The Girard Reader by René Girard

Max
    Scheler himself is not far from the truth when he states in Ressentiment that "the fact of choosing a model for oneself" is the result of a certain tendency, common to all men, to
    compare oneself with others, and he goes on to say, "all jealousy, all ambition, and even an
    ideal like the 'imitation' of Christ is based on such comparisons." But this intuition remains
    isolated. Only the great artists attribute to the mediator the position usurped by the object; only they reverse the commonly accepted hierarchy of desire.
    In The Memoirs of a Tourist , Stendhal warns his readers against what he calls the modern
    emotions, the fruits of universal vanity: "envy, jealousy, and impotent hatred." Stendhal's
    formula gathers together the three triangular emotions; it considers them apart from any
    particular object; it associates them with that imperative need to imitate by which, according
    to the novelist, the nineteenth century is completely possessed. For his part, Scheler asserts,
    following Nietzsche -- who acknowledged a large debt to Stendhal -- that the romantic state
    of mind is pervaded by ressentiment . Stendhal says precisely this, but he looks for the source of this spiritual poison in the passionate imitation of individuals who are fundamentally our
    equals and whom we endow with an arbitrary prestige. If the modern emotions flourish, it is
    not because "envious natures" and "jealous temperaments" have unfortunately and
    mysteriously increased in number, but because internal mediation triumphs in a universe
    where the differences between men are gradually erased.
    The great novelists reveal the imitative nature of desire. In our days its nature is hard to
    perceive because the most fervent imitation is the most vigorously denied. Don Quixote
    proclaimed himself the disciple of Amadis and the writers of his time proclaimed themselves
    the disciples of the Ancients. The romantic vaniteux does not want to be anyone's disciple. He convinces himself that he is thoroughly original . In the nineteenth century spontaneity
    becomes a universal dogma, succeeding imitation. Stendhal warns us at every step that we
    must not be fooled
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    by these individualisms professed with fanfare, for they merely hide a new form of imitation.
    Romantic revulsion, hatred of society, nostalgia for the desert, like gregariousness, usually
    conceal a morbid concern for the Other.
    In order to camouflage the essential role which the Other plays in his desires, Stendhal's
    vaniteux frequently appeals to the clichés of the reigning ideology. Behind the devotion, the
    mawkish altruism, the hypocritical engagement of the grandes dames of 1830, Stendhal finds not the generous impulse of a being truly prepared to give itself but rather the tormented
    recourse of vanity at bay, the centrifugal movement of an ego powerless to desire by itself.
    The novelist lets his characters act and speak; then, in the twinkling of an eye, he reveals to
    us the mediator. He reestablishes covertly the true hierarchy of desire while pretending to
    believe in the weak reasoning advanced by his character in support of the contrary hierarchy.
    This is one of the perpetual methods of Stendhal's irony.
    The romantic vaniteux always wants to convince himself that his desire is written into the
    nature of things, or which amounts to the same thing, that it is the emanation of a serene
    subjectivity, the creation ex nihilo of a quasi-divine ego. Desire is no longer rooted in the
    object perhaps, but it is rooted in the subject; it is certainly not rooted in the Other. The
    objective and subjective fallacies are one and the same; both originate in the image which we
    all have of our own desires. Subjectivisms and objectivisms, romanticisms and realisms,
    individualisms and scientisms, idealisms and positivisms appear to be in opposition but are
    secretly in agreement to conceal the presence of the mediator. All these dogmas are the
    aesthetic or philosophic translation of