René Girard’s fundamental anthropology

Abstract

As a social science cultural anthropology shares the problems of all preparadigmatic sciences.Cultural anthropology textbooks primarily aim to overcome the traditional division to natural and social sciences, and they see anthropology as an ideal space for uniting the two. However, this aspiration does not remove doubts about the subject and methods of cultural anthropology. René Girard, a French-American theoretician, tried to solve the aporias of the science about man by deliberating on the origin of man and his culture. For that purpose, he created so-called fundamental anthropology, whose basic theoretic idea is the mimeticity of a human being resulting by violence. By repressing the true nature of the so-called founding murder, and by its ritualization, a man defers his violence and creates culture. Girard's inspiring theory, though widely accepted, is still not completely recognized among professional anthropologists. However, all prerequisites for that have been created, and this short review endeavors to provide evidence for that.