Iconologies: Reading Simulations with Plato and Nietzsche

David B. Allison

SUNY-Stony Brook

Introduction to the Problem

Perhaps what is most disturbing to many of Baudrillard's critics is his reasoned itinerary from a
position of responsible and informed critique to one he himself comes to term "nihilism" (1981:
227-34, l993: 132). After all, for our age, especially, isn't this precisely what must be avoided at
all costs? Namely, to concede to the crisis of values, of the sciences, of humanity itself? Isn't this
crisis of foundations precisely what prompted Husserl and so many others to reformulate the
very thought of the twentieth century, so as, e.g., to establish philosophy as a "rigorous science" -
- one fully cognizant of the meaning and rationality of a free human existence? Isn't this the
motive behind critical and rational discourse theory, to establish a common ground of
intelligibility, truth, and value, one which could withstand the vicissitudes of accident and
historical relativism? If real value is simply a mutation of exchange value, indeed, if all
exchanges are merely in-house (one interpretive claim against another, one text against another,
one theory against yet another), such that all transcendence, origin, or finality is but a regulative
illusion, then it is understandable that the claim of determining the real, the true, seems to be
little more than what Jean-Luc Nancy terms the "thought of an ahistorical return" -- a nostalgic
wish to return to the absolute ground of a Kantian ethic and rationality, or of the Platonic Good
and the True.

In discussing the opposition between Husserlian phenomenology, with its claim to return to "the
things themselves," and the subsequent poststructural, deconstructionist, and postmodernist
challenges to this claim, Vincent Descombes articulates what now seems to be the general
problematic subtending these diverse standpoints, an opposition which effectively drives much
of contemporary thought: "the problem... is to affirm the transition from the objective genitive to
the subjective genitive , in the 'discourse of the thing itself' that philosophy attempts to be" (l980:
81). Clearly, this is but the most recent formulation concerning the traditional problems of
realism and representation -- the subjective genitive being the interiorized social symbolic and
linguistic orders. More traditionally, perhaps, one could likewise pose the opposition as one
between the priority of a metaphysical or an epistemological account: the being of the former
determining the truth-functionality of the latter. Or, alternatively, the capacity of the latter to
represent the reality, meaning, and value of the former. The entire history of philosophy is
enacted in the determination to resolve these oppositions.

Nonetheless, and this is what concerns us, a certain skeptical attitude persists concerning the
validity of these philosophical operations and the capacity to resolve them. Such an attitude, we
would point out, is as old as the tradition itself -- inhabiting it as a ghost or a shadow, perhaps as
the tradition's own cynical observer, ever ready to lend witness to a history of pretense and
dissimulation. If Baudrillard's own work engages these oppositions and shows their deeply
paradoxical (if not paralogistic) nature, we would point out that such a project is emminently
positive: it disabuses us of a general sense of closure, brought about precisely by the seeming
axiomatics of the tradition. In this sense, Baudrillard will at once enable us to understand the
tradition more profoundly -- especially its founding claims to authority -- and to acknowledge the
finitude of its agency, the infirmity of its presumptions. One hundred years after Nietzsche's
madman proclaimed the death of God, Baudrillard, perhaps more cogently than any of our
contemporaries, explains what the effects of this "greatest event" mean for us, since even great
deeds and events take time to be known. Effectively, Baudrillard asks us to reconsider, with a
newly found modesty and candor, what our very sanity consists in, when disburdened of the
pretense of closure.

At the very core of Baudrillard's extensive writings stands the armature, the machinery in the
very wheel of things, with which he is concerned, namely, the sublation of reference and
meaning. That the real may be only its own simulation, that the highest values are incapable of
resisting their own reversal and devaluation -- this is the nihilistic position which has earned
Baudrillard his general reprobation. Baudrillard states his case most succinctly in his essay of
l978, "La Précession des Simulacres," subquently taken up in his work of l981, Simulacres et
simulation. He recalls that the traditional notion of truth as correspondence underlies our
knowledge claim of reference, representation. To the extent, then, that our idea of something
corresponds to that thing as it is, our idea is said to be correct and the thing is held to be real. The
idea refers to the object, it represents the object. Our understanding is thus mediated by our ideas
of the object, our representations of it. According to this traditional view, Baudrillard argues, the
relation of representation is "reversible." We can always verify our understanding, by referring
the idea or representation back to the original object, i.e., to its referent. While this is most often
thought of as a model of visual representation -- where the image "stands for" or "represents" its
object -- by derivation, a tradition also assigns the same model to language, e.g., to what
Wittgenstein termed "the picture theory of language." In this case, we understand that a word
"names" a thing, or is a "word-picture" of things.

With Saussure's introduction of the linguistic sign, however, where the word or (material)
"signifier" is said to express (an intelligible or conceptual) meaning or "signified," the situation
changes dramatically. Since conceptual meaning or signification is itself fully discursive, it can
be explained or defined, precisely in terms of other linguistic signs, other words. Thus, the
"system of language" is relatively complete unto itself: meaning is intralinguistic, and not
empirically referential, since the object discussed only means anything to the extent that it can be
understood by someone -- by the speaker or by the listener -- according to the language in which
it is articulated. Hence, to ask what something means is simply to ask that it be explained
according to a set of words or concepts ingredient to the shared linguistic vocabulary. Unlike the
traditional model of reference, then, the model of linguistic signification is not reversible, since,
according to the latter, the object of reference itself is intelligible, makes sense, only according to
the order of meaning, of language. And language alone "makes sense." In short, there remains
nothing of significance outside the system of significance to serve as its (transcendent or
foundational) guarantee of significance -- or, of its truth. As Baudrillard would say in "The
Precession of Simulacra": "Death of the referential. Resurrection in signs." Hence Baudrillard's
use of the term "hyperreal": the real itself is defined exclusively -- i.e., hyperbolically,
exaggeratedly -- in terms of the sense it makes to us: principally linguistic, but basically in terms
of our broader symbolic systems and social codes (among which language figures most
prominently).
Baudrillard dramatizes his problematic (the sublation of meaning and reference) most effectively
when he chooses the "image" or "icon" as his foremost example of simulation. An image is given
as sole testimony to something else, as its ostensible referent. In the absence of the referent,
however, the image becomes literally unbound, and can be understood or interpreted according
to a broad range of possible significance -- i.e., according to the logical limits of the code which
encloses it. His principal example is sublime: the crucial role of the "image" (Eikon: Eikon, icon)
in the celebrated Iconoclastic controversy (or heresy) of early Fourth century Christianity.

