Charles Davis versus René Girard

In the course of the past twenty years René Girard has offered us a theory of the structure of human desire. Because desire is something very fundamental, his hypothesis is far-reaching and it gives us many original and, I believe, plausible results. However, not everything is explained and put into a new light because of a new insight into the structure of human desire. Thanks to Girard’s hypothesis, I think we can see how many apparently very varied things may have much more in common than we thought, and sometimes we can even perceive much better why there are differences and what they are. But even I, who have restricted myself in the three articles on Girard which I have published in New Blackfriars’ mainly to expounding his hypothesis, consider that hypothesis to be less embracing than Girard himself sometimes seems to think.Nevertheless, although any debate on Girard’s hypothesis is welcome, precisely because it helps us to see what is valuable and what is not, and although it is a pleasure to see Charles Davis in the July/August issue of New Blackfriars contributing to this debate, the attitudes which Davis brings to the debate make constructive discussion difficult. It seems to me that Davis feels akin to the postmodern position which assumes that a universal and unifying vision of reality is impossible and that it is doubtful whether reality is a unity; that perhaps there are more realities than one at the same time. Holders of this view can thus only be suspicious: ‘Suspicion, critique, uncovering: all can be turned upon oneself’ (p. 327) in a never-ending process. I myself feel closer to those attempts which, like Girard’s, try to dismantle the boundary fences between the various disciplines, constituting a parallel movement to postmodernism.