The Principle of Production and a Critique of Metaphysics: From the Perspective of Theory of Baudrillard

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1 Front. Philos. China 2014, 9(2): DOI /s SPECIAL THEME The Principle of Production and a Critique of Metaphysics: From the Perspective of Theory of Baudrillard Abstract In this article, I discuss Baudrillard s critique of metaphysics based on his work The Mirror of Production, in which he stresses the principle of production i.e., dichotomy and derivation. In the development of classical German philosophy, the principle of production was speculatively established, first as Descartes cogito, then as Fichte s Tathandlung, and finally as Hegel s labor, and grew to be a major principle of modern metaphysics. At the article s conclusion, the meaning of Symbolic Exchange Baudrillard s utopian condition lying beyond the principle of production will be discussed. Keywords Baudrillard, metaphysics, production, symbolic exchange, reciprocal 1 Introduction The Mirror of Production, published in 1973, was the magnum opus of the well-known French philosopher and media critic Jean Baudrillard. In it, he attempts to refute Marxism, a system of thought to which he had previously subscribed and which had served as the essential background for his research on consumer society. In The Mirror of Production, Baudrillard begins to argue against such Marxist conceptions as labor, nature, and historical materialism, all of which were connected with the core notion of production. Although Baudrillard had previously translated Marx s important work, The German Ideology, many scholars have found presumably errors in conveying Marx s ideas in The Mirror of Production. For example, when discussing the concept of labor, Baudrillard regards the distinction of use value and exchange value as Marx s contribution to the theory of value, stressing the relationship of these two Received December 12, 2012 ( ) Department of Philosophy, Tsinghua University, Beijing , China melodyxia9936@163.com

2 182 types of value and ultimately concluding that the former is derived from the latter. In reality, the distinction of use value and exchange value had been made by Adam Smith and David Ricardo, while Marx simply confirmed their findings. In this sense, Baudrillard misunderstood Marx, and this misunderstanding has led many to deprecate The Mirror of Production. However, in my view, we should not ignore that this work makes: Baudrillard offers an important critique of production qua the foundation upon which the modern metaphysics is based. 2 What does Baudrillard mean by the critique of production? To Baudrillard, The critical theory of the mode of production does not touch upon the principle of production. All the concepts it articulates, describe only the dialectical and historical genealogy of the contents of production, leaving production as a form intact (Baudrillard 1975, 17). That is to say, although much critical theory from the 19 th century until the present day has criticized the capitalist mode of production, the only solution offered in its stead is a different mode of production, leaving us under the control of capitalism still. The reasons for this lie in the mode of production (whatever mode it may be), for as the truth of capital and of political economy, it is taken up whole by the revolution only to capital s benefit (Baudrillard 1975, 17). Capital develops the productive forces but also restrains them: they must be liberated (Baudrillard 1975, 17 18). According to this view, no philosophical revolution from the textual productivity of Tel Quel to Deleuze s factory-machine productivity of unconscious could overthrow the system of capitalism, and as such they are not as radical as they seem to be at first glance. The truly radical critique will occur only when the critique touches upon the mode of production; touching upon the principle of production is thus the key point that Baudrillard seeks to establish. If we continually concern ourselves with the content of production, trying to substitute one kind of production for another, we can never establish a dialogue with Baudrillard, who tries to criticize the notion of production itself. So, what is the meaning of the principle of production, which is the object of Baudrillard s critique? In the preface to The Mirror of Production, Baudrillard gives us his own interpretation: production would be nothing but a code imposing this type of decipherment, the decipherment, where there is properly neither finality, cipher, nor value (Baudrillard 1975, 19). This kind of production exists not only in the economic system, but also in the operation of the whole of modern society. It is a way of thinking, a way of constituting everything that happens in modern society.

