Rene Girard was born in 1923 in France, and has lived and worked in the United States since 1947. He began as a literary critic, but gained fame in the 70s as a philosopher and anthropologist. His anthropological concept was first expounded in detail in the book Violence and the Sacred (1972). In the humanitarian knowledge of the last thirty years, this book occupies a unique place in terms of the boldness and scope of its generalizations. Explaining the origin of religion and human culture, Girard compares Greek tragedies, the Old Testament, African rites, myths of primitive peoples, the theories of Freud and Lévi-Strauss - and finds a common answer for all human societies. The answer is related to the main disease of today's civilization.