René Girard, Unlikely Apologist: Mimetic Theory and Fundamental Theology - Hardcover

Kaplan, Grant

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0268100853 ISBN 13: 9780268100858

Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press, 2016

Synopsis

Since the late 1970s, theologians have been attempting to integrate mimetic theory into different fields of theology, yet a distrust of mimetic theory persists in some theological camps. In René Girard, Unlikely Apologist: Mimetic Theory and Fundamental Theology, Grant Kaplan brings mimetic theory into conversation with theology both to elucidate the relevance of mimetic theory for the discipline of fundamental theology and to understand the work of René Girard within a theological framework. Rather than focus on Christology or atonement theory as the locus of interaction between Girard and theology, Kaplan centers his discussion on the apologetic quality of mimetic theory and the impact of mimetic theory on fundamental theology, the subdiscipline that grew to replace apologetics. His book explores the relation between Girard and fundamental theology in several keys. In one, it understands mimetic theory as a heuristic device that allows theological narratives and positions to become more intelligible and, by so doing, makes theology more persuasive. In another key, Kaplan shows how mimetic theory, when placed in dialogue with particular theologians, can advance theological discussion in areas where mimetic theory has seldom been invoked. On this level the book performs a dialogue with theology that both revisits earlier theological efforts and also demonstrates how mimetic theory brings valuable dimensions to questions of fundamental theology.

About this title

About the Author

Grant Kaplan is professor of theology at Saint Louis University. He is the author of a number of books, including Answering the Enlightenment: The Catholic Recovery of Historical Revelation.

From the Back Cover

"In this pathbreaking book, Grant Kaplan provides a theoretical framework for understanding René Girard as a particular kind of theologian, a Christian apologist in an age of unbelief whose anthropological explorations necessarily entail a theological horizon and verge upon fundamental theological questions. Reading the Girardian literary corpus broadly, Kaplan calls attention to modifications of, and developments within, Girard’s mimetic theory across time, as the French thinker attended to the constructive critiques of such theologians as Raymund Schwager and Hans Urs von Balthasar. Girard’s apologetic response to theologians and his appeal to them as co-investigators, Kaplan argues, have had a transformative effect upon theology itself as a discipline, reminding it of its own most fundamental concerns: sin, grace, conversion, revelation. Highly recommended." —Ann W. Astell, University of Notre Dame

"This is a promising and original book advancing the discussion of Girard and theology. It exemplifies today's growing appreciation of Girard's work as having become more intentionally theological, rather than purely social scientific and objective. The discussion of reason and revelation cast in a hermeneutical key is perhaps the book's strongest exploration of this complementarity in Girard, between rational objectivity and the necessity of conversion." —Scott Cowdell, author of René Girard and Secular Modernity: Christ, Culture, and Crisis

"With clarity and erudition, Grant Kaplan has demonstrated the theological fecundity of Girard’s thought. Kaplan opens up the dialogue to include major themes in fundamental theology, attending to how Girard’s insights into mimesis and the scapegoat mechanism shed new light on traditional questions. A welcome addition to a growing body of Girardian theological literature." —Neil Ormerod, Australian Catholic University

Grant Kaplan is associate professor of theological studies at Saint Louis University.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The foundation and driving force behind mimetic theory derives from Girard’s thesis about the shape of human desire. According to Girard’s own testimony, this thesis, or discovery, did not generate from his own genius. One finds the same insight already in Aristotle: “The instinct of imitation is implanted in man from childhood, one difference between him and other animals being that he is the most imitative of living creatures, and through imitation learns his earliest lesson; and no less universal is the pleasure felt in things imitated.” Mimetic theory cannot even claim to have discovered this forgotten insight from antiquity. Erich Auerbach produced a famous study on literary theory―Mimesis―in the 1950s, which predated Girard’s earliest efforts. What is unique to Girard, and to mimetic theory, however, is the attempt to plant this insight in the ground, to water it, and to attend to its growth. Girard’s importance, especially for theology, derives from his exploration of the implications of mimetic desire for different fields of study, especially anthropology and religion.

Desire, according to mimetic theory, is most primarily mediated through another person rather than generated from the individual subject. Mimetic desire is what most clearly distinguishes human beings from other primates. Girard makes this point quite forcefully in the opening section of Things Hidden: “There is nothing, or next to nothing, in human behaviour that is not learned, and all learning is based on imitation. If human beings suddenly ceased imitating, all forms of culture would vanish . . . To develop a science of man it is necessary to compare human imitation with animal mimicry, and to specify the properly human modalities of mimetic behaviour, if they indeed exist.” Girard’s claim for the centrality of mimesis in human behavior has been confirmed by recent neuroscience. In 1996, a group of Italian scientists in Parma discovered “mirror” neurons. According to Scott Garrels, “Mirror neurons are brain cells that are activated regardless of whether the individual is performing a particular motor movement or observing the same movement being made by another person.” In other words, these neurons mirror observed action. If one person sees another enjoying a hotfudge sundae, the former’s neurons respond similarly to how they would if their subject were the one enjoying the sundae.

Although this discovery focused on a study of macaque monkeys, scientific experiment indicates that the human brain has “many more, and more widely distributed, mirror neurons than monkeys, and that these are fired off from birth onwards.” In addition to imitating adult actions, infants distinguish between adult intentions and the completed act, evidencing even more clearly how infant brains seek to imitate the intention, not the action itself. From this data, Garrels concludes: “Human infants are thought to be immersed in a rich social matrix of self–other reciprocity and intersubjective experience from the very beginnings of Life.” Humans do not learn to imitate as an act of departure from an earlier, more spontaneous autonomy; imitating itself is innate to human nature, as Girard had argued before this groundbreaking research.

The discovery of mirror neurons has important consequences both for the discipline of anthropology and for any theology seeking overlap with natural science. The motor and problem-solving skills of a three-year-old child will be no more advanced than that of many primates, but the former will know far more words than even the most verbose chimpanzee. But what does this say about human particularity? Garrels summarizes: “So foundational is our capacity to imitate, that many researchers believe it to be the linchpin that contributed to a wide-scale neural reorganization of the brain, allowing for the coevolution of more complex, social, cultural, and representational abilities from earlier primates to humans.” The imitative capacity enables humans to experience a mutuality that is more neurologically connected than that between other mammals. Humans can “lock into” other humans to a degree not achieved by other species. James Alison concludes, “Humans are exceptionally finely prepared imitating bodies for whom imitation, at which we can indeed improve, is the normal conduit through which we acquire language, gesture, memory and empathy, and so receive ourselves as ourselves.” Reflection on mirror neurons points to the same conclusion as Girard’s mimetic theory: we learn our accents, our preferred colors, and our notion of beauty from our communities, which give us a sense of who we are by telling us what we want.

Mimetic theory, of course, undermines one of modernity’s most fiercely defended dogmas: the sovereignty and goodness of individual choice. One is free, we learn from a thousand advertisements and grand narratives, to determine one’s own tastes, preference, likes, and dislikes. Although mimetic theory prioritizes the social over the individual, it does not eliminate individual sovereignty or choice. Girard on several occasions has rejected determinism or reductionism. Girard upholds some measure of human freedom, however truncated, and maintains that human behavior cannot be reduced to biological or neurological predictors. The biological basis of imitation does not remove the capacity to moderate the object of imitation. Nevertheless, Girard’s notion of mimetic desire, which he calls “the real ‘unconscious,’” challenges our default mode of thinking about human agency.

(Excerpted from Chapter 1)

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
• Publication date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0268100853
• ISBN 13: 9780268100858
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 280