Review of Oughourlian

Oughourlian, Jean-Michel. The Genesis of Desire. Trans. by Eugene Webb. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2010. 174 pp.

Reviewed by Charles K. Bellinger.

Dr. Oughourlian, an experienced psychoanalyst in Paris, has collaborated with René Girard for many years in developing mimetic theory. This book presents mimetic theory with a focused application to the work of psychological therapists, as they seek to assist couples who are struggling with relational issues. A reader who is not familiar with Girard will find this to be a worthy introduction to Girard’s theory of human psychology, particularly if they have an interest in marriage counseling. Readers who are familiar with Girard will find this to be a substantial addition to the secondary literature. The question: “How does mimetic theory apply to . . . [the Arab-Israeli conflict, pastoral work, the interpretation of a literary text, advertizing, etc.]” is a live question among Girardians. This book provides a perspective on that type of query with regard to the psychiatrist’s couch and the anthropological reflections that arise out of that setting.

Theologically inclined readers will take an interest in Oughourlian’s comments on the Adam and Eve story in Genesis, which inspires the title. He interprets Adam and Eve as symbols of human beings in general; the Serpent is the symbol of mimetic desire. The Serpent introduces discontent, a feeling of lack and of deprivation. Out of these flow envy, conflict, and violence. The vertical relationship with God, which signifies the original goodness of creation, is broken down and replaced with horizontal relationships of mistrust, deception, and jealousy. In the wake of the Fall into sin, human beings claim to know good and evil, meaning that “my desire will be presumptuously indentified with the good, and the other’s rival desire will mendaciously be identified with evil”(68). Some of the author’s more memorable positive comments point to the reality of continuing creation, through which God seeks to bring humans forward into maturity in spite of the pervasiveness of sin. Rivalry is a “closed cycle of time” always repeating the victim / victimizer loop. The time of grace and redemption is “openness to the future”(157).

The book mentions the concept of “mirror neurons,” though it is not an extensive theoretical treatise on that topic. Mirror neurons are an aspect of the brain which enables humans and other animals to mimic behaviors they observe. This ties mimetic theory to naturalistic roots. The author includes diagrams illustrating psychological concepts that are at times helpful and at times hard to follow.

A fair number of pages are devoted to describing the entangled relationships of Dr. Oughourlian’s patients. X is married to Y, but X is having an affair with Q because Y drinks, and so on and so forth. The doctor seeks to show the patients how they are involved in various triangular relationships that are energized by jealousy. This is interesting, in a tawdry sort of way, but I can imagine many theological readers finding this aspect of the book to reveal more about the soap opera that is contemporary France than it does the gospel message. A doctor using the treasure that is mimetic theory to assist wealthy hedonistic westerners to manage their lives is a limited horizon. There is a great need for Christian catechesis that will apply the insights of Girard and others in a transformative way in our world, from interpersonal relationships on up to international politics. This book leaves the reader feeling that need very acutely; it does not fill the need.

Charles K. Bellinger
Assoc. Prof. of Theology and Ethics
Brite Divinity School, Fort Worth, Texas

Comments on Permanence and Change by K. Burke

The epigraph for Burke's later work A Grammar of Motives is ad bellum purificandum, which is usually translated as "towards the purification of war." I'm tempted to say that the epigraph for Permanence and Change could be ad religio purificandum: towards the purification of religion. I'm not sure if the Latin is exactly correct, but it is close enough to convey the meaning. The book as a whole can be interpreted as making the case that while the patterns of religion change over time and vary across cultures, the need of human beings to be religious is permanent.

