The Scapegoating Phenomenon Rene Girard, influential French philosopher, is best known for his examination of a universal human tendency called “scapegoating.” According to Girard, every human group must at last occasionally have someone(s) they scapegoat. Scapegoating is based on the Hebrew practice, related in the Pentateuch, of symbolically placing the people’s sins on an animal (usually but not always a goat) and sending it out of the people’s living space and into a wilderness to die alone. According to Girard,... Read more