Ren� Girard is a French-born, American historian, literary critic, and philosopher of social science whose work belongs to the tradition of anthropological philosophy. Girard is the author of nearly thirty books, with his writings spanning many academic domains. Although the reception of his work is different in each of these areas, there is a growing body of secondary literature on his work and his influence on disciplines such as literary criticism, critical theory, anthropology, theology, psychology, mythology, sociology, economics, cultural studies, and philosophy. Girard's fundamental ideas, which he has developed throughout his career and provide the foundation for his thinking, are that desire is mimetic, that all conflict originates in mimetic desire, that the scapegoat mechanism is the origin of sacrifice and the foundation of human culture, and religion was necessary in human evolution to control the violence that can come from mimetic rivalry, and that the Bible reveals these ideas and denounces the scapegoat mechanism. 

December 25th, 1923 in Avignon  /  Died:   Nov 4th, 2015