Bishop Barron and the Three Theoretical Limits to René Girard
In an interesting
interview, Bishop Barron speaks of Girard's greatness, a greatness that I do
not deny.
https://youtu.be/ZOdPLrq5ViM?si=UUC3YCRlo5Vl4fgg
But this is to forget
that all theoretical view is limited, and only a message identified with the
messenger can be complete.
Girard's theories have
three limits.
It is a theory without
psychology. Girard had an almost physical repulsion for psychology. He was an
anthropologist, and, even better, he had a philological background. I read societies
as one reads a text. Searching for their meaning and object. That is why he
never accepted the theories of the absence of a referent, but at the same time
without investing in the intimate psychology of the text.
Not all desire is
mimetic. Girard himself recognized it. There are autonomous desires. I'm hungry
and thirsty, I need to breathe. Nothing is mimetic in this. But what I want to
eat, when, this can have a mimetic inflection.
If all desire is mimetic,
where does the first desire come from? Girard does not explain it. His theory
is like a kind of Big Bang. After the Big Bang, it explains well what is going
on. But not the first irruption of desire.
Where is the foundation
of these three limits? Perhaps it is unique, and it comes from the absence of
psychology. Reading society as a text is the work of a philologist. It has
limits. But between a critical edition of Plato and a fanciful one there is a
long distance. It's a good thing that someone brought philology to anthropology
to end decades of cheap nominalisms.
A student at the École
des Chartes, he showed us the power of philology to read the profound reality.
But also its limits. To speak of people without speaking of soul is a
fruitful deviation. But being a detour hides part of the road.
One day, comparing him
with St. Irenaeus of Leo and with Jung, I hope to explain why.
Alexandre Brandão da
Veiga
