Cruelty, Religion, and the Public Sphere at Stanford

Rorty and Girard

Abstract

Richard Rorty and René Girard
illuminate the relationships between cruelty,
religion, and moral life at Stanford. Rorty
treats cruelty as the central public evil and
hopes secular liberal culture can reduce it
through democratic habits, sympathy, and
public justification. Girard offers a darker
account, arguing that rivalry, scapegoating,
and collective violence recur even in
enlightened communities. The essay argues
that Rorty’s secular pragmatism is too
abstract to explain how people are formed
against cruelty, while Girard more
powerfully diagnoses the social pressures of
ambitious institutions. Yet Girard’s
anthropology remains in tension with
Augustinian and Thomistic Christianity,
which treats cruelty as a fallen choice rather
than human nature.