Desire and the Origins of Culture: Lonergan and Girard in Conversation

Abstract

This paper explores differing accounts of the nature of desire, found in the works of Bernard Lonergan and Rene´Girard, and their implications for our understanding of the origins or socio-cultural order. Using Lonergan's distinction between natural and elicited desires it argues that Girard's account of desire as mimetic may account for elicited desire, but may not account for natural desire, in Lonergan's account, as desire for meaning, truth and goodness. It then considers the implications for this distinction in our understanding of our socio-cultural origins.The question of desire and its place in human existence has had a long history of reflection in the Christian tradition. Most famously Augustine of Hippo identified a deep longing in the human heart, a longing whose object can be nothing less than God. 'You have made us and drawn us to yourself, and our heart is unquiet until it rests in you.' 1 Yet coupled with this appreciation of the place of desire is a keen sense of the distortions that can be found in desire, broadly captured by Augustine's notion of concupiscence. Distorted desire is the starting point for sin whose effects can only be healed by the power of divine grace. Immediately we find ourselves in profound theological territory, leading to doctrinal bifurcations which rent the garment of western Christianity during the Reformation.The tensions present in our understanding of desire continue into present debates, though now the focus is not so much on the individual implications of desire but on our understanding of our cultural origins. How do we understand the origins of human society and culture in terms of human desire? Different accounts of desire lead to differing evaluations of the nature of our human socio-cultural project. From Augustine's 'two cities', the 'city of man' based on 'love of self' and the 'city of God' based on 'love of God', or more recent calls for a revival of Christendom, perhaps cut down to monastic bite-sized bits, theologians and philosophers have attempted to bring out the socio-cultural implications of human desire, writ large in human history. 2 In this paper I would like to explore two authors whose work focuses our attention upon the question of desire. The first of these, philosopher and theologian Bernard Lonergan, takes as his starting point the more positive aspect of Augustine's account of desire, seeking to identify a longing for meaning, truth and goodness whose final object can be nothing less than God. The second author, literary critic and cultural theorist ReneǴ irard, has greater affinity with Augustine's concern about concupiscence, uncovering the darker aspects of desire. I shall conclude with an examination of three cultural 'types' which arise from a consideration of differing accounts of the nature of desire, and implications of these types for our present context.