The following is an excerpt of an interview with René Girard, French historian, philosophical anthropologist and emeritus professor of anthropology at Stanford University.
"NPQ: When Pope Benedict XVI recently denounced what he saw as the "dictatorship of relativism," especially in European culture, it caused great controversy. Is the Pope right that we live in such a dictatorship?
René Girard: Yes, he is right.... It makes sense that this formula comes from a man—(the former) Cardinal Ratzinger—whose specialty is dogma and theory.
This reign of relativism which is so striking today is due, in part, to the necessities of our time. Societies are so mixed, with such plurality of peoples. You have to keep a balance between various creeds. You must not take sides. Every belief is supposed to be accorded equal value. Inevitably, even if you are not a relativist, you must sound like one if not act like one.
As a result, we have more and more relativism. And we have more and more people who hate any kind of faith. This is especially the case in the university. And it hurts intellectual life. Because all truths are treated as equal, since there is said to be no objective Truth, you are forced to be banal and superficial. You cannot be truly committed to anything, to be "for" something—even if only for the time being.
Like Ratzinger, however, I believe in commitment. After all, we are both convinced by the idea that responsibility demands we must be committed to one position and follow it through.
NPQ: For all the controversy Pope Benedict’s comment caused, it was really in the stead of the late John Paul II’s encyclical "Veritatis Splendor," which criticized "postmodern" society as becoming indifferent to values—disbelief—in the name of tolerance. His fear was a new nihilism that could plunge the world into dehumanizing will-to-power episodes akin to the fascist and communist disasters of the 20th century.
Girard: Postmodernism is dramatic in saying there are no absolute values, that there is no Truth, that language can’t reach the truth...Pope Benedict is engaging this battle head-on by attacking this vogue of disbelief in the world today, especially in Europe. Like John Paul II, he knows from personal experience that, without religion, societies go to the dogs. And he doesn’t hesitate to say it.
I hope his message resonates. His challenge to relativism is important not only for the Church and for Europe, but for the whole world..."
NPQ: Even Jean Baudrillard once agreed that "the whole world, including China and Japan, is implicated in the postmodern fragmentation and uprootedness that leaves values behind. There is one exception: Islam. It stands as a challenge to the radical indifference sweeping the world. Isn’t it true that Islam remains the only civilization fully based in faith, and thus is in conflict with our secular postmodern culture the same way Ratzinger is? After all, despite Pope John Paul II’s determined efforts, the drafters of the EU Constitution rejected any mention of the Christian heritage of the West. Every state in the Islamic world mentions Islam as its cultural foundation.
Girard: Western civilization is, no doubt, predominantly on the side of secular relativism. That is not true in the Islamic world, where faith dominates. This victory of relativism is precisely why Pope Benedict has made defending the Christian Truth his central mission.
Having said this, I should also say that American secularism—which arose in defense of freedom of religion—and French laicite—which arose from the Jacobin opposition to the Church—are more similar than most people recognize because they are experienced in the same way at the personal level.
NPQ: It is not only the Pope who doesn’t like the relativism he sees in Europe, where the churches may be empty but the mosques are full. It is also the radical Muslims like the young Moroccan who slit Theo Van Gogh’s throat in the Netherlands, possibly the world capital of relativism.
Girard: This conflict, you are right, is most acute in Europe, especially in the Netherlands, where the postmodern idea of equality of cultures has been most enshrined in policy. God knows they are so liberal, which is why this violence should not have happened.
In America, there is not really a recognition of how far things have gone—that, in France, for example, one child out of three is born a Muslim..."
"NPQ: Shortly after 9/11, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, a Catholic, was widely condemned for saying that Christianity was superior to Islam. When Ratzinger said a few years ago that Christianity was a superior religion, he also caused controversy. In 1990, in the encyclical "Redemptoris Missio," Pope John Paul II said the same thing. It should not be surprising that believers would affirm their faith as the true one. Perhaps it is a mark of the very relativist dominance Pope Benedict condemns that this is somehow controversial?
Girard: Why would you be a Christian if you didn’t believe in Christ? Paradoxically, we have become so ethnocentric in our relativism that we feel it is only OK for others—not us—to think their religion is superior! We are the only ones with no centrism.
NPQ: Is Christianity superior to other religions?
Girard: Yes. All of my work has been an effort to show that Christianity is superior and not just another mythology. In mythology, a furious mob mobilizes against scapegoats held responsible for some huge crisis. The sacrifice of the guilty victim through collective violence ends the crisis and founds a new order ordained by the divine. Violence and scapegoating are always present in the mythological definition of the divine itself.
It is true that the structure of the Gospels is similar to that of mythology in which a crisis is resolved through a single victim who unites everybody against him, thus reconciling the community. As the Greeks thought, the shock of death of the victim brings about a catharsis that reconciles. It extinguishes the appetite for violence. For the Greeks, the tragic death of the hero enabled ordinary people to go back to their peaceful lives.
However, in this case, the victim is innocent and the victimizers are guilty. Collective violence against the scapegoat as a sacred, founding act is revealed as a lie. Christ redeems the victimizers through enduring his suffering, imploring God to "forgive them for they know not what they do." He refuses to plead to God to avenge his victimhood with reciprocal violence. Rather, he turns the other cheek.
The victory of the Cross is a victory of love against the scapegoating cycle of violence. It punctures the idea that hatred is a sacred duty.
The Gospels do everything that the (Old Testament) Bible had done before, rehabilitating a victimized prophet, a wrongly accused victim. But they also universalize this rehabilitation. They show that, since the foundation of the world, the victims of all Passion-like murders have been victims of the same mob contagion as Jesus. The Gospels make this revelation complete because they give to the biblical denunciation of idolatry a concrete demonstration of how false gods and their violent cultural systems are generated. This is the truth missing from mythology, the truth that subverts the violent system of this world. This revelation of collective violence as a lie is the earmark of Christianity. This is what is unique about Christianity. And this uniqueness is true."
This interview was excerpted from New Perspectives Quarterly--and can be found at NPQ.