"Renâe Girard's stance towards the Western philosophical tradition was somewhat ambivalent. On the one hand, he acknowledged that major philosophers had influenced him and had contributed valuable insights on questions of desire, religion, violence, and the sacred. On the other hand, he felt that Western philosophy often, if not always, neglected the founding violence that lies at the origin of culture. The relevance of this contention is the pivotal question of the two volumes of Renâe Girard and the Western Philosophical Tradition. The chapters in these books engage the French anthropologist in a dialogue with key figures in the history of Western philosophy. Volume 1 features chapters on Plato, Augustine of Hippo, Niccoláo Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes, Blaise Pascal, Baruch Spinoza, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Adam Smith, Immanuel Kant, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, Alexis de Tocqueville, S²ren Kierkegaard, as well as Renâe Girard. Volume 2 features chapters on the pre-Socratics, Aristotle, Renâe Descartes, Friedrich Nietzsche, Carl Schmitt, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Emmanuel Levinas, Simone Weil, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and Giorgio Agamben"