Are religions intrinsically violent (as is strenuously argued by the ‘new atheists’)? Or, as Girard argues, have they been functionally rational instruments developed to manage and cope with the intrinsically violent runaway dynamic that characterizes human social organization in all periods of human history? Is violence decreasing in this time of secular modernity post-Christendom (as argued by Steven Pinker and others)? Or are we, rather, at increased and even apocalyptic risk from our enhanced powers of action and our decreased socio-symbolic protections? Rene Girard’s mimetic theory has been slowly but progressively recognized as one of the most striking breakthrough contributions to twentieth-century critical thinking in fundamental anthropology: in particular for its power to model and explain violent sacralities, ancient and modern. The present volume sets this power of explanation in an evolutionary and Darwinian frame. It asks: How far do cultural mechanisms of controlling violence, which allowed humankind to cross the threshold of hominization—i.e., to survive and develop in its evolutionary emergence—still represent today a default setting that threatens to destroy us? Can we transcend them and escape their field of gravity? Should we look to—or should we look beyond—Darwinian survival? What—and where (if anywhere)—is salvation?
ContentsForeword / Rowan WilliamsAcknowledgmentsIntroductionPart One. The Programming of Origins: Sacred Violence and Its LegacyA Covenant among Beasts: Human and Chimpanzee Violence in Evolutionary Perspective / Paul DumouchelLiminal Crises: The Origins of Cultural Order, the Default Mechanisms of Survival, and the Pedagogy of the Sacrificial Victim / Pierpaolo AntonelloVictims, Sacred Violence, and Reconciliation: A Darwinian-Girardian Reading of Human Peril and Human Possibility / Harald WydraEmpire of Sacrifice: Violence and the Sacred in American Culture / Jon Pahl and James WellmanPart Two. Rebooting Evolutionary Survival: Is Christianity Crucial?From Closed Societies to the Open Society: Parochial Altruism and Christian Universalism / Wolfgang PalaverGirard, the Gospels, and the Symmetrical Inversion of the Founding Murder / Paul GiffordSurvival and Salvation: A Girardian Reading of Christian Hope in Evolutionary Perspective / Robert G. Hamerton-KellyPart Three. Violent Reciprocities and Peace-Making in the Contemporary WorldNorthern Ireland: Breaking the Inheritance of Conflict and Violence / Duncan MorrowCommunities of Contrast: Modeling Reconciliation in Northern Ireland / Derick WilsonGirardian Reflections on Israel and Palestine / Mel KonnerSouth Africa: Positive Mimesis and the Turn toward Peace / Leon MarincowitzPeace-Making in Practice and Theory: An Encounter with René Girard / Scott AtranPart Four. Between Progress and Abyss: Our ModernityNuclear Apocalypse: The Balance of Terror and Girardian “Misrecognition” / Jean-Pierre DupuyThe “Intermediary” Case / Margo Boenig-LiptsinMisrecognition of “Misrecognition” / Paul DumouchelSurvival without Salvation? / Paul GiffordGirard, Climate Change, and Apocalypse / Michael NorthcottA New Heaven and a New Earth: Apocalypticism and Its Alternatives / Michael KirwanAbout the AuthorsIndex
