Evolution and Conversion

Rene Girard is one of the most divisive and striking intellectuals of the 20th century. Over the past forty years, his work has continued to exert an influence across literary theory, philosophy and the social sciences. Echoing the format of his early works, Evolution and Conversion brings Girard into dialogue with two sympathetic interviewers and allows him to speak candidly about the major tenets of his life and thought. Hailed by Michel Serres as "the Charles Darwin" of human sciences, Girard is in fact one of the few thinkers who has given full consideration to an evolutionary perspective to explain the emergence of culture and institutions. Evolution and Conversion draws out not only this aspect of his thought but also emphasises the centrality of religion to his work. Girard's reflection on the relationship between violence and religion is both original and persuasive and, given the urgency of this issue in our contemporary world, in need of a reappraisal.

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Reviewed by Michael McGhee, Theological Book Review Vol.19 No.1 2007

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Rene Girard is the Andrew B. Hammond Professor Emeritus of French Language, Literature, and Civilization at Stanford University. Joao Cezar de Castro Rocha is Professor of Comparative Literature at the State University of Rio de Janeiro, Professor of Latin American Studies at University of Manchester (UK), and currently Humboldt Research Fellow at the Frei Universitat in Berlin. He has widely published on literary theory and social history. Pierpaolo Antonello, Senior Lecturer at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of St John's College, is currently a member of COV&R, and has worked for many years on the relationship between literature, philosophy and science.

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Chapter 1. The Life of the Mind; Chapter 2. "A theory by which to work": the Mimetic Mechanism; Chapter 3: The Symbolic Species; Chapter 4. Critique and Dialogue: From Frazer to Levi-Strauss; Chapter 5: Method, Evidence and Truth; Chapter 6: The Scandal of Christianity; Chapter 7: Modernity, Postmodernity and the End of History.

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