Reviews for Torn halves

The average rating for Torn halves based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-12-08 00:00:00 Belinda M Rodgers Girard's basic thesis is well known; Human culture arose out of the resolution of mimetic desire. By nature we desire what is desired by others, this leads to conflict and ultimately murder. Institutions and rituals arise out of this act. Girard sees the Gospel texts of the New Testament as a revolutionary exposing of this basic mechanism. However, the church has continued to offer a sacrificial reading of the Gospel which undermines its revelatory potential. This book is an excellent and accessible overview of his thought. What I found interesting was his conclusion. At the end of the book Girard suggests we suffer most basically from a lack of meaning. I find this to be a bit dissonant from much of his work. Perhaps he is was still too heavily influenced by the existential angst that seemed to exist in the middle of the twentieth century but I expected him to move in a much more 'material' direction in his conclusion. Here are some of his parting lines, "What is important above all is to realize that there are no recipes; there is no pharmakon anymore, not even a Marxist or a psychoanalytic one. Recipes are not what we need, nor do we need to be reassured - our need is to escape from meaninglessness. . . . I hold that truth is not an empty word, or a mere 'effect' as people say nowadays. I hold that everything capable of diverting us from madness and death, from now on, is inextricably linked with this truth. But I do not know how to speak about these matters. I can only approach texts and institutions, and relating them to one another seems to me to throw light in every direction. . . . Present-day thought is leading us in the direction of the valley of death, and it is cataloguing the bones one by one. All of us are in this valley but it is up to us to resuscitate meaning by relating all the [Judeo-Christian] texts to one another without exception, rather than stopping at just a few of them. All the issues of 'psychological health' seem to me to take second place to a much greater issue - that of meaning which is being lost or threatened on all sides but simply awaits the breath of the Spirit to be reborn." At which point Girard concludes by quoting Ezekiel 37's vision of the valley of dry bones.

Review # 2 was written on 2012-12-15 00:00:00 Juan M Castro Tapia This is one of the most seminal books I know from the second half of the twentieth century. As a religious person, a monk as it happens, and a yearner for peace, I have been perplexed by the intertwining of violence with religion, which supposedly preaches peace, and especially perplexed by the violence within Christianity itself in contradiction to Jesus' teaching in the Gospels. It is Girard who has pointed the way to how violence happens in religious contexts and where religions resources are to reverse violent trends. Anyone with anywhere near the same concerns as I have would do well to ponder this book and then ponder books by others developing his thought. For my own reflections on Girard & Christian spirituality as well as some interesting fantasy literature for readers young & old see