PHILOSOPHER

René Girard

1923 - 2015

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René Noël Théophile Girard (; French: [ʒiʁaʁ]; 25 December 1923 – 4 November 2015) was a French-American historian, literary critic, and philosopher of social science whose work belongs to the tradition of philosophical anthropology. Girard was the author of nearly thirty books, with his writings spanning many academic domains. Although the reception of his work is different in each of these areas, there is a growing body of secondary literature on his work and his influence on disciplines such as literary criticism, critical theory, anthropology, theology, mythology, sociology, economics, cultural studies, and philosophy. Girard's main contribution to philosophy, and in turn to other disciplines, was in the psychology of desire. Read more on Wikipedia

His biography is available in different languages on Wikipedia. René Girard is the 355th most popular philosopher (up from 365th in 2019), the 983rd most popular biography from France (up from 1,003rd in 2019) and the 46th most popular French Philosopher.

René Girard is most famous for his theory of mimetic desire. This theory states that all human desires are imitations of desires that we see in others.

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Among PHILOSOPHERS

Among philosophers, René Girard ranks 355 out of 1,267. Before him are Crates of Thebes, Pompeia Plotina, Aristoxenus, Robert Nozick, Hermann Cohen, and Günther Anders. After him are Otto Neurath, Peter Singer, Abul A'la Maududi, Nasir Khusraw, John Philoponus, and George Santayana.

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Contemporaries

Among people born in 1923, René Girard ranks 39. Before him are Lee Teng-hui, Pope Shenouda III of Alexandria, Antoni Tàpies, Anne Baxter, Carroll Shelby, and Masao Ono. After him are Alice Miller, Dev Anand, Markus Wolf, Nizar Qabbani, Diana Douglas, and Nguyễn Văn Thiệu. Among people deceased in 2015, René Girard ranks 46. Before him are Wes Craven, Benedict Anderson, Douglass North, Fatema Mernissi, James Last, and Colleen McCullough. After him are Günter Schabowski, Yitzhak Navon, Yevgeny Primakov, Boris Nemtsov, Frei Otto, and Faten Hamama.

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In France

Among people born in France, René Girard ranks 983 out of 6,770. Before him are Charles François Dumouriez (1739), Geneviève Page (1927), Philipp Spener (1635), Jean-Pierre Melville (1917), Theodore Beza (1519), and Jean de Lattre de Tassigny (1889). After him are Armand-Emmanuel de Vignerot du Plessis, Duc de Richelieu (1766), Louis Antoine, Duke of Enghien (1772), Alain-René Lesage (1668), François Joseph Lefebvre (1755), René Lalique (1860), and Carole Bouquet (1957).

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Among PHILOSOPHERS In France

Among philosophers born in France, René Girard ranks 46. Before him are Roscellinus (1050), Georges Sorel (1847), Henri Lefebvre (1901), Félix Guattari (1930), Lucien Lévy-Bruhl (1857), and Louis Couturat (1868). After him are Maurice Halbwachs (1877), Étienne Cabet (1788), Pierre d'Ailly (1350), Hugues Felicité Robert de Lamennais (1782), Edgar Morin (1921), and Antoine Arnauld (1612).

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