Weak Faith

Abstract

Gianni Vattimo’s published work in English does not show evidence of any sustained and in-depth engagement with other works of Girard aside from Things Hidden and Violence and the Sacred, and even from these two books, it seems, Vattimo has only retained a summary of Girard’s theory. Moreover, Vattimo is well aware that his use of Girard may be contrary to the latter’s own intentions, but he does not really consider this to be a problem: In his view, every interpreter of any text is justified in calling forth new meanings from a text and putting a text to use beyond its author’s explicit intentions (as a text is always richer than its author can fathom). Vattimo’s work offers testimony to the impact and dissemination of Girard’s ideas in contemporary thought, but it is difficult to consider him a faithful adherent of mimetic theory.