Why your deepest desires are not actually your own, according to René Girard

Ideas & Philosophy · Published 29 September 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: René Girard argued that human desire is not spontaneous but imitative. We do not want objects because they are inherently valuable; we want them because others want them. This mimetic cycle creates rivalry, fuels social conflict, and historically led communities to unite through the violent scapegoating of an arbitrary victim.

René Girard, a French academic born in 1923, proposed that human desire functions through a triangular relationship: the subject, the object, and the model. Rather than pursuing an object directly, we copy the desire of a model. This process is rarely conscious, leading us to believe our aspirations are authentic when they are actually borrowed. As Girard noted in his 1961 work Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, this imitation transforms the model into a rival when the desired object cannot be shared, turning the pursuit of status or material goods into a source of intense conflict.

The consequences of this mimetic rivalry extend beyond individual psychology into anthropology. Girard argued that when mimetic conflict spreads, it threatens to destroy the community. To restore order, groups historically polarized their hostility toward a single, arbitrary victim. The killing of this scapegoat provided a temporary, unifying peace, as the group projected their disorder onto the victim and subsequently venerated them as a sacred source of order. This mechanism, detailed in his 1972 book Violence and the Sacred, suggests that archaic religion and social structures were built upon the foundation of ritualized violence.

Girard believed that Biblical texts uniquely expose this mechanism by siding with the victim rather than the persecuting community. By revealing the innocence of the victim, these scriptures challenge the scapegoat process that once generated social unity. While Girard’s theories have been applied to fields ranging from theology to the study of modern political conflicts, they remain controversial and pessimistic. They suggest that as long as we remain blind to our imitative nature, we are destined to repeat the cycles of rivalry and violence that have defined human history since its foundation.

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