Trauma as the Catalyst of the Girardian Single-Victim Mechanism

René Girard, in his word I See Satan Fall Like Lightning, offers a revolutionary anthropological framework drawing on literature, psychology, history, and theology.[1] In his theory, he argues that mimetic desire spreads and intensifies exponentially, generating conflict amongst individuals and communities until their accumulated tensions are transferred onto a single victim. This convergence of violence […]

Maritain’s New Christendom: A Vision in Need of Renewal

Jacques Maritain lived in a momentous era in world history. Written between two world wars, his 1936 monumental work Integral Humanism presents a philosophical alternative to the competing European sociopolitical models of his time. Maritain proposes a “new Christendom,” fundamentally different from the medieval conception of civilization and the secular humanism of his day. This […]