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David B. Allison, Philosophy, SUNY Stony Brook
Introduction to the Problem
Perhaps what is most disturbing to many of Baudrillard's critics
is his reasoned itinerary from a position of responsible and informed
critique to one he himself comes to term "nihilism"
(1981: 227-34, l993: 132). After all, for our age, especially,
isn't this precisely what must be avoided at all costs? Namely,
to concede to the crisis of values, of the sciences, of humanity
itself? Isn't this crisis of foundations precisely what prompted
Husserl and so many others to reformulate the very thought of
the twentieth century, so as, e.g., to establish philosophy as
a "rigorous science" -- one fully cognizant of the meaning
and rationality of a free human existence? Isn't this the motive
behind critical and rational discourse theory, to establish a
common ground of intelligibility, truth, and value, one which
could withstand the vicissitudes of accident and historical relativism?
If real value is simply a mutation of exchange value, indeed,
if all exchanges are merely in-house (one interpretive claim against
another, one text against another, one theory against yet another),
such that all transcendence, origin, or finality is but a regulative
illusion, then it is understandable that the claim of determining
the real, the true, seems to be little more than what Jean-Luc
Nancy terms the "thought of an ahistorical return" --
a nostalgic wish to return to the absolute ground of a Kantian
ethic and rationality, or of the Platonic Good and the True.
In discussing the opposition between Husserlian phenomenology,
with its claim to return to "the things themselves,"
and the subsequent poststructural, deconstructionist, and postmodernist
challenges to this claim, Vincent Descombes articulates what now
seems to be the general problematic subtending these diverse standpoints,
an opposition which effectively drives much of contemporary thought:
"the problem... is to affirm the transition from the objective
genitive to the subjective genitive , in the 'discourse
of the thing itself' that philosophy attempts to be" (l980:
81). Clearly, this is but the most recent formulation concerning
the traditional problems of realism and representation -- the
subjective genitive being the interiorized social symbolic and
linguistic orders. More traditionally, perhaps, one could likewise
pose the opposition as one between the priority of a metaphysical
or an epistemological account: the being of the former determining
the truth-functionality of the latter. Or, alternatively, the
capacity of the latter to represent the reality, meaning, and
value of the former. The entire history of philosophy is enacted
in the determination to resolve these oppositions.
Nonetheless, and this is what concerns us, a certain skeptical
attitude persists concerning the validity of these philosophical
operations and the capacity to resolve them. Such an attitude,
we would point out, is as old as the tradition itself -- inhabiting
it as a ghost or a shadow, perhaps as the tradition's own cynical
observer, ever ready to lend witness to a history of pretense
and dissimulation. If Baudrillard's own work engages these oppositions
and shows their deeply paradoxical (if not paralogistic) nature,
we would point out that such a project is emminently positive:
it disabuses us of a general sense of closure, brought about precisely
by the seeming axiomatics of the tradition. In this sense, Baudrillard
will at once enable us to understand the tradition more profoundly
-- especially its founding claims to authority -- and to acknowledge
the finitude of its agency, the infirmity of its presumptions.
One hundred years after Nietzsche's madman proclaimed the death
of God, Baudrillard, perhaps more cogently than any of our contemporaries,
explains what the effects of this "greatest event" mean
for us, since even great deeds and events take time to be known.
Effectively, Baudrillard asks us to reconsider, with a newly
found modesty and candor, what our very sanity consists in, when
disburdened of the pretense of closure.
At the very core of Baudrillard's extensive writings stands the
armature, the machinery in the very wheel of things, with which
he is concerned, namely, the sublation of reference and meaning.
That the real may be only its own simulation, that the highest
values are incapable of resisting their own reversal and devaluation
-- this is the nihilistic position which has earned Baudrillard
his general reprobation. Baudrillard states his case most succinctly
in his essay of l978, "La Précession des Simulacres,"
subquently taken up in his work of l981, Simulacres et simulation.
He recalls that the traditional notion of truth as correspondence
underlies our knowledge claim of reference, representation. To
the extent, then, that our idea of something corresponds to that
thing as it is, our idea is said to be correct and the thing is
held to be real. The idea refers to the object, it represents
the object. Our understanding is thus mediated by our ideas of
the object, our representations of it. According to this traditional
view, Baudrillard argues, the relation of representation is "reversible."
We can always verify our understanding, by referring the idea
or representation back to the original object, i.e., to its referent.
While this is most often thought of as a model of visual representation
-- where the image "stands for" or "represents"
its object -- by derivation, a tradition also assigns the same
model to language, e.g., to what Wittgenstein termed "the
picture theory of language." In this case, we understand
that a word "names" a thing, or is a "word-picture"
of things.
With Saussure's introduction of the linguistic sign, however,
where the word or (material) "signifier" is said to
express (an intelligible or conceptual) meaning or "signified,"
the situation changes dramatically. Since conceptual meaning
or signification is itself fully discursive, it can be explained
or defined, precisely in terms of other linguistic signs, other
words. Thus, the "system of language" is relatively
complete unto itself: meaning is intralinguistic, and not empirically
referential, since the object discussed only means anything to
the extent that it can be understood by someone -- by the speaker
or by the listener -- according to the language in which it is
articulated. Hence, to ask what something means is simply to
ask that it be explained according to a set of words or concepts
ingredient to the shared linguistic vocabulary. Unlike the traditional
model of reference, then, the model of linguistic signification
is not reversible, since, according to the latter, the object
of reference itself is intelligible, makes sense, only according
to the order of meaning, of language. And language alone "makes
sense." In short, there remains nothing of significance outside
the system of significance to serve as its (transcendent or foundational)
guarantee of significance -- or, of its truth. As Baudrillard
would say in "The Precession of Simulacra": "Death
of the referential. Resurrection in signs." Hence Baudrillard's
use of the term "hyperreal": the real itself is defined
exclusively -- i.e., hyperbolically, exaggeratedly -- in terms
of the sense it makes to us: principally linguistic, but basically
in terms of our broader symbolic systems and social codes (among
which language figures most prominently).
Baudrillard dramatizes his problematic (the sublation of meaning
and reference) most effectively when he chooses the "image"
or "icon" as his foremost example of simulation. An
image is given as sole testimony to something else, as its ostensible
referent. In the absence of the referent, however, the image becomes
literally unbound, and can be understood or interpreted according
to a broad range of possible significance -- i.e., according to
the logical limits of the code which encloses it. His principal
example is sublime: the crucial role of the "image"
(Eikon: Eikon, icon) in the
celebrated Iconoclastic controversy (or heresy) of early Fourth
century Christianity.
