What Counts as “Deeper Reality” in Baudrillard’s First-Order Simulacra?

“What is truth?” Pilate asked. AI image

Introduction

The phrase “the first order of simulacra reflects a deeper reality” is frequently repeated in commentaries on Jean Baudrillard, often as if its meaning were self-evident. Yet Baudrillard himself never treats “reality” as a neutral, timeless, or ontological category. This article argues that, in the context of first-order simulacra, “deeper reality” does not refer to an essence hidden behind appearances, but to a historically specific belief in the world as ordered, meaningful, and guaranteed by transcendent structures such as nature, God, and social hierarchy. Clarifying this point helps prevent the projection of both longstanding and subsequent philosophical concerns onto Baudrillard’s early analysis of representation.

From Symbolic Exchange to Representation

Before the emergence of simulacra, Baudrillard locates pre-modern societies within what he calls symbolic exchange. In such formations, objects and images do not primarily signify; instead, they bind participants through obligations generated by ritual. Meaning is not accumulated, stored, or aestheticized. Rather, it circulates through acts that are singular, irreversible, and socially binding. Value here is neither economic nor aesthetic but relational and ceremonial.

The first-order simulacrum arises when this symbolic logic begins to dissolve. Images no longer generate social relations directly, yet they still refer to a world believed to exist independently of representation. The sign does not float freely; it reflects. Simulation, at this stage, operates as imitation rather than substitution. Baudrillard describes this regime as one in which the image “is the reflection of a profound reality” (Baudrillard, 1994, p. 6). The “profundity” at stake here is historical rather than ontological: it names not an essence of the world, but the culturally dominant belief that meaning precedes representation.

Ritual Images, Aura, and Restricted Circulation

Sacred images exemplify the earlier symbolic regime. Byzantine icons, for instance, were not objects of aesthetic contemplation but instruments of ritual practice. Their circulation was limited, their placement fixed, and their function prescribed. Each image carried a specific obligation within a collective ceremonial order. Such images did not represent belief; they enacted it.

Here, Walter Benjamin’s concept of aura is instructive, though not identical. Aura names the authority of uniqueness grounded in tradition, distance, and ritual use (Benjamin, 2008). Baudrillard’s notion of symbolic exchange resonates with this description insofar as both thinkers oppose aesthetic autonomy and mechanical reproducibility. Yet Baudrillard’s concept is more radical: symbolic exchange is not simply an auratic mode of representation later lost, but a non-representational social logic rendered structurally impossible by the emergence of generalized value systems. The first-order simulacrum begins precisely when this enactment can no longer operate.

The Classical Image and the Birth of Aesthetic Representation

During the Classical and Baroque periods, images increasingly detach from ritual necessity and assume an aesthetic and representational role. Visual forms proliferate and enter public space. The Jesuit church of Sant’Andrea al Quirinale in Rome, designed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini in the seventeenth century, offers a clear illustration (Toffoletti, 2011). Its oval plan, dramatic illumination, lavish materials, and sculptural ornamentation overwhelm the senses, producing awe through spectacle.

For Baudrillard, this excess masks a loss. The image can no longer generate symbolic obligation, so it compensates through theatrical display. Religious devotion is no longer ritually produced but visually induced. As Baudrillard notes, images now serve “the control of a pacified society” by cementing institutional authority (Baudrillard, 1993a, p. 53). Representation replaces participation; spectacle replaces obligation.

What Is the “Deeper Reality”?

At this point, the crucial question arises: what exactly is the reality to which first-order simulacra relate? It is neither a metaphysical truth hidden behind appearances nor a natural essence awaiting disclosure. Rather, it is the world conceived as an ordered totality, a cosmos structured by divine intention, natural hierarchy, and stable meaning.

This reality functions as a guarantee. Signs are believed to interpret the world rather than construct it. Nature provides forms to be imitated, God anchors meaning, and society appears as a coherent whole. The legitimacy of representation depends on this assumed external order. In this sense, “deeper reality” names not a thing but a belief: the belief that meaning precedes representation and that the world grounds signs.

This is what distinguishes first-order simulacra from later regimes of simulation. Although the signifier and signified may be arbitrarily linked, that arbitrariness is tolerated only insofar as reference is believed to anchor meaning. The world is still presumed to ground signification, even if representation embellishes or distorts it.

Counterfeits, Imitation, and the Visibility of the Referent

Baroque ornamentation makes this logic especially visible. Stucco decorations, faux marbles, and sculpted cherubs in Sant’Andrea al Quirinale openly declare their artificiality. They do not attempt to deceive. Instead, they play with resemblance. Baudrillard describes such images as counterfeits: representations that imitate nature while remaining recognizably distinct from it (Genosko, 1994).

The difference between copy and original remains legible. The viewer knows that stucco fruit is not organic, just as painted heavens are not celestial (Toffoletti, 2011). This visible gap preserves the referent, or more precisely, the belief in the referent. The image does not abolish the world; it stages it. Simulation here depends on the continued belief that what is being imitated precedes the imitation.

Only later, in second-order simulacra, does the sign begin to circulate autonomously within a semiotic and productive system, gradually eroding the necessity of reference. The first order still requires the belief that the world precedes signs.

Conclusion

To say that first-order simulacra reflect a deeper reality is to describe a historical belief, not a philosophical constant. That reality is the world understood as meaningful prior to representation, structured by transcendent principles that guarantee interpretation. Baroque images, religious architecture, and aesthetic excess do not negate this world; they reflect it while compensating for the loss of symbolic exchange. Reading Baudrillard carefully requires resisting the temptation to import later theories of signification into this earlier regime. Precision matters, especially when a single phrase risks hardening into an empty formula.

Bibliography

Baudrillard, J. (1993a). Symbolic exchange and death (I. Hamilton Grant, Trans.). Sage.

Baudrillard, J. (1994). Simulacra and simulation (S. F. Glaser, Trans.). University of Michigan Press.

Benjamin, W. (2008). The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction. Penguin.

Genosko, G. (1994). Baudrillard and signs: Signification ablaze. Routledge.

Toffoletti, K. (2011). Baudrillard reframed: Interpreting key thinkers for the arts. I. B. Tauris.