Mecaskey 1

Hannah M. Mecaskey
PH 2000- Modern Philosophy
Fr. Anselm Ramelow, O.P.
Term Paper
22 November 2010

Hobbes’ Social Contract Compared vs. Girard’s Scapegoat Theory

Mimetic Violence Operative in both Leviathan and the Scapegoat Mechanism

Introduction

Theorists’ belief systems are often betrayed by the anthropologies underlying their socio-

political theories. For Thomas Hobbes, the naturalistic state of man in his social contract theory

is violent and animalistic, only controllable when the general public is able to redirect their

individualistic fear and anger at one particular person—an absolute monarch. This system seems

very similar to a more modern reconstruction of society by René Girard, whose theory of

mimetic rivalry and violence, especially Girard’s scapegoat mechanism, function very similarly

to Hobbes’ ideal state, the “Leviathan.” For Girard, man’s natural state is also violent, not only

on an individualistic level but on a societal level as well. However, human animosity is too

cyclic to be constrained by redirection to one member of society and remain in the society, so

one person becomes the scapegoat, the communal vessel of guilt, for the whole of the society.

While Girard and Hobbes have created very similar systems analyzing human society, theirs

solutions to mimetic rivalry differ dramatically: Hobbes accepts a notion of katéchon, that

human institution can quell mimetic rivalry, while Girard accepts only a divine solution.

Thomas Hobbes’ Social Contract Theory

The primary text of Hobbes from which I will construct Hobbes’ social contract theory is

Leviathan. In describing the common-wealth or state as “Leviathan”, the ancient biblical beast

which appears in the book of Job as a symbol of primordial chaos, Hobbes designates his ideal
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state as “an Artificial Man”1 which is in fact greater than natural man. Hobbes begins in his

introduction by decreeing that it is man’s duty to create artificial life is exemplified in this state,

imitating of the creative ability of God. Already, we see the concept of mimesis in human beings

primordially functioning as imitation of God’s action, not other humans, as creators of that initial

motion of life. Perhaps Hobbes conceives as all of life as automated, since he describes life as

merely the motion of limbs, mechanistically moving about.

In like manner, the body of the state is animated by an absolute monarch, whom Hobbes

terms the “Artificial Soul” of the mechanistic body of the state. Designating mankind as creator

of this nationalistic beast Leviathan as well as man composing the Leviathan, Hobbes says that

the Leviathan’s artificial life comes through the making of “covenants” which designate “what

are the rights and just power or authority of a sovereign; and what it is that preserves and

dissolves it.”2 It is upon these covenants which bring about the existence of the Leviathan state

through social contract theory that I will focus.

Beginning with a discussion of human nature in Chapter 17, “Of the Causes, Generation

and Definition of a Common-Wealth” in Leviathan, Hobbes determines that human beings have

a need for the common-wealth/state to preserve individual security. Describing the creation of a

common-wealth as mankind’s “final cause” in order to preserve individual lives from “that

miserable condition of War” which results from “the natural Passions of men” since Hobbes

finds no “visible Power” to contain their natural violence by threat of punishment.3 Since man’s

chief desire is for self-preservation, Hobbes argues that this desire “gives rise to a desire for

pleasure,”4 leading humans to try and store pleasure for the future, requiring a certain amount of

1
Thomas Hobbes. Leviathan. MacPherson, C.B., ed. (Baltimore: Penguin Books Ltd., 1968), 81.
2
Ibid., 82.
3
Ibid., 223.
4
D.D. Raphael. Hobbes: Morals and Politics. Political Thinkers, 6. Geraint Perry, ed. (London: George Allen &
Unwin Ltd., 1977), 30.
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power which Hobbes defines as “the means to satisfy our desires.”5 These descriptions evidence

that Hobbes finds mankind unable to maintain a natural peace, unlike “certain living creatures, as

Bees and Ants, live sociably with one another.”6 Why is mankind’s natural disposition not

towards peaceful co-existence with fellow mankind?