Baudrillard: The Values and Genealogy of the Icon
The controversy centered around the practice of using an image
or icon to depict or to represent, the Divine. Supporters of
the use of such images were termed "iconolators" and
opponents of this practice were called the "iconoclasts".
Since the image or icon in question was that used to represent
the Divine presence, or likeness, it proved to be an extremely
focal point of theological controversy, and for Baudrillard, it
serves as one of the most pointed problems for any theory of
knowledge. Since the making or recognizing of images, i.e., icons,
seemed to entail a representation of the original, of the Divine
in this case, and this mediated the original precisely by communicating
the representation to the public at large, through images, those
people in a position to control the use and disposition of the
images
obviously enjoyed an immense degree of authority. And, with that
authority, there arose the question of its legitimate exercise.
In any case, at least implicitly, the icon is said to be, is
alleged to be, referential, representative. Hence the problem:
What becomes of the divinity when it reveals itself in icons,
when it is multiplied by simulacra? Does it remain the supreme
authority, simply incarnated in images as a visible theology?
Or is it volatilized into simulacra which alone deploy their
pomp and power of fascination -- the visible machinery of icons
being substituted for the pure and intelligible Idea of God? (l983:
9)
Once the problem is announced in these terms, i.e., that the
relations of reference and signification are sublated, the supposedly
antithetical positions (the iconoclasts and iconolaters) themselves
become subverted, and the values assignable to the image itself
effloresce according to the logical square of possibilities.
A) The iconoclast is against the image, the icon, because the
image assumes a concretely powerful and unwarranted degree of
authority, of power. The image thus overpowers, by means of its
very imagery -- e.g., by the languid eyes of the Virgin, the
brilliant gold halos shimmering above the ecstases of God, the
beatific human smile on Jesus, the adorable children and angels
surrounding the ascension, etc. -- it overpowers that which it
ostensibly represents. Thus the image devalues the original
by concealing it, by hiding it. The image distorts the referent.
Thus, for the iconoclast, we must destroy the image.
B) The iconocolast also stands opposed to the image, alternatively,
since by overpowering the supposed original, the image denies
rather than distorts the original. The image thus becomes cut
off from the original, and is thus, properly speaking, not an
image at all -- neither is it accurate nor does it distort.
The icon thus breaks with God, and this is the crime. If the
image denies the original, so then, for the iconoclast, the image
must be destroyed, since the image itself has usurped the position
of the original.
Thus, the iconoclasts -- the haters of images -- are the
ones who see the real power and autonomy of the image, the simulacrum.
Their anger is thus a mark of their extraordinary sincerity,
and of their fear -- a fear that resonnates right through contemporary
protestantism.
As for the Iconolaters, those who celebrate the image, the
simulacrum, they do so for two reasons as well:
A) On the one hand, they celebrate the images because the images
reflect, even if somewhat imperfectly, the Divine. Thus, God
can be venerated. Save the image, save the Divine, even if the
image in fact distorts the original.
B) On the other hand, God may become only his ostensible representations,
his own simulacra. As such, he is destroyed. But, with the
icon, he is resurrected as a sign, that is, by the signifying
image, by the icon. Thus, the representational character of the
image is broken, but the image itself must be retained; the image
must be saved. Why? Precisely because the image is so powerful
as to hide the fact that there is nothing at all behind it, nothing
to which it refers. God is dead, but save the image itself --
which is enough, in the end, says the iconolater, to mystify
and control those who lend it their worship and devotion.
Seemingly, then, any value position is possible with regard to
the insertion of the image within the specifics of the social
symbolic: in this case, according to the theo-logical code which
governs or permits the Iconoclastic controversy in the first place.
This same dynamics of transformation and reversal can be dramatically
illustrated in a somewhat different fashion, according to what
Baudrillard terms "the successive phases of the image":
1. -- It is the reflection of a basic reality.
2. -- It masks and perverts a basic reality.
3. -- It masks the absence of a basic reality.
4. -- It bears no relation to any reality whatsoever; it is its
own pure simulacrum.
In the first case the image is a good appearance -- the
representation is of the order of sacrament. In the second, it
is an evil appearance -- of the order of malefice. In
the third, it plays at being an appearance -- it is of
the order of sorcery. In the fourth, it is no longer in the order
of appearance at all, but of simulation (l983: 11-12).
Not only does Baudrillard mark his indebtedness to Nietzsche
in this "genealogy of moral values," but in paraphrasing
Nietzsche's "History of an Error," Baudrillard shows
how the sublation of reference and signification into simulation
effectively permits what Nietzsche would term "the overcoming
of all values into their opposites." Again, the formal demise
of truth-functionality for the paradigm case of the icon or image:
1) The image reflects or represents reality.
A (the real) ----> is represented by the image of the real
(A').
A=A'
2) The image masks or distorts the real.
The real -----> is represented by an image which is a disfigurement
of the real, in that the image over-determines or under-determines
the real. Let X = additional signification and -X = reduced signification.
Thus: A = A' (X V -X)
3) The image masks or hides the absence of the
real.
The real -----> is replaced by an image, and the image conceals
that there is no real. Dissimulation or play occurs:
one feigns not to have nothing.
Or: A' = -(-A)
4) The image has no relation to the real.
The image -----> refers to no real thing. It thus kills
the referential relation altogether and is pure simulation.
Or: A' = -A (Especially, perhaps, when, of all things,
A = A'? And when might that be? Unclear.)
As Baudrillard would remark:
The transition from signs which dissimulate something to signs
which dissimulate that there is nothing, marks the decisive turning
point. The first implies a teleology of truth and secrecy (to
which the notion of ideology still belongs). The second inaugurates
an age of simulacra and simulation, in which there is no longer
any God to recognize his own, nor any last judgment to separate
true from false, the real from its artificial resurrection, since
everything is already dead and risen in advance [i.e., what Baudrillard
termed "the resurrection by signs"] (l983: 12).
Baudrillard's account of the Iconoclastic controversy not only
points out the malleability of signs, their capacity to mutate
and traverse the space of the symbolic code, but it dramatically
exhibits the symbolic power exercised by the image, the sign --
what Baudrillard will come to term its power of "seduction."
Since the sign (now, as simulation) no longer serves the traditional
referential function of mediation, it effectively becomes "weightless."
By this very token, however, its power becomes immense, because
it can be employed to serve the discursive agenda of those in
a position to direct, to control, indeed, to manipulate it: hence
to define and structure the very intelligibility of a collective
social world -- of its "orbital," as he says. That
the image is conventionally "held" or "felt"
to be referential, only serves to enhance its operational efficacity.
