Violence and the return of the religious

René Girard speaks of the return of the religious as a "return of the sacred… in the form of violence." This violence was inherent in the original "sacrificial system," which deflected communal violence onto the victim. In this article, I argue that there is a double return of th...

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Détails bibliographiques
Auteur principal: Mensch, James R. 1944- (Auteur)
Type de support: Électronique Article
Langue:Anglais
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Interlibrary Loan:Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany)
Publié: 2020
Dans: Continental philosophy review
Année: 2020, Volume: 53, Numéro: 3, Pages: 271-285
Sujets / Chaînes de mots-clés standardisés:B Violence
Sujets non-standardisés:B René Girard
B Violence
B Religion
B The political
B Sacrifice
B Carl Schmitt
Accès en ligne: Volltext (lizenzpflichtig)
Description
Résumé:René Girard speaks of the return of the religious as a "return of the sacred… in the form of violence." This violence was inherent in the original "sacrificial system," which deflected communal violence onto the victim. In this article, I argue that there is a double return of the sacred. With the collapse of the original sacrificial system, the sacred first reappears in the legal order. When this loses its binding claim, it reappears in the political order. Here, my claim will be that Carl Schmitt’s conception of the political is not simply structurally similar to Girard’s conception of the sacrificial system. It is actually a manifestation of this. In this political return of the religious, the religious and the political systems are conflated. What prevents us from seeing this is the self-concealment that is essential to the sacrificial act, a self-concealment that also characterizes its twofold return.
ISSN:1573-1103
Contient:Enthalten in: Continental philosophy review
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1007/s11007-018-9443-y