René Girard

René Girard is a member of the French Academy, Emeritus Professor at Stanford University; his books have been translated and acclaimed worldwide. He received the Modern Language Association’s Award...

Battling to the End: Conversations with Benoît Chantre

René Girard

In Battling to the End René Girard engages Carl von Clausewitz (1780–1831), the Prussian military theoretician who wrote On War. Clausewitz, who has been critiqued by military strategists, political scientists, and philosophers, famously postulated that "War is the continuation of politics by other means." He also seemed to believe that governments could constrain war.

Clausewitz, a firsthand witness to the Napoleonic Wars, understood the nature of modern warfare. Far from controlling violence, politics follows in war’s wake: the means of war have become its ends.

René Girard shows us a Clausewitz who is a fascinated witness of history's acceleration. Haunted by the French-German conflict, Clausewitz clarifies more than anyone else the development that would ravage Europe. Battling to the End pushes aside the taboo that prevents us from seeing that the apocalypse has begun. Human violence is escaping our control; today it threatens the entire planet.

Translated by Mary Baker. Benoît Chantre is President of l’Association Recherches Mimétiques.

CONTENTS:
- A Note on the Translation
- Introduction
- Chapter 1. The Escalation to Extremes
- Chapter 2. Clausewitz and Hegel
- Chapter 3. Duel and Reciprocity
- Chapter 4. The Duel and the Sacred
- Chapter 5. Hölderlin’s Sorrow
- Chapter 6. Clausewitz and Napoleon
- Chapter 7. France and Germany
- Chapter 8. The Pope and the Emperor
- Epilogue

Reviews

“Fundamentalists, preoccupied with apocalypse, nevertheless grab the wrong end of the stick: 'They cannot do without a cruel God. Strangely, they do not see that the violence we ourselves are in the process of amassing and that is looming over our own heads is entirely sufficient to trigger the worst. They have no sense of humor.' Girard insists that our desires are mimetic; envy and admiration fuel imitation and resentment—and eventually violence. We become our foes. In one of the sweeping, epigrammatic statements that pepper the book, Girard claims, 'Individualism is a formidable lie.'" - Cynthia Haven, San Francisco Chronicle

"I think Girard is the most important theorist on the competitive behaviour of human beings."
- German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk

"...elevates Girard's classical description of the sacrificial lamb [what he calls the 'founding murder'] to a world stage." - FRIEZE magazine,

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