To this question, Hobbes offers six reasons in response: First, Hobbes believes that

humans are always in competition with one another for “honor and dignity,”7 stirring up envy

and strife which lead to war.8 Second, Hobbes says that this envy and jealousy is so heightened

in mankind that he cannot enjoy anything which does not selfishly pertain to himself.9 Thirdly,

Hobbes describes human beings and prideful about their own intellects, causing political strife by

constant attempts to reform the state.10 Fourth, Hobbes finds humankind to be deceptive because

of our linguistic abilities, further frustrating our fellow humans.11 Fifth, Hobbes describes human

beings as boastful about their own knowledge, especially concerning state governance, which

breeds discontent on a political level.12 And finally, Hobbes does not believe human beings

naturally agree to things, unlike irrational creatures, thus peace comes through an artificial

covenant.13 In these six ways, Hobbes distinguished between human nature and that of irrational

animals, seeming to conclude that human rationality makes men more violent than capable of a

simplistic peace.

Given this negative anthropology, Hobbes concludes that the only way for humans to live

in peace with one another is to intentionally covenant with one another, “every man with every

5
Ibid., 31.
6
Thomas Hobbes. Leviathan. MacPherson, C.B., ed. (Baltimore: Penguin Books Ltd., 1968), 225.
7
Ibid.
8
Ibid., 226.
9
Ibid.
10
Ibid.
11
Ibid.
12
Ibid.
13
Ibid.
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man, in such manner, as if every man should say to every man.”14 This individualistic covenant

between persons agrees that each will subjugate himself to the rule of an absolute monarch,

receiving punishment for wrongful actions. Hobbes thinks that such a covenant will unite the

whole multitude of individuals into one person he calls the “Moral God,” the Leviathan state.15

Thus all the persons united as individuals convey the power of their submission to one

individual, the absolute monarch, who is granted sovereign power—so much power and strength

that he is actually able to terrorize the individuals composing the state unchecked.16 Hobbes says

that the absolute monarch embodies the “essence of the common-wealth” in as much as it is “one

person, of whose acts a great multitude, by mutual covenants with another have made themselves

every one the author” of the city-state “to the end that he may use” the collective means and

powers of the individuals “as he shall think expedient for their peace and common defense.”17

Thus Hobbes solves his perceived problem of human nature’s propensity to violence for

the sake of individual benefit by harnessing that energy through social covenants with one

another to grant the power for protection and self-preservation to an absolute monarch, whose

absolute authority terrorizes the people who comprise the state. So in the Leviathan, mimetic

rivalry on the level of individuals is dissolved when each agrees to redirect their animosity

towards one person, functioning as a civil god, who almost seems to have an imitative

relationship rivaling God Himself. Having stated in his introduction that he was reacting to the

Aristotelian concept of “nature,” Hobbes has destroyed the social nature of human beings, and

has taken that conclusion to its natural extreme in the belief that all human beings are so

concerned with individualist self-preservation and survival that community is an artificial

14
Ibid., 227.
15
Ibid.
16
Ibid.
17
Ibid., 228.
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product of a social contract to preserve individual needs. It is interesting that Hobbes requires a

specifically visible presence for the maintenance of human peace—and that the sovereign he

erects is one endowed with absolute, unquestioned authority. Seeing elements of the sovereigns

mimesis of God, Hobbes creates his own parallel of God, a human epitome of absolute power

and unquestionable authority, in anti-Christ form, for the monarch rules through fear and terror.

Wolfgang Palaver describes the sovereign monarch of Hobbes’ social contract theory as

a katéchon, a term referring to the restraining or holding back force18 for the mimetically violent

natures Hobbes reads as inherent in humanity. Palaver recognizes characteristics mimetic rivalry

as defined by René Girard within Hobbes’ system of human violence, along with redirection of

that violence towards one person in Leviathan as parallel to Girard’s scapegoat mechanism.

Hobbes’ version of mimetic theory, described as humankind’s equality of ability (to kill one

another) and the “equality of hope in attaining” the same ends as the processes which puts human

beings in conflict with one another.19 Since Hobbes does believe that two people can both enjoy

the same end, he says that “they become enemies,” endeavoring “to destroy or subdue one

another.”20 Having seen traces of Girard’s mimetic rivalry in Hobbes’ Leviathan, I will describe

Girard’s own theory of mimetic rivalry, culminating in the scapegoat mechanism, as a way to

better elucidate the humanistic implications of Hobbes’ social contract theory.

