Girard and Heidegger: Mimesis, Mitsein, Addiction

Abstract

In his essay “Peter’s Denial,” René Girard draws a parallel between mimesis and Martin Heidegger’s concept of being-with (Mitsein). In this essay I explore this parallel through a third, intermediate term—addiction—on the assumption that living in a world governed by mimesis, according to Girard, and living in the modus of Mitsein, according to Heidegger, can both be characterized as a kind of addiction. The clarification of the parallel between mimesis and Mitsein through this intermediate term may contribute to a better understanding of a central concept of Heidegger’s philosophy and, at the same time, bring into view the philosophical dimension of Girard’s mimetic theory. In my conclusion I propose Levinas’s ethical approach as a possible cure to the addiction to mimesis and being-with.

Notes

1. René Girard, “Peter’s Denial,” in The Scapegoat (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), 149–164, esp. 150–54.

2. Matt. 26.69–75; Mark 14.66–72; Luke 22.54–62; John 18.15–18, 25–27. Girard’s interpretation is mainly based on Mark 14.66–72, New English Translation NET Bible, https://www.biblegateway.com: Now while Peter was below in the courtyard, one of the high priest’s slave girls came by. When she saw Peter warming himself, she looked directly at him and said, “You also were with that Nazarene, Jesus.” But he denied it: “I don’t even understand what you’re talking about!” Then he went out to the gateway, and a rooster crowed. When the slave girl saw him, she began again to say to the bystanders, “This man is one of them.” But he denied it again. A short time later the bystanders again said to Peter, “You must be one of them, because you are also a Galilean.” Then he began to curse, and he swore with an oath, “I do not know this man you are talking about!” Immediately a rooster crowed a second time. Then Peter remembered what Jesus had said to him: “Before a rooster crows twice, you will deny me three times.” And he broke down and wept.

3. Girard, “Peter’s Denial,” 150.

4. See, for example, Paolo Diego Bubbio, “Mimetic Theory and Hermeneutics,” Colloquy 9 (2005); Gianni Vattimo, “Heidegger and Girard: Kenosis and the End of Metaphysics,” in Christianity, Truth, and Weakening Faith: A Dialogue, ed. Gianni Vattimo (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010); Anthony W. Bartlett, “A Flight of God: M. Heidegger and R. Girard,” Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia 59.4 (2003): 1101–12.

5. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), 149

6. Heidegger, Being and Time, 149–68.

7. Heidegger, Being and Time, 312.

8. William J. Richardson, Heidegger: Through Phenomenology to Thought (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974), 530–32.

9. Rüdiger Safranski, Martin Heidegger: Between Good and Evil (Boston, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 211, 212, 279.

10. In German: Botmäßigkeit and Diktatur. See Sein und Zeit, 126; Being and Time, 163–64.

11. In French, addiction is asservissement (lit. being made a slave); in Dutch, it is verslaving (lit. being a slave).

12. There is a range of scientific journals on the subject, including, among others, Addiction, The Journal of Addictive Diseases, The American Journal on Addictions. On the Internet I even found an “International Society of Addiction Journal Editors,” an alliance of only the (apparently numerous) editors of such journals.

13. Not only is the word addiction in many languages closely linked to slavery (see note 11), but anyone who has worked with addicts or is an addict himself knows that they are barely capable of acting without being motivated by their addiction in some way, and what is more, that they cannot take responsibility for what they do.

14. Paul Ricoeur, “Phenomenology and Hermeneutics,” in The Phenomenology Reader, ed. D. Moran Mooney and T. Mooney (London: Routledge, 2002), 582.

15. In line with Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty interprets this prior relationship of belonging as bodily existence in his Phenomenology of Perception (London: Routledge, 2008), 178.

16. Heidegger, Being and Time, 149, 164, 165.

17. Of course, this is not a translation in the literal sense. Heidegger’s (1889–1976) Sein und Zeit is from 1927; Girard (b. 1923) started publishing on mimesis and scapegoating in the 1960s.

18. See René Girard, Mimesis and Theory: Essays on Literature and Criticism, 1953–2005, ed. Robert Doran (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008).

19. “Mirror neurons” in Google produces more than 1.2 million hits, thus illustrating the topicality of the subject.

20. René Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning, trans. James G. Williams (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2001), 49–61.

21. Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority (first published in 1961), trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 2000), 245, 246, 279; Emmanuel Levinas, Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, trans. Alphonso Lingis (1974) (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 2004), 15, 50, 52, 56, 57, 106, 122, 124, 127, 144, 145, 153, 194.

22. Levinas discusses his notion of the face in numerous articles, published in a variety of journals. For an overview, see “The Levinas Online Bibliography” (www.levinas.nl). In his first chef-d’oeuvre, Totality and Infinity, the experience of the face is discussed on pages 187–204. Levinas’s second chef-d’oeuvre, Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, in which his previous work is radicalized, still rests on the notion of the face, albeit less predominantly.

23. Joachim Duyndam, “Girard and Levinas, Cain and Abel, Mimesis and the Face,” Contagion: Journal of Violence, Mimesis, and Culture 15.16 (2009): 237–48.

24. Joachim Duyndam, “Sincerely Me: Enjoyment and the Truth of Hedonism,” in Radical Passivity: Rethinking Ethical Agency in Levinas, ed. Benda Hofmeyr (Heidelberg: Springer, 2009), 67–78.