3 The Principle of Production and a Critique of Metaphysics 183 On the one hand, to Baudrillard, as the subject of modern society, man should be produced it is no longer a question of being oneself but of producing oneself (Baudrillard 1975, 19). Man has learned to reflect on himself according to this scheme of production. On the other hand, it is with this scheme of production that the objective world emerges and through which man recognizes himself objectively (Baudrillard 1975, 19). That is to say, production is the medium of reflection through which man and the objective world emerge as image. Or to put it another way, production as form has become the mirror of the objective world. The mirror is the medium through which man can find the existence of himself and the existence of the objective world. The image of the mirror is the Other in contrast to the I, and I have found myself in this Other. When Baudrillard tries to regard production as a mirror, what he wants to show is the logic of the mirror. The logic of the mirror includes two aspects. First, it means dichotomy: in front of the mirror, everything becomes two, the object and its image. Second, it means the activity of derivation: the object being reflected derives (produces) the image. Subjectivity is presupposed in the production. Of course, we cannot ignore the influence of Jacques Lacan when talking about the logic of the mirror. Lacan uses the theory of the mirror to describe the process of subjectivity formation, arguing that by observing the activity of a baby in front of a mirror, we may infer how subjectivity arises. Moreover, the subject formed by the mirror is illusory and as such the subjectivity constructed by this illusion is itself an illusory subjectivity. Therefore, Baudrillard s mirror of production analogizes Lacan s theory of the mirror, critiquing humanist subjectivity. For Baudrillard, humanism in capitalism takes the form of production, labor, and value. The principle of political economy is a form of reason, a logic of code. From this point of view, production, subjectivity, and reason are highly inter-related. There is another question that needs to be asked: why is it that production can be a typical expression of the mirror logic? Answering this question will help us understand why Baudrillard could render historical materialism as a whole susceptible to critique. 3 In The Mirror of Production, Baudrillard connects the principle of production with Western metaphysics: The mirror of production in which all Western metaphysics is reflected, must be broken (Baudrillard 1975, 47). Baudrillard did not offer further explanation of this sentence. However, in my view, it is the key to understanding his criticism of production and if we want to talk about

4 184 Baudrillard positively, we should consider this sentence very seriously. The metaphysics mentioned by Baudrillard should be termed modern metaphysics, a tradition that began with Descartes, continuing through Kant, Fichte, and Hegel before finally ending with Marx. In order to understand metaphysics in general, we must return to this tradition. Hegel observed that, From the beginning of Descartes, we come into a sort of independent philosophy, a philosophy that understands: it itself comes from reason, and self-consciousness is the main link of truth (Hegel 1978, 59). Hegel could make this point about Descartes because from Descartes onward, the cogito was the presupposition of deduction; that is to say, it was from Descartes onward that the subject principle was constructed. Initially, however, the method used by Descartes to talk about cogito ergo sum combines the methods of intuition and deduction. At first, from the perspective of intuition, Descartes thinks that nothing relying on the senses is reliable. In order to clear up any remaining doubts, Descartes reduces everything to cogito. For Descartes, cogito means I doubt : nothing is reliable, and everything can be doubted with the exception of the fact that I doubt, which refers to the inner activity in thought. When Descartes talks about philosophy, he wants to make it clear and certain that in order to do so, he must find a reliable starting point upon which the whole philosophy can be based. I doubt as I think comes into being as this starting point. In this sense, we could say that Descartes paved the way for modern metaphysics. What is the key to modern metaphysics? It is this inner principle which presupposes the whole world as a creation of cogito (I think). In the past, when we talked about this principle, we always stressed the cogito as the starting point of philosophy, and ignored its deduction qua inner principle. Modern metaphysics implies a procession from inner (cogito) to outer (the whole world), which can be expressed as a sort of production of consciousness. cogito as producer produces sum as production. If Descartes created this kind of consciousness production, the whole of classical German philosophy followed on along this inner principle. Consciousness production exerts its power in the mirror logic, which includes a sort of reflection. Representation and reflection, in a sense, have the same meaning as the principle of production in the development of classical German philosophy. When Baudrillard claims to break the mirror of production and thereby transcend the whole of Western metaphysics, he is regarding the principle of production as a way of thinking about the whole of Western metaphysics, one which pays attention to representations. How could representation, reflection, and production be connected in modern metaphysics? In order to answer this question, we should look back to the source of representation: Kant s philosophy.

