‘Naming the Demon’: The ‘Structure’ of Evil in Lonergan and Girard

This article explores basic insights from René Girard and Bernard Lonergan on the ‘structure’ of evil in human living. For Girard, the root of human evil lies in rivalries, affections of the human heart that lead to mimetic competition, and in the extreme, to the scapegoating of innocent or vulnerable people. For Lonergan, evil is the opposite of the good, so that there is a sense in which he identifies evil as it opposes the good at every level of its structure. In the case of both thinkers, the hope of a solution to the persistence of evil lies in the positive mimesis or imitation and participation in the Triune life of God.