Wolfgang Palaver In this chapter, Wolfgang Palaver looks at developments in Rene Girard’s later work, in particular, at Girard’s assessment that he had earlier unfairly “scapegoated” sacrifice in an effort to rid humanity of violence. In recognition of the need to address — not erase — the violence that is with us, Girard developed his thinking in at least two ways. The first is his growing interest in how an “ontology of peace,” which Girard held undergirds all faith traditions, is expressed in non-Christian faiths. Second is his insight that Jesus’s death on the cross tells us not only about the evils of sacrifice-as-murder but also about the productive possibilities of sacrifice-of-self, giving for the sake of others. To explore what such donative sacrifice consists in, Palaver investigates the theories of oppression, resistance, and sacrifice in the works of Simone Weil and Mahatma Gandhi.
in in Marcia Pally, ed., Mimesis and Sacrifice Applying Girard’s Mimetic Theory Across the Disciplines, Bloomsbury (2019), pp. 37-50
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