René Girard is famous for claiming that there is no such thing as spontaneous desire: we don’t fall for people because they are beautiful or smart or funny or kind; we fall for them because somebody else fell for them first. This all sounds extremely exciting, in that very French kind of way. But does anyone actually believe it?
Joshua Landy
Joshua Landy is the Andrew B. Hammond Professor of French and Professor of Comparative Literature at Stanford University, where he co-directs the Initiative in Philosophy and Literature. His books include Philosophy as Fiction: Self, Deception, and Knowledge in Proust (Oxford, 2004), How to Do Things With Fictions (Oxford, 2012), and (as coeditor) The Re-Enchantment of the World: Secular Magic in a Rational Age (Stanford, 2009).