I Just finished listening to this episode of Philosophize This podcast https://www.philosophizethis.org/podcast/simulacra-and-simul... . Whole-heartedly recommend this podcast episode the entire podcast to anyone who is remotely interested in learning the "modern western canon" in Layman's terms.
Simulacra and Simulation
31–40 of 41 posts
Re: Simulacra and Simulation
#32https://youtu.be/PA23qLvl79k?is=nkWS0Tbgcm65RCQS
The Simulation and Simulacra part starts around 4:00.
Re: Simulacra and Simulation
#33How readable and accessible is this book? I am always attracted to philosophy and culture theory books, but more often than not they are extremely dry and academic, and sadly I require more excitement to hold my squirrel attention. It is no wonder much more people have read the “Industrial Society and its Future” than anything by Jacques Ellul.
The book consists of a set of loosely related essays, and the first essay "the precession of simulacra" is just roughly 40 pages. If you read that, squirrel brain is happy and you got most of the books content. The rest is just explaining this concept on modern (slightly outdated now, but culturally still relevant), cultural phenomenon. Once you understand his concepts of "simulacrum" and "image" it is very readable. Later he uses his concepts of "economic and symbolic exchange" which come from his earlier book Symbolic Exchange and Death. The concept is quite easy to grasp, the book is good but you don't have to have read it. The rest of the book builds on these concepts. So the key to making this book accessible is understanding these concepts, which for me took some thinking and time to actually understand deeply.
But, and that's important, once you worked through the book, it is a phenomenal tool to understand modern culture. So is it accessible: theoretically yes, linguistically not, but its worth it.
Re: Simulacra and Simulation
#34Re: Simulacra and Simulation
#35How readable and accessible is this book? I am always attracted to philosophy and culture theory books, but more often than not they are extremely dry and academic, and sadly I require more excitement to hold my squirrel attention. It is no wonder much more people have read the “Industrial Society and its Future” than anything by Jacques Ellul.
Someone with the same squirrel attention who starts a lot of books a rarely finishes one. I think for a philosophy book, it is quite accessible in the sense that it builds on common knowledge and known cultural phenomenon, not that much on prior theory you must have read. Regarding the language it is not that accessible, Baudrillard (in the culture of french intellectuals of the time) has a very dense, complex langua…
Not sure I get your point, as I wish we had more punk rock philosophy aimed at the masses and not at academia.
If your philosophy isn't targeting your average person with their average existential crisis, you have failed your mission. Philosophers have completely failed their mission since the Greeks. They had the Christian Church pick up their slack during the Middle Ages, and now that we've shed religion, we're utterly lost and people that seek to cure their existential dread have to navigate through utter drudgery to find a path towards the Good Life. /rant
Re: Simulacra and Simulation
#36How readable and accessible is this book? I am always attracted to philosophy and culture theory books, but more often than not they are extremely dry and academic, and sadly I require more excitement to hold my squirrel attention. It is no wonder much more people have read the “Industrial Society and its Future” than anything by Jacques Ellul.
> It is no wonder much more people have read the “Industrial Society and its Future” than anything by Jacques Ellul. Do you think it is because Ellul is hard to read or because Kaczynski is just more well-known for obvious reasons?
Re: Simulacra and Simulation
#37How readable and accessible is this book? I am always attracted to philosophy and culture theory books, but more often than not they are extremely dry and academic, and sadly I require more excitement to hold my squirrel attention. It is no wonder much more people have read the “Industrial Society and its Future” than anything by Jacques Ellul.
Its not great. I suggest reading Villem Flusser instead.
Re: Simulacra and Simulation
#38I always liked his observation that Disneyland was created in order to make the rest of America seem real.
Re: Simulacra and Simulation
#39I like Existential Comic's explanation of the simulacrum concept, using football/soccer injuries as an example: https://existentialcomics.com/comic/476
Wow, I hadn't considered that final point.
Re: Simulacra and Simulation
#40How readable and accessible is this book? I am always attracted to philosophy and culture theory books, but more often than not they are extremely dry and academic, and sadly I require more excitement to hold my squirrel attention. It is no wonder much more people have read the “Industrial Society and its Future” than anything by Jacques Ellul.
It took me about 20-30 re-reads of the first page to understand it.
The rest of the chapter was then a bit easier. I gave up after that.
But it really is a great idea in the first few pages.