The Question of Reality: the Relationship Between the Real and the Unreal in Baudrillard and Morin

Abstract

Jean Baudrillard and Edgar Morin were both fascinated by the question of the ‘reality of reality’ in the contemporary world, where the domination of media, technics and technology has substantially reconfigured mankind’s relationship with reality. The substantial difference between the two positions is that Baudrillard in the endless dialectic between the real and the unreal disrupts both, without the possibility of their ever being caught in their essence, while in Morin the two are an integral part of each other and it isn’t possible for humans to escape the contradiction of a life that is both real and unreal, in constant exchange between reality and imaginary. For Baudrillard, the task of thought is to expose a reality that is fundamentally illusory, and it must do so through a series of provocative propositions that force reality to reveal itself as illusion. For Morin, social phenomena, even unexpected events in the social system, must be designed with specific attention to their symbolic, mythological aspect, which is a constituent part of social communication with respect to the phenomenon itself. Aspects generally confined within the irrational lie must have their space as an object of study, in order to increase awareness of the continued contamination and of the indissolubility of the epistemological couple reality-unreality.