In Battling to the End René Girard engages Carl von Clausewitz (1780-1831), the Prussian military theoretician who wrote On War. Clausewitz, who has been critiqued by military strategists, political scientists, and philosophers, famously postulated that "War is the continuation of politics by other means." He also seemed to believe that governments could constrain war. Clausewitz, a firsthand witness to the Napoleonic Wars, understood the nature of modern warfare. Far from controlling violence, politics follows in war's wake: the means of war have become its ends. René Girard shows us a Clausewitz who is a fascinated witness of history's acceleration. Haunted by the French-German conflict, Clausewitz clarifies more than anyone else the development that would ravage Europe. Battling to the End pushes aside the taboo that prevents us from seeing that the apocalypse has begun. Human violence is escaping our control; today it threatens the entire planet.
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René Girard is a member of the French Academy, Emeritus Professor at Stanford University, and the author of several books that have been translated widely. He is the recipient of the Modern Language Association's Lifetime Achievement Award (2008).
Product Details
Paperback: 256 pages
Publisher: Michigan State University Press (December 15, 2009)
I have long been interested in Rene Girard's mimetic theory. His discussion of it in this book is well worth the read. His theory emphasizes the role of imitation in our lives. Mimesis, he says, is the way we learn and acquire culture. It is also the basis of all human conflict in that, through mimesis, we desire what another has. To the extent that desiring what another has results in fighting over that possession, violence erupts. A way out of the violence is to join together against an outsider. This resolution of conflict through public sacrifice of a scapegoat, Girard contends, is the foundation of all archaic religions and civilizations. People unite against the scapegoat, the victim is sacrificed, and harmony is restored. A scapegoat succeeds as long as people believe in its guilt. The problem today is that the ancient formula no longer works. Girard attributes this to Christianity. Since the crucifixion of Jesus, everyone knows that the victim is innocent.Paradoxically, the Passion freed both holiness and violence. In Girard's words, "Freed from sacrificial constraints, the human mind invented science, technology and all the best and worst of culture. Our civilization is the most creative and powerful ever known, but also the most fragile and threatened because it no longer has the safety rails of archaic religion. Without sacrifice in the broad sense, it could destroy itself if it does not take care, which clearly it is not doing." My fascination with Girard's theory derives from my understanding of recent neuroscientific findings about human beings that are consistent with mimethic theory. These findings include: Neuroanatomy - humans are created with mirror neurons and right brain hemispheres that can mediate mimesis.... Neurophysiology - our brains are constructed evolutionarily to prepare us to sense and react automatically and nonconsciously to safety and danger. Behavioral sciences - we are born with innate capacities for imitation and empathy that can lead either to love or hatred. Whether you agree with Girard's theory, clearly we live in violent times. His views about history and his proposed solutions to our apocalyptic times are worth thinking about. In addition his views about the role and actions of the current Pope are worth considering.Read more ›
At last, this magisterial book is available in English. All readers who wish to understand the underlying causes of terrorist violence need to read this: military, clergy, philosophers, scholars of many stripes, and the Average Non-fiction Reader.
I wrote a review of the original French text, which I partially quote below (in English):
In Achever Clausewitz, Girard seeks to "finish" Clausewitz, an intentional double entendre. Clausewitz glimpsed in his thinking the possibility of wars of total annihilation, replacing the "wars in lace" (guerres en dentelle) of earlier times. The phrase "Messieurs les Anglais, tirez les premiers" ("Gentlemen of England, fire first") from the battle of Fontenoy in 1745 is the classic (if inexact) example of this codified and ritualized warfare. After the French Revolution with its masses of conscript soldiers, the restraints of the old system were gradually thrown off. The specter of a war of annihilation, without rhyme or reason, became apparent.
For Clausewitz, this absolute war is a theoretical possibility, though his treatise, which he re-worked several times while never completing it, argues that war can never actually get to that point. His notion of war is that of a duel (Zweikraft) akin to a wrestling match, and a war is a congeries of these "duels." For Girard, absolute war has now become a daily possibility, if not certainty, with the capacity we now possess to destroy the planet. The apocalyptic literature found in the New Testament especially is not predictive of the final cataclysm, he says. Rather, it is "Christianity predicting its own failure", he declares provocatively, "the only religion ever to do so...."
