Search Results
Abstract
This chapter explores Jean Baudrillard and Michel Serres’s post-Marxist reworking of the concept of symbolic power. Both philosophers paint a dystopian portrait of the (post-) modern world in which the simulators of hyperreality endlessly strive to solidify their control by imploding the real through the simulacral imagination. Revealing the inherent limitations of any theories related to power that focus exclusively on production, Baudrillard and Serres develop highly original and cogent theoretical frameworks for understanding the nexus of power in the contemporary landscape. Baudrillard and Serres demonstrate that (mis-) information is now the opiate of the masses used to manufacture consent to a new social order and to suppress dissension. Nonetheless, their respective post-Marxist visions of power abruptly diverge in their late philosophy. For Baudrillard, the digital revolution represents the final proverbial “nail in the coffin” for the (post-) modern subject for whom resistance is no longer a viable option. Conversely, Serres envisions that the Internet could one day be the greatest democratic and liberating force that the world has ever known.
Abstract
The purpose of this exploration is to probe the more sustainable type of thinking promoted by the oft-neglected French philosopher Michel Onfray in his latest work Cosmos. Attempting to resuscitate the long tradition of philosophical hedonism and materialism in Western civilization, Onfray proposes a different, sensual way of being in the world that he persuasively contends is paramount to the continued existence of the human race. As the philosopher himself candidly admits, Cosmos is a practical guide that could be used as a starting point for changing the way we think and live in the Anthropocene epoch.