Baudrillard: The Values and Genealogy of the Icon

The controversy centered around the practice of using an image or icon to depict or to represent,
the Divine. Supporters of the use of such images were termed "iconolators" and opponents of this
practice were called the "iconoclasts".

Since the image or icon in question was that used to represent the Divine presence, or likeness, it
proved to be an extremely focal point of theological controversy, and for Baudrillard, it serves as
one of the most pointed problems for any theory of knowledge. Since the making or recognizing
of images, i.e., icons, seemed to entail a representation of the original, of the Divine in this case,
and this mediated the original precisely by communicating the representation to the public at
large, through images, those people in a position to control the use and disposition of the images

obviously enjoyed an immense degree of authority. And, with that authority, there arose the
question of its legitimate exercise. In any case, at least implicitly, the icon is said to be, is alleged
to be, referential, representative. Hence the problem:

What becomes of the divinity when it reveals itself in icons, when it is multiplied by simulacra?
Does it remain the supreme authority, simply incarnated in images as a visible theology? Or is it
volatilized into simulacra which alone deploy their pomp and power of fascination -- the visible
machinery of icons being substituted for the pure and intelligible Idea of God? (l983: 9)

Once the problem is announced in these terms, i.e., that the relations of reference and
signification are sublated, the supposedly antithetical positions (the iconoclasts and iconolaters)
themselves become subverted, and the values assignable to the image itself effloresce according
to the logical square of possibilities.

A) The iconoclast is against the image, the icon, because the image assumes a concretely
powerful and unwarranted degree of authority, of power. The image thus overpowers, by means
of its very imagery -- e.g., by the languid eyes of the Virgin, the brilliant gold halos shimmering
above the ecstases of God, the beatific human smile on Jesus, the adorable children and angels
surrounding the ascension, etc. -- it overpowers that which it ostensibly represents. Thus the
image devalues the original by concealing it, by hiding it. The image distorts the referent. Thus,
for the iconoclast, we must destroy the image.

B) The iconocolast also stands opposed to the image, alternatively, since by overpowering the
supposed original, the image denies rather than distorts the original. The image thus becomes cut
off from the original, and is thus, properly speaking, not an image at all -- neither is it accurate
nor does it distort. The icon thus breaks with God, and this is the crime. If the image denies the
original, so then, for the iconoclast, the image must be destroyed, since the image itself has
usurped the position of the original.

Thus, the iconoclasts -- the haters of images -- are the ones who see the real power and autonomy
of the image, the simulacrum. Their anger is thus a mark of their extraordinary sincerity, and of
their fear -- a fear that resonnates right through contemporary protestantism.

As for the Iconolaters, those who celebrate the image, the simulacrum, they do so for two
reasons as well:

A) On the one hand, they celebrate the images because the images reflect, even if somewhat
imperfectly, the Divine. Thus, God can be venerated. Save the image, save the Divine, even if
the image in fact distorts the original.

B) On the other hand, God may become only his ostensible representations, his own simulacra.
As such, he is destroyed. But, with the icon, he is resurrected as a sign, that is, by the signifying
image, by the icon. Thus, the representational character of the image is broken, but the image
itself must be retained; the image must be saved. Why? Precisely because the image is so
powerful as to hide the fact that there is nothing at all behind it, nothing to which it refers. God is
dead, but save the image itself -- which is enough, in the end, says the iconolater, to mystify and
control those who lend it their worship and devotion.

Seemingly, then, any value position is possible with regard to the insertion of the image within
the specifics of the social symbolic: in this case, according to the theo-logical code which
governs or permits the Iconoclastic controversy in the first place. This same dynamics of
transformation and reversal can be dramatically illustrated in a somewhat different fashion,
according to what Baudrillard terms "the successive phases of the image":

1. -- It is the reflection of a basic reality.

2. -- It masks and perverts a basic reality.

3. -- It masks the absence of a basic reality.

4. -- It bears no relation to any reality whatsoever; it is its own pure simulacrum.

In the first case the image is a good appearance -- the representation is of the order of sacrament.
In the second, it is an evil appearance -- of the order of malefice. In the third, it plays at being an
appearance -- it is of the order of sorcery. In the fourth, it is no longer in the order of appearance
at all, but of simulation (l983: 11-12).

Not only does Baudrillard mark his indebtedness to Nietzsche in this "genealogy of moral
values," but in paraphrasing Nietzsche's "History of an Error," Baudrillard shows how the
sublation of reference and signification into simulation effectively permits what Nietzsche would
term "the overcoming of all values into their opposites." Again, the formal demise of truth-
functionality for the paradigm case of the icon or image:

1) The image reflects or represents reality.

A (the real) ----> is represented by the image of the real (A').

A=A'

2) The image masks or distorts the real.

The real -----> is represented by an image which is a disfigurement of the real, in that the image
over-determines or under-determines the real. Let X = additional signification and -X = reduced
signification.

Thus: A = A' (X V -X)

3) The image masks or hides the absence of the real.

The real -----> is replaced by an image, and the image conceals that there is no
real. Dissimulation or play occurs: one feigns not to have nothing.

Or: A' = -(-A)

4) The image has no relation to the real.

The image -----> refers to no real thing. It thus kills the referential relation altogether and is pure
simulation.

Or: A' = -A (Especially, perhaps, when, of all things, A = A'? And when might that be?
Unclear.)

As Baudrillard would remark:

The transition from signs which dissimulate something to signs which dissimulate that there is
nothing, marks the decisive turning point. The first implies a teleology of truth and secrecy (to
which the notion of ideology still belongs). The second inaugurates an age of simulacra and
simulation, in which there is no longer any God to recognize his own, nor any last judgment to
separate true from false, the real from its artificial resurrection, since everything is already dead
and risen in advance [i.e., what Baudrillard termed "the resurrection by signs"] (l983: 12).

