ABSTRACT
The Puranas are a typical rendition of perceptions and values which are present in most traditional societies. In a mimetic crisis, religious and cultural differences are felt to be slipping away as a result of an invisible but omnipresent influence. Unlike classical social contract approaches, though, the mimetic theory dispenses with the assumption of rationality by positing a spontaneous mechanism. In the mimetic theory, the solution is a war of all against one–the victim; in Leviathan, it is in effect a war of one against all, since the sovereign is the only one to retain the unlimited right to the use of force that exists in the state of nature. Unconscious mimetic rivalry operates, most of the time, as a desperate search for and espousal of views, attitudes, and actions antithetical to those of the model. It operates, therefore, as a search for independence that produces an impoverished opposite of the model’s attitude.
