Andreas WilmesCorresponding author

Demystifying the Negative
René Girard’s Critique of the “Humanization of Nothingness”

Article
24/1 – Spring 2019, pages 91-126
Date of online publication: 30 juin 2019
Date of publication: 30 juin 2019

Abstract

This paper will address René Girard’s critique of the “humanization of nothingness” in modern Western philosophy. I will first explain how the “desire for death” is related to a phenomenon that Girard refers to as “obstacle addiction.” Second, I will point out how mankind’s desire for death and illusory will to self-divinization gradually tend to converge within the history of modern Western humanism. In particular, I will show how this convergence between self-destruction and self-divinization gradually takes shape through the evolution of the concept of “the negative” from Hegel to Kojève, Sartre and Camus. Finally, we shall come to see that in Girard’s view “the negative” has tended to become an ever-preoccupying and unacknowledged symptom of mankind’s addiction to “model/obstacles” of desire. 

Keywords

Cite this article