Insights with Rene Girard

First describing the triangular structure of desire—object, model, and subject—Girard tells how conflicts are resolved and why human society is not marked by total conflict all the time.

Recorded on Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Cast

Rene Girard

Rene Girard

Related

Books

Judgment Calls: Finding the Way to Wise Decisions

How can we make better decisions—especially when the stakes are highest? In Judgment Calls, historian Zachary Shore tackles this timeless puzzle with intellectual daring and uncommon range. 

November 1, 2026

Articles

Armistice Day

The world breathed a sigh of relief when, on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month—November 11, 1918—the guns fell silent. The Great War, as World War One was then known, was over in Europe. 

November 11, 2026

Articles

Strategic Narcissism Is Making A Comeback: The Optimism Of The 1990s And Implications For Today’s Competition With Russia And China

This Monday marks thirty-six years since the beginning of the end of the Cold War. In the excerpt below from Battlegrounds: The Fight to Defend the Free World, I recall watching the Iron Curtain part while serving in the Second Armored Cavalry Regiment, a unit charged with border surveillance and control along the East-West German border and the West Germany-Czechoslovakia border.

November 10, 2026