The Mimetic and Scapegoat Mechanisms of René Girard

To introduce René Girard’s framework of mimetic theory, especially the scapegoat

mechanism, I will briefly explain the mechanism with the aid of Michael Kirwan, a Neo-

18
Wolfgang Palaver. Hobbes and the Katéchon: The Secularization of Sacrificial Christianity. Contagion:
Journal of Violence, Mimesis, and Culture. (Vol 2., Spring 1995), 61.
19
Thomas Hobbes. Leviathan. MacPherson, C.B., ed. (Baltimore: Penguin Books Ltd., 1968), 184.
20
Ibid.
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Girardian, before drawing out my analysis. Kirwan is very careful to describe Girard’s theory as

closely as possible, and seems to do an extremely accurate job, even according to the originator

of this scapegoat mechanism himself, Girard. Thus arguing from Kirwan’s book Discovering

Girard, I feel as if I am dealing with a translation of Girard’s theory, the actual substance of his

thought in slightly varied presentation. Girard himself describes “mimesis,” the basis of his

theory, as a behavioral tendency towards imitation,21 in the case of mimetic theory, basically the

imitation of desire in that one desires what one sees another person desiring because that other

person desires it.

It is important to understand what is meant by mimetic rivalry if one is going to correctly

grasp Girard’s concept of the scapegoat mechanism, which rests upon the acceptance of mimetic

violence within human society. Briefly put, mimetic rivalry is the violence that arises in

interpersonal, even inter-societal relations when one person or society desires what another has,

and views it as necessary for his/their happiness. Mimetic rivalry is the impetus, the

psychological or spiritual violence of envy and covetousness which impels mimetic violence,

which is violence done in attempt to selfishly acquire whatever was desired of the other. Keeping

this in mind, it will be much easier to understand how Girard characterizes the rising up on

mimetic violence within the scapegoat mechanism. Appealing to children to exemplify mimetic

conflicts, Girard describes Augustine’s illustration of two children who have the same wet nurse:

the nurse has more than enough milk for both children, but they simultaneously desire the same

thing.22 Girard says that this exemplifies a desire beyond acquisitive, that has become a

competitive desire: “even if there is more than enough milk for both” children, each wants “to

21
René Girard with Pierpaolo Antonello and João Cezar de Casto Rocha. Evolution and Coversion: Dialogues on
the Origins of Culture. (New York: Continuum International Publishing, 2007), 60.
22
Ibid., 61.
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have it all in order to prevent the other from having any.”23 Girard also claims that this kind of

desire is operative among adults, a selfish desire for a thing which another person also wants or

needs, while desiring to present the other from having the thing as well.

Clearly in Kirwan’s presentation, Girard’s theory of the scapegoat mechanism arose

mainly through his analysis of classical literature such as Tolstoy and Shakespeare. I will briefly

describe the major components of what Girard calls the “scapegoat mechanism.” Expanding his

prior theories of mimetic rivalry and interpersonal violence into a more general theory of social

order, Girard stated that it was a society’s conception “of ‘the sacred’” through which

interpersonal violence was contained, preserving the social order.24 It is within this context of

‘the sacred,’ within religion itself, that Girard sees the scapegoat mechanism as operating

opportunistically.

The scapegoat mechanism operates at two different levels of a society’s self-

understanding, that of divine-human interaction, as well as interpersonal relations, beginning

with the distinct cosmic realms of sacred and profane which are brought into being through

sacrifice of a victim through expulsion or execution. Describing the scapegoat mechanism as a

social process, Girard characterizes the time when a community begins to seek out a victim as

“when the cultural order is destabilized or endangered by the escalation of mimetic desire”25 and

plunges into crisis. Characterizing the crisis as perceived in almost apocalyptic proportion, the

community as becoming collectively obsessed to the point of seeming possessed in a unified

manner, especially when it seems that the crisis cannot be found without resorting to violence.