What could be more "natural" than to think that a sign
or an image would be "of" something, or that they would
"point to" something? Ultimately, based on a sensory-empirical
prejudice, it would appear commonplace that "consciousness"
itself is always "intentional" -- i.e., that consciousness
has an object. Such a prejudice, of course, subtends the most
traditional concept of truth itself: truth as correspondence.
It is for these reasons that Baudrillard's example of the Iconoclastic
controversy is so telling: the icon itself serves as a basis for
establishing theological orthodoxy, depending on the position
advanced, and it thereby determines the entire belief and value
structure for the (in this case, religious) community. Such a
generalized belief structure in turn legitimates the authority
which so positioned the value of the icon in the first place.
In the case of the Iconoclastic controversy, the authority, of
course, is ecclesiastical, and the Icon serves as the [-(-/+)
V +(-/+)] likeness of the Christian God of Being and Truth.
Plato: Birthing the Icon
Employing Baudrillard's analysis, it is instructive to see virtually
the same set of issues and resolutions operative at the very founding
of the Western philosophical enterprise itself: the sublation
of meaning and reference, through the agency of the icon or image,
to establish a discourse of being and truth -- to which the "philosopher
king" alone can claim access, and by which he secures his
just authority. And, it should be added, knowledge would henceforth
be equated with virtue and power. This broader case finds it
focus in the celebrated "divided line" image (eikon)
of Plato's Republic. Perhaps the most interesting -- and
least recognized -- aspect of the divided line image is the central
role played by the image (eikon: 'eikon,'
icon) and the imagination (eikasia:
'eikasia') in the very construction of Platonic metaphysics.
The fact that 'eikasia' is traditionally taken to mean "the
construction of images," "the artistic project of creating
similitudes," as well as "the recognition of such images,"
implies a deeper significance to the term than has usually been
given by Plato's critics -- who typically limit its significance
to the "faculty" of "imagination." Specifically,
this broader usage involves what could be termed the intentional
or adumbrational character of 'eikasia,' whereby a referential
function is strongly involved, whenever the "image"
or 'eikon' is discussed in its epistemological function. Effectively,
this is a "naturalistic" prejudice, as we have said
before, one typically identified with a visual or sensible model.
The divided line image is given in Book VI of the Republic,
in the context of Socrates' account of the apprehension of The
Good (to agathon: to agathon). The
earlier "pilot in the ship" eikon (488) leads to the
demand for an explanation of the "true philosopher,"
and in what his wisdom and knowledge consists. An account must
be given that supersedes the nature of justice and the philosophic
virtues, in order to establish what "properly befits"
the philosopher (504a ff), since it is "the greatest thing
to learn the idea of the good by reference to which just things
and all the rest become useful and beneficial." In 506b-c,
Socrates explains the need for discussing the Good in terms of
an eikon, for unlike the virtues, the Good -- at least at this
point in the argument -- is not susceptible to definition. Indeed,
Socrates provisionally dismisses the nature of the "good
in itself" (504e), deferring, rather, to speak of the "offspring
and likenesses" of the good. He had earlier anticipated
this discussion in Book V (476), by distinguishing two realms
-- that of being and becoming -- and their corresponding mental
states, knowledge and opinion. Stating the terms, he indicates
the means of resolution, i.e., how the idea of the good may ultimately
be apprehended in the world of becoming. Although the "...just,
good, and all the ideas or forms" are each one, they are
also many, i.e., they are in communion, i.e., participation, with
that realm of becoming, in actions and bodies: "they present
themselves everywhere." Objects in the realm of becoming,
however, are objects of the faculty of opinion. Collectively,
what will be the lower half of the (visual) line eikon of Book
VI, opinion is here suggested as the faculty which is able to
resolve the two realms. Since the philosopher (475d) is enamoured
with the spectacle, the sight, of truth, it is understandable
why Socrates starts his discussion of the Good, with the "offspring"
or "likenesses" of the Good, since they are held to
be readily apparent in the visual world, presenting themselves
as a spectacle.
Socrates' first extensive discussion of the good occurs in Book
VI (507a-509b), when he presents his celebrated "sun"
eikon. The sun is compared to the good, as vision is compared
to knowledge. Each is respectively the cause of its own "offspring."
The sun eikon fails, however to explain the transition between
the visible and intelligible orders, for human knowledge, and
stands merely as an analogy of proper proportionality. Not only
does the analogy lack a causal principle which could account for
the transition between the two orders, but the meaning of the
primary analogate, "the good," would itself have to
be presupposed to construct the analogy in the first place. The
divided line eikon (509d-511e) is meant to correct this, and to
claim continuity between the visible and intelligible orders of
being. And whereas the sun eikon was expressed in speech, the
divided line eikon is itself specified as a visual eikon: the
two spheres meant to be represented are rendered continuous as
two unequal segments of a line. Each segment or section is divided
in turn according to the ratio of the original division. Socrates
starts with a classification of the objects belonging to the two
orders, in continuity with the preceding argument, and they are
classified in terms of their respective degrees of clarity. The
first section is taken to represent images (eikones:
eikones); the second, objects (onta:
onta); the third, mathematical and scientific objects, and "those
things akin," and the fourth section is taken to represent
ideas (eide: eide). The first two sections
represent the visible order, the second two, the intelligible.
Corresponding to these four sections of objective being are four
mental states (pathe: pathe), as related
in 511e: imagination (eikasia: eikasia),
trust (pistis: pistis), thought or
understanding (dianoia: dianoia), and
intellection (noesis: noesis). The
first two are collectively designated as opinion (doxa:
doxa), the latter two as knowledge or intellection (episteme:
episteme). As Socractes specifes this later (533e-534b), opinion
has to do with becoming (or, the visible) and knowledge or intellection
has to do with being (the intelligible).
What orchestrates the dynamics of the divided line is the agency
of the image, the eikon, and its corresponding mental state, the
imagination, or eikasia (oftentimes translated as "picture-thought"
as well), and its agency derives from its implicitly referential
character, which supposes, if not induces, belief in the object
purportedly depicted, imaged, represented. Prior to the whole
discussion of the divided line, it is assumed that truth somehow
resides in judgment, in our subjective capacity to cognitively
judge that our understanding corresponds to the nature of the
given object. Hence the objects in the divided line are arranged
in ascending order according to their own "relative clarity
and obscurity." By the close of the discussion, "clarity
and distinctness" are imputed to the intending subjective,
mental acts, and truth and reality attributed to the objects.
