Rene Girard and the Cross

We discussed Rene Girard today in the contemporary euro class.  Girard is best known in literary criticism circles, but his work should be of interest to philosophers.  We discussed, in particular, his ‘anthropology of religion’ and the scapegoating mechanism.  Here is an article that gives a nice summary of Girard’s view and then applies it to the Cross.  What is interesting for those interested in pomo philosophy is how Girard abandons the transactional ‘economy of exchange’ found in ordinary substitution theories of atonement and makes room for an an-economic understanding of the Cross that introduces a new ‘logic of the gift’.  An appropriate topic on Good Friday.

UVU Conference

Congratulations to Will Holloway and Carson Bessinger, each of whom presented a paper at the UVU undergrad philosophy conference yesterday, and each of whom performed fabulously. It was a marathon of a conference, with two papers presented each hour from 8 to 4 with only one break, which was when I had a guest appearance in a Nietzsche class. The papers were uniformly impressive, and the discussions were provocative and intelligent. Everyone patiently endured my keynote address, and then there was a fancy dinner afterward with about 10 of us, including Will. With driving, a 14-hour day for me — exhausting, but in a good way.