I hate to be the guy correcting pronunciation and names, but you just can't pronounce "Jorge Luis Borges" the Argentinian writer as "Jean Louis Borges" :p 13:30 and by the way, if you haven't read any Borges I strongly recommend it to you, after what I have seen on your channel you'll really like it Thanks for all the videos! Chao!

@TheoryPhilosophy

3 жыл бұрын

Yup I definitely just had Baudrillard's first name on my mind. Shit.

I like the video's because sometimes watching someone talk and seeing their hand gesture assist in the understanding. Just listening can work, but sometimes the visual assists. Love the channel.

Immensely grateful for the time and effort you put into this!

I am so grateful for your channel!! They have helped me a lot in understanding critical theory. Your videos have enriched my life in so many ways, so thank you so so much!!

Great idea for the Keyword segment. I love your passion for philosophy!

@TheoryPhilosophy

3 жыл бұрын

Thanks

okay not just even a beautiful voice, a beautiful mind and a beautiful face. thank you

@TheoryPhilosophy

3 жыл бұрын

Awwwh shucks

cool, i wasn't familiar with his idea that simulation and reality are one and the same, it's something that always kinda crossed my mind and its great to know some heavy-smoking grumpy ass french academic agreed lol. turned me on to reading baudrillard, thanks man!

This is my understanding of it but I could be wrong: Baudrillard does not juxtapose the Simulacrum with reality, but rather that the simulacrum opposes illusion (The simulacrum is reality, the third order and beyond is hyperreality). What is confusing here is that this seems somewhat similar to Lacan's Real, which is merely a temporal shattering of the symbolic and imaginary orders that make up "reality." For Baudrillard, Illusion seems like what we could call the Real, in the sense that it is not totalizing and can never truly be known, it can be fought over, or "seduced" if you will. But after digging deeper into Baudrillard's work and Douglas Kellner (who wrote about him), it seems that he considered the Real to be something of the past, which died a long time ago. Reality never "truly" existed ever since the birth of the sign (The Real is that which cannot be simulated). What changed in the postmodernity is the death of the reality Principle (in the sense that signs no longer have any referents). While I was aware of this while making my video Baudrillard and the Gulf War, I did not want to really go to deep into Baudrillard's death of the real because it would have been a much more difficult concept to explain to an audience inexperienced with his work, plus I wanted to mainly focus on the Gulf War essays. This may have caused it to seem that I was assuming the reality principle to be intact (by juxtaposing the simulation and what "actually happened"), which is a bit hard to avoid given the topic, and fully explaining the pre-existing non-existence of the real may have been one two many Baudrillard pills to handle haha. Maybe I will make another video in the future fully explaining it but you provided a very clear explanation of it and it helped me evaluate my interpretations on Baudrillard.

@TheoryPhilosophy

3 жыл бұрын

Tbh, I'm not a huge Douglas Kellner person--I feel like he is too marred by his Marxist inclinations to take Baudrillard on his own terms (Baudrillard's own terms, what are those, anyways?). As for the Gulf War stuff, I think that there is way too much emphasis placed on the role of the media in 'simulating' the "war." I think that that is a part of it, and it would certainly make for an easy description of what simulation is (media images, televisions, etc.), but it is only half the story. I intend on doing a video on Baudrillard's view of the Vietnam War, The Gulf War, and the Iraq War to explain that media images only complete part of project of the simulacrum for Baudrillard. Stay tuned for that

@1Dimee

3 жыл бұрын

@@TheoryPhilosophy I think Baudrillard is difficult to understand in general due to his polemic style and conflicting stances throughout his work. Since you have reviewed most of his work, would you ever do an episode on his works "Screened Out" and "Passwords"?

@TheoryPhilosophy

3 жыл бұрын

@@1Dimee probably not because many of the essays in Screened Out are pretty redundant in relation to the rest of his stuff and Passwords is a little too aphoristic to make a smooth presentation of the ideas difficult :/

@1Dimee

3 жыл бұрын

@@TheoryPhilosophy I recently finished Transparency of Evil and saw that those two books were on Verso. Do you think they are worth reading? Or is it just the same as his prior stuff

@TheoryPhilosophy

3 жыл бұрын

@@1Dimee I have a PDF of Screened out if you want (comment your email and as soon as I see it, I'll delete the comment) and Passwords is, imo, worth it

Thank you for your clear and cogent explanation of Baudrillard’s simulacra. Current trying to find some source material comparing levels of representation in Plotinus and Baudrillard. If you have any suggestions, it would be immensely helpful!

your eyebrows look great

Comabting... (Pause) Combating?? (Question yourself if that is a word) 😂 I do this constantly and it makes me feel better knowing I'm not the only one. Thank you so much for this David! I'm going to need a few coffees to get through it all. Hope you are doing well!

Thank you for your help

Very insightful. Illusion opposes simulation and thus reality because the latter two are intertwined. I have always had this question in my mind as to what exactly constitutes as reality. Is it a majoritarian belief? At times , I feel , reality and absolute truth are two human constructs...two gigantic human monoliths. Whatever probably exists is just simulation? Don’t know if I being naive over there. Anyways, great work , David. I really liked your elucidation, you are quite good ! Could you consider doing a similar thing on the Panopticon?

@TheoryPhilosophy

3 жыл бұрын

Yes I intend to do a panopticon one :)

next please "body without organs"

@TheoryPhilosophy

3 жыл бұрын

Ok.

Great video

Yes! You did it for Uncle Bau! Hahaha. Great job mate.

@TheoryPhilosophy

3 жыл бұрын

More like daddy Bau

Great as ever.

Thank you!!!!