Hence, something is true to the extent to which it "participates"
in "truth and reality". Truth and reality are in the
things themselves, and our understanding and judgments are but
subjective apprehensions. The order of signification is subordinated
to that of reference in order to give the defining account of
Platonic metaphysics: classical realism. And it will be the philosopher
king alone who will be trained to have unique access to the truth
"itself".
This referential character of the image or eikon is asserted
in the brief description of the first level, where merely four
lines of the text are devoted to it. Its importance becomes clear
at the second level, however, in that the objects of "pistis"
or trust ("...animals, plants, and all those objects made
by man," or more simply stated, natural objects as such)
are precisely the objective referents of the former level -- the
level of pistis is composed of those objects of which the
eikones themselves were likenesses or images. Thus, it may be
said that the first two levels of the divided line are insensibly
codependent. The eikon, that presentation of ordinary experience,
is in fact an adumbration, a partial appearance of the object
itself. Indeed, the visual or the visible image stands already
as an index for the entire sensible order itself -- hence the
inclusion of a descriptive vocabulary that draws on specifically
tactile qualities (i.e., for the initial level of the eikon):
"...you'll have one segment in the visible part [of the divided
line] for images. I mean by images first shadows, then appearances
produced in water, and in all close-grained, smooth, bright things..."
And, as if to emphasize the generality of such appearances, Socrates
concludes,"...and everything of the sort, if you understand"
(509e-510a2). It would seem, then, that eikasia would have a
broad perceptual function, similar in kind to sensory awareness,
generally. To further qualify "pistis," emphasizing
its character of "trust" (within the very order of "belief"
or "opinion," i.e., "doxa"), we would specify,
in more contemporary terms of reference, perhaps, that such objects
would be termed "thetic" or "positional,"
i.e., that we explicitly assert the "thesis" or "position"
of empirical reality to them.
With the transition to the "intelligible" sphere, Socrates
introduces the objects of dianoetic understanding. The rather
limited examples of the objects of the geometer (as well as the
objects of those individuals who calculate, reckon and make arguments),
stress the abstract character of the correlates of what might
be called discursive reasoning, syllogistic reasoning, calculative
thought, second order experience, etc. These "intelligibles"
with which the "geometer" deals, are ideas, forms, essences,
etc., but of a particular kind. They require a sensible intuition
as their "hypothesis" or "supposition," in
that they are dependent in various ways on a precedent visual
model -- as the conceived square may be dependent upon or derived
by abstraction from the perceived square. Thus, what is striking
about this "third level" of dianoia, is that the dianoetic
process is essentially a modification of "eikasia".
Indeed, Socrates clearly specifies that one treats "...as
images, the things imitated in the former division" (510b
4). If the contents of this mode of thought find their origin
in the sensible order (i.e., to which they refer, correspond),
it should be remembered that the dianoetic understanding deals
with them in a deductive fashion, drawing conclusions and generalizations
from these intentional objects, as the mathematical or geometrical
proof. Thus, the starting point for the deductive or inferential
process is at first assumed as a postulate, an assumption, from
which the deduction and conclusion procede.
While some critics have held that the dianoetic and noetic realms
are distinguished according to the specific type of idea, i.e.,
in the former, "mathematical ideas," and in the latter,
"moral ideas," it seems apparent that Plato found the
"objects of the sciences" more nearly suited to his
projects of unifying the various modes of cognition. If this
is the case, the continuity is kept between the different "levels"
and he would not be faced with the disjunction between fact and
value, which would be incurred by the more popular view. Assuming
such a strong disjunction, one could rectify it by arguing that
the ground of eidetic resolution -- and the education of the philosopher
as well -- would be through the recognition of "harmony,"
from whence the Platonic epistemology, axiology, and ethics might
be derived.
Rather, we would argue that the continuity of levels in the divided
line is retained, not by reference to an external principle,
such as "harmony" (harmonia:
'harmonia'), but precisely by the inclusion of eikasia on the
different levels. Here we are particularly concerned with its
function on the level of "dianoia", and its correlative
objects, as distinguished from the pure "eidos" as the
correlate to noetic intuition. Granted that the dianoetic intution
finds as its object an intelligible (the abstract "image"
of the sensible), it was only natural that Plato would choose
as the paradigm case, that geometrical or mathematical mode --
as would later Descartes, in the Regulae and in his Discourse
on Method. This in no way excludes the discursive understanding
of ethical subjects, or any other, for that matter, precisely
because the nature of dianoetic intuition is formal: the paradigm
case is the deductive process itself, which Plato makes quite
explicit (510b, and the explicit geometrical reformulation of
510c-d). The geometrical "reckoning" is precisely what
Socrates himself does, in his function as an "eikon-maker,"
i.e., to render an account of the good. Having deferred an explicit
account of the good (506e), or the unhypothetical first principle,
Socrates urges that we start with the "offspring of the good,"
themselves postulates, assumptions (which he in fact simply postulates:
507b 4), and reckon or render the consequences (507a 4-7). The
consequence is, of course, the series of eikons themselves, which
are nonetheless said to adumbrate the nature of the good.
If the general metaphysical and epistemological project of Plato
can be anticipated in the way we have set forth, then, by parity
of reasoning, dianoetic intuition is hardly limited to those "objects"
with which the "geometers" deal. Rather, dianoetic
understanding is that reckoning or abstract reproduction of the
contents of "lower" consciousness -- of "opinion"
-- in respect to their essential or eidetic structure, thus adumbrating
the intuition of the eidos itself. One is constrained from doing
the latter on the plane of dianoesis, for its objects were said
to be unexamined postulates; the full intuition of the noetic
realm can only be attained by taking these starting points themselves
and reasoning to their unconditional ground. This is a process,
Socrates says, "...which makes no use of the images employed
by the other section, relying on ideas only and progressing systematically
through ideas" (510b 9-c4). Argument or reason (logos:
logos) will then use what is formally abstracted -- by comparison,
differentiation, ratio, etc. -- from specific individual cases
to ascertain general formal natures or essences. In this sense,
the references to particular images will be dropped, the instances
considered not as factual particulars (i.e., not as real beginnings),
but merely as formal or intelligible cases to be used (as "steps"
or "springboards") in a process of essential determination
(511b 5). This essence or form (idea) arrived at, basically by
abstraction and generalization, is finally asserted to be that
which itself depends on the unconditioned, the first principle,
i.e., the cause of all being (pantos arch:
'pantos arche'). Logos is thereby alleged to find its ground
in the first principle, which is, after all, held to be none other
than the father of the offspring, i.e., of the ideas. If dialectical
or noetic reasoning, then, proceeds to "...that which requires
no assumption, and is the starting point of all," the question
must be asked as to exactly what that "unhypothetical"
ground or first principle is. As the sun eikon attempted to grasp
the Good, here again, the divided line eikon was constructed to
illustrate exactly this. As the eikastic function refers from
image to referent, so it is supposed that, at the level of the
idea, the referent will likewise be intuited, albeit, in an abstract
cognitive mode. Indeed Socrates asserts that as the levels of
cognition are ascended, with the character of "clearness"
and "precision," so do their objects "...partake
of truth and reality." Unfortunately, just as the "Good"
itself was left unexplained as a causal principle in the sun eikon,
so is that unhypothetical first principle also left unexplained
here, in the divided line.
