Mimetic Theory and World Religions

Wolfgang Palaver · Richard Schenk

nën 2017 · MSU Press

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Those who anticipated the demise of religion and the advent of a peaceful, secularized global village have seen the last two decades confound their predictions. René Girard’s mimetic theory is a key to understanding the new challenges posed by our world of resurgent violence and pluralistic cultures and traditions. Girard sought to explain how the Judeo-Christian narrative exposes a founding murder at the origin of human civilization and demystifies the bloody sacrifices of archaic religions. Meanwhile, his book Sacrifice, a reading of conflict and sacrificial resolution in the Vedic Brahmanas, suggests that mimetic theory’s insights also resonate with several non-Western religious and spiritual traditions. This volume collects engagements with Girard by scholars of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism and situates them within contemporary theology, philosophy, and religious studies.

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Wolfgang Palaver is a Professor of Catholic Social Thought at the School of Catholic Theology at the University of Innsbruck, where he was also the Dean from 2013 to 2017.

Richard Schenk, a Roman Catholic Priest of the Dominican Order, served as a Professor of Philosophy and Theology at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley from 1990 to 2011, and as the President of the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt from 2011 to 2014.