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The Intelligence of Evil or the Lucidity Pact

Book by Jean Baudrillard · 2 quotes · Reality, Pop Culture, Simulation

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The Intelligence of Evil or the Lucidity Pact Quotes

“The exact hypothesis is that man is born unfree, that the world is born untrue, non-objective, non-rational. But this radical hypothesis is definitively beyond proof, unverifiable and, in a sense, unbearable. Hence the success of the opposite hypothesis, of the easiest hypothesis. Subjective illusion: that of freedom. Objective illusion: that of reality. Just as belief in freedom is merely the illusion of being the cause of one's own acts, so the belief in objective reality is the illusion of finding an original cause for phenomena and hence of inserting the world into the order of truth and reason. Despairing of confronting otherness, seduction, the dual relation and destiny, we invent the easiest solution: freedom. First, the ideal concept of a subject wrestling with his own freedom. Then, de facto liberation, unconditional liberation - the highest stage of freedom. We pass from the right to freedom to the categorical imperative of liberation. But to this stage, too, there is the same violent abreaction: we rid ourselves of freedom in every way possible, even going so far as to invent new servitudes.”

“Fortunately, there are other, more poetic ways of ridding oneself of freedom - that of gaming, for example, where what is at stake is not a freedom subject to the law, but a sovereignty subject to rules. A more subtle and paradoxical freedom which consists in a rigorous observance, an enchanted form of voluntary servitude that is, as it were, the miraculous combination of master and slave: in gaming no one is free, everyone is both the master and the slave of the game.”