Thus, “according to Girard, the crisis is resolved by a realignment of the aggression, ‘all against

23
Ibid.
24
Michael Kirwan. Discovering Girard. (Cambridge, MA: Cowley Publications, 2005), 38.
25
Ibid., 38.
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one,’”26 venting blame for the cause of the communal disturbance onto the shoulders of one

person. Having selected its victim, the scapegoat through which the community hopes to regain

peace, the group becomes unified in violently eradicating the victim they deem profane from

within their midst through the victim’s death or expulsion. This experience of being united in

aggression against a common enemy allows the group to experience “a transcendence and

harmony which seem to have come from ‘outside.’”27

The communal threat abated and a state of beatitude achieved through the removal of the

scapegoat victim, the mob that expelled/exterminated the victim attributes the beatitude of their

new state to the victim itself, allowing him/her to acquire “a ‘sacred’ numinosity, even a divine

status.”28 Thus the victim is attributed with conflicting qualities: demonization as the attributed

cause of the community’s disaster, as well as some kind of salvific role. Girard assigned the

purpose of cultic prohibitions, rituals and myths as functioning to control a society’s impulses

towards mimetic violence, “even if they do so by contradictory means” such as permitting ritual

sacrifices.29 While prohibitions serve to separate the community members from potential sources

of conflict and violence, sacrificial rituals serve as “momentary relaxation of taboos, whereby the

community allows itself an ‘acceptable’ dosage of violence and chaos,” serving as a kind of

inoculation against the infectious spread of mimetic violence.30 In bringing together his analysis

of literature and conception of myth, Girard “establishes a link between mimetic desire and

victimization” summed up in his declaration that “’violence is the heart and secret soul of the

sacred.’”31

26
Ibid., 38.
27
Ibid., 39.
28
Ibid., 39.
29
Ibid., 39.
30
Ibid., 39.
31
Ibid., 39.
 Mecaskey 9

The name of Girard’s scapegoat mechanism is derived out of the popular usage of

“scapegoat,” rather than with reference to the scapegoat as a part of the Day of Atonement ritual

discussed in Leviticus 16, as an innocent victim against whom the violence of entire community

is channeled.32 The victim of Girard’s mechanism is in some sense random, possibly singled out

because of some significant difference or defect, against which the community enacts a

controlled, limited use of violence “in order to prevent a more widespread violence from

engulfing and destroying the whole group.”33 Included in his scapegoat mechanism is the

assumption that scapegoating is “a spontaneous and unconscious psychological mechanism,”

which Neo-Girardian theorists have admitted, and taken farther into an idea that post-sacrifice,

the victim’s experience may enable the community to realize its own violence, as James Alison

has theorized about the death of Christ providing mankind with an “intelligence of the victim”

which both demonstrates the innocence of the victim as well as the community’s own propensity

for violence. Neo-Girardians interpret the process of scapegoating as that which can give the

violating community and understanding of its own violence, a redeeming factor in the cyclic

system of scapegoating.

Comparison of Girard and Hobbes

Picking up on the theme of mimetic rivalry which we have witnessed as the

anthropological basis to both Hobbes’ and Girard’s theories, I will return to Palaver’s proposition

concerning a katéchon in the secularized political system Hobbes proposes, which can be

brought to a greater light through comparison with Girard’s mimetic theory. To restate the

definition of katéchon, Palaver suggests the term can refer to “the restraining of chaotic violence

32
Ibid., 49.
33
Ibid., 49-50.
 Mecaskey 10

through violence.”34 We see this in the social contract theory of Hobbes in Leviathan, where the

uncontainable violence of individual persons is restrained by their mutual agreement to be ruled

by an absolute, tyrannical sovereign. Reversing Scholastic Christianity’s claim concerning

humanity in the image of God, Hobbes pinpoints human rationality as that which allows human

beings to develop mimetic rivalry of which animals are incapable. Writing in the wake of the

