René Girard’s Science of Religion: The Scapegoat Mechanism, Prefrontal Synthesis, and Collective Intentionality in the Process of Hominization

Abstract

This article discusses René Girard’s “science of religion,” examining its central idea—variously called the scapegoat, victimage, or founding mechanism—and its role in the process of hominization in light of the neuroscientific concept of prefrontal synthesis and the related philosophical concept of collective intentionality. The latter concepts, it is argued here, while unavailable to Girard himself, offer a way to make more scientific sense than is present in his account of the scapegoat mechanism in relation to hominization and his related and radical notion that “human culture and humanity itself are religion’s children.”