The Study On René Girard's Aesthetics Theory

RenéGirard (1923-) is a famous French philosopher, anthropologist and literature critic. As an anthropologist, he takes literature works as his target of observation and to seek the truth and the human nature behind. This article would be divided into four parts to introduce and analyze the main content of Girard's theory.The first part: Girard has found a lot of evidences to prove his"Mimetic Desire Theory"by reading a great amount of famous European novels. He divides the basic psychological structure normally called"Desire"into two types:"Appetite and Needs"and"Desire". As people's desire of trying to pursue other, it inevitably leads to the desire model that Girard calls as"Mimetic". In this triangle model, which includes the subject, the object and the mediator, it is the mediator that the subject is pointing to more directly. He also makes a clear cut between External mediation and Internal Mediation. The concept of Internal Mediation could offer a better interpretation those human basic emotions, like jealousy, envy and hatred, related to the competition of Desire. The difficulty of interpreting these emotions is that they are always constructed by a kind of Desire triangle, and is a double complex of model-obstacle. It means that the object we feel jealous and hate is the very model we worship and imitate, and we manage to hide this kind of imitation. Girard indicates that the Internal Meditation is the root of Desire competition, and the closer the mediation is, the less the concrete value would be. Then it is more easily to result in the object's super organic disappointment and panic for nothing. People copy other's desire and form"Double Mediation". Therefore, the closer the subjects are, the cruder they fight is, which even lose sense and meaningless. At the same time, by comparing Frued's"Desire", Plato's"Imitation"and Girard's"Mimetic", he himself tries to laid the anthropology's foundation on the human nature—imitation and seeks the new interpretation of the human culture.The second part: He analyzes one common social phenomena, the persecution of scapegoat, to continue the discussion of the expression and the result of"Mimetic". Through analyzing the history literature, the existence of the Persecution has been confirmed, and it has become the principle of the foundation of every social structure.The third part: Girard sets his eye on the intercultural discussion of human common model. He figures out four typical ways of persecution from Machaut's poems, and implies these four to all the persecution literature in the world. During the process of concluding and implying, he tries to depict an intercultural draft existing in the collective violence. By the analysis of King Oedipus, he points out that myth is a kind of persecution covered with beautiful outfits. And the principle of religious sacrifice is the"original violence"used to replace other kinds of violence. The Scapegoat mechanism of myth is that one person's death trades for others'survival.The fourth part: Girard finds that Bible mention a lot about Persecution, victims and Scapegoat. Different from the myth which tries hard to hind the nature of persecution, Bible indicates the fact of persecution instead of hiding it. This indication is the enlightenment power of Bible. The subject of persecution is people, whose unison forms the threat of violence. People is the unison but totally loosed, and it regains its unity by scarifying the victim—its scapegoat. He analyzes all kinds of relationships in Gospel by Mimetic, and concludes that it is the mimetic that arouse people's desire and fight that cause the tragedy and ridiculous misunderstanding. Therefore mimetic is the very root of human division, all chaos and scapegoat. When mimetic develop to its extreme, victims make people united and against themselves, scarify themselves to restore the order. In our world, our culture used to cover the root of collective violence in the shy manner. Yet behind the power of hiding, there is the power of enlightening to expose the ancient lie and fight against the hiding power. Bible is the very power of enlightening which is combined by the Old Testaments and New Testaments. As Gospel states, to fight with persecution, expose the scapegoat mechanism and cause the persecute-unit crash. Human society could only survive in the long run by adjusting each other's violence. However, the case of this kind of sacrifice is inevitable. From the social aspect, this kind of death is to maintain the mutual order and interest. So this kind of sacrifice is logical and even legal. But there is a rule-oriented culture to re-identify this kind of death. It is a daring cultural recognition that scapegoat is innocent.