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What it argues
Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World is René Girard's most comprehensive and ambitious work, presenting the full scope of his mimetic theory in a series of extended dialogues with two psychiatrists, Jean-Michel Oughourlian and Guy Lefort. The book is structured as a philosophical conversation rather than a treatise, which makes it more accessible than academic monographs but denser than Girard's shorter works. It is divided into three parts: a theory of human origins and society, an analysis of world religions, and a reading of the Gospels as the revelation of the scapegoating mechanism that all previous religion had concealed.
Girard's fundamental thesis is that human desire is mimetic — we do not desire objects directly but through the desire of others. We want what others want, or what others seem to want, or what a model figure appears to value. This mimetic quality is what makes desire social and what makes it dangerous. When two people desire the same thing through imitation of each other, rivalry and violence follow. Left unchecked, mimetic rivalry spreads through groups via contagion, escalating into communal violence that threatens social cohesion.
What it gets right
- 1.
Mimetic desire: humans do not desire objects directly but imitate the desire of others. This is the fundamental social dynamic that makes both culture and rivalry possible.
- 2.
Mimetic rivalry escalates naturally unless interrupted. Two people who desire the same thing through mutual imitation will eventually become doubles — mirrors of each other's aggression.
- 3.
The scapegoat mechanism is how archaic communities managed mimetic violence: unanimous transfer of collective aggression onto an individual or group restored social peace through expulsion or killing.
What it covers
Who wrote it
René Girard (1923–2015) was a French-American literary critic, philosopher, and anthropologist who spent most of his career at Stanford University. His intellectual project — developing and applying mimetic theory across literature, anthropology, and religion — began with Deceit, Desire and the Novel (1961) and continued through Violence and the Sacred (1972), The Scapegoat (1982), and I See Satan Fall Like Lightning (1999). He was elected to the Académie française in 2005 and received honorary doctorates from numerous universities. His influence has spread far beyond academic literary criticism into fields including economics, psychotherapy, and political philosophy.
