Jean Baudrillard: Quotes about the truth

Jean Baudrillard was French sociologist and philosopher. Explore interesting quotes on truth.
Jean Baudrillard: 128 quotes8 likes

“The secret of theory is that truth does not exist.”

Jean Baudrillard

Source: Fragments: Cool Memories III, 1990-1995

“To challenge and to cope with this paradoxical state of things, we need a paradoxical way of thinking; since the world drifts into delirium, we must adopt a delirious point of view. We must no longer assume any principle of truth, of causality, or any discursive norm. Instead, we must grant both the poetic singularity of events and the radical uncertainty of events. It is not easy. We usually think that holding to the protocols of experimentation and verification is the most difficult thing. But in fact the most difficult thing is to renounce the truth and the possibility of verification, to remain as long as possible on the enigmatic, ambivalent, and reversible side of thought.”

Jean Baudrillard

The Vital Illusion (2000) "The Murder of the Real". Wellek Library Lectures given May 1999 at the University of California, Irvine
New millennium

“The discourse of truth is quite simply impossible. It eludes itself. Everything eludes itself, everything scoffs at its own truth, seduction renders everything elusive. The fury to unveil the truth, to get at the naked truth, the one which haunts all discourses of interpretation, the obscene rage to uncover the secret, is proportionate to the impossibility of ever achieving this. …But this rage, this fury, only bears witness to the eternity of seduction and to the impossibility of mastering it.”

Jean Baudrillard

Source: 1980s, The Ecstasy of Communication (1987), p. 73

“If he is this good at acting crazy, it's because he is." Nor is military psychology mistaken in this regard: in this sense, all crazy people simulate, and this lack of distinction is the worst kind of subversion. It is against this lack of distinction that classical reason armed itself in all its categories. But it is what today again outflanks them, submerging the principle of truth.”

Jean Baudrillard

The Precession of Simulcra
1980s, Simulacra and Simulation (1981)

“The simulacrum now hides, not the truth, but the fact that there is none, that is to say, the continuation of Nothingness.”

Jean Baudrillard

1990s, Radical Thought (1994)

“If the thought enunciates an object as a truth, it is only as a challenge to this object's own self-fulfillment.”

Jean Baudrillard

1990s, Radical Thought (1994)

“The simulacrum is never what hides the truth — it is truth that hides the fact that there is none. The simulacrum is true.”

Jean Baudrillard

Ecclesiastes
1980s, Simulacra and Simulation (1981)