The Tuesdays of Philosophy

Every quarter, the philosophy teachers offer to talk about a book and the theme that it underlies. The next edition will be dedicated to the anthropologist and philosopher René Girard.

Emmanuelle Soubou, Genevieve and Joseph Cardella Ginvert present the book: "Violence and the Sacred," published by Editions Grasset in 1972.

"Why anthropology puts in its perspective sacred love and she reveals the proper interpretation of the death struggle of the brothers become enemies, marking all texts? Why one or both twins born are killed in many societies? Why the one who we know is innocent is yet condemned, killed and then paradoxically becomes sacred pillar supporting the social structure?

Throughout his life, René Girard explored all sides of a single extraordinary anthropological intuition: there is culture as transcendence and it is by means of an original violence. Religions are not an epiphenomenon of companies but what cements, of incredible way because every society carries with it a violence that the threat of disintegration: expelling an innocent victim, violence is curbed. Sacrifice is then the cornerstone of the social whole and the scapegoat is necessary for the peace of this whole. "