Reading René Girard in light of Emmanuel Levinas

Abstract

This thesis presupposes a parallelism between Girard and Levinas because both scholars establish their theories in opposition to the Heideggerian being. Girard opposes the Heideggerian being in that, while pursuing the Heideggerian being, we already project our vision on each other and take each other as a model in order that we may imitate each other and absorb what is imitated into our being. The social mimesis calls for the victim mechanism because, while imitating each other as a model, we also imitate each other's violence and drag ourselves to the vicious cycle of violence that we have to break the vicious cycle by choosing a victimto deflectour violent impulses. As a solution to the victim mechanism, Girard suggests the biblical revelation of violence in that the Bible ends violence not with violence, butby revealing violence until violence is reversed to the kingdom of God in the gospels. Levinas also opposes the Heideggerian being in that, while pursuing the Heideggerian being in the world, we already divest the world of its material qualities, e.g., heats and colds, and synchronize the material world into what is being there. The synchronization of the material world has prevailed all over the Western traditions because, in the West, nothing remains as it is, but can be stripped of its material qualities and synchronizedinto what is being there. As a solution to the Western synchrony, Levinas suggests the Judaic diachrony in that, in Judaism, diachrony reveals the limit of the Western synchrony with its proximity until we give up the Western synchrony and listen to the voice in diachrony. The parallelism between Girard and Levinas, however, does not go well because the Girardian theory of revelation has been blamed not only for being anti-Semitic but also for being sacrificial because, in the revelation theory, the kingdom of God is opened not in the Hebrew Bible but in the Christian gospels, and because Jesus in the Christian gospels plays as the same victim in the Leviticus rituals. To defend Girard from these allegations, we propose to read Girard in light of Levinas because, thanks to the parallelism betweentwo scholars, the Levinasian theory of diachrony serves as the key to the Girardian theory of revelation. The Levinasian theory of diachrony serves as the key to the Girardian theory of revelation because, without diachrony in the Bible, which fleets away from vision before we project our vision on each other and drag ourselves into the violent imitation, there would neither revelation nor the kingdom of God, but only violence and its victim mechanism. Diachrony in the Bible identified in our thesis serves to defendGirard from the allegations above because the biblicaldiachrony reveals the limit of our being with its proximity until we give up our being and its anti-Semitic and sacrificial view on the Girardian theory and listen to the voice in the biblical diachrony. To developour thesis, we first clarify the Levinasian time-framework: the Western synchrony vs. the Judaic diachrony. Then, in light of the Levinasian time-framework, we will read the Girardian time-framework: the cultural synchrony vs. the biblical diachrony, which is already signaled in our thesis. In our thesis, the cultural synchrony is signaled in the Girardian theory of mimesis because, while imitating each other as a model inside the culture, we already divest the other of his/her physical qualities, e.g., heats and colds, and synchronize the physical other into our being. The biblical diachrony is also signaled in the Girardian theory of revelation because diachrony in the Bible is the key to the revelation theory.