Baudrillard's account of the Iconoclastic controversy not only points out the malleability of
signs, their capacity to mutate and traverse the space of the symbolic code, but it dramatically
exhibits the symbolic power exercised by the image, the sign -- what Baudrillard will come to
term its power of "seduction." Since the sign (now, as simulation) no longer serves the traditional
referential function of mediation, it effectively becomes "weightless." By this very token,
however, its power becomes immense, because it can be employed to serve the discursive agenda
of those in a position to direct, to control, indeed, to manipulate it: hence to define and structure
the very intelligibility of a collective social world -- of its "orbital," as he says. That the image is
conventionally "held" or "felt" to be referential, only serves to enhance its operational efficacity.
What could be more "natural" than to think that a sign or an image would be "of" something, or
that they would "point to" something? Ultimately, based on a sensory-empirical prejudice, it
would appear commonplace that "consciousness" itself is always "intentional" -- i.e., that
consciousness has an object. Such a prejudice, of course, subtends the most traditional concept of
truth itself: truth as correspondence. It is for these reasons that Baudrillard's example of the
Iconoclastic controversy is so telling: the icon itself serves as a basis for establishing theological
orthodoxy, depending on the position advanced, and it thereby determines the entire belief and
value structure for the (in this case, religious) community. Such a generalized belief structure in
turn legitimates the authority which so positioned the value of the icon in the first place. In the
case of the Iconoclastic controversy, the authority, of course, is ecclesiastical, and the Icon serves
as the [-(-/+) V +(-/+)] likeness of the Christian God of Being and Truth.

Plato: Birthing the Icon

Employing Baudrillard's analysis, it is instructive to see virtually the same set of issues and
resolutions operative at the very founding of the Western philosophical enterprise itself: the
sublation of meaning and reference, through the agency of the icon or image, to establish a
discourse of being and truth -- to which the "philosopher king" alone can claim access, and by
which he secures his just authority. And, it should be added, knowledge would henceforth be
equated with virtue and power. This broader case finds it focus in the celebrated "divided line"
image (eikon) of Plato's Republic. Perhaps the most interesting -- and least recognized -- aspect
of the divided line image is the central role played by the image (eikon: 'eikon,' icon) and the
imagination (eikasia: 'eikasia') in the very construction of Platonic metaphysics.

The fact that 'eikasia' is traditionally taken to mean "the construction of images," "the artistic
project of creating similitudes," as well as "the recognition of such images," implies a deeper
significance to the term than has usually been given by Plato's critics -- who typically limit its
significance to the "faculty" of "imagination." Specifically, this broader usage involves what
could be termed the intentional or adumbrational character of 'eikasia,' whereby a referential
function is strongly involved, whenever the "image" or 'eikon' is discussed in its epistemological
function. Effectively, this is a "naturalistic" prejudice, as we have said before, one typically
identified with a visual or sensible model.

The divided line image is given in Book VI of the Republic, in the context of Socrates' account
of the apprehension of The Good (to agathon: to agathon). The earlier "pilot in the ship" eikon
(488) leads to the demand for an explanation of the "true philosopher," and in what his wisdom
and knowledge consists. An account must be given that supersedes the nature of justice and the
philosophic virtues, in order to establish what "properly befits" the philosopher (504a ff), since it
is "the greatest thing to learn the idea of the good by reference to which just things and all the
rest become useful and beneficial." In 506b-c, Socrates explains the need for discussing the
Good in terms of an eikon, for unlike the virtues, the Good -- at least at this point in the argument
-- is not susceptible to definition. Indeed, Socrates provisionally dismisses the nature of the
"good in itself" (504e), deferring, rather, to speak of the "offspring and likenesses" of the good.
He had earlier anticipated this discussion in Book V (476), by distinguishing two realms -- that
of being and becoming -- and their corresponding mental states, knowledge and opinion. Stating
the terms, he indicates the means of resolution, i.e., how the idea of the good may ultimately be
apprehended in the world of becoming. Although the "...just, good, and all the ideas or forms"
are each one, they are also many, i.e., they are in communion, i.e., participation, with that realm
of becoming, in actions and bodies: "they present themselves everywhere." Objects in the realm
of becoming, however, are objects of the faculty of opinion. Collectively, what will be the lower
half of the (visual) line eikon of Book VI, opinion is here suggested as the faculty which is able
to resolve the two realms. Since the philosopher (475d) is enamoured with the spectacle, the
sight, of truth, it is understandable why Socrates starts his discussion of the Good, with the
"offspring" or "likenesses" of the Good, since they are held to be readily apparent in the visual
world, presenting themselves as a spectacle.

Socrates' first extensive discussion of the good occurs in Book VI (507a-509b), when he presents
his celebrated "sun" eikon. The sun is compared to the good, as vision is compared to
knowledge. Each is respectively the cause of its own "offspring." The sun eikon fails, however to
explain the transition between the visible and intelligible orders, for human knowledge, and
stands merely as an analogy of proper proportionality. Not only does the analogy lack a causal
principle which could account for the transition between the two orders, but the meaning of the
primary analogate, "the good," would itself have to be presupposed to construct the analogy in
the first place. The divided line eikon (509d-511e) is meant to correct this, and to claim
continuity between the visible and intelligible orders of being. And whereas the sun eikon was
expressed in speech, the divided line eikon is itself specified as a visual eikon: the two spheres
meant to be represented are rendered continuous as two unequal segments of a line. Each
segment or section is divided in turn according to the ratio of the original division. Socrates starts
with a classification of the objects belonging to the two orders, in continuity with the preceding
argument, and they are classified in terms of their respective degrees of clarity. The first section
is taken to represent images (eikones: eikones); the second, objects (onta: onta); the third,
mathematical and scientific objects, and "those things akin," and the fourth section is taken to
represent ideas (eide: eide). The first two sections represent the visible order, the second two, the
intelligible. Corresponding to these four sections of objective being are four mental states (pathe:
pathe), as related in 511e: imagination (eikasia: eikasia), trust (pistis: pistis), thought or
understanding (dianoia: dianoia), and intellection (noesis: noesis). The first two are collectively
designated as opinion (doxa: doxa), the latter two as knowledge or intellection (episteme:
episteme). As Socractes specifes this later (533e-534b), opinion has to do with becoming (or, the
visible) and knowledge or intellection has to do with being (the intelligible).

What orchestrates the dynamics of the divided line is the agency of the image, the eikon, and its
corresponding mental state, the imagination, or eikasia (oftentimes translated as "picture-
thought" as well), and its agency derives from its implicitly referential character, which
supposes, if not induces, belief in the object purportedly depicted, imaged, represented. Prior to
the whole discussion of the divided line, it is assumed that truth somehow resides in judgment, in
our subjective capacity to cognitively judge that our understanding corresponds to the nature of
the given object. Hence the objects in the divided line are arranged in ascending order according
to their own "relative clarity and obscurity." By the close of the discussion, "clarity and
distinctness" are imputed to the intending subjective, mental acts, and truth and reality attributed
to the objects. Hence, something is true to the extent to which it "participates" in "truth and
reality". Truth and reality are in the things themselves, and our understanding and judgments are
but subjective apprehensions. The order of signification is subordinated to that of reference in
order to give the defining account of Platonic metaphysics: classical realism. And it will be the
philosopher king alone who will be trained to have unique access to the truth "itself".

