Abstract
Girard’s mimetic theory provides us with a way to respond to the challenges that are raised in The Genealogy of Morals as well in Scheler’s and Weber’s subsequent theoretical investigations of ressentiment. Girard, more than anyone else, wondered about the crucial point of intersection where Nietzsche analyzed ressentiment, namely the relationship between desire and the foundations of social order. By emphasizing the mimetic dimension of the human condition and mining it for the fundamental characteristics of the relationships that inform our social life, René Girard has thrown light on the social and anthropological warp and weft of the human condition in the Judeo-Christian tradition.
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Further Reading
Gans, Eric. Signs of Paradox: Irony, Resentment, and Other Mimetic Structures. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Genealogy of Morals. Translated by Horace Barnett Samuel. New York: Courier Dover Publications, 2003.
Scheler, Max. Ressentiment. Translated by William Holdheim. Edited by Lewis A. Coser. New York: Schocken, 1972.
Schroeder, Ralph. “Nietzsche and Weber: Two ‘prophets’ of the Modern World.” In Max Weber, Rationality and Modernity. Edited by Sam Whimster and Scott Lash. London: Allen and Unwin, 1987.
Tomelleri, Stefano. Ressentiment: Reflections on Mimetic Desire and Society. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2015.
Weber, Max. Economy and Society. Translated by E. Fischoff et al. Edited by Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich. Oakland: University of California Press, 2013.
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Tomelleri, S. (2017). Ressentiment and the Turn to the Victim: Nietzsche, Weber, Scheler. In: Alison, J., Palaver, W. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Mimetic Theory and Religion. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-53825-3_43
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