One of the big problems with Girard is that "needs" for survival--oxygen, water, food, body temperature--are most certainly not mimetic. I don't need to breathe oxygen just because I saw someone else do it first. These "needs" are on a spectrum--for example, not eating for 3 days may not kill me, but surely I would <i>desire</i> to eat if I did (and not because someone else made eating "cool".) Any desire an infant (not yet capable of observing others) might have in response to pain/pleasure stimulus is not mimetic. Or Hellen Keller whose senses are impaired, etc. So it's a rather flawed premise.
Understood metaphorically, the "thetan hypothesis" might be partly true. It belongs with other psychoanalytic theories which, while out of vogue today, probably contain some truth.<p>With regard to Girdard, there's a broad pattern here where prominent thinkers realize something and then interpret <i>everything</i> in light of that realization (the article gets into this but I don't think satisfactorily). Obviously thinkers are making an error when they univerisalize their idea -- but that's what makes them great thinkers: they give us a new, strangely plausible way of looking at the world. People who are skeptical rarely make waves (unless they take their skepticism to extremes).<p>I'm not sure where this leaves us. Maybe every "great thinker" is a mountebank? I'd be more kind than that. It's probably good to have these highly idiosyncractic worldviews floating around, even if they're always partly false. Perhaps they cause us to reexamine the world or act as useful tools for us to navigate life with.
Every time I think "oh Jean-Yves Girard".<p>Besides being perhaps the logician of note of the 20th century (against considerable "competition"), he's become an important philosopher in the 21st. I think he realizes he's become a philosopher, although it would seem (from private correspondence) that he doesn't find philosophy all that important, let alone that he's such an important one.<p>The recommended book-length treatment of Girardian ideas is "The Phantom of Transparence". The TED talk version is this: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nc3pgZxU-Cg" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nc3pgZxU-Cg</a><p>I often tell people to watch the video even if they don't know one "euh" of French. There's something about the energy in it that already conveys so much.<p>----<p>I can't honestly evaluate the other, minor Girard because of the homonymy. It's unfortunate.
I don’t necessarily hold Girard to be correct, but I do find immediate flaws in the reasoning. I only desire to swim because someone taught me to swim (at considerable effort). I only know who Zooey and Ann are because they have been presented to me in the media.<p>It’s clear that humans have sensations like hunger or thirst that are purely individual, but that doesn’t imply that the desires for things that interact with those sensations arise individually?
>He’s thinking, say, about the time I watched Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill just because my good friend Lanier recommended it to me. Fair enough; I did watch that movie just because Lanier recommended it to me, and because I trust his judgment. But then it turned out to be one of the worst films of all time,<p>I was enjoying this article until I found out the author has terrible taste.
I think Girard's Christianity may have influenced his thinking.<p>I also think that, as far as Capitalism is concerned, this may be the perfect framework to understand human beings.<p>I'd love to expand on these ideas but my brain isn't playing nice today.