This referential character of the image or eikon is asserted in the brief description of the first
level, where merely four lines of the text are devoted to it. Its importance becomes clear at the
second level, however, in that the objects of "pistis" or trust ("...animals, plants, and all those
objects made by man," or more simply stated, natural objects as such) are precisely the objective
referents of the former level -- the level of pistis is composed of those objects of which the
eikones themselves were likenesses or images. Thus, it may be said that the first two levels of the
divided line are insensibly codependent. The eikon, that presentation of ordinary experience, is in
fact an adumbration, a partial appearance of the object itself. Indeed, the visual or the visible
image stands already as an index for the entire sensible order itself -- hence the inclusion of a
descriptive vocabulary that draws on specifically tactile qualities (i.e., for the initial level of the
eikon): "...you'll have one segment in the visible part [of the divided line] for images. I mean by
images first shadows, then appearances produced in water, and in all close-grained, smooth,
bright things..." And, as if to emphasize the generality of such appearances, Socrates
concludes,"...and everything of the sort, if you understand" (509e-510a2). It would seem, then,
that eikasia would have a broad perceptual function, similar in kind to sensory awareness,
generally. To further qualify "pistis," emphasizing its character of "trust" (within the very order
of "belief" or "opinion," i.e., "doxa"), we would specify, in more contemporary terms of
reference, perhaps, that such objects would be termed "thetic" or "positional," i.e., that we
explicitly assert the "thesis" or "position" of empirical reality to them.

With the transition to the "intelligible" sphere, Socrates introduces the objects of dianoetic
understanding. The rather limited examples of the objects of the geometer (as well as the objects
of those individuals who calculate, reckon and make arguments), stress the abstract character of
the correlates of what might be called discursive reasoning, syllogistic reasoning, calculative
thought, second order experience, etc. These "intelligibles" with which the "geometer" deals, are
ideas, forms, essences, etc., but of a particular kind. They require a sensible intuition as their
"hypothesis" or "supposition," in that they are dependent in various ways on a precedent visual
model -- as the conceived square may be dependent upon or derived by abstraction from the
perceived square. Thus, what is striking about this "third level" of dianoia, is that the dianoetic
process is essentially a modification of "eikasia". Indeed, Socrates clearly specifies that one
treats "...as images, the things imitated in the former division" (510b 4). If the contents of this
mode of thought find their origin in the sensible order (i.e., to which they refer, correspond), it
should be remembered that the dianoetic understanding deals with them in a deductive fashion,
drawing conclusions and generalizations from these intentional objects, as the mathematical or
geometrical proof. Thus, the starting point for the deductive or inferential process is at first
assumed as a postulate, an assumption, from which the deduction and conclusion procede.

While some critics have held that the dianoetic and noetic realms are distinguished according to
the specific type of idea, i.e., in the former, "mathematical ideas," and in the latter, "moral ideas,"
it seems apparent that Plato found the "objects of the sciences" more nearly suited to his projects
of unifying the various modes of cognition. If this is the case, the continuity is kept between the
different "levels" and he would not be faced with the disjunction between fact and value, which
would be incurred by the more popular view. Assuming such a strong disjunction, one could
rectify it by arguing that the ground of eidetic resolution -- and the education of the philosopher
as well -- would be through the recognition of "harmony," from whence the Platonic
epistemology, axiology, and ethics might be derived.

Rather, we would argue that the continuity of levels in the divided line is retained, not by
reference to an external principle, such as "harmony" (harmonia: 'harmonia'), but precisely by the
inclusion of eikasia on the different levels. Here we are particularly concerned with its function
on the level of "dianoia", and its correlative objects, as distinguished from the pure "eidos" as the
correlate to noetic intuition. Granted that the dianoetic intution finds as its object an intelligible
(the abstract "image" of the sensible), it was only natural that Plato would choose as the
paradigm case, that geometrical or mathematical mode -- as would later Descartes, in
the Regulae and in his Discourse on Method. This in no way excludes the discursive
understanding of ethical subjects, or any other, for that matter, precisely because the nature of
dianoetic intuition is formal: the paradigm case is the deductive process itself, which Plato makes
quite explicit (510b, and the explicit geometrical reformulation of 510c-d). The geometrical
"reckoning" is precisely what Socrates himself does, in his function as an "eikon-maker," i.e., to
render an account of the good. Having deferred an explicit account of the good (506e), or the
unhypothetical first principle, Socrates urges that we start with the "offspring of the good,"
themselves postulates, assumptions (which he in fact simply postulates: 507b 4), and reckon or
render the consequences (507a 4-7). The consequence is, of course, the series of eikons
themselves, which are nonetheless said to adumbrate the nature of the good.

If the general metaphysical and epistemological project of Plato can be anticipated in the way we
have set forth, then, by parity of reasoning, dianoetic intuition is hardly limited to those "objects"
with which the "geometers" deal. Rather, dianoetic understanding is that reckoning or abstract
reproduction of the contents of "lower" consciousness -- of "opinion" -- in respect to their
essential or eidetic structure, thus adumbrating the intuition of the eidos itself. One is constrained
from doing the latter on the plane of dianoesis, for its objects were said to be unexamined
postulates; the full intuition of the noetic realm can only be attained by taking these starting
points themselves and reasoning to their unconditional ground. This is a process, Socrates says,
"...which makes no use of the images employed by the other section, relying on ideas only and
progressing systematically through ideas" (510b 9-c4). Argument or reason (logos: logos) will
then use what is formally abstracted -- by comparison, differentiation, ratio, etc. -- from specific
individual cases to ascertain general formal natures or essences. In this sense, the references to
particular images will be dropped, the instances considered not as factual particulars (i.e., not as
real beginnings), but merely as formal or intelligible cases to be used (as "steps" or
"springboards") in a process of essential determination (511b 5). This essence or form (idea)
arrived at, basically by abstraction and generalization, is finally asserted to be that which itself
depends on the unconditioned, the first principle, i.e., the cause of all being (pantos arch: 'pantos
arche'). Logos is thereby alleged to find its ground in the first principle, which is, after all, held
to be none other than the father of the offspring, i.e., of the ideas. If dialectical or noetic
reasoning, then, proceeds to "...that which requires no assumption, and is the starting point of
all," the question must be asked as to exactly what that "unhypothetical" ground or first principle
is. As the sun eikon attempted to grasp the Good, here again, the divided line eikon was
constructed to illustrate exactly this. As the eikastic function refers from image to referent, so it
is supposed that, at the level of the idea, the referent will likewise be intuited, albeit, in an
abstract cognitive mode. Indeed Socrates asserts that as the levels of cognition are ascended, with
the character of "clearness" and "precision," so do their objects "...partake of truth and reality."
Unfortunately, just as the "Good" itself was left unexplained as a causal principle in the sun
eikon, so is that unhypothetical first principle also left unexplained here, in the divided line.

