Positive and negative thematization of reality: Šliogeris and Baudrillard

The article aims to elucidate the dialectical nature of the most fundamental ontological tenets of Šliogerian philosophy while contrasting them to Baudrillard’s interpretation of the ontological status of the Rreal. In contrast to Šliogeris who thematizes the Real both in terms of what it is an what it is not, Baudrillard proceeds in a negative way only by showing what the Rreal is not. Šliogeris’ philosophy is based on a paradoxical ontological argument that the metadiscursive Real functions as the final non-reductive referent conceptualised as the ultimate perceptual substance (Isness). As an ultimate metaphysical principle, it serves as a core of experience, although it cannot be adequately described ex definitio or else somehow reduced to any meaningful counterpart of the conceptual system. Baudrillard’s philosophy, on the contrary, is based on the principle of semiological reductionism, i.e. on the premise that all meaningful links to metadiscursive reality follow the self-referential logic and therefore are merely interrelated symbolic constructions (simulacra) precluding any direct access to the and not only to its positive (cataphatic) articulation