René Girard, whose explorations of literature and myth helped establish influential theories about how people are motivated to want things, died on Nov. 4 at his home in Stanford, Calif. He was 91.
Martha Girard, his wife of 64 years, confirmed his death.
Professor Girard, who was born in France, had lived and taught in the United States since 1950 but continued to write in French, amassing close to 30 works of analysis, essays and interviews. Writers like Karen Armstrong, Simon Schama and J. M. Coetzee have cited his work, and Peter Thiel, a founder of PayPal, the digital payment company, credits Professor Girard with inspiring him to switch careers and become an early, and well-rewarded, investor in Facebook.
Professor Girard’s central idea was that human motivation is based on desire. People are free, he believed, but seek things in life based on what other people want. Their imitation of those desires, which he termed mimesis, is imitated by others in turn, leading to escalating and often destructive competition.
His first work, published in French in 1961 and in English in 1965 as “Deceit, Desire, and the Novel,” introduced this idea through readings of classic novels. Over time, the idea has been used to explain financial bubbles, where things of little intrinsic value are increasingly bid up in the hope of financial gain. It has also been cited to explain why people unsatisfied by high-status jobs pursue them anyway.
The Red and the Black: Mimetic Desire and the Myth of Celebrity (Twayne's Masterwork Studies)
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P. J. O'Rourke: By the Book
Hawaii is shortening the school year by 17 days. Poor kids. The heck are they supposed to do in Hawaii with 17 days off? — Will Durst
heck
interj.
Used as a mild oath.
n. Slang
Used as an intensive: had a heck of a lot of money; was crowded as heck.
- heck
- 発音
- hék
- heckの慣用句
- a heck of a, What the heck！, （全2件）
研究採用ISO 9000認證的，究竟屬「威脅型」（coercive）、「規範或道義型」（normative）、模仿型的（mimetic）。
mimetic
(mĭ-mĕt'ĭk, mī-)
adj.
- Relating to, characteristic of, or exhibiting mimicry.
- Of or relating to an imitation; imitative.
- Using imitative means of representation: a mimetic dance.
mimesis
(mĭ-mē'sĭs, mī-)n.- The imitation or representation of aspects of the sensible world, especially human actions, in literature and art.
- Biology. Mimicry.
- Medicine. The appearance, often caused by hysteria, of symptoms of a disease not actually present.
mimetic
- mi • met • ic
- 発音
- mimétik
- BIOLOGYthe close external resemblance of an animal or plant (or part of one) to another animal, plant, or inanimate object.
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