Baudrillard’s Hyperreality and its simulacral foundation
Abstract
The idea that our life is part of an hyperreal abstraction, supported by Baudrillard throughout his research, has its foundation in his particular philosophy of language of the seventies, in a close relationship with his theory of simulacra in the same seventies. The work we present here intends to evaluate from a philosophical point of view some pages of L’échange symbolique et la mort (1976) and other texts of the early eighties, in order to identify some motivations of our contemporary virtuality in the perspective of studies of Jean Baudrillard. Baudrillard has been not only a sociologist, but also a philosopher. He was able to hold together philosophy, theory of art and the media, cybernetics, political economy and much more. There is a link according to Baudrillard between virtuality, hyperreality and the communication/information networks, not only in the seventies, but also during the last fifty years. Scholars such as Pierre Levy, Thomas Maldonado, Paul Virilio, Mario Perniola, Bifo Berardi, Derrick De Kerchove, Luciano Floridi, have continued their studies on this line, until the recent debate on the so-called post-truth.
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