The premise makes sense: if we as a species rely on violence as a means of communal life (Girard's essential point), and if we are now controlled by our technology rather than controlling it (Heidegger's famous thesis), it follows that the extinction of the human race by our own hand is inevitable, as we now have the technology to destroy the planet in an act of war. Furthermore, as Christian apocalyptic literature predicts an "end of days," this part of the Bible can no longer be dismissed merely as an embarrassment to Christians other than fundamentalists with political axes to grind. Deprived as we are of the archaic scapegoat mechanism by the Passion and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, we have been trying to find new ways forward within a transformed religious perspective. These are bound to fail, for war is part of the essence of human life and society, not simply an aberration we fall into.
This last insight is what links Clausewitz with Girard most closely, and it provides the springboard for not only Girard's incisive critique of Clausewitz, but also his pointing to the narrow road that only can lead to safety. This is that we take the road of Christ and live in his way, leaving behind violence as a means of resolving conflict, especially mimetic conflict. Needless to say, Girard is not optimistic that we will do so.
Clausewitz' treatise, as Raymond Aron showed, is a genuine classic, in that its meaning proves always to be larger than specific interpretations of it. Many readers never make it past the first chapter and its presentation of "absolute war" or war of annihilation (Vernichtungskrieg) as the asymptote toward which all wars tend. This has given rise to the erroneous (or convenient) conclusion that Clausewitz actually favors it. On the contrary, he is clear that he is absolutely against such an eventuality, which for practical reasons he considers to be an unrealistic abstraction anyway.
As hostile feelings and intention between two peoples grow (the ground of war), "reciprocal actions" (Wechselwirkung) take place. In these reciprocal actions, Clausewitz fears a possible escalation to extremes (Äußersten), from "armed observation" (bewaffneten Beobachtung) to absolute war, but believes that counterweights to extreme action (such as fear of the enemy's potential for destruction, the "friction" of real elements (terrain, logistics, commanders' will, etc.), and the "fog of war" will always forestall such an eventuality.
Here is Girard's eureka moment, when he realized the Prussian's philosophical treatise had much in common with his own work. Girard draws the striking parallels between Clausewitz' identification of reciprocal actions tending toward an escalation to extremes with his own analysis of mimetic crisis. Where he sees Clausewitz' analysis falling apart has to do with the famous dictum, Der Krieg ist eine bloße Fortsetzung der Politik mit anderen Mitteln: "War is merely a prolongation of policy/politics by other means." The question of how to translate Politik (policy, politics) does not bother a Frenchman, for the word politique has the same ambiguity of meaning. It is Clausewitz' very correct insistence that the politicians, not generals, decide whether the violence of war is necessary for their ends that Girard sees as now being superceded by the decline of the nation-state (whose existence and functioning Vom Kreige takes for granted). It is now more and more replaced by terrorist organizations, the eventuality of the use of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction as they become increasingly common, and the rise of new transnational irrational fanaticisms.
Clausewitz depends greatly, as a man of the Enlightenment, on the reasonableness of those leaders guiding wars for the realization of their policies. He likes to contrast what civilized nations do, in contrast to "savages" who indulge in killing noncombatants, pillage and rape. This distinction, if it ever existed, has obviously disappeared in our day. Just as Clausewitz bemoaned the end of eighteenth-century codified war, and correctly foresaw that the French Revolution had inaugurated a whole new era, so too does the rise of what are called "rogue states" and "global terrorism" signal the end of warfare as he conceived of it.
I am neither a Christian nor a Girardian; however, I very much appreciate the insights of both. I have long been impressed with Girard's Christian anthropological understanding of human history but had wondered how (and indeed if) he could apply that understanding to our thoroughly secularized postmodern world. This book does just that. However, as a non-Christian, this book leads me to considerations that our author could never support. But first a word about Girard and his brilliant book.