Most importantly, however, for the divided line eikon, eikasia
has operated to seal the breach between the realm of the visible
and the intelligible, in function of its referential character.
If we have been led to the realm of the eidos, it is at least
asserted that the ideas themselves adumbrate a unifying cause
and grounding principle. We are left with a considerable paradox,
nonetheless. It is only this unifying principle which can ensure,
which can be the guarantor of eikasia, which brought us to this
point in the first place. If eikasia is the function which assures
the identity of transition through the various levels, and leads
us to that grounding principle, how may that grounding principle
be invoked, in turn, to justify eikasia (assuming that the unhypothetical
principle is ultimately truth and reality) -- such that the ideas
themselves are "offspring" of the good, are metaphysically
grounded at all? Seemingly, either the first principle -- the
Good -- is not represented by the line, and the difference between
thought and understanding or intellect would thus be of degree,
of progressive abstraction (as the difference between eikasia
and pistis -- and their objects -- seems to be), or we are confronted
with an insurmountable circularity. In which case, and ironically,
Glaucon's response to Socrates' summary account of the divided
line eikon is remarkably consistent: "I understand"(511e
7).
What, finally, can be said about L'Éminence grise
behind the baroque of the Platonic eikones? The intelligible
is claimed to be united with the sensible. This is effectively
asserted in the divided line by the formal identity between sections
two and three, i.e., between "pistis" and "dianoia"
-- by the simple expedient that Socrates had constructed the two
sections proportionally, in the first place. Since the latter
is dependent on the image of the former for its content, there
is no epistemological need for a doctrine of "participation"
at all -- i.e., of the Platonic metaphysics. In this case, level
four, "noesis" could be accounted for by a progressive
abstraction of the contents of dianoetic thought, so as to construct
abstract "ideas" or "essences" of virtually
anything (and with somewhat different imperatives in mind, this
is precisely what the Aristotelian and Cartesian traditions did).
Their "reality," however, consists in their significance,
their purely symbolic status. Because the intelligible order
is itself discursive, symbolic, one can claim to talk about the
sensible order easily enough: and the eikastic function of reference
is effectively invoked to permit just this. One can speak about
the world, i.e., it makes sense, because language is asserted
to refer to it. In the same way that Descartes "supposed
some order [i.e., a mathematical order], even among objects that
have no natural order of precedence" (l985: 120) for his
project of unifying the sciences, so the Platonic account assumes
that the symbolic order of language (argument, speech: logos)
renders the world "intelligible." Effectively, reference
and signification are sublated -- through the agency of eikasia.
To the extent that the "ideas" are held to be the "offspring"
or "children" of the good," i.e., that they are
metaphysically grounded forms, which exist in themselves, and
which "participate" in things, all the while pointing
to the good -- to the real and true -- to this extent Platonic
realism demands that the "ideas" testify to their provenance,
that they refer to their transcendent ground of Being. That the
discursive sun eikon gets replaced by the visual divided line
eikon, and that the eikastic function is incorporated as the very
dynamic of the line, however, argues against the plausibility
of such a provenance -- relying as it does, on the naturalistic
prejudice of reference (what Husserl would later mean by "the
natural attitude" of consciousness). Quite simply, the ideas
are asserted to be such "offspring" of being, even before
the sun eikon is framed:
"Anyhow, receive this interest and child [both: 'tokos']
of the good itself...."
"We both assert that there are," I said, "and distinguish
in speech, many fair things, many good things, and so on for each
kind of thing."
"Yes, so we do."
"And we also assert that there is a fair itself, a good itself,
and so on for all the things that we then set down as many. Now,
again, we refer to them to one idea of each as though the
idea were one; and we address it as that which really
is " (507 a3 ff.).
Distinguish the ideas in speech and assert their being. An entire
edifice of metaphysics is thus constitued in speech, and it will
indeed serve as the "father's narrative" (506e 10) for
two millenia. Death of the referential: resurrection in signs.
As for the final truth of the metaphysical edifice itself, Socrates
acknowledges to Glaucon, "A god doubtless knows if it happens
to be true." Nonetheless, one can always "suppose"
it to be true, and to invest this token in the social:
"At all events, this is the way the phenomena look to me:
in the knowable the last thing to be seen, and that with considerable
effort, is the idea of the good; but once seen, it must
be concluded that this is in fact the cause of all that is right
and fair in everything -- in the visible it gave birth to light
and its soverign; in the intelligible, itself sovereign, it provided
truth and intelligence -- and the man who is going to act prudently
in private or public must see it."
"I, too, join you in supposing that, he said, "at least
in the way I can" (517b 6ff.)
Since the eikons of the sun, divided line, and cave are ultimately
intended to aid in the education of the political sovereign, Socrates
doesn't hesitate to lend direction to the new philosophers:
"Then our job as founders [of the just state]," I said,
"is to compel the best natures to go to the study which we
were saying before is the greatest, to see the good and to go
up that ascent; and, when they have gone up and seen sufficiently,
not to permit them what is now permitted."
"What's that?"
"To remain there," I said, "and not be willing
to go down again among those prisoners...[for, the law's concern
lies in] ...harmonizing the citizens by persuasion and compulsion...in
order that it may use them in binding the city together"
(519c 8ff).
Nietzsche: Twilight of the Icons
Like Baudrillard, Nietzsche is first struck with the question
of error, distortion, falsification, and how the conceptual system
results in a world which is hardly represented, so much as fundamentally
constructed, by virtue of our discourse about it.
