Jean Baudrillard's "The Illusion of the End"

[@Maxarcc]

What I love about Baudrillard and Derrida and the likes, is that it's incredibly rewarding to plough through. I constantly cycle through their stuff and every time I reread something or listen to a video like this I feel like a little piece to the puzzle is added to my understanding.

[@michellebarnett2046]

I've literally never watched the marble Olympics but I follow the subreddit because I'm so absolutely fascinated by the fans. So that was an extra fun connection for me!

[@st.friendship]

i really enjoy your lectures. thanks for all the hard work.

[@TheoryPhilosophy]

Thank YOU for the kind words :3

[@87Julius]

I'm very much a beginner with Baudrillard, but I gotta say, his thought unnerves me. Not because of its negativity, but because he constantly seems to be struggling with what I would call the concept of authenticity. It's as if he always works around the idea of an original self, or a fundamental reality - of course, I'm aware that this doesn't really exist in Baudrillard, you do insist on this point in your videos. Not only this doesn't exist, but it never existed. But there is also the loss - loss seems everywhere in Baudrillard, but we don't exactly know what was lost. The tone is constantly melancholic, but we're told melancholy doesn't make sense anymore. His expression always longs for the real, but says that the real never was - and never will be. So what does this mean? He doesn't have a utopian horizon for the real life (like in Adorno), nor a reactionary one (the real would be the past). It seems entirely nihilistic, as if theory, society or art can't even serve to resist in any way to the fluidity and speed of the current situation. In your video you mention that Baudrillard critiques Foucault's theory of power for not having a normative horizon (I disagree with that), but it seems as if Baudrillard doesn't have anything else to offer than a "reality which is not perfect", which is thus "real" (perfection being the negation of the real).

[@TheoryPhilosophy]

Yes! Thank you for this! There are a few things I'd like to say in response. 1. I completely agree that there is a general antinomy in Baudrillard's thought. There both was/wasn't reality apparently. I've tried to untangle that conundrum in my own work by delineating two different forms of simulation, the conflictual and the non-contradictory. The conflictual is the form of simulation that maintains a dialectical struggle between good and evil (this is his manichean side). While the non-contradictory is born out of the complete realization of everything (what he calls the obscene, or transparency). Having established this I then see the problem that you have correctly identified to be a problem not of reality v. Simulation, but of these two forms of simulation mentioned above battling it out. That is to say that we are always within simulation to some extent (language is just a big simulation machine) so the term "reality" is a misnomer. 2. Could you say more about your disagreement with Baudrillard about Foucault? Really, thanks for this--i live for the sort of problems that you posed.

[@87Julius]

​@@TheoryPhilosophy As I said, my reading of Baudrillard is very much on the beginner level, so I'm talking in general terms more than anything else. The very idea of an unmediated reality, from a hegelian standpoint, doesn't hold up. There is no unconstructed reality in Hegel. So in this manner, the baudrillardian point doesn't seem to be adding anything philosophically new, to me. The question is how reality being constructed, by whom, and for what interests. The idea of ideology in Marx, let's say. For Foucault, it isn't a question of ideology ; ideology isn't sufficient to explain the construction of reality, it has to be grasped through an immanent analytics of power relations, through genealogy. You said a couple of things in the video that indicate that Baudrillard wants to distinguish himself from the foucaldian perspective - one that power doesn't work the same way today as Foucault thought, and two that Foucault doesn't judge power from an ethical perspective (correct me if I'm wrong). The first point : Foucault analyses disciplinary societies, but he's aware that we are somewhere else now (as Deleuze puts it : "societies of control"). The second point is what constitutes the Foucault-Habermas debate. I don't agree with the habermassian critique, I think Foucault defends a nietzschean philosophy which assumes no ultimate normative foundation. And I don't think this is a problem ; from what I understand from what you said, Baudrillard seems to think this is a problem, but he doesn't seem to offer an alternative (the idea of communicative rationality or authentic living, for example).

[@TheoryPhilosophy]