You should check out, 'The Master and His Emissary' by Iain McGilchrist Baudrillard's Simulacrum resembles our left hemispheric mind untethered. Love your breakdowns. But it can be broken down in neurological terms also. These dicussions might be taken more seriouslly by society, if it were grounded in neuroscience, evne if it's modern RB/LB research which has been entirely ignored

Can you lay some Georges Bataille takes on us? Definately not in the postmodern vein + possibly a polarizing figure, but it's hard to find any videos + commentaries in English. Also off-topic but criminally under-represented in this type of format: Filippo Marinetti

Hi David! Loving how your channel is growing. Also a fan of this format! I'd love for mentioned keywords to show up on the screen, would help with the following of your explanation. Lastly, I would like to suggest that you cover INNATISM in a future video. Keep up the great work! Rooting for ya.

Could you clarify for me how you understand Baudrillard's definition of reality? Maybe it would warrant another video. I feel like I understand the simulacrum but it's not completely clear what the reality is that the simulacrum obscures (or obscures the absence of, etc). As a possible corollary, I don't understand the opposition between hyperreality and illusion. The SEP says, "reality disappears although its traces continue to nourish an illusion of the real." The SEP doesn't seem to describe "illusion" as something opposed to hyperreality. "The real" seems reduced to a figurehead which justifies illusion. I understand that Baudrillard is meant to be a dualistic thinker, but there doesn't seem to be genuine opposition here. Even reality (whatever that is) has taken the side of illusion.

love this

I'm not that familiar with philosophy, not sure how I arrived here, but this is fascinating, even to a layperson.

I remember reading Simulacra and Simulations decades ago as a student, and thinking it was meaningless. Years later listening to youtube videos in the hope of elucidation I have the same reaction. There's a huge error in trying to account for cultural objects and visual phenomena via the language of semiotics, signs. If one takes things which aren't actually signs as such then the conclusion is that they've lost any reference to a 'reality'. But if they're not signs then nothing has been lost.

Can you please explain? What is a "Code" according to Baudrillard?

"Excoriated...that's another good word." 🤣

KZread and all such cloned channels are itself a great example of Simulacrum.

How is the simulacrum of Klosswoski different than this?

Is Simulacrum similar to "The Spectacle" or Ideology at all?

@TheoryPhilosophy

2 жыл бұрын

The spectacle and ideology are very different depending on who you read but the short answer is no

i like your glasses

hey david, great new series 😎👍 i did a video about "simulacra and simulation" in terms of theme parks and ... the shrek series 😂 if you ever get bored, i think you'd appreciate it

@TheoryPhilosophy

3 жыл бұрын

I'll check it out, thanks!

Imagine you see a picture of a delicious hamburger on a fast-food menu. You're hungry, so you order it. When the hamburger arrives, it looks a bit different from the picture. It's not as big or as perfectly arranged as it seemed in the photo. But you eat it anyway because it still tastes good. Now, think about what just happened. The picture of the hamburger on the menu is like a "simulation" or a representation of a real hamburger. It's not the real thing; it's just an image meant to make you want to buy it. This is the first level of simulation. But here's where it gets interesting. The hamburger itself, the one you actually eat, is also a kind of simulation. It's not the "real" hamburger you might imagine - it's made with processed meat, artificial flavors, and other ingredients that don't exist in nature. So, even though you're eating something physical, it's still not the "real" hamburger you might expect. Now, let's take it a step further. What if the hamburger you saw on the menu wasn't even a real photograph? What if it was a computer-generated image or a drawing? In that case, it's a simulation of a simulation - a copy of a copy that's even further removed from reality. This idea, that we live in a world where representations and simulations of reality are everywhere, is what Jean Baudrillard called "simulacra." It's the idea that we're surrounded by images, signs, and symbols that have become detached from their original meanings, creating a world where it's hard to tell what's real and what's not.

Is there really any form of "true" reality or is it all just figments of imagination at play in a simulated virtual environment?

Aviators too fly

Volume is too low.

The gender example at the end falls short. Imagining boys may prefer blue and girls may prefer pink can hardly be described as the "proliferation of the real." People really do not care about these things. The more compelling example is the transgender issue. Which, I'm sure you will admit, does not suffer from a "proliferation of the real," but rather the elevation and imposition of the personal will over reality in a way that glorifies representation and image over facts of biology. Surely you are not claiming that the facts of biology are themselves problematic here. Also, how is it that assuming boys like blue is an example of proliferating reality and not rather the simulacrum itself. Obsession with the presentation of gender, I'm sure you are not saying is "reality." This is at the very core of the idea of simulacra, is it not?

The Matrix was let down by the cheesy depiction of the real underworld. Representing reality with a Mad Max post apocalyptic demi mond, just seemed like a cliche. What Baudrillard would call the reality principle. As in the mistake of believing the real is associated with ragamuffin, crustiness. Something like how anarchists and punks think they're keeping it real, but are just making a performance of their authenticity.

How can it be that the simulacrum came about in phases but now there is no way to reverse it as you describe through the ready player one example. If we destroyed all technology I do see how that would be yet another example of human transfixion with simulacra. But how then can we say technology contributed to its expansion? In my view, it can be one or the other. If the claim is that the simulacra is and has always been the medium through which humans express themselves and interact with the world, well then you're really just talking about culture. If however, the simulacrum in the post modern era is characterized by ever distorted inter-referential signs resulting in a divergence from interaction and acknowledgement of reality, well then you are making a positive claim which I find very interesting, compelling, and relevant to our time. I don't see how it can be both.

Turn up your mic to a proper level when making videos I can't watch this