Most importantly, however, for the divided line eikon, eikasia has operated to seal the breach
between the realm of the visible and the intelligible, in function of its referential character. If we
have been led to the realm of the eidos, it is at least asserted that the ideas themselves adumbrate
a unifying cause and grounding principle. We are left with a considerable paradox, nonetheless.
It is only this unifying principle which can ensure, which can be the guarantor of eikasia, which
brought us to this point in the first place. If eikasia is the function which assures the identity of
transition through the various levels, and leads us to that grounding principle, how may that
grounding principle be invoked, in turn, to justify eikasia (assuming that the unhypothetical
principle is ultimately truth and reality) -- such that the ideas themselves are "offspring" of the
good, are metaphysically grounded at all? Seemingly, either the first principle -- the Good -- is
not represented by the line, and the difference between thought and understanding or intellect
would thus be of degree, of progressive abstraction (as the difference between eikasia and pistis -
- and their objects -- seems to be), or we are confronted with an insurmountable circularity. In
which case, and ironically, Glaucon's response to Socrates' summary account of the divided line
eikon is remarkably consistent: "I understand"(511e 7).

What, finally, can be said about L'Éminence grise behind the baroque of the Platonic eikones?
The intelligible is claimed to be united with the sensible. This is effectively asserted in the
divided line by the formal identity between sections two and three, i.e., between "pistis" and
"dianoia" -- by the simple expedient that Socrates had constructed the two sections
proportionally, in the first place. Since the latter is dependent on the image of the former for its
content, there is no epistemological need for a doctrine of "participation" at all -- i.e., of the
Platonic metaphysics. In this case, level four, "noesis" could be accounted for by a progressive
abstraction of the contents of dianoetic thought, so as to construct abstract "ideas" or "essences"
of virtually anything (and with somewhat different imperatives in mind, this is precisely what the
Aristotelian and Cartesian traditions did). Their "reality," however, consists in their significance,
their purely symbolic status. Because the intelligible order is itself discursive, symbolic, one can
claim to talk about the sensible order easily enough: and the eikastic function of reference is
effectively invoked to permit just this. One can speak about the world, i.e., it makes sense,
because language is asserted to refer to it. In the same way that Descartes "supposed some order
[i.e., a mathematical order], even among objects that have no natural order of precedence" (l985:
120) for his project of unifying the sciences, so the Platonic account assumes that the symbolic
order of language (argument, speech: logos) renders the world "intelligible." Effectively,
reference and signification are sublated -- through the agency of eikasia.

To the extent that the "ideas" are held to be the "offspring" or "children" of the good," i.e., that
they are metaphysically grounded forms, which exist in themselves, and which "participate" in
things, all the while pointing to the good -- to the real and true -- to this extent Platonic realism
demands that the "ideas" testify to their provenance, that they refer to their transcendent ground
of Being. That the discursive sun eikon gets replaced by the visual divided line eikon, and that
the eikastic function is incorporated as the very dynamic of the line, however, argues against the
plausibility of such a provenance -- relying as it does, on the naturalistic prejudice of reference
(what Husserl would later mean by "the natural attitude" of consciousness). Quite simply, the
ideas are asserted to be such "offspring" of being, even before the sun eikon is framed:

"Anyhow, receive this interest and child [both: 'tokos'] of the good itself...."

"We both assert that there are," I said, "and distinguish in speech, many fair things, many good
things, and so on for each kind of thing."

"Yes, so we do."

"And we also assert that there is a fair itself, a good itself, and so on for all the things that we
then set down as many. Now, again, we refer to them to one idea of each as though the idea were
one; and we address it as that which really is " (507 a3 ff.).

Distinguish the ideas in speech and assert their being. An entire edifice of metaphysics is thus
constitued in speech, and it will indeed serve as the "father's narrative" (506e 10) for two
millenia. Death of the referential: resurrection in signs. As for the final truth of the metaphysical
edifice itself, Socrates acknowledges to Glaucon, "A god doubtless knows if it happens to be
true." Nonetheless, one can always "suppose" it to be true, and to invest this token in the social:

"At all events, this is the way the phenomena look to me: in the knowable the last thing to be
seen, and that with considerable effort, is the idea of the good; but once seen, it must be
concluded that this is in fact the cause of all that is right and fair in everything -- in the visible it
gave birth to light and its soverign; in the intelligible, itself sovereign, it provided truth and
intelligence -- and the man who is going to act prudently in private or public must see it."

"I, too, join you in supposing that, he said, "at least in the way I can" (517b 6ff.)

Since the eikons of the sun, divided line, and cave are ultimately intended to aid in the education
of the political sovereign, Socrates doesn't hesitate to lend direction to the new philosophers:

"Then our job as founders [of the just state]," I said, "is to compel the best natures to go to the
study which we were saying before is the greatest, to see the good and to go up that ascent; and,
when they have gone up and seen sufficiently, not to permit them what is now permitted."

"What's that?"

"To remain there," I said, "and not be willing to go down again among those prisoners...[for, the
law's concern lies in] ...harmonizing the citizens by persuasion and compulsion...in order that it
may use them in binding the city together" (519c 8ff).
Nietzsche: Twilight of the Icons

Like Baudrillard, Nietzsche is first struck with the question of error, distortion, falsification, and
how the conceptual system results in a world which is hardly represented, so much as
fundamentally constructed, by virtue of our discourse about it.

