The Time Has Grown Short: René Girard, or the Last Law
The Time Has Grown Short: René Girard, or the Last Law
by Benoît Chantre translated by Trevor Cribben Merrill
Michigan State University Press, 2022 eISBN: 978-1-62895-463-0 | Paper: 978-1-61186-426-7 Library of Congress Classification B2430.G494C42813 2022 Dewey Decimal Classification 227.106
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
ABOUT THIS BOOK
The protagonist of Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time observes with wonder the comings and goings of the crows that roost in the belfry of the village church in Combray, his childhood home. For René Girard, one of Proust’s great interpreters, their mysterious flight, first departing from and then returning to the vertical axis of the steeple, suggests the movement of modern history—the crisis of aristocratic models, the growing servitude of individuals possessed by mimetic desire, and the final irruption of authentic transcendence. In this rich exploration of Girard’s insights, his French editor and longtime collaborator Benoît Chantre brings Saint Paul’s Letter to the Romans into dialogue with both Proust and Girard in order to push to its logical endpoint the idea of a back-and-forth movement from chaos to order. History, Chantre argues, has been driven mad by the revelation of its sacrificial engine. The only way out lies in a transformation internal to the crisis itself—only that faith which is capable of hearing the One who speaks in the Law makes it possible to avoid the perpetual ups and downs of rivalry. Acting and revealing Himself at the heart of history, an intimate model “hidden since the foundation of the world” deals a fatal blow to the circle of sin. Authentic transcendence coincides with the eschaton, the moment when—according to Saint Paul—historical time implodes into eternity.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
BENOÎT CHANTRE is a French essayist and literary critic. He has authored books on the German poet Hölderlin (Le clocher de Tübingen, 2019) and René Girard (Les derniers jours de René Girard, 2016), with whom he collaborated on Battling to the End (2009).
REVIEWS
Benoît Chantre has written a volume that masterfully lays out the three major syntheses of mimetic theory while also breaking important new ground. His eschatological reading of Saint Paul’s Letter to the Romans brilliantly shows the vibrant compossibilities—and the coexistence of apparent opposites—that are so central to understanding René Girard’s intellectual project.—Luke Burgis, author of Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life
Benoît Chantre has written a beautiful and profound book. He has attempted something new in Girardian research: to reread the entirety of René Girard’s thought from a few words offered toward the end of Battling to the End on médiation intime (innermost mediation), words attributed to Augustine’s Deos interior intimo meo. Chantre sees in Saint Paul’s Letter to the Romans the culmination of Girard’s new conception of “anthropo-theology.”—Sandor Goodhart, professor of English and Jewish studies, Purdue University
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
Introduction
I. From Vertical Transcendence to Deviated Transcendence
II. Self-Transcendence, the Scapegoat Mechanism, and the Institution of Sacrifice
III. Messianic Transcendence
IV. A Mimetic Approach to the Letter to the Romans
Conclusion
Notes
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