Girard began his career with a theory of Mimetic Desire. Not only do we all desire, but we desire what others desire. This leads to conflict. The ancient world resolved this conflict through the mechanism of the scapegoat. One individual is publicly sacrificed so the community might live in (an always temporary) peace. But the Crucifixion ends all that. Today we all know that the scapegoats are innocent. ...So, why aren't we living in Paradise?
That is the tale that this book tells. In these conversations Girard maintains that Clausewitz glimpsed the 'demoniacal' evil of secular progress not as peace, but as war, not without end, but rather as war to the bitter end. - As in the end of us all. I have just recently purchased this and am quite impressed. I know that I was not alone in wondering if Girard could bring his understanding of ancient religious (or mythical) sacrifice, mimesis, violence, and Christianity into the modern world. This book does just that. In a nutshell, it was the Apocalypse itself that Clausewitz glimpsed in his study of modern war. Of course, later commentators paper this over. (Girard is thinking mostly of Raymond Aron and Liddell Hart here.) But it is just this 'Apocalyptic turn' of the Enlightenment project that Girard intends to 'shout to the mountaintops'....
This book is brilliant; but it is by no means a 'pleasant' read. The Introduction ends thusly:
"I am convinced that history has meaning, and that its meaning is terrifying. 'But where danger threatens That which saves from it also grows.' (p. xvii)"
Of course, this concluding hopeful gesture is unavailable to non-believers... (The quoted text is from Hölderlin's luminous 'Patmos'.) This book is intentionally quite exciting: French Revolution, Clausewitz, Hölderlin, Hegel, Napoleon, France and Germany, the Pope, and looming always, the Apocalypse. And then, salvation, - in spite of everything Girard does not give up hope.
I do fail, however, to understand the necessity of presenting this book as a conversation... Wouldn't a book length essay have been more effective? But that is a quibble. This book is superb! Five stars for a brilliant account of the necessary violence of our Secular Enlightenment.
Now, most Christians I know are optimistic about the future. 'Optimist' would not be the term I would first pick to describe our author. There are underlying notes of tragedy in this text that are genuinely terrifying and perhaps even irredeemable. It is these that I wish to pursue in the remainder of this review.
"More than ever, I am convinced that history has meaning, and that its meaning is terrifying." Why is it terrifying? Has Christ not Risen? In his Introduction Girard tersely, brilliantly and compellingly describes our present situation and what led to it:
"Christianity demystifies religion. Demystification, which is good in the absolute, has proven bad in the relative, for we were not prepared to shoulder its consequences. We are not Christian enough. The paradox can be put in a different way: Christianity is the only religion that has foreseen its own failure. This prescience is known as the apocalypse. (p. x)"
"The fetters put in place by the founding murder but unshackled by the Passion, are now liberating planet-wide violence, and we cannot refasten the bindings because we now know that scapegoats are innocent. The Passion unveiled the sacrificial origin of humanity once and for all. It dismantled the sacred and revealed its violence. However, Christ also confirmed the divine that is within all religions. This incredible paradox, which no one can accept, is that the Passion has freed violence at the same time as holiness. (p. xi)"
"Our civilization is the most creative and powerful ever known, but also the most fragile and threatened because it no longer has the safety rails of archaic religion. Without sacrifice in the broad sense, it could destroy itself if it does not take care, which clearly it is not doing. [...] Once again, this does not mean Christian revelation is bad. It is wholly good, but we are unable to come to terms with it. A scapegoat remains effective as long as we believe in its guilt. Having a scapegoat means not knowing that we have one. Learning that we have a scapegoat is to lose it forever and to expose ourselves to mimetic conflicts with no possible resolution. This is the implacable law of the escalation to extremes. The protective system of scapegoats is finally destroyed by the Crucifixion narratives as they reveal Jesus' innocence, and, little by little, that of all analogous victims. [...] To make the Revelation wholly good, and not threatening at all, humans have only to adopt the behavior recommended by Christ: abstain completely from retaliation, and renounce the escalation to extremes. (p. xiv)"