Specifically, Nietzsche attributes the hyperreality of our traditional world to the simulation
ingredient to rationality itself -- specifically, to the vehicle of rationality, its signifying medium
of language. Nietzsche's account is perhaps more historically comprehensive than Baudrillard's
four-staged evolution of the hyperreal, since Nietzsche discusses at length how the relation of
reference, or conceptual representation, gets elaborated in the first place -- such that the concept
or the idea can be asserted to stand for the real. Nietzsche analyzes this derivation in the section
entitled "Reason in Philosophy," in his work of 1888, The Twilight of the Idols. Then, in the
following section of the same work, he sketches out what he calls "The History of an Error,"
namely, a genealogy of reversion -- a devolution, as it were -- of the very pretense of such a
simulation as the real, the true. He subtitles the account, "How the 'True World' Finally Became
a Fable." This devolution closely anticipates Baudrillard's own account, and for all purposes, it is
from Nietzsche's analysis that Baudrillard devised his own. Nietzsche goes on, however, to show
the specific content of what such a hyperreal world entails, and in doing so, directs his critique
against Christianity -- a frequent target for Nietzsche. More importantly, the critique is directed
against the foundational terms of Western thought itself, which terms or "idols" traditionally
served to explain and lend meaning to the human condition, thence to address that condition, and
ostensibly, would help enable us to improve it. Finally, in TheAntichrist, Nietzsche proposes to
explain what he sees as an entire set of motivations which subtend the terms and the initial
construction of this hyperreal world.

For Nietzsche, the tradition of Western thought, beginning with the presocratics, made its first
mistake when it distrusted the testimony of the senses, distrust having been predicated on the
supposed autonomy of reason, that is to say, on the capacity of reason to ascertain the truth about
the real. Parmenides thereby argued against the senses, since the senses seemed to give us no
access to the real, the true, to the permanence of Being. Heraclitus also cast distrust upon the
senses since he claimed -- precisely to the contrary -- that while they do show us the unity or
permanence of things, this must necessarily be wrong, since it is only impermanence which is
real, not stability, not immutable Being. Nietzsche's observation?

They [the senses] do not lie at all. What we make of their testimony, that alone introduces lies;
for example, the lie of unity, the lie of thinghood, of substance, of permanence. 'Reason' is the
cause of our falsification of the testimony of the senses. Insofar as the senses show becoming,
passing away, and change, they do not lie. But Heraclitus will remain eternally right with his
assertion that Being is an empty fiction. The 'apparent' world [Die "scheinbare" Welt ] is the only
one; the 'true' world is merely added by a lie (l968: 480-1).

Reason thus distorts and falsifies the testimony of the senses. It imposes a demand that the real
be other than what the senses yield, and furthermore, reason demands that this other, Being
itself, substance and permanence, be understood conceptually. Thus, the real world, or Being,
stands opposed to the merely apparent world of sense experience, which discloses only change
and passing, i.e., becoming. In this respect, Nietzsche likens traditional philosophers to
iconolators, or as he says, idolators: whatever is real can only be admitted or grasped to the
extent that it is first transformed into a concept, the concept of Being. The actual world thus is
judged lacking in Being, and is dismissed as impermanent, transistory, aleatory, as false -- it
consists in mere appearance, becoming. Or, as Nietzsche quite simply says, they mummify it:

All that philosophers have handled for thousands of years have been concept-mummies; nothing
real escaped their grasp alive. When these honorable idolators of concepts [Begriffs-
Götzendiener ] worship something, they kill it and stuff it; they threaten the life of everything
they worship. Death, change, old age, as well as procreation and growth, are to their minds
objections -- even refutations. Whatever has Being does not become; whatever becomes does not
have being. Now they all believe, desperately even, in what has being. But since they never grasp
it, they seek for reasons why it is kept from them (l968: 479-80).

The actual world thus becomes represented to the philosopher by its purported sign, namely, by
the concept of being. Thus, the concept of being on the one hand is claimed to refer to the
domain of the real, the metaphysically real itself. But, precisely due to its conceptual nature --
either as a discursive construction of language, or as a set of mathematical axioms and
postulates: the Platonic-Aristotelian and Cartesian traditions, respectively -- it imposes
significant requirements as to what this reality is.

In such a fashion, actuality becomes displaced by the simulacrum, which is none other than the
"concept of being" -- and it thereby loses its claim of adequation to the concept, to the concept of
being. Since the reference is thus broken between the experienced world and the concept of
Being -- which is supposed to yield the "true world" -- the "true world" is itself only a concept,
indeed, an abstraction predicated upon the very rejection, the very antithesis of actuality. And
this antithesis further devalues the actual to another hyperreal domain, to that of "mere
appearance," "becoming," and "non-being."

For the tradition, then, actuality is never grasped as such. In this case, it is doubly dissimulated --
as Being and as mere appearance, both of which are conceptual predications which testify to no
actuality at all. To follow Baudrillard's usage, both Being and mere appearance are "resurrections
of the real by signs," i.e., they are two forms of simulated hyperreality.

What, for Nietzsche, is at the source of this dispossession of actuality by signs? At first, he
claims it is "the prejudice of reason," which "forces us to posit unity, identity, permanence,
substance, cause, thinghood, being," so that we are "ourselves somehow caught in error,
compelled into error. So certain are we, on the basis of rigorous examination, that this is where
the error lies" (l968: 482).

But Nietzsche quickly makes an analogy with the perceptual order, and specifies that it is the
operation of language which itself governs rational thought processes, and it is this which
underlies the fiction, the affabulation, the simulation, of Being:
It is no different in this case than with the movement of the sun: there, our eye is the constant
advocate of error, here it is our language. In its origin, language belongs in the age of the most
rudimentary form of psychology. We enter a realm of crude fetishism when we summon before
consciousness the basic presuppositions of the metaphysics of Language -- in plain talk, the
presuppositions of reason. Everywhere, it sees a doer and doing; it believes in the will
as the cause, it believes in the ego, in the ego as being, in the ego as substance, and it projects
this faith in the ego-substance upon all things -- only thereby does it first create the concept of
"thing". Everywhere "being" is projected by thought, pushed underneath, as the cause; the
concept of being follows, and is derivative of, the concept of ego.... Indeed, nothing has yet
possessed a more naive power of persuasion than the error concerning being... After all, every
word we say and every sentence speak in its favor... "Reason" in language -- oh, what an old
deceptive female she is! I am afraid we are not rid of God because we still have faith in
grammar! (l968: 482-3)

Nietzsche then goes on to sum up his account of this genesis of the double simulacrum, i.e., of
the merely "apparent world," and the so-called "real world," that of "true being," in two brief
propositions:

1) The reasons for which "this" world has been characterized as "apparent" [scheinbar ] are the
very reasons which indicate its reality; any other kind of reality is absolutely indemonstrable.

