Wikipedia entry - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato
Also the analogy of the divided line - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analogy_of_the_divided_line
And the Metaphor of the sun - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato
The metaphor of the sun talks about how the presence of light makes things easier to comprehend, and how the sun is the ultimate source of light.
"When [the soul] is firmly fixed on the domain where truth and reality shine resplendent it apprehends and knows them and appears to possess reason, but when it inclines to that region which is mingled with darkness, the world of becoming and passing away, it opines only and its edge is blunted, and it shifts its opinions hither and thither, and again seems as if it lacked reason." (The Republic bk. VI, 508d; trans. Paul Shorey)
In the divided line Plato discusses the visiblle world, consisting of visible objects and their shadows, representations and so on, along with the intelligible world, similarly divided into higher and lower forms.
Plato's cave discusses how people react to representations of things - in this case shadows, but it could be photographs, drawings, reflections, videos etc - instead of the thing itself. They understand the effect of the object but not the object itself.
COMMENTRY ON PLATOS CAVE
http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0915144921&id=o9d4dOfdID8C&pg=PA1&lpg=PA1&ots=jg1f3nmkCG&dq=the+republic&sig=cko-kL_MoQsA16NlaZXjOocLtHo#PPA183,M1
514a-517c "It would be difficult and painful for someone released from his chains to see when turned toward the fire. It would more difficult still for someone led out of the cave to see in the sunlight. At first he would have to look at shadows and reflctions of things in water; then he would be able to look at the things themselves; and finally he would be able to look at the sun. He would much prefer this state to being in the cave; and if he went back down again his sight would at first be poor in the darkness, and he would be despised for this"
Companion to Plato's Republic By Nicholas P. White
Published 1979 Hackett Publishing
ISBN 0915144921
Tuesday, 3 April 2007
Tuesday, 13 March 2007
Jean Baudrillard's Obituary
From the Guardian website
http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,2028749,00.html
James Harkin
Thursday March 8, 2007
"Au revoir, then, Jean Baudrillard, who appeared to die on Tuesday at the ripe old age of 77. I say appeared, because if the French thinker's oeuvre teaches us anything at all, it is surely that you can't believe what you read in the papers. This hero of the polo-necked, pointy-spectacled classes made it his life's work to argue that, under the weight of our relentless consumption of objects and media, simulated experiences had come to replace the real thing and reality and fantasy had blurred into one impenetrable edifice called "hyper-reality". That the term sounded like something out of Star Trek tells us something of the contradictions embodied by his work.
Baudrillard is much sneered at by almost all Anglophone philosophers, but at least he took the trouble to engage with the real world, even if he didn't believe it was entirely real. His method of rhetorical exaggeration in order to make a point could always be relied on to wind up the stuffed shirts. In 1991, for example, he was moved to argue that the first Gulf war did not really exist, but was yet another "simulacrum" rehearsed in simulations and then presented as entertainment by the broadcast media. The point he was trying to make, ignored by his critics, was our remoteness and our powerlessness in the face of this new kind of war. It looked like a computer game, after all, and was fought largely from TV screens thousands of miles away from the battlefield.
Live by the media-generated simulation, however, and you are likely to die with it draped across your coffin. Baudrillard's tragedy is that, at least for anyone under the age of 30, the reputation of this homme sérieux will for ever be linked with a gimmicky Hollywood film. In their Matrix triology, the filmmakers Andy and Larry Wachowski lobbed in copious references to Baudrillard to give their work a little philosophical heft. Baudrillard was reportedly unimpressed, but he could console himself that it was only a simulacrum, and that it finally cemented his reputation across the pond. For all his criticism of America, Baudrillard ended up enchanted with a place he called "the original version of modernity". France, he pointed out, was nothing more than "a copy with subtitles".