Over and over again in the text Burke takes traditional religious language and reapplies it to modern "secular" culture, which renders the concept of secularity very ambiguous. Examples: Piety is obviously a key concept in this book, interpreted as "the sense of what properly goes with what"(74). All human beings are thus pious, in their varying ways, whether they are dock workers, teachers, police officers, or criminals. Anyone who seeks to persuade another person of some idea is engaged in "evangelism." "Conversion" is not simply the goal of preachers; all human beings are constantly being "born again" as they reconfigure themselves as they go through life. The professors, sales people, ad writers, etc., who are the priests of the capitalist system are always seeking to uphold that orientation(179). Karl Marx, as a representative of dissent that is trying to imagine a different orientation is a prophet. The "secular mysticism in Bentham" is concerned "au fond with the problem of evil"(193). The chapter on "The Ethical Confusion" can be seen as wrestling with the Great Commandment, in that it talks about the relation between love of neighbor and love of self. People must always choose between thinking of the universe as "being created" or "having been created"; is creation purely past tense or is it present tense (218)? The tension between these possibilities is a perennial debate among theologians, with fundamentalists tending to favor the past tense and reformers such as Martin Luther and Karl Barth tending to favor the "creation continues" approach.

What is the upshot of all of this? One could say that in human culture there is tremendously powerful inertia. So, if "modern" people think that they are rejecting religion and becoming secular, they are deceiving themselves, because the subtle inertia of millennia of religion will shape how they think and act (in the many ways that Burke is cataloging). But, it may be that in three or five hundred more years that inertia will have finally dissipated and humanity will actually be secularized. Or, a person may think that the religious features of human culture are necessary (permanent), not accidental. There is something in human nature that is stable across cultures and eras, which entails that there will always be catharsis, piety, conversion, and so forth. The specific expressions of those things will vary, but they will always be there, just as the human body can have different skin and hair colors, but it will always have lungs, a liver, muscles, bones, and so forth. I think Burke favors this latter possibility. "One may doubt that places such as heaven, hell, and purgatory await us after death--but one may well suspect that the psychological patterns which they symbolize lie at the root of our conduct here and now"(184). Homo sapiens is homo religiosus. Religion arises out of our metabiology.

If this is the case, it has interesting implications for higher education. Many "secular" universities, for example, do not even have a religious studies department, which suggests that there is a tacit acceptance of the inertia-dissipation-theory. But Burke's thought would seem to imply that it should not only be the case that there is a religious studies department in every university but also that there is a sense in which that department sees the human condition at the greatest depth. It is the heart of the university as it leads people to become aware of human pieties. Another implication would be that any philosophical interpretation of the human condition (such as Burke's, for example) is actually a kind of theology. "It seems obvious that before we could establish the existence of a common situation or motive for all men, we should have to define the cosmic situation and man's place in it. In the last analysis, psychology is but a subdivision of metaphysics . . ."(221). From the perspective of traditional (explicit) theology, this sort of (implicit) theology is ambiguous. It could be seen as a good thing in that there is a recognition of the permanent religiosity of human beings; it could be seen as a bad thing in that human beings in the modern world reject God and seek to become gods in their own right (rite!). Instead of human beings submitting to God's guidance, judgment, and poesis, they seek to become "strong poets of their own souls" which will lead to various forms of judgment against their neighbors, if those neighbors poetize differently. This judgment may include killing their neighbors (or euthanizing "defective" infants or the "useless" elderly).

We have been led to the conclusion that there is limited usefulness to the phrase that "religion is the opiate of the masses"; one could make a stronger case that the secularization thesis is the opiate of modern intellectuals who don't see things very clearly. Burke is thus a trojan horse for Marxism, boring from within to advance and purify religion.

Introducing Paul Young

I gave the following brief remarks to introduce author Paul Young, author of The Shack, at the Brite Divinity School Minister's Week Conference on Feb. 11, 2010.

Good morning, and welcome to the 2010 Scott Lectures at Brite Divinity School.

Through a quirk of circumstances, I just happen to have known Paul Young before he became famous. Back in 1997-2000 I lived in Portland, Oregon. Paul was also living in that area, and we met each other as participants in a discussion group for Christians from different churches. Back then, my impression of Paul was that he was bright, articulate, and well educated in theology, but I had no clue that Paul would one day write a book that would sell millions of copies. I'm sure that most of you are aware of the subsequent story: Paul wrote the manuscript of a novel, intending to give a few copies to family and friends. He and a small group of friends created their own imprint for the book, and it quickly rose to #1 on the New York Times bestseller list.

