The relevance of an antique neoplatonist like Nemesius of Emesa (fl. c. AD 390) might seem doubtful in a period dominated by science and secularism.
Yet, by way of comparison, when we consider the reception of Rene Girard—whose works on mimetic desire paint pagan history as a failure to overcome the scapegoat mechanism that Christ revealed—such avalanche of attention suggests that Christian anthropology is not the anachronism often supposed. Girard’s popularity may be attributed to his explicit call for a Christian counterattack against its modern rivals, from Nietzsche’s crypto-pagan morality to technological utilitarianism and the weaponizing of shame dynamics. Such an atmosphere, in which the Christian consensus seems to have evaporated, reeks of late antiquity as the cauldron in which that accord was first cooked.
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