SUMMARY
Believed that our idea of reality is merely fed to us through the media (similar to Plato's Cave)
Discussed hyperreality and Simulacra
Famously said that the gulf war never happened
His thinking is reference in the Matrix films
BOOKS
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Baudrillard
The System of Objects (1968)
The Consumer Society: Myths and Structures (1970)
For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign (1972)
The Mirror of Production (1973)
Symbolic Exchange and Death (1976)
Forget Foucault (1977)
Seduction (1979)
Simulacra and Simulation (1981)
In the Shadow of the Silent Majorities (1982)
Fatal Strategies (1983)
America (1986)
Cool Memories (1987)
The Ecstasy of Communication (1987)
The Transparency of Evil (1990)
The Gulf War Did Not Take Place (1991)
The Illusion of the End (1992)
Baudrillard Live: Selected Interviews (Edited by Mike Gane) (1993)
The Perfect Crime (1995)
Paroxysm: Interviews with Philippe Petit (1998)
Impossible Exchange (1999)
Passwords (2000)
The Singular Objects of Architecture (2000)
The Vital Illusion (2000)
Au royaume des aveugles (2002)
The Spirit of Terrorism: And Requiem for the Twin Towers (2002)
Fragments (interviews with François L'Yvonnet) (2003)
The Intelligence of Evil or the Lucidity Pact (2005)
The Conspiracy of Art (2005)
Les exilés du dialogue, Jean Baudrillard and Enrique Valiente Noailles (2005)
Utopia Deferred: Writings for Utopie (1967-1978) (2006)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,2028749,00.html
James Harkin
Thursday March 8, 2007
"Au revoir, then, Jean Baudrillard, who appeared to die on Tuesday at the ripe old age of 77. I say appeared, because if the French thinker's oeuvre teaches us anything at all, it is surely that you can't believe what you read in the papers. This hero of the polo-necked, pointy-spectacled classes made it his life's work to argue that, under the weight of our relentless consumption of objects and media, simulated experiences had come to replace the real thing and reality and fantasy had blurred into one impenetrable edifice called "hyper-reality". That the term sounded like something out of Star Trek tells us something of the contradictions embodied by his work.
Baudrillard is much sneered at by almost all Anglophone philosophers, but at least he took the trouble to engage with the real world, even if he didn't believe it was entirely real. His method of rhetorical exaggeration in order to make a point could always be relied on to wind up the stuffed shirts. In 1991, for example, he was moved to argue that the first Gulf war did not really exist, but was yet another "simulacrum" rehearsed in simulations and then presented as entertainment by the broadcast media. The point he was trying to make, ignored by his critics, was our remoteness and our powerlessness in the face of this new kind of war. It looked like a computer game, after all, and was fought largely from TV screens thousands of miles away from the battlefield.
Live by the media-generated simulation, however, and you are likely to die with it draped across your coffin. Baudrillard's tragedy is that, at least for anyone under the age of 30, the reputation of this homme sérieux will for ever be linked with a gimmicky Hollywood film. In their Matrix triology, the filmmakers Andy and Larry Wachowski lobbed in copious references to Baudrillard to give their work a little philosophical heft. Baudrillard was reportedly unimpressed, but he could console himself that it was only a simulacrum, and that it finally cemented his reputation across the pond. For all his criticism of America, Baudrillard ended up enchanted with a place he called "the original version of modernity". France, he pointed out, was nothing more than "a copy with subtitles".
SUMMARY
Believed that our idea of reality is merely fed to us through the media (similar to Plato's Cave)
Discussed hyperreality and Simulacra
Famously said that the gulf war never happened
His thinking is reference in the Matrix films
BOOKS
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Baudrillard
The System of Objects (1968)
The Consumer Society: Myths and Structures (1970)
For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign (1972)
The Mirror of Production (1973)
Symbolic Exchange and Death (1976)
Forget Foucault (1977)
Seduction (1979)
Simulacra and Simulation (1981)
In the Shadow of the Silent Majorities (1982)
Fatal Strategies (1983)
America (1986)
Cool Memories (1987)
The Ecstasy of Communication (1987)
The Transparency of Evil (1990)
The Gulf War Did Not Take Place (1991)
The Illusion of the End (1992)
Baudrillard Live: Selected Interviews (Edited by Mike Gane) (1993)
The Perfect Crime (1995)
Paroxysm: Interviews with Philippe Petit (1998)
Impossible Exchange (1999)
Passwords (2000)
The Singular Objects of Architecture (2000)
The Vital Illusion (2000)
Au royaume des aveugles (2002)
The Spirit of Terrorism: And Requiem for the Twin Towers (2002)
Fragments (interviews with François L'Yvonnet) (2003)
The Intelligence of Evil or the Lucidity Pact (2005)
The Conspiracy of Art (2005)
Les exilés du dialogue, Jean Baudrillard and Enrique Valiente Noailles (2005)
Utopia Deferred: Writings for Utopie (1967-1978) (2006)
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