1. I have just posted a short essay on the thought of René Girard, whose esoteric ideas have a niche but committed following of ‘Girardians’.

To say that Girard’s ideas are enormous in their scope is an

2. The 2 big ideas at the centre of Girard's work are 'mimetic desire' & 'sacrifice of the scapegoat' from which he weaves extraordinarily rich insights

His profound understandings of philosophical, religious & literary texts repeatedly startle with their lucidity & seriousness

3. Mimesis is fundamental to being human - we copy each other in everything - but Girard’s key concern is ‘mimetic desire’, which sets off competitively reciprocal and escalating cycles which can become socially contagious and violent.

4. For Girard it is fundamental that mankind is “ethologically violent” because of this susceptibility to mimetic contagion.

5. Girard’s second big idea is that religion emerges in the form of rituals and myths around sacrificial scapegoating in order to reconcile violent rivalries and re-bond a community around the ‘othering’ of a victim.