This essay René Girard: The Last Nietzschean brings tears to my eyes while reading, not so much for the content, but because of a private hypothesis I developed while independently thinking about René Girard and Nietzsche. This essay explores that relationship in enough detail to confirm the theory.
Rene Girard spent a lot of time, an enormous amount of time, thinking and writing about Nietzsche. And he did it because Nietzsche came so close to the truth which Girard eventually discovered (the scapegoat mechanism). His relationship with Neitzsche on the surface looks like completely polarized opposition, and this is how many interpret it. But it is not. Girard is like a son who loves his father even though his father is a criminal who has been a bad model for him, giving him a wretched inheritance which must be overcome, not enjoyed. Nevertheless, the son still loves his father, and in his mind salvages his father from his own weaknesses. He's able to be honest about his father's character flaws but also to love him regardless.
Think Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader for an example of this dynamic. This fictional portrayal is archetypally "perfect" because a circle which is often incomplete in reality gets completed: In the end, the father dies to save the life of his son against the evil which originally corrupted him, thereby conquering the evil. Meanwhile, the son has become great by overcoming his corrupted inheritance while holding firmly to love for his father. He has incrementally gained the ability to ignore the evil mask and focus on the good within, which ultimately gives his father the strength to do what he couldn't do the first time around: resist the evil. A circle is completed. In reality, not all examples are so clean that both sides are able to play their roles to the point which leaves both father and son standing side-by-side against an evil so strong it takes multiple generations to overcome it.
Rene Girard is doing something similar with Nietszche.
In short, what I see, as a Christian, is this: Rene Girard had the spirit of Christ operating within him, seeking to alleviate Nietzsche's pain. He knew that Nietzsche got nearly everything right, except the way he interpreted the victim=victor aspect of Christianity. He boldly states that the cognitive dissonance from a negative interpretation of that specific insight is what drove Nietzsche insane. But he means this with compassion, not rejection, as most people do when they say someone else is insane. Girard's positive interpretation of that same aspect (victim=victor) replaces Nietzsche's negative opinion. This ironically reveals the victory of Christ right where Nietzsche tried to suppress him. Because it's such a deep point about the nature of Christianity, this interpretation also enables Girard to love Nietzsche and spend years seeking to exonerate him from his own prison of insanity. If you believe in an afterlife, where Nietzsche has learned the full truth of everything and is yearning to be free from the constraints he placed upon himself while in this life, you can see Neitzsche cheering for Girard's interpretation.
The tenderness and diligence with which Girard approaches this labor brings tears to my eyes. The essay is also well written. Note that I am not alone in seeing this side of Girard. Linked here: Saved from salvation : Friedrich Nietzsche in the work of René Girard is another essay that goes into this intellectual relationship along these lines. Consider the abstract:
Literary critic René Girard pays special attention to the work of Friedrich Nietzsche in his writing. His assessment is generally negative, and those writers who have participated in Girard‘s project tend to share that view. A positive assessment of Nietzsche in light of Girard‘s work has been neglected. In this thesis I survey and analyze themes about desire and selfhood in both authors‘ work, showing the value of a Girardian view of Nietzsche and a Nietzschean view of Girard, and then move to a proposal for an alternate, positive view of Nietzsche in Girardian theory.
I agree fully for the right reason: I realized it independently, before finding it in other's works.