Specifically, Nietzsche attributes the hyperreality of
our traditional world to the simulation ingredient to rationality
itself -- specifically, to the vehicle of rationality, its signifying
medium of language. Nietzsche's account is perhaps more historically
comprehensive than Baudrillard's four-staged evolution of the
hyperreal, since Nietzsche discusses at length how the relation
of reference, or conceptual representation, gets elaborated in
the first place -- such that the concept or the idea can be asserted
to stand for the real. Nietzsche analyzes this derivation in
the section entitled "Reason in Philosophy," in his
work of 1888, The Twilight of the Idols. Then, in the
following section of the same work, he sketches out what he calls
"The History of an Error," namely, a genealogy of reversion
-- a devolution, as it were -- of the very pretense of such a
simulation as the real, the true. He subtitles the account, "How
the 'True World' Finally Became a Fable." This devolution
closely anticipates Baudrillard's own account, and for all purposes,
it is from Nietzsche's analysis that Baudrillard devised his own.
Nietzsche goes on, however, to show the specific content of what
such a hyperreal world entails, and in doing so, directs his critique
against Christianity -- a frequent target for Nietzsche. More
importantly, the critique is directed against the foundational
terms of Western thought itself, which terms or "idols"
traditionally served to explain and lend meaning to the human
condition, thence to address that condition, and ostensibly, would
help enable us to improve it. Finally, in The Antichrist,
Nietzsche proposes to explain what he sees as an entire set of
motivations which subtend the terms and the initial construction
of this hyperreal world.
For Nietzsche, the tradition of Western thought, beginning
with the presocratics, made its first mistake when it distrusted
the testimony of the senses, distrust having been predicated
on the supposed autonomy of reason, that is to say, on the capacity
of reason to ascertain the truth about the real. Parmenides
thereby argued against the senses, since the senses seemed to
give us no access to the real, the true, to the permanence of
Being. Heraclitus also cast distrust upon the senses since he
claimed -- precisely to the contrary -- that while they do show
us the unity or permanence of things, this must necessarily be
wrong, since it is only impermanence which is real, not stability,
not immutable Being. Nietzsche's observation?
They [the senses] do not lie at all. What we make of
their testimony, that alone introduces lies; for example, the
lie of unity, the lie of thinghood, of substance, of permanence.
'Reason' is the cause of our falsification of the testimony of
the senses. Insofar as the senses show becoming, passing away,
and change, they do not lie. But Heraclitus will remain eternally
right with his assertion that Being is an empty fiction. The 'apparent'
world [Die "scheinbare" Welt ] is the only one;
the 'true' world is merely added by a lie (l968: 480-1).
Reason thus distorts and falsifies the testimony of the senses.
It imposes a demand that the real be other than what
the senses yield, and furthermore, reason demands that this other,
Being itself, substance and permanence, be understood conceptually.
Thus, the real world, or Being, stands opposed to the merely
apparent world of sense experience, which discloses only change
and passing, i.e., becoming. In this respect, Nietzsche likens
traditional philosophers to iconolators, or as he says, idolators:
whatever is real can only be admitted or grasped to the extent
that it is first transformed into a concept, the concept of Being.
The actual world thus is judged lacking in Being, and is dismissed
as impermanent, transistory, aleatory, as false -- it consists
in mere appearance, becoming. Or, as Nietzsche quite simply says,
they mummify it:
All that philosophers have handled for thousands of years have
been concept-mummies; nothing real escaped their grasp alive.
When these honorable idolators of concepts [Begriffs-Götzendiener
] worship something, they kill it and stuff it; they threaten
the life of everything they worship. Death, change, old age,
as well as procreation and growth, are to their minds objections
-- even refutations. Whatever has Being does not become; whatever
becomes does not have being. Now they all believe, desperately
even, in what has being. But since they never grasp it, they
seek for reasons why it is kept from them (l968: 479-80).
The actual world thus becomes represented to the philosopher
by its purported sign, namely, by the concept of being. Thus,
the concept of being on the one hand is claimed to refer to the
domain of the real, the metaphysically real itself. But, precisely
due to its conceptual nature -- either as a discursive construction
of language, or as a set of mathematical axioms and postulates:
the Platonic-Aristotelian and Cartesian traditions, respectively
-- it imposes significant requirements as to what this reality
is.
In such a fashion, actuality becomes displaced by the simulacrum,
which is none other than the "concept of being" --
and it thereby loses its claim of adequation to the concept,
to the concept of being. Since the reference is thus broken between
the experienced world and the concept of Being -- which is supposed
to yield the "true world" -- the "true world"
is itself only a concept, indeed, an abstraction predicated upon
the very rejection, the very antithesis of actuality. And this
antithesis further devalues the actual to another hyperreal domain,
to that of "mere appearance," "becoming,"
and "non-being."
For the tradition, then, actuality is never grasped as
such. In this case, it is doubly dissimulated -- as Being and
as mere appearance, both of which are conceptual predications
which testify to no actuality at all. To follow Baudrillard's
usage, both Being and mere appearance are "resurrections
of the real by signs," i.e., they are two forms of simulated
hyperreality.
What, for Nietzsche, is at the source of this dispossession
of actuality by signs? At first, he claims it is "the prejudice
of reason," which "forces us to posit unity, identity,
permanence, substance, cause, thinghood, being," so that
we are "ourselves somehow caught in error, compelled into
error. So certain are we, on the basis of rigorous examination,
that this is where the error lies" (l968: 482).
But Nietzsche quickly makes an analogy with the perceptual
order, and specifies that it is the operation of language which
itself governs rational thought processes, and it is this which
underlies the fiction, the affabulation, the simulation, of Being:
It is no different in this case than with the movement of the
sun: there, our eye is the constant advocate of error, here
it is our language. In its origin, language belongs in the age
of the most rudimentary form of psychology. We enter a realm
of crude fetishism when we summon before consciousness the basic
presuppositions of the metaphysics of Language -- in plain talk,
the presuppositions of reason. Everywhere, it sees a doer and
doing; it believes in the will as the cause, it believes
in the ego, in the ego as being, in the ego as substance, and
it projects this faith in the ego-substance upon all things --
only thereby does it first create the concept of "thing".
Everywhere "being" is projected by thought, pushed
underneath, as the cause; the concept of being follows, and is
derivative of, the concept of ego.... Indeed, nothing has yet
possessed a more naive power of persuasion than the error concerning
being... After all, every word we say and every sentence speak
in its favor... "Reason" in language -- oh, what an
old deceptive female she is! I am afraid we are not rid of God
because we still have faith in grammar! (l968: 482-3)
Nietzsche then goes on to sum up his account of this genesis
of the double simulacrum, i.e., of the merely "apparent world,"
and the so-called "real world," that of "true being,"
in two brief propositions:
1) The reasons for which "this" world has been characterized
as "apparent" [scheinbar ] are the very reasons
which indicate its reality; any other kind of reality is absolutely
indemonstrable.
