Nihil volitum nisi praevolitum ab aliisLa heteronomía fundamental del deseo humano según René Girard

Résumé

René Girard’s anthropological theory posits that the main characteristic of human beings as opposed to the animal world from which Man has emerged is desire. There is no essential difference between animals and Man, but one of degree. The different degree of intensity in “mimesis”, is the element that embodies this difference between animals and men. Human beings and animals alike are mimetic, though men are highly mimetic and this hyperbolic mimesis becomes 2desire” as such. Human desire is intrinsically mimetic. The essential traits of desire derive from the evolution of mimesis in the process of hominization. Probably, the most remarkable note of mimetic desire is ‘heteronomy’, which means that the yearn for the object that we long to acquire is aroused by a third one (a man like us), not by the inherent characteristics of that object. In other words: our tendency towards an object is born from the imitation of a model, who becomes the mediator of our desire. We want what we want due to the fact that someone else desires it too. This dynamics generates inter-individual and social tension. Violence emerges in human society and goes all thorough it since the beginning of our history on Earth, ever since there is such a thing as mimetic desire. All in all, the basic problem of human violence stems from the way in which the mediation between human desire and divine transcendence takes place.