The most vociferous objections to the book seem to be coming from certain conservative evangelicals who claim that it teaches dangerously heretical doctrines. Such critics could benefit from reading The Art of Rhetoric, in which Aristotle says that there are three main forms of persuasion: logos (the logical force of the argument), ethos (the authority and charisma of the author), and pathos (the emotional impact that the work has on its audience). Those who criticize the alleged theological errors in the book make the category mistake of treating it as if it were a doctrinal treatise, an example of logos, which it is not. The book is not an example of ethos either, in the sense that Paul Young was not a person who had name recognition as a charismatic leader prior to the book's publication. The book's success is purely a result of the impact it had on its readers; it is an eye-opening example of what Aristotle called pathos.

Many readers have resonated deeply with the book's message about God's love for wounded people, and we are all wounded in various ways. The book challenges pastors in particular to ask themselves whether our churches and our religiosity are turning people away from God, or opening up people's spirits to truly hear the Gospel. Even if we are not contributing to the problem, is it the case that our preaching and teaching lacks persuasive power because it does not reach people where they are? Is there a deep spiritual hunger in people, for which we have very little nourishment to offer? These are the types of questions that we should be asking.

So without further ado, I present to you the accidental author, Paul Young.

Chantal Delsol, The Unlearned Lessons of the 20th Century

# Book report: Chantal Delsol, The Unlearned Lessons of the Twentieth Century: An Essay on Late Modernity.

The following is a paraphrase of some of the author’s main ideas. We think of ourselves as having left totalitarianism behind, as having triumphed over it. But we do not realize the extent to which we agree with the ideological assumptions that made totalitarianism possible. We are indignant, for example, regarding the way the Nazis dehumanized the Jews, but we are blind to our own practices of dehumanization. We condemn the condemnation of people as “radically other” while we also engage in othering.

Utopian schemes sow death. We are so slow mentally that we have to see the truth of that statement actually demonstrated before we acknowledge it. Utopian dreaming is premised on the idea that human beings are self-sufficient self-creators. The belief that there are no limits to our ability to refashion the world leads to violence without limits.

Ideologies such as Nazism and Communism sought to break down traditional ties between people, such as family and congregation, where personal virtue was nurtured, to replace those ties with worship of the state that would be enforced through suspicion, threats, and informing on others. The nihilistic culture that we foster today also seeks to break down traditional ties that nurture virtue, though the means used, such as ridicule, sarcasm, and ostracism, are less brutal. It is as if we feel a need to finish the uncompleted work of the ideologies. We call our escape into nothingness “progress.”

We define progress as the sweeping away of all scruples. Scruples are those cultural memories that prod us to defend the dignity of each human being; they are the voice within us that resists the destruction of morality. Our finest eugenicists are sometimes plagued with scruples; they realize that the rational course of action is to eliminate the substandard beings, but they hesitate. After we have “progressed” further as a race they will no longer hesitate. It will go without saying, because it cannot be said, that at that point we will prove ourselves to be the true spiritual heirs of Hitler, the one who burned scruples at the stake. The totalitarian ideologies destroyed traditional moral selfhood and the common world of neighborliness that it made possible. We have decided that we like living in that destroyed world. If anyone seeks to restore the common world that was lost we will brand them as a heretic.

In our world people are afraid to ask deep questions about the meaning of humanness. We withdraw from that activity of questioning that is our true path toward wholeness and transcendence. We think that there is no need for questioning and growing because we are automatically self-sufficient as individuals. We are isolated individuals who enter into relations with others that are either contractual or predatory. We do not want to give or forgive; we do not want to need or suffer; we do not want to recognize that we are finite and fallen or that we are called to live by grace. We think that we are capable of inventing ourselves and of governing ourselves; we presume that we are the God of our own individual world. The utopian dream sought god-like power to achieve the goal of “saving” society. By embracing individualism we think that we have rejected that dream, but we are actually prolonging that nightmare. We seek to be individual demiurges instead of collectivist demiurges. That is our definition of “change.”