2) The criteria which have been bestowed on the "true being"
of things are the criteria of non-being, of naught -- of nothing;
the "true world" has been constructed out of the contradiction
to the actual world; indeed [this is] an apparent world [eine
scheinbare Welt ], insofar as it is merely a moral-optical
illusion [eine moralisch-optische Täuschung ]. (l968:
485)
Fine: genesis of both the "apparent" and the "true"
worlds, each deriving from our inordinate faith in discursive
rationality, or in short, our grammar. An inherited grammar subtends
our capacity to reason, which, as a universal -- or, at least
Western -- characterization of human understanding, serves as
the foundation for our belief in a true world. Yet that belief,
as expressed in the concept of being, is already in Nietzsche's
words, an illusion, a fable. As such, Nietzsche's paradigm is
even more complex, perhaps more sinister, than that of Baudrillard,
since Nietzsche begins his account -- "How the 'True World'
Finally Became a Fable," or "The History of an Error,"
which corresponds to Baudrillard's "successive phases of
the image" -- with the prior suspension of the reference
relation.
It's interesting then, to see the elaboration of Nietzsche's
account as both the exhaustion of the very semantic content of
the image, sign, or concept -- i.e., "the true world"
-- as well as a reaffirmation of the broken reference. Thus,
reference emerges as but a dream, an idyll: but even more so,
the concept, image, idea, or sign, which is described as "the
true world," is itself shown to be evacuated of sense.
The history, then, is of an error, which is the evolving development,
the genealogy of an Idea. And as Nietzsche frequently remarked,
some ideas or concepts, simply become effaced : they lose their
distinctive signifying marks, their power or place, in a signifying
system. Ideas, in this sense, are precisely like icons, images,
or as he says, idols, in that they are fetishes. As such, they
are significantly overinvested. Or, as Baudrillard would have
it: hyperreal.
Deflated, thence devalued -- no longer even a medium of
exchange -- of exchange value or symbolic value, they are dis-invested,
divested. Let us follow this very curious and picaresque itinerary
of an error:
1) The true world -- attainable for the sage, the pious, the
virtuous man; he lives in it, he is it. (The oldest form of the
idea, relatively sensible, simple, and persuasive. A circumlocution
for the sentence, "I, Plato, am the truth.")
2) The true world -- unattainable for now, but promised for the
sage, the pious, the virtuous man ("for the sinner who repents").
(Progress of the idea; it becomes more subtle, insidious, incomprehensible
-- it becomes female, it becomes Christian.)
3) The true world -- unattainable, indemonstrable, unpromisable;
but the very thought of it -- a consolation, an obligation, an
imperative. (At bottom, the old sun, but seen through mist and
skepticism. The idea has become elusive, pale, Nordic, Königsbergian
[i.e., "Kantian"].)
4) The true world -- unattainable? At any rate, unattained.
And being unattained, also unknown. Consequently, not consoling,
redeeming, or obligating: how could something unknown obligate
us? (Gray morning. The first yawn of reason. The cock-crow
of positivism.)
5) The "true" world -- an idea which is no longer good
for anything, not even obligating -- an idea which has become
useless and superfluous -- consequently, a refuted idea:
let us abolish it! (Bright day; breakfast, return of bon
sens and cheerfulness; Plato's embarassed blush; pandemonium
of all free spirits.)
6) The true world -- we have abolished. What world has remained?
The apparent one perhaps? But no! With the true world we
have also abolished the apparent one.
(Noon; moment of the briefest shadow; end of the longest error;
high point of humanity; INCIPIT ZARATHUSTRA.) (l968: 485-6)
What the so-called "true world" entailed or embraced,
what it ostensibly signified, was, for Nietzsche, practically
a catalogue of Western metaphysics: it included the domain of
causality, religion, will, being, science, psychology, morality,
and purposiveness. Such a "true world," which effectively
defines the Judeao-Christian universe itself, the lives and habits
of individuals and their culture, as well as the very discourse
of the West, for some two millenia -- this entire apparatus of
our intelligibility itself, Nietzsche attacks with his celebrated
"critique of pure fiction." Such a fictional world,
he would remark, in The Antichrist, one not even attaining
to the status of a dream world, finds its initial motivations
in precisely a hatred of the actual, the sensible, world of nature:
In Christianity, neither morality nor religion has even a single
point of contact with reality. Nothing but imaginary causes
("God," "soul," "ego," "spirit,"
"free will" -- for that matter, "unfree will"),
nothing but imaginary effects ("sin," "redemption,"
"grace," "punishment," "forgiveness of
sins"). Intercourse between imaginary beings ("God,"
"spirits," "souls"); an imaginary natural
science (anthropocentric; no trace of any concept of natural
causes); an imaginary psychology (nothing but self-misunderstandings,
interpretations of agreeable or disagreeable general feelings
-- for example, of the states of the sympathetic nervous system
-- with the aid of the sign language of the religio-moral idiosyncrasy:
"repentance," "pangs of conscience," "temptations
by the devil," "the presence of God"); an imaginary
teleology ("the kingdom of God," "the Last
Judgment," "eternal life").
This world of pure fiction is vastly inferior to the world
of dreams, insofar as the latter mirrors reality, whereas
the former falsifies, devalues, and negates reality. Once the
concept of "nature" had been invented as the opposite
of "God," "natural" had to become a synonym
of "reprehensible": this whole world of fiction is
rooted in hatred of the natural (of reality!); it is the
expression of a profound vexation at the sight of reality.
But this explains everything . Who alone has good reason
to lie his way out of reality? He who suffers from it. But
to suffer from reality is to be a piece of reality that has come
to grief. The preponderance of feelings of displeasure over feelings
of pleasure is the cause of this fictitious morality and religion;
but such a preponderance provides the very formula for decadence
(l968: 581).
Sense and Sensibility
Baudrillard's self-professed nihilism, often qualified, is precisely
his affirmation of Nietzsche's critique. This is not just to
invoke the Death of God in a narrow sense, but rather, to point
in agreement to the entire apparatus which generated, sustained,
and oversaw the repeated atavistic reincarnations of the divine
(e.g., the exhaustive theoretical enterprise of Western scientific
thought, together with its political nationalisms, its utopian
ideologies, and its seemingly interminable series of improbable
moral causes), in short, everything that lent purpose and meaning
to a world and to a humanity which found itself constructed through
the disposition of that meaning. What for Baudrillard would result
in the oversaturated world of hyperreality, was for Nietzsche,
precisely the entire symbolic of the "religio-moral idiosyncracy,"
or what Heidegger would later term the Western tradition of "ontotheology"
(perhaps revising Nietzsche's own ironic term, "monotonotheism").
