The phenomenology of Girard and also of Heidegger are read by Vattimo and Zabala (2011) as an interpretation of the meaning of history being one of emancipation from violence, but the work of Girard reveals how our own will to power in seeking to overcome that violence can undermine those efforts and ideals (how else does Heidegger become a Nazi?). It is the founding murder as the initial condition for social formation which is revealed in the Judaeo-Christian tradition. Forgiveness un-conceals this violence and offers a new social order through embracing rather than sacrificing the ‘monstrous other’. This forgiveness demonstrates why the old solutions of religious sacrifice (even when dressed up in the new clothing of ‘the rational’) in criminal justice no longer work. Using Girard’s work, we argue first that my desire to punish you is not authentic, but is a socially transmitted fantasy of regaining that which has been lost. It is group contagion linked to scapegoating mechanisms and social order based on archaic sacrifice. Second, my desire to punish you is my desire to differentiate myself from you. This differentiation spirals into an escalation of extremes, which heightens similarities rather than differences. It is this sameness which is the cause of violence. Third, that religion has controlled rather than caused mimetic violence in archaic societies through the scapegoat mechanism. This mechanism no longer works (because we know the victim is innocent) although we keep on trying to use it (this explains the punitive turn and the rhetoric of harsh sentences). The Judaeo-Christian tradition offers us the radically new resources that we need. These resources start with the individual and the need to overcome my own violence and will to power.

Post-Enlightenment philosophical influences on criminology

The critical tradition has been essential in exposing the lies and deceits of history, including the will to power of Christianity, but does not reveal radically new solutions to that violence. In this sense, its solutions are perpetually conservative and elitist; or according to Voegelin forms of Gnosticism (discussed in Chapter 2). In the dialectics of Hegel and Marx, the personal, subordinated to an impersonal and inexorable logical process (see Milbank, 2006) cannot value the individual or voluntarism.