2) The criteria which have been bestowed on the "true being" of things are the criteria of non-
being, of naught -- of nothing; the "true world" has been constructed out of the contradiction to
the actual world; indeed [this is] an apparent world [eine scheinbare Welt ], insofar as it is
merely a moral-optical illusion [eine moralisch-optische Täuschung]. (l968: 485)

Fine: genesis of both the "apparent" and the "true" worlds, each deriving from our inordinate
faith in discursive rationality, or in short, our grammar. An inherited grammar subtends our
capacity to reason, which, as a universal -- or, at least Western -- characterization of human
understanding, serves as the foundation for our belief in a true world. Yet that belief, as
expressed in the concept of being, is already in Nietzsche's words, an illusion, a fable. As such,
Nietzsche's paradigm is even more complex, perhaps more sinister, than that of Baudrillard,
since Nietzsche begins his account -- "How the 'True World' Finally Became a Fable," or "The
History of an Error," which corresponds to Baudrillard's "successive phases of the image" -- with
the prior suspension of the reference relation.

It's interesting then, to see the elaboration of Nietzsche's account as both the exhaustion of the
very semantic content of the image, sign, or concept -- i.e., "the true world" -- as well as a
reaffirmation of the broken reference. Thus, reference emerges as but a dream, an idyll: but even
more so, the concept, image, idea, or sign, which is described as "the true world," is itself shown
to be evacuated of sense. The history, then, is of an error, which is the evolving development, the
genealogy of an Idea. And as Nietzsche frequently remarked, some ideas or concepts, simply
become effaced : they lose their distinctive signifying marks, their power or place, in a signifying
system. Ideas, in this sense, are precisely like icons, images, or as he says, idols, in that they are
fetishes. As such, they are significantly overinvested. Or, as Baudrillard would have it: hyperreal.
Deflated, thence devalued -- no longer even a medium of exchange -- of exchange value or
symbolic value, they are dis-invested, divested. Let us follow this very curious and picaresque
itinerary of an error:

1) The true world -- attainable for the sage, the pious, the virtuous man; he lives in it, he is it.
(The oldest form of the idea, relatively sensible, simple, and persuasive. A circumlocution for the
sentence, "I, Plato, am the truth.")

2) The true world -- unattainable for now, but promised for the sage, the pious, the virtuous man
("for the sinner who repents"). (Progress of the idea; it becomes more subtle, insidious,
incomprehensible -- it becomes female, it becomes Christian.)

3) The true world -- unattainable, indemonstrable, unpromisable; but the very thought of it -- a
consolation, an obligation, an imperative. (At bottom, the old sun, but seen through mist and
skepticism. The idea has become elusive, pale, Nordic, Königsbergian [i.e., "Kantian"].)

4) The true world -- unattainable? At any rate, unattained. And being unattained, also unknown.
Consequently, not consoling, redeeming, or obligating: how could something unknown obligate
us? (Gray morning. The first yawn of reason. The cock-crow of positivism.)

5) The "true" world -- an idea which is no longer good for anything, not even obligating -- an
idea which has become useless and superfluous -- consequently, a refuted idea: let us abolish it!
(Bright day; breakfast, return of bon sens and cheerfulness; Plato's embarassed blush;
pandemonium of all free spirits.)

6) The true world -- we have abolished. What world has remained? The apparent one perhaps?
But no! With the true world we have also abolished the apparent one.

(Noon; moment of the briefest shadow; end of the longest error; high point of humanity;
INCIPIT ZARATHUSTRA.) (l968: 485-6)

What the so-called "true world" entailed or embraced, what it ostensibly signified, was, for
Nietzsche, practically a catalogue of Western metaphysics: it included the domain of causality,
religion, will, being, science, psychology, morality, and purposiveness. Such a "true world,"
which effectively defines the Judeao-Christian universe itself, the lives and habits of individuals
and their culture, as well as the very discourse of the West, for some two millenia -- this entire
apparatus of our intelligibility itself, Nietzsche attacks with his celebrated "critique of pure
fiction." Such a fictional world, he would remark, in The Antichrist, one not even attaining to the
status of a dream world, finds its initial motivations in precisely a hatred of the actual, the
sensible, world of nature:

In Christianity, neither morality nor religion has even a single point of contact with reality.
Nothing but imaginary causes ("God," "soul," "ego," "spirit," "free will" -- for that matter,
"unfree will"), nothing but imaginary effects ("sin," "redemption," "grace," "punishment,"
"forgiveness of sins"). Intercourse between imaginary beings ("God," "spirits," "souls"); an
imaginary natural science (anthropocentric; no trace of any concept of natural causes); an
imaginary psychology (nothing but self-misunderstandings, interpretations of agreeable or
disagreeable general feelings -- for example, of the states of the sympathetic nervous system --
with the aid of the sign language of the religio-moral idiosyncrasy: "repentance," "pangs of
conscience," "temptations by the devil," "the presence of God"); an imaginary teleology ("the
kingdom of God," "the Last Judgment," "eternal life").

This world of pure fiction is vastly inferior to the world of dreams, insofar as the
latter mirrors reality, whereas the former falsifies, devalues, and negates reality. Once the
concept of "nature" had been invented as the opposite of "God," "natural" had to become a
synonym of "reprehensible": this whole world of fiction is rooted in hatred of the natural (of
reality!); it is the expression of a profound vexation at the sight of reality.

But this explains everything . Who alone has good reason to lie his way out of reality? He who
suffers from it. But to suffer from reality is to be a piece of reality that has come to grief. The
preponderance of feelings of displeasure over feelings of pleasure is the cause of this fictitious
morality and religion; but such a preponderance provides the very formula for decadence (l968:
581).

