René Girard, French Theorist of the Social Sciences, Dies at 91
Professor Girard’s central idea was that human motivation is
based on desire. People are free, he believed, but seek things in life based on
what other people want. Their imitation of those desires, which he termed
mimesis, is imitated by others in turn, leading to escalating and often
destructive competition.
His
first work, published in French in 1961 and in English in 1965 as “Deceit,
Desire, and the Novel,” introduced this idea through readings of classic
novels. Over time, the idea has been used to explain financial bubbles, where
things of little intrinsic value are increasingly bid up in the hope of
financial gain. It has also been cited to explain why people unsatisfied by
high-status jobs pursue them anyway.
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