We like to think that if a person believes something strongly, with a sense of certainty, then they will become a fanatic who oppresses others. Therefore, the preferable alternative is to not believe anything, to not think, to be vacuous on the inside. We are very good at resisting the temptation of building up beliefs that could structure our lives. Because we have no inner depth or moral backbone, we live in a superficial wasteland of cultural fads and fashions. We are shaped by these social trends because we lack coherent selves, although we never stop bleating about how we enjoy our perfect “freedom” as individuals. Because we are passive we always hold others responsible for what is happening in the world, rather than being responsible ourselves. In truth, to become a real individual requires participating in a coherent culture that can foster our rationality, our growth in personal virtues, and our sense of responsibility for ourselves and others.

People today tend to live in a perpetual present moment, cut off from a meaningful past and a hopeful future. We have fashioned very small, narrow cells for ourselves in which we choose to live cut off from the flow of time and from true community. And then we wonder why our preoccupation with our small selves leaves us so bored.

When we do venture out of our solitary cells, we join collectives of “like-minded” people who share our “identities.” In this way our individual narcissism is lifted up to a social plane where we think that we have “strength in numbers.” It is often the case that these collectives seek to outdo in each other to see who can make the strongest claim to being victims of tyrannical oppressors. These identity collectives arise out of the psychology of the self-sufficient isolated individual who is seeking to reinforce his or her inner convictions. This individual wants to join in a group which consists of mirror images of him or herself. A true subject, on the other hand, a growing person who is open to transcendence, is more open to genuine diversity and pluralism, because he or she is not narrowly self-interested but is seeking to foster a common world in which all can participate. The growing person is drawn in hope by a vision of a better future, rather than trying to defend an idolatry of origins. Collectives often claim that they are able to define their own vision of good and evil, morality and law, in defiance of tradition and of the contemporary need to build a common world with other human beings who do not belong to the collective. A collective may even claim that each individual in the collective is able to define their own view of good and evil as an individual. This reduces human life to an absurd Tower of Babel. It also smuggles in the assumption that since the individual is defining good for themselves then they will always do good and never evil—by definition. Anyone who criticizes the individual who has thus self-interestedly defined their own self as good must be an evil imposer of alien standards.

Collective thinking presumes that the members of the collective are good and outsiders who can be labeled as members of another group (“the Jews!”) are evil. People are not evil because of what they have done but simply because they had the misfortune to be born into the wrong group. In this way individual responsibility is obliterated, both for the members of the collective and for those they are attacking. A true community is rooted in the principle of individual responsibility, that is, in a recognition that all people can make good or bad choices. We have free will. There are not separate sub-species within the human race; there is only one human race made up of persons who are called to live ethically before God and in relation to others.

The totalitarian ideologies have twin goals: recreating human nature according to a utopian dream and personifying evil in some group. The revolutions of 1989 in Europe were seeking to expose the falsity of these ideologies; they were seeking to actually learn the lessons of the twentieth century. We must reject the notion that we can recreate ourselves and society from scratch, ex nihilo. We must love ourselves, our neighbors, and our Creator more than we love the plans, dreams, and ideologies that arise out of our own immature minds. If we understand this, then we will realize that the creation account in Genesis protects human dignity more effectively than any modern forms of “reason” can.

We need to be gardeners, not demiurges, and the chief way we can do that well is in how we raise our children. To nurture and raise a child is to help him or her emerge into the world as a person who is wounded by the tragedy that is the human race, without being overcome and undone by that wound. We need to pass on our love and accumulated wisdom to the next generation so that they have a chance to become authentic subjects who know that they are incomplete beings on a journey toward truth, beauty, and goodness. To be incomplete, to be half-created, is God’s gift to us which evokes our freedom and makes it real. If we reject the ideology of self-sufficiency and live into this freedom, then we have begun to learn the lessons of the twentieth century.