"Christ came to take the victim's place. He placed himself at the heart of the system to reveal its hidden workings. The 'second Adam,' to use Saint Paul's expression, revealed to us how the 'first' came to be. The Passion teaches us that humanity results from sacrifice, is born with religion. Only religion has been able to contain the conflicts that would have otherwise destroyed the first groups of humans. However, the Revelation has not destroyed Religion. Mimetic theory does not seek to demonstrate that myth is null, but to shed light on the fundamental discontinuity and continuity between the Passion and archaic religion. Christ's divinity which precedes the Crucifixion introduces a radical rupture with the archaic, but Christ's resurrection is in complete continuity with all forms of religion that preceded it. The way out of archaic religion comes at this price. (p. xv)"
"We can all participate in the divinity of Christ so long as we renounce our own violence. However, we now know, in part thanks to Clausewitz, that humans will not renounce it. The paradox is thus that we are starting to grasp the Gospel message at the very moment when the escalation to extremes is becoming the unique law of history. (p. xvi)"
This horrible escalation of violence in modern times is described and dissected in these conversations on Clausewitz, Modernity and War. Read them if you dare!
But now I would like to turn to some 'Meta-Girardian' considerations if I may. The Crucifixion ends (not immediately, it is the beginning of the end of) the effectiveness of the scapegoat mechanism. It was this effectiveness that allowed Civilization to both arise, increase and endure. Without this mechanism Civilization must eventually destroy itself.
To continue to speak in Girardian terms, the destruction of the scapegoating mechanism has plunged the world into an endless cycle of ever-increasing violence. In antiquity, some poor wretch would be seized and destroyed, and peace (yes, always a temporary peace) would be restored. After the Crucification, I mean after its Truth spreads in an ever-widening gyre, these always temporary respites become ever more brief, and eventually even impossible. Therefore, after His Sacrifice, the civilized world must eventually end in permanent war resulting in its own destruction. To put it as bluntly and tersely as possible, the Christian Savior, insofar as humanity doesn't change itself and learn to forgive, has through His Sacrifice destroyed us all.
For most of us it was Borges who first drew our attention to John Donne's "Biathanatos". Borges argues the possibility that Christ's Crucifixion was also His Suicide. "Christ died a voluntary death, Donne suggests, and this means that the elements and the terrestrial orb and the generations of mankind and Egypt and Rome and Babylon and Judah were extracted from nothingness in order to destroy him. Perhaps iron was created for the nails, and thorns for the mock crown, and blood and water for the wound. That baroque idea glimmers behind Biathanatos. The idea of a god who creates the universe in order to create his own gallows." (Borges, Biathanatos, collected in "Selected Non-Fictions", p. 335) Now, if the above speculations of Girard are correct, the Crucifixion might also have been a mass murder! His 'suicide' (eventually, accidentally, but certainly) causes the destruction of civilized humanity.
Merleau-Ponty once said that in order for a policy to be considered good it must also be effective. I agree with the philosophers on this. Is Christianity effective? Does it bring peace or war? At bottom, this is the issue (as I see it) between the two greatest experts on the ancient Sacred in the modern world: Girard and Nietzsche. What can actually be done? For Girard, there is clearly no going back: after His Sacrifice scapegoating becomes, and must become, ever more ineffective. For Girard, nothing, absolutely nothing, changes this. Nietzsche is well aware that the secularized modern world, the heir of Christianity, is declining towards ever more lawlessness. To him, Christians (and their secular avatars) are all anarchists, nihilists and disturbers of the peace. Before Christianity, under the archaic religions, there was always episodic peace. Always. After Christianity peace, of any length, becomes ever more impossible. Today we are preparing to fully reap this whirlwind.
Now, one should not leave the impression that Nietzsche considers the life Jesus led to be merely insane. Not only does he think this exemplary life possible, the great atheist Nietzsche concedes with a wave of his hand that the Christian lifestyle is in fact still possible; indeed that it is always possible! But he knows that it can only be possible for a tiny few. And therefore he sets out to destroy it.
