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Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam > Blaise Pascal Instituut > Girard Studiekring > COV&R 2007 > Abstracts Papers
Girard and Levinas, Cain and Abel, Mimesis and the Face
Joachim Duyndam
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NOTES
1.
Starting from the Bible story of Cain and Abel, my lecture will study
connections between Girard and Levinas from a philosophical point of view. Their
significantly diverging perspectives share an important common motive, though,
which can be characterized as moral or ethical.
2.
Whereas Levinas takes the first persons perspective, starting from my
position in face of the other, Girards theory rather opts for a general
viewpoint. The latters theory on mimesis, violence, and the scapegoat
mechanism argues from a general perspective on humans, human nature and the
principles of culture, and in his concept of society, human subjects look at
themselves and each other from a comparative perspective, due to their mimetic
nature. The sacrifice of the scapegoat concludes this process of subjects
comparing themselves mutually.
3.
Levinass approach seems quite different. In his view, I am chosen by the
other as other to be responsible for him. Being chosen does not happen by
comparison, as from outside, but it happens from within my relationship to the
other. Levinas uses the notion of the face to stress the internal perspective of
election or being chosen to responsibility. I cannot compare my responsibility
to the responsibility of anyone else. Being chosen is not comparative, but
absolute and unconditional, even if from an external and general philosophical
perspective it can be said that being chosen is essential to subjectivity, and
thus crucial for any me.
4.
These different perspectives complement each other, however, deploying a moral
counterweight against primarily amoral human nature. My lecture will trace this
moral element through re-reading a few Bible stories that are important for
Girard, supplementing their interpretation from a Levinasian view. In addition
to the story of Cain and Abel, I will include Josephs narrative from the book
of Genesis and the New Testament accounts of the prodigal son and the adulterous
woman in my analysis.
5.
In my view, the ethical perspective is introduced by an unexpected reversal in
these Bible stories of a natural, logical, traditional or established order. The
inversion concerns the election or being chosen, mostly by God, of the
unexpected, the victim or the scapegoat in the interpreted narratives. In the
notion of being chosen lies the connection looked for between Girard and Levinas.
The uniqueness of being chosen for responsibility from an internal perspective
singles out the subject, it individualizes me, from the mimetic hordes, from the
Heideggerian Mitsein of the herd to
which we first and foremost belong.
6.
Essential to the ethical perspective of being chosen for responsibility, as
Levinas formulates it, is that it is an internal perspective. The internal
perspective of being chosen, which happens and is experienced within my
relationship with the others face, precedes the external comparative
perspective of the general view on human beings and human nature. In fact, it
precedes also the view of the reader of the Bible stories, who necessarily
compares the different characters he or she meets in the tales. The reversal
mentioned above is a warning of the comparative perspective and practices to the
reader, who is not God but a human, cursed with mimetic desire.
7. From our philosophical perspective, both epistemological and ethical, we may conclude that the common motive that Girard and Levinas share and the point where their views complement each other is the internal ethical perspective of unique responsibility preceding and supplementing the comparative perspective of mimetic human nature.
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Joachim Duyndam
PhD is associate professor of philosophy at the