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Date Posted: 18:33:12 03/23/08 Sun
Author: Caitlin
Subject: What is freedom in desire?

I really enjoyed reading Girard's writings on interdividual psychology, especially his short section on mimetic desire and the modern world (Things 284-7). I especially liked his comments about the reasons for prohibitions in the mechanism of desire. Commonly we think that freedom of desire would be the best. We don't want restrictions, prohibitions, or the like. After all, if everyone got what he or she desired, wouldn't everyone be happy? However, this sentence really stuck out to me: "The best method of chastising mankind is to give people all that they want on all occasions" (286).

I think this really plays a part in mimetic desire. If we all got what we desired, we wouldn't actually desire anything would we? I can see his point about the purpose of prohibitory restrictions. They play a big part in our lives. Without desire we wouldn't work for anything, right? We'd stagnate and our so called "freedom without restrictions" would destroy us. I was once told that true freedom is found within boundaries. I think this fits.

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