Der Anarchist und der Christ sind Einer Herkunft... Nietzsche, Antichrist, 57 Nihilist und Christ: das reimt sich, das reimt sich nicht bloss... Nietzsche, Antichrist, 58
When those remarks were first published people could be forgiven for believing that they were additional proof (if proof were needed) that Nietzsche was insane. Christians anarchists? Christians nihilists! How they all must have laughed... But now, thanks to the brilliant work of Girard, we all understand what Nietzsche was driving at. For Nietzsche, Christianity is the height of lawlessness because it makes (eventually must make) all law impossible. And Girard agrees with this! Mere legality is becoming impossible.
One can perhaps say that Nietzsche and Girard are both students of what Girard calls the 'order of the Sacred' (i.e., sacrificial scapegoating). Nietzsche accepts it, Girard does not. I should also point out that Girard has always considered Nietzsche a great thinker and the origin of his own thought. In this book, Girard says that Nietzsche's genius "was incomparable. (p. 94)" In "I See Satan Fall Like Lightning" Girard says of Nietzsche that "he discovers the truth that I only repeat after him, the truth that dominates this book: in the Dionysian passion and the Passion there is the same collective violence. But the interpretation is different..." A bit later Girard will say, "...myths are based on a unanimous persecution. Judaism and Christianity destroy this unanimity in order to defend the victims unjustly condemned and to condemn the executioners unjustly legitimated. As incredible as it may seem, no one made this simple but fundamental discovery before Nietzsche - no one, not even a Christian!" ("I See Satan Fall Like Lightning", p. 172)
So you see, Girard's thought and Nietzsche's are inextricably bound. Perhaps one can say that, in a sense, both their projects are impossible. Nietzsche believes we can forget the Crucifixion, that is, forget that the scapegoats are innocent. Girard believes we can all live as Jesus did, forgiving our enemies and not retaliating.
Typically, generous and optimistic people, whether religious or secular, claim that we have or soon will reach a turning point and that History will once again ascend towards Peace and Universality. I certainly hope they are right. But I know that as we swirl round the vortex of History cum Apocalypse, this terrible fate that we all today endure, there is certainly no shortage of turning points; but still, the End seemingly comes relentlessly on...
For the philosophers, however, perhaps even this is no reason for despair. Hegel said that everything happens twice in history. Now, of course, he doesn't thereby mean exactly 'everything'; he means everything essential recurs because the lesson of (the Reason within!) the first occurrence went unlearned. For this particular Philosophy then, history is ultimately a story of triumph; the essential lessons, eventually, will always be learned. Perhaps a new universal religion based on love and holiness will one day rise, and successfully eschewing sacrifice, scapegoating and violence, heal our History and make humanity one. However, as the Hegelians surely know, this bon mot of Hegels regarding recurrence also means that every essential lesson is lost at least once.
Perhaps even the most stoical of philosophers can find some compassion for those unfortunate enough to live precisely then...
From all of the above it is possible to draw the conclusion that in the long run it is both practically futile and personally vain to insist upon bringing the Truth into a world incapable of accepting it. But be that as it may, I do know that this bottomless despair regarding human possibility is something that both Christianity and philosophy will always oppose.
If Girard is right that we cannot go back to the ancient sacred, and if Nietzsche is right that Christianity cannot ever be lived by the majority of mankind then - what? Civilization is doomed and barbarism is our only future.
I am old enough to remember when people, following Bataille, began saying that outside Communism there was only Nietzsche. Perhaps today the Girardians have begun whispering to each other that outside Christianity there is only Nietzsche. That is to say, outside of Christianity there is only Nietzsche and his road to a Revival of the Ancient Sacred.
These Meta-Girardian considerations can only lead us to one choice. And that is to choose between three possibilities: either we all live as Jesus did, or we return to the ancient sacrificial sacred, or we destroy ourselves. Whose side are you on?Read more ›
