Pride or Envy, Which Came First?

In his essay, ‘Naming the Demon’: The Structure of Evil in Lonergan and Girard’, John Dadosky writes that in a previous article in which he engaged the theme of mimetic theory, he states that in referring

to the work of one of Girard's followers, James Alison, on the hermeneutics of the Fall, I raised questions about the nature of original sin as envy, something which Alison argues. In contrast, I agreed with Aquinas' emphasis on the role of pride not only with the first parents, but with the fallen angels as well. I concluded that while mimetic theorists with their emphasis on envy have overlooked the role of pride at the heart of human sin and violence, their insights are helpful in clarifying a mimetic component to the sin of pride. Hence, one can speak of horizontal mimetic appropriation (envy) directed towards human beings by other human beings and vertical mimetic appropriation (pride), the desire to be more than one's nature, that is, the desire of human beings to be like God.

I find a particular flaw in Dadosky’s argument, that being his use of a biblical myth of origins that came to fruition thousands of years after humans had developed highly sophisticated civilizations and symbol systems. The story of the fall in the second chapter of Genesis was the creation of what has been deemed the J source, probably originally orally transmitted until written in its present form around the 7^th century BCE. The evolutionary appearance of Homo sapiens occurred approximately half a million years ago, while the emergence of Homo sapiens sapiens emerged some 100,000 to 32,000 years ago. In the Girardian schema, it was the increase in mimesis that influenced this evolutionary emergence of a specifically human consciousness.

With the emergence of mimetically influenced self-consciousness, in its very primitive archaic incarnation, the symbology that is necessary for such self-regard that is required to produce constructs, or self-images of pride seems to me a bit of a stretch. Ethnologists assure us that even though fido the dog, or mittens the cat seem to display human emotions, the reality is that they only possess emotions at most the level of a two and a half human child, whereas complex human emotions like pride do not begin to manifest until after the age of 3. Thus, any projection of seeming pride is an act of anthropomorphizing by the pet’s proud master.

Girard’s theory of hominization claims that what brought about human consciousness was the increase in mimesis, the facility to imitate the actions and intentions of others. Imitating the intentions of others gave rise to the possibility of conflict because of the growing desire to possess what the model of one’s desires possessed. This, in turn, indicates that emotions of envy arise from mimetic desiring. Pride, it seems to me, arises after human communities establish roles of differentiation, which in turn gives rise to mental and emotional images of comparison. Attitudes of superiority, a sense of being better, more talented, higher status, etc., indicating the possibility of pride, both in its positive and negative connotation, cannot occur prior to self-aware differentiation.

The biblical account depicts a situation in which the human couple were tempted to grasp beyond their station, becoming their own self-creation, a delusion that is real in human consciousness. But such a consciousness is not possible before the demarcations that come with (specifically) human socialization.

Thus, in contradistinction to Dadosky’s argument, I would maintain with many Girardians that envy has precedence in the development of human self-consciousness and social development. Only later did there develop the complex human emotional and ideological construct of pride. Where I think Dadosky misses it here is that he does not sufficiently take into account the dynamics of human evolution and has misplaced a complex mythic narrative as being a more faithful depiction of the development of human evolution.