Enemies, Scapegoats and Sacrifice

The relation between politics and individual experience has never been convincingly articulated. Palaver tackles this question by connecting Carl Schmitt's political reconstructions with René Girard's cultural theory. While Schmitt traces political concepts such as sovereignty and the state back to their theological origins, he only deals with these issues on the institutional level. He does not discuss the dynamics of individual experience associated with these developments. Girard's theory of culture seems to fill these lacunae. In order to locate a basic instinct for violence, he approaches relations between individuals in terms of imitation and desire, from which he develops a theory of the origin of culture

Economics · Epistemology · Imitation · Instinct · Order (exchange · Political science · Politics · Relation (database · Sacrifice · Sociology · Sovereignty · State (computer science · Theology · Law · Mathematics · Philosophy · Political Theology and Sovereignty · Psychology · Social Psychology · Violence, Religion, and Philosophy · War, Ethics, and Justification