The Madman and the Spider: Sacrifice and Metaphysics in Nietzsche and Girard

Abstract

This article examines René Girard’s claim that Nietzsche foreshadowed Girard’s scapegoat mechanism in his famous aphorism 125 on the death of God called The Madman. The role of rhetoric and interpretation in competition between ideas is explored through examining the ambiguity of ‘sacrifice’ and ‘violence,’ words which can be metaphorical or literal. Through a comparison of the views and contexts of Girard and Nietzsche I argue that their ideas spring from similar sources of human metaphysical need. However, Nietzsche has no literal conception of metaphysics; rather metaphysics exists only as experienced or constructed as conventions. Girard, on the other hand, tries to banish the metaphysical foundations of other religions as superstition while refounding the metaphysical certainty offered by Christianity. Girard ‘sacrifices’ Nietzsche as a rhetorical mechanism toward reestablishing this foundational truth and I place the sacrifice in the broader context of scapegoating that Girard’s own theory demands, in the context of sacrifice as rhetorical tool, and in the German theological context from which the death of God as a metaphor springs.