Protestant Reformation, Hobbes did not identify the Catholic Church with a political katéchon as

the Medievals had,35 no longer recognizing any kind of religious institution which could maintain

order. Instead Hobbes creates, in the terminology of Carl Schmitt, a “political theology”36 which

exemplifies secularization in Hobbes’ analogous depiction of God “and his concept of the state

and of sovereignty.”37

Instead of looking to God to restrain human violence, Hobbes chose one of the great

“biblical images of the principle of disorder”38 the Leviathan, as a civic symbol of order. Palaver

notes that “mimetic theory helps to explain this reversal of a principle of disorder to a principle

of order, for it shows us that sacrificial order itself is a product of chaos.”39 Palaver claims that “a

transfer of sacrificial theological concepts”40 is evident in Hobbes’ social contract theory through

not just a secularization of the Catholic empire’s katéchon power which comes from Divine

authority, but also in the way that Hobbes’ state functioning a katéchon, holds back the advent of

Christ’s kingdom.41 By depicting his Leviathan state as a kind of katéchon, fulfilling the

Medieval functions of restraining violence and the paraousia of Christ, Palaver argues that

34
Wolfgang Palaver. Hobbes and the Katéchon: The Secularization of Sacrificial Christianity. Contagion:
Journal of Violence, Mimesis, and Culture. (Vol 2., Spring 1995), 65.
35
Ibid., 66.
36
Ibid., 65.
37
Ibid.
38
Ibid.
39
Ibid.
40
Ibid.,66.
41
Ibid., 68.
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Hobbes makes sacrifice still necessary to maintain peace, which breaks with other Protestant

authors who saw the katéchon as already removed since Protestants tended to identify the Pope

as the Antichrist.42 Unlike the Catholic tradition of daily representing the sacrifice of Christ to

God, Protestants eliminated the need for a sacrificial tradition, believing the end times were

unrestrained after the Reformation. Reading Hobbes’ system as a secularization of the sacrificial

Catholic empire, Palaver reads a sacrificial element into Hobbes’ Leviathan common-wealth.

How can Hobbes be seen as creating a secular sacrificial system by which to restrain the

mimetic tendencies of human beings towards violence? Answering this requires comparison to

Girard’s explanation of the scapegoat mechanism, which is itself a sacrificial system to end

human culture’s need for a sacrificial victim. Girard’s scapegoat mechanism describes the

sacrificial process by which Girard interprets all societies to function. Following Aristotle in the

Poetics, Girard alights upon the distinguishing characteristic of human beings as imitation, not

merely in behavior, but also in our desires.43 Building on Hobbes’ analysis of man’s nature in

which “we find three principal causes of quarrel [:] First, Competition; Secondly, Diffidence;

Thirdly, Glory,”44 Girard theories the idea of a kind of social contract as well to diffuse a

perceived crisis point. This contract is not a redirection of fear and violence through the giving

over of individual power to a monarch, but rather towards one member of the society who can be

easily pinpointed as the alleged cause of the disturbance, fear, or violence. For Girard, the

society then becomes “unified…in the action of expelling or destroying the victim. Or the group

finds an external focus for its aggression, ‘an enemy without’ who similarly unites them.”45 In

this way, Girard provides a sacrificial outlet for internal violence of a group through elimination

42
Ibid., 66.
43
Michael Kirwan. Discovering Girard (Cambridge, MA: Cowley Publications, 2005), 17.
44
Thomas Hobbes. Leviathan. MacPherson, C.B., ed. (Baltimore: Penguin Books Ltd., 1968), 185.
45
Michael Kirwan. Discovering Girard (Cambridge, MA: Cowley Publications, 2005), 38-9.
 Mecaskey 12

of a group member or redirection of animosity to an outsider—whom Hobbes has designated as

the sovereign monarch.