@@87Julius Well in terms of what Baudrillard offers as new, I have a few things worth mentioning none of which will deal with Hegel because I am cautious to write about things I haven't read. As for the distinction between Baudrillard and Foucault, I think that there are two schools of thought. The first is that Baudrillard and Foucault are doing two vastly different projects that share nothing in common and can only be referred to polemically; and the second is that they could be read with some similarities, and even as supplementary to one another. In terms of the first, I will say that Foucault appears to be even further removed from any project of reconciliation than Baudrillard is. This might raise some eyebrows, but I think that Baudrillard is committed to essence whereas Foucault, aligning himself with Nietzsche, is very cautious of that alignment. The essence that I'm referring to in Baudrillard is by no means consistent nor is it universal (this is what is properly understood as "singularity" for him). It is rather the possiblity for possibility, an ontological claim that is anti-ontological (perhaps we could go so far as to say that Baudrillard is doing non-ontology). So what he does that is new, for me, is first identify that our status as humans is predicated upon our 'fluidity,' and that, and this is the real fire, this fluidity is at risk in the age of hyoerratiobal discourses of 'truth,' 'scientific objectivity' and so on. Now anyone versed in the dark arts of poststructuralism generally may question what Baudrillard does that is new, to which I have no definitive answer other than he tried, wholehartledy to construct a kind of heuristic tool in the form of 'sedu tion' that opposed power in every form. Jeez good luck following that jargon laced reply lol

[@87Julius]

​@@TheoryPhilosophy Don't worry about the jargon. The idea of protecting fluidity is interesting, it goes against something like Bauman's liquid modernity, which I understand to be anti-postmodern. For Bauman, fluidity is precisely the problem - it disables us from the possibility of engagement and a "meaningful life" - to me, it's a reactionary kind of idea, as if he would like to go back to a more "solid" kind of culture (the old early productive capitalism). Indeed, poststructuralism and Baudrillard seem to go against this kind of critique, they don't really want to reconstruct the idea of meaning (which makes them "dangerous", of course). But yes, with what you say here, the distinction between Foucault and Baudrillard is that Foucault doesn't believe that theory is an opposition to power, it's rather a different kind of power. So you'd be right : Baudrillard doesn't follow Nietzsche to the end. But yeah, I'm really talking in the void since I haven't read Baudrillard's works beyond the first ones from the '70. What I'm asking you is to sell me Baudrillard, which is probably not a very dignified thing to do.

[@Enzaio]

A very interesting discussion to which I don't think I can add much, but I'll try. Just like 87Julius I'm pretty new to Baudrillard, but I'm also not a trained philosopher. However, I recognize the unnerving thing about Baudrillard described by 87Julius and I've been trying to find the silver lining to Baudrillard's thought. But it all seems so hopeless and indeed maybe even nihilistic. I'm not at all sure if Baudrillard ever meant it this way, but to me it helps to view his theories as strictly descriptive and not at all prescriptive. He never seems to be in favor of any solution (and if he is, he always seems to immediately point out the naivety in that solution), instead he appears to be merely analyzing all kinds of symptoms and offer a diagnosis of Western society. As I've been thinking about this diagnosis (as far as I understand it now), especially his concepts of the hyperreal and simulation, I've noticed that I'm able to put into words a lot of the 'fakeness' I encounter in the world around me. A bit like that movie about the sunglasses which make you see 'reality'. For me, just by being able to understand certain things about Western life and society around me in Baudrillard's terms, I've been able to cope far better with it and focus much more on the things in my life that appear the most real to me. When he talks about 'moving beyond' the hopeless situations he describes, I think that could be it. By seeing through the simulation as best you can, it's effects are diminished. But I'm probably just projecting my own current thoughts onto Baudrillard. A copy of a copy of a copy.

[@malice4422]

23:54 If I watch a movie, I will often be considering my review while watching the movie. I’ll think “hmm, this is pretty good, 3.5 stars.” Same for books and shows etc. Am I wrong in saying that this is an example of the anticipated meaning you are referring to?

[@nickacelvn]

Due to the latest "Actual mathematically reasonable" projections, one would have to take the E8 lattice into account. Wouldn't one?

[@lsvhwow351]

Great points esp. at 35 mins or so, interesting perspective

[@TheoryPhilosophy]

Thanks friend!

[@ScientificGentlemen]

Fantastic!

[@TheoryPhilosophy]

Thanks, friend :3

[@Enigma_WK]

The Word you couldnt find is abitrary

[@TheoryPhilosophy]

Thank you, friend.

[@twosolitudes]

Scorpions! ... too funny!

[@TheoryPhilosophy]

Lol I know right?

[@philross6539]

Is there a pdf to this?

[@TheoryPhilosophy]

No unfortunately :/

[@philross6539]

@@TheoryPhilosophy So i bought the book and made a pdf for everyone to read, here it is. drive.google.com/file/d/112hCe7talXGpXmXxoL0feey0yE1I6knw/view?usp=drivesdk

[@87Julius]

@@philross6539 Thanks a lot!

[@soulthompson6698]

at 54min you said to end all germs and children hummmm, doesn't seem like a phobia

[@battragon]

Arbitrary.

[@GerolamoUrsidYulin]

Hey, I'm from Poland and all this absurd about Eastern Europe is rubbish. So he just had some thoughts, but nowhere grounded in reality.