Sense and Sensibility

Baudrillard's self-professed nihilism, often qualified, is precisely his affirmation of Nietzsche's

critique. This is not just to invoke the Death of God in a narrow sense, but rather, to point in
agreement to the entire apparatus which generated, sustained, and oversaw the repeated atavistic
reincarnations of the divine (e.g., the exhaustive theoretical enterprise of Western scientific
thought, together with its political nationalisms, its utopian ideologies, and its seemingly
interminable series of improbable moral causes), in short, everything that lent purpose and
meaning to a world and to a humanity which found itself constructed through the disposition of
that meaning. What for Baudrillard would result in the oversaturated world of hyperreality, was
for Nietzsche, precisely the entire symbolic of the "religio-moral idiosyncracy," or what
Heidegger would later term the Western tradition of "ontotheology" (perhaps revising
Nietzsche's own ironic term, "monotonotheism"). If Baudrillard oversees the social imploding
into the masses, so Nietzsche likewise saw the progressive emergence of "the herd individual" as
consequent to the intellectual and moral encoding of the tradition. For both thinkers, the
individual would find his or her own value and significance in function of this encoding, just as
Plato had defined the very essence of the human to be discursive rationality itself. While
Nietzsche would regard the Platonic metaphysical edifice to be a "pious fraud," constructed
either to advance the interests of the state, or to preserve the semblance of a universal ground
(the good, true, beautiful taken up into a supraessential One -- which would foreshadow the
Trinitarian god of being, truth, and goodness) against his adversaries, the sophists, or, even as a
hyperbolic response to his other adversaries, the Protagorean academics, he nonetheless did so
by cleverly manipulating the sensible image, or icon, in the account (which was itself specifically
advanced as an icon) of the "divided line" in the Republic. That sensibility should so intrude
upon, and indeed, surreptitiously condition, the genesis of "true world" only serves to reaffirm
"Plato's embarrassed blush" -- at the return of "good sense" and at the very superfluity of such a
"true" world (much less, in response to Alcibiades' erotic advances in the Symposium).
If such a world would be invoked to assuage our suffering by lending meaning (precisely, the
metaphysical-moral investment of tradition) to it and to humanity, Nietzsche saw all too clearly
that such meaning was precisely the cause of so much of our suffering in the first place: it placed
all suffering under the metaphysical-moral structure of sin and guilt, thereby only intensifying its
domain and rendering impossible the elimination of our ressentiment against reality, i.e., the
actual world of human existence. Hence, Nietzsche would invoke Zarathustra to repudiate the
entire tradition, arguing instead, that the world is an immense play of eternally recurring forces,
in constant metamorphosis and transfiguration -- a Will to Power whose only "truth" consisted in
the dynamics of its appearing, i.e., our experiencing it as the infinitely mutable domain of
sensible objectivity (of which we are ingredient). Of itself, Will to Power is meaningless: it has
neither origin, moral purpose, finality, nor significance. But, for all that, it is nonetheless the
repository of all possible forms, events, history, and future -- humanity included.

Like Nietzsche, Baudrillard would locate the nihilism of his own age in the hyperreal world of
simulation, which would resurrect the real in the form of exclusively and universally detemining
codes of signification. With the sublation of reference and signification, however, the real is
short-circuited, and the system becomes infinitely orbital and refractory, ever changing its values
and significance by virtue of its governing operationalism. Hence, Baudrillard's charge that the
system of meaning kills, that all value is sundered by it, rendered into its opposite, negated, and
ultimately, left indifferent (l981: 234). All this facilitated by the unassimilable speed of the
electronic media, which, as we saw earlier, effectively mediates nothing, but can explain
everything according to an infinity of symbolic axes, such that everything becomes transparent,
neutral, inconsequential, without effect or affect. This would be the terrorism of the system itself,
its capacity to render everything indifferent, adiaphorous, a series of images which, in their
effulgent succession, no longer refer to anything, of communication which endlessly circulates
information, only to be transformed, reversed, countered, debated, rearticulated politically,
economically, aesthetically, ideololgically, according to yet another symbolic index. Handguns
don't cause crime, public assistance causes welfare, ketchup is a vegetable, God must be brought
back to the schools, sex education causes teenage pregnancies, condoms promote AIDS,
dictatorships are emerging democracies, everyone profits from the globalization of trade, the free
market will restore human rights, equal opportunity is racist and sexist, etc. Mindless saturation,
meltdown, indifference.

Yet, just as Nietzsche had concluded his "History of an Error" by invoking Zarathustra -- indeed,
Twilight of the Idols itself ends with a quotation from Zarathustra -- so does Baudrillard sound
much the same call at the close of his discusssion of nihilism ("Sur le nihilisme"),
concluding Simulacres et Simulation. Instead of "Incipit Zarathustra," his final remark in the
book is "C'est là où commence la séduction." Seduction would in large part constitute
Baudrillard's return to the actual, to the primacy of the objective domain in its sensible integrity,
its objective necessity. Expressed in terms quite reminiscent of Zarathustra's account of Will to
Power, such an objective dimension is framed to challenge the original sin of a significant and
purposive "world order," one so transparent in its hyperreality as to leave practically no clue that
the entire order is itself what he would come to term "the perfect crime." Baudrillard's inquiry
into the transfiguring and transforming play -- the seductive game -- of objective appearances
would serve as a modest beginning to counter the totalizing systems of purposive interpretation,
whose legitimate agency, we finally and fatally come to realize, may be largely nominal. The
interminable age of this "moral-optical illusion" may well be returned, as Nietzsche had hoped,
to the domain of bon sens -- of good sense -- where chance and necessity would give rise to the
fatality of a tragic wisdom, a joyous wisdom. And this was Zarathustra's "secret":

"...and I whispered something into her [Life's] ear, right through her tangled yellow foolish
tresses.

"You know that, O Zarathustra? Nobody knows that."

And we looked at each other and gazed on the green meadow over which the cool evening was
running just then, and we wept together. But then life was dearer to me than all my wisdom ever
was (l968: 339).

REFERENCES

BAUDRILLARD, Jean (l979) De la Séduction . Paris: Galilée.

----- (l981) Simulacres et Simulation . Paris: Galilée.

----- (l983) Simulations . Trans. P. Foss, P. Patton, P. Beitchman. New York: Semiotext(e).

----- (l992) L'Illusion de la Fin. Paris: Galilée.

----- (l993) Baudrillard Live . Ed. M. Gane. New York: Routledge.

----- (l995) Le Crime Parfait. Paris: Galilée.

DESCARTES, René (l985) The Philosophical Writings of Descartes , II Vols. Trans. J.

Cottingham, R. Stoothoff, D. Murdoch. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.

DESCOMBES, Vincent (l980) Modern French Philosophy. Cambridge:

Cambridge Univ. Press.

NIETZSCHE, Friedrich (l968) The Portable Nietzsche . Trans. W. Kaufmann. New York:
Viking.

PLATO (l935) The Republic . II Vols. Trans. P. Shorey. Cambridge:

Harvard Univ. Press.

----- (l968) The Republic of Plato. Trans. A. Bloom. New York:

Basic Books.