Placing Girard’s terminology in the framework of Hobbes’ explication of the functioning

of Leviathan, the mimetic rivalry for Hobbes is solved when the individuals redirect their

collective animosity towards the sovereign monarch. Yet it is this depiction of the Leviathan as

solution to a people’s realized need for a katéchon that Girard objects to as implausible.46 Instead

of agreeing that they need an outside aggressor as scapegoat in time of peak violence allowing

them to cease their hostilities, Girard thinks war more immanent than agreement to submit to an

absolute sovereign.47 Seeing Hobbes’ system of diffusing mimetic rivalry as entirely improbably,

Girard suggests a temporary violence of “all against one person,” 48 either eliminating them or

throwing them out of the community. This person’s eradication from the presence of the “all”

triggers a united experience of “a transcendence and harmony which seem to have come from

‘outside.’”49 Yet later, Girard thinks remorse will set in and cause the scapegoatted person to be

viewed in an extremely positive light for having served to bring about the unity now enjoyed.

While Girard himself may scorn Hobbes’ system of regaining harmony, Girard’s own scapegoat

mechanism allows for Hobbes’ system without the concluding remorse and magnification of the

scapegoat (for Hobbes the absolute monarch).

Conclusion

Both Hobbes and Girard share a similar conception of the individual person in their

natural state: violent, scared for their own existence in an animalistic way. Yet where Hobbes

46
Ibid., 45.
47
Ibid.
48
Ibid., 38.
49
Ibid., 39.
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pits individual against individual, Girard sees individual violence melding together in communal

violence rather than communal peace. While for Hobbes fear and survival instincts drive this

individualistic state, for Girard it is something called “mimetic rivalry,” competitive selfish

desires which drive individuals into conflict with one another. Hobbes suggests a mitigation of

his conception of individual violence through the creation of a social contract where, for the

survival of all, each individual agrees to act in harmony with one another, allowing an absolute

monarch to hold a tyrannical over them as individuals. Girard’s scapegoat mechanism offers a

way in which the transfer of aggression from individual rivalry to Hobbes’ absolute sovereign

can occur, enabling this system to act as katéchon for the mimetic rivalry between individuals,

though allowing it to reign at the level of the sovereign monarch’s activity towards the people.

Girard has openly rejected Hobbes’ conclusion to a system so similar to Girard’s

scapegoat mechanism, denying that people would be able to agree to a social contract that would

allow this transfer of aggression to the sovereign monarch. However, Girard’s theory of the

scapegoat’s blame and elimination is exactly the same as Hobbes’, considered in the redirection

of animosity towards the sovereign which allows the people of the state to live in harmony with

one another, except for the fact that Girard insists the scapegoat mechanism will result in feelings

of remorse from those who victimized, causing them to praise the scapegoat victim for their

newfound unity. According to Girard, this scapegoat mechanism will cyclically continue

whenever a dire situation rises in a group or community, whereas for Hobbes, the sovereign

monarch is the solution to individual persistence in survival though it does not entirely eliminate

animosity, since the people of Hobbes’ Leviathan will live in terror of the monarch. The “double

transference” of Girard’s victim, as author of violence and author of peace,50 makes Girard’s

conception unique when compared to Hobbes’. Both systems demonstrate sacrificial operations,
50
Ibid., 52.
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the redirection of violence from all-against-all to all-against-one, only Girard rejects the notion

of a katéchon, “generally a conception of politics where the overriding purpose of political

institutions is the restraint of conflict,”51 while Hobbes maintains it. For Girard, the only true

solution to mimetic rivalry is found through the Gospel accounts of the sacrifice of Christ—no

human work will satisfy this.

51
Ibid., 45.
 Mecaskey 15

Bibliography

Girard, René with Pierpaolo Antonello and João Cezar de Casto Rocha. Evolution and
Coversion: Dialogues on the Origins of Culture. New York: Continuum International
Publishing, 2007.

Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan. MacPherson, C.B., ed. Baltimore: Penguin Books Ltd., 1968.

Kirwan, Michael. Discovering Girard. Cambridge, MA: Cowley Publications, 2005.

Palaver, Wolfgang. Hobbes and the Katéchon: The Secularization of Sacrificial Christianity.
Contagion: Journal of Violence, Mimesis, and Culture. Vol 2., Spring 1995. Pg. 57-74.

Raphael, D.D. Hobbes: Morals and Politics. Political Thinkers, 6. Geraint Perry, ed. London:
George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1977.