Selfhood and Sacrifice: “Making Sacred” and “Making the Modem Identity”
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Selfhood and Sacrifice: “Making Sacred” and “Making the Modem Identity” (A Comparative Study of Selected Works by René Girard and Charles Taylor) Doctor of Philosophy St Patrick’s College, Drumcondra Supervisor: Dr. Joseph Dunne Department of Education and Human Development August 2008 Declaration I hereby certify that this material, which I now submit for assessment on the programme of study leading to the award of doctor of philosophy is entirely my own work and has not been taken from the work of others save and to the extent that such work has been cited and acknowledged within the text of my work. Signed a A x / / CcXJ L/U*Ç c^ ( Candidate! ID No.: 53103378 Date: May 2008 To my parents... Acknowledgements There are many people who deserve thanks for helping me to undertake and complete this work. Along the way friends - forged in the process - have been of assistance, often by pointing me to important books and in some instances handing them to me; Padraig de Paor, Dara Waldron, and Brendan Purcell can be mentioned here. Others for their resistance, which pushed me and forced me to push myself in a direction that I might not otherwise have taken, a direction that in the end may have made all the difference; these people, acknowledged here without fuss, shall remain unnamed. My friends and colleagues in Human Development, Jones Irwin and Maeve O’Brien have shown immense generosity to me throughout the course of this work, especially toward the end with the editing when I was under considerable pressure to finish. I am humbled by their care and grateful beyond words. A special thanks is reserved for my supervisor Joe Dunne whose continued belief in the work and steadfast guidance is the true heroism of this story. His thoroughness and commitment to good practice were exemplary, and his patience, encouragement and good humor were appreciated beyond measure. Finally, thank you H. for being there during the last year, and inspiring me ‘at the darkest hour’. Introduction pp. i-xxxv Part 1 From Self to Sacrifice: Girardian Theory I. Division and Unity in Literary Space (The Romantic Fallacy) 1. Introduction p.l 2. Debunking the Modem Subject p.4 3. Self and Other in Literary Structure p.10 4. Fusion and Separation: The Futility of the Romantic Spirit p. 15 5. Underground Psychology: Dostoyevsky’s ‘The Double’ p.20 6. The Romantic Lie, and the Historical Struggle for Consciousness p. 24 7. Failure to Gather: ‘The Dostoyevskian Apocalypse’ p. 30 8. Authentic and Inauthentic Unity: Novelistic Conclusions p. 34 9. Conclusion: the Spiritual and the Literary p. 41 II Division and Unity in Cultural Space (The Scapegoat Mechanism) 1. Introduction p. 46 2. De-differentiation: The Link Between Self and Sacrifice p. 49 3. Some Characteristics of Violent Reciprocity p. 54 4. Shakespeare’s ‘Mimetic Theory’: The World as Stage p. 57 5. Violence and Scapegoating: From Crisis to Resolution p. 62 6. Mimesis and the Monstrous Double p. 68 7. Bringing Together All Rites: The Janus Face of the Sacred p. 71 8. Beyond Structuralism: Representation and Real Violence p. 75 9. Conclusion: Reading back in p. 81 HI Negating Subjectivity and History: (Problems Within Girardian Theory) 1. Introduction p. 89 2. Explaining Cultural Space by reference to Literary Space p. 93 3. History as Negating Negativity: The Legacy of Alexander Kojeve p. 100 4. Interdividual Psychology: A Loss of Positive Interiority? p. 108 5. The Death of Desire: Mimesis and the World as Will p. 116 6. Dostoyevsky’s Conscious Attack on Rationalism p. 124 7. Conclusion: Beyond Literary Space p. 131 Part 2 From Sacrifice to Self: Taylor’s Philosophical Account IV Transposing the Old Cosmic Order (The Modem Period) 1. Introduction p. 136 2. Taylor’s St. Augustine: “In Interiore Homine” p. 143 3. Disengaged Reason and the Affirmation of Ordinary Life p. 152 4. Right Use, Right Order: Innerworldly Asceticism p. 161 5. Deism and the New Providential Order: Re-marking Difference p. 167 6. Conclusion: ‘Self-Love and Social’ p. 174 V Rethinking Division and Unity (Self, Religion, and the Current of Life) 1. Introduction p. 178 2. Sentiments and the Voice of Nature p. 182 3. Expression and Originality: Combining Two Views of Nature p. 190 4. ‘Self-divinisation’ or the Demands of Expression? p. 200 5. Religion and the History of Division p. 208 6. Division and the Unity of Life: ‘Unanimity Plus One’ p. 214 7. Conclusion: A Post-Romantic Vision p. 220 VI Crisis and Unity in Moral Space (Identity and the Good) 1. Introduction p. 227 2. Moral Space: Strong Value, Identity, and Gaining Orientation p. 234 3. Disenchantment: Modem Crisis, and Being Lost in Moral Space p. 241 4. ‘Conclusions’ in Moral Space: Craving, and the Unity of a Self p. 251 5. Sacrifice, and the Best Account Possible p. 258 6. Conclusions: Being on Both Sides of the Debate p. 273 Bibliography pp. 275 - 286 ABSTRACT This thesis examines key works of René Girard (both his earlier literary criticism and his later cultural anthropology) and of Charles Taylor (both his philosophical history and his philosophical anthropology). Both thinkers see the loss of traditional frameworks grounded in religious worldviews as precipitating a crisis of order in the modem period. Girard's diagnosis of this loss of order stems from his analysis of desire as mimetic, an analysis that leads him to argue that scapegoating and sacrifice are essential to the creation of cultural stability and are no longer available today either to individuals or communities. I shall claim that this analysis of desire thoroughly - and, even on Girard’s own terms, problematically - debunks subjectivity and undermines the possibility of any coherent ethical agency. And I shall then go on to argue that Taylor’s philosophy, while taking due cognizance of the crisis of order so acutely identified by Girard, allows us to meet it with a robust and nuanced account of subjectivity and ethical agency - an account that allows us to reject Girard’s apocalyptic forebodings and to imagine that ‘hope and history rhyme’. Introduction 1 Why write a dissertation on the work of René Girard and Charles Taylor? The reason for placing these contemporary thinkers in conversation is not immediately evident since both occupy quite distinct realms of discourse. Girard is a literary critic and cultural anthropologist, while Taylor is much more firmly rooted in academic philosophy. Indeed the question arises as to whether such different figures share enough of a common language to have a fruitful dialogue. It is not easy to see how a preoccupation with scapegoating and sacrifice through the critical lens of literary and cultural theory (Girard), and a practical approach to philosophy and articulating the sources of the modem identity (Taylor), can be brought together in a coherent and purposeful engagement. Surely there is just too much clarification needed before either side can address any substantive content? Yet while Girard nowhere refers to Taylor’s work in any direct way, Taylor on more than one occasion refers to Girard’s work with admiration and genuine sympathy, although not with complete agreement. Moreover, both thinkers share an interest in, and concern for, the continued relevance of religion and transcendence in exploring some of the most pressing issues of our time - issues that might well make a sober observer of the contemporary world fear for the future. And, importantly, they both take seriously the significance of the Christian revelation in helping us to understand our predicament as historical subjects existing in community, and more broadly in a web of social and cultural relations. But, before we can properly grasp the connections that may make them an exciting, if not urgent, match it is perhaps worth saying something about each of their varied careers and then explaining how I first came to find them so appealing - each in himself and as a potential dialogue partner with the other.1 Girard’s early historical work seems remote from his later concerns, which involve a pursuit of what might be called a ‘grand unified theory’2. The beginning of Girard’s interest in broader social and cultural questions is often identified with his time preparing for and teaching a course on French Literature at The University of Indiana. This was the first of several posts that he held after completing his doctoral work: others were at Johns Hopkins University (where he Chaired the Department of Romance Languages 1965 - 1968), The State University of New York at Buffalo, where he was appointed in 1971, and where he stayed until he accepted his final post as Andrew B. Hammond Professor of French Languages, Literature, and Civilisation at Stanford University in 1981. In 1966, while still at Johns Hopkins University, Girard helped organise a conference which was to have significant impact on the emergence of critical theory in the United States. Entitled The Languages o f Criticism and the Sciences o f Man, this conference included papers by Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan, and Roland Barthes, among other (mainly French) Continental thinkers, whose attacks on prevailing theories of consciousness formed the driving force of a new post structuralist criticism. In was also during his time at Johns Hopkins that Girard wrote his first two books: Mensonge romantique et vérité romanesque (1961), and Dostoïevski: du double à l’unité (1963). In these works of criticism he first began to 1 In a private conversation in St Paul’s University, Ottawa, June 2006, Girard acknowledged the plausibility of his and Taylor’s similarity in describing certain aspects of the modem period, and, when pressed further on this similarity, encouraged me to explore it.