If Baudrillard oversees the social imploding into the masses,
so Nietzsche likewise saw the progressive emergence of "the
herd individual" as consequent to the intellectual and moral
encoding of the tradition. For both thinkers, the individual
would find his or her own value and significance in function of
this encoding, just as Plato had defined the very essence of the
human to be discursive rationality itself. While Nietzsche would
regard the Platonic metaphysical edifice to be a "pious fraud,"
constructed either to advance the interests of the state, or to
preserve the semblance of a universal ground (the good, true,
beautiful taken up into a supraessential One -- which would foreshadow
the Trinitarian god of being, truth, and goodness) against his
adversaries, the sophists, or, even as a hyperbolic response to
his other adversaries, the Protagorean academics, he nonetheless
did so by cleverly manipulating the sensible image, or icon, in
the account (which was itself specifically advanced as an icon)
of the "divided line" in the Republic. That
sensibility should so intrude upon, and indeed, surreptitiously
condition, the genesis of "true world" only serves to
reaffirm "Plato's embarrassed blush" -- at the return
of "good sense" and at the very superfluity of such
a "true" world (much less, in response to Alcibiades'
erotic advances in the Symposium).
If such a world would be invoked to assuage our suffering by
lending meaning (precisely, the metaphysical-moral investment
of tradition) to it and to humanity, Nietzsche saw all too clearly
that such meaning was precisely the cause of so much of our suffering
in the first place: it placed all suffering under the metaphysical-moral
structure of sin and guilt, thereby only intensifying its domain
and rendering impossible the elimination of our ressentiment
against reality, i.e., the actual world of human existence.
Hence, Nietzsche would invoke Zarathustra to repudiate the entire
tradition, arguing instead, that the world is an immense play
of eternally recurring forces, in constant metamorphosis and transfiguration
-- a Will to Power whose only "truth" consisted in the
dynamics of its appearing, i.e., our experiencing it as the infinitely
mutable domain of sensible objectivity (of which we are ingredient).
Of itself, Will to Power is meaningless: it has neither origin,
moral purpose, finality, nor significance. But, for all that,
it is nonetheless the repository of all possible forms, events,
history, and future -- humanity included.
Like Nietzsche, Baudrillard would locate the nihilism of his
own age in the hyperreal world of simulation, which would resurrect
the real in the form of exclusively and universally detemining
codes of signification. With the sublation of reference and signification,
however, the real is short-circuited, and the system becomes infinitely
orbital and refractory, ever changing its values and significance
by virtue of its governing operationalism. Hence, Baudrillard's
charge that the system of meaning kills, that all value is sundered
by it, rendered into its opposite, negated, and ultimately, left
indifferent (l981: 234). All this facilitated by the unassimilable
speed of the electronic media, which, as we saw earlier, effectively
mediates nothing, but can explain everything according to an infinity
of symbolic axes, such that everything becomes transparent, neutral,
inconsequential, without effect or affect. This would be the
terrorism of the system itself, its capacity to render everything
indifferent, adiaphorous, a series of images which, in their effulgent
succession, no longer refer to anything, of communication which
endlessly circulates information, only to be transformed, reversed,
countered, debated, rearticulated politically, economically, aesthetically,
ideololgically, according to yet another symbolic index. Handguns
don't cause crime, public assistance causes welfare, ketchup is
a vegetable, God must be brought back to the schools, sex education
causes teenage pregnancies, condoms promote AIDS, dictatorships
are emerging democracies, everyone profits from the globalization
of trade, the free market will restore human rights, equal opportunity
is racist and sexist, etc. Mindless saturation, meltdown, indifference.
Yet, just as Nietzsche had concluded his "History of an
Error" by invoking Zarathustra -- indeed, Twilight of
the Idols itself ends with a quotation from Zarathustra
-- so does Baudrillard sound much the same call at the close of
his discusssion of nihilism ("Sur le nihilisme"), concluding
Simulacres et Simulation. Instead of "Incipit Zarathustra,"
his final remark in the book is "C'est là où
commence la séduction." Seduction would in large
part constitute Baudrillard's return to the actual, to the primacy
of the objective domain in its sensible integrity, its objective
necessity. Expressed in terms quite reminiscent of Zarathustra's
account of Will to Power, such an objective dimension is framed
to challenge the original sin of a significant and purposive "world
order," one so transparent in its hyperreality as to leave
practically no clue that the entire order is itself what he would
come to term "the perfect crime." Baudrillard's inquiry
into the transfiguring and transforming play -- the seductive
game -- of objective appearances would serve as a modest beginning
to counter the totalizing systems of purposive interpretation,
whose legitimate agency, we finally and fatally come to realize,
may be largely nominal. The interminable age of this "moral-optical
illusion" may well be returned, as Nietzsche had hoped, to
the domain of bon sens -- of good sense -- where chance
and necessity would give rise to the fatality of a tragic wisdom,
a joyous wisdom. And this was Zarathustra's "secret":
"...and I whispered something into her [Life's] ear, right
through her tangled yellow foolish tresses.
"You know that, O Zarathustra? Nobody knows that."
And we looked at each other and gazed on the green meadow over
which the cool evening was running just then, and we wept together.
But then life was dearer to me than all my wisdom ever was (l968:
339).
REFERENCES
BAUDRILLARD, Jean (l979) De la Séduction . Paris:
Galilée.
----- (l981) Simulacres et Simulation . Paris: Galilée.
----- (l983) Simulations . Trans. P. Foss, P. Patton, P.
Beitchman. New York: Semiotext(e).
----- (l992) L'Illusion de la Fin. Paris: Galilée.
----- (l993) Baudrillard Live . Ed. M. Gane. New York:
Routledge.
----- (l995) Le Crime Parfait. Paris: Galilée.
DESCARTES, René (l985) The Philosophical Writings of
Descartes , II Vols. Trans. J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff,
D. Murdoch. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.
DESCOMBES, Vincent (l980) Modern French Philosophy. Cambridge:
Cambridge Univ. Press.
NIETZSCHE, Friedrich (l968) The Portable Nietzsche . Trans.
W. Kaufmann. New York: Viking.
PLATO (l935) The Republic . II Vols. Trans. P. Shorey.
Cambridge:
Harvard Univ. Press.
----- (l968) The Republic of Plato. Trans. A. Bloom. New
York:
Basic Books.
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