5 The Principle of Production and a Critique of Metaphysics 185 When Kant completes his Copernican Revolution, he creates a regulative philosophy whose regulations (or principles, or laws) are made by us ourselves. It is Kant who introduces pure subjective idealism onto the scene: Fichte simply makes it more systematic, although Kant does not agree entirely with Fichte. 1 Fichte s I qua self-positing I still comes out of Kant s regulative philosophy. That is to say, when our view of the world is simply representations (these representations are regulations) made by ourselves, then if we want certainty in knowledge, we need to know how we construct ourselves. This is the inner logic passed down from Kant to Fichte. From this point of view, Hegel s description of idealism is correct: first, subjective idealism can be regarded as being in a positive relationship to the world, at peace with the world. Second, its thinking is itself actuality, and thus its relationship to the latter is that of idealism. Apprehending itself in this way, it is as if the world had for it only now come into being (Hegel 1977, ). Third, pure consciousness posited in a twofold manner; once as restless movement to and fro through all its moments, aware in them of an otherness which is superseded in the act of grasping it; and again, rather as the tranquil unity certain of its [own] truth (Hegel 1977, 143). The first two of these points apply to Kant, and all three points apply to Fichte. When Fichte posits the I as the starting point of philosophy, and gives us the three principles of the self-positing I, it seems that Fichte is offering a typical subjective idealism. Everything, however, changes in Schelling s Philosophy of Nature. Instead of the primacy of the subject in relation to a world of objects, Schelling now insists that the productivity does not begin as an I, but only becomes an I (Bowie 1993, 57). Fichte gives us a self-positing I whose essence is the original action (Tathandlung). According to Schelling, we should be asking for something that precedes this original action. Schelling, suggests the notion of nature, i.e. the concept of the pure subject-object. Now Schelling begins his philosophical construction (which obviously contrasts with regulative philosophy) with the subject-object, which is a kind of absolute identity. This is an objective perspective, from which we resist the temptation to bring the world of objects 1 As Kant wrote in an open letter in 1799, But I am so opposed to metaphysics, as defined according to the Fichtean principles, that I have advised him, in a letter, to turn his fine literary gifts to the problem of applying The Critique of Pure Reason rather than squander them in cultivating fruitless sophistries [Spitzfindigkeiten (apices)]. He, however, has replied politely by explaining that he would not make light of scholasticism after all. Thus the question whether I take the spirit of Fichtean philosophy to be a genuinely critical philosophy is already answered by Fichte himself, and it is unnecessary for me to express my opinion of its value or lack of value. For the issue here does not concern an object that is being appraised but concerns rather the appraising subject, and so it is enough that I renounce any connection with that philosophy (Kant 1799).

6 186 into our consciousness. What Schelling has done is very important for Hegel. Schelling s magnetic line is, in some sense, Hegel s invisible construction of the phenomenology of spirit. Schelling stresses that there are three points on the magnetic line: the first potency emphasizes the object pole (A = B+); the second the infinite, or the ideal, or the subject pole (A + = B); and the third (named, the eternal ) the absolute, indifferently. Accordingly, we can find the same structure in Hegel s syllogism, which also unfolds in three points: one is inclined to the subjective aspect, one is inclined to the objective aspect, and finally reaches a sort of identity (subject-object unity). To Hegel, this is the process through which spirit proceeds from subjective aspect to objective aspect, culminating in absolute knowing (spirit, or identity). That is to say, both the subjective aspect and the objective aspect are inner moments of the whole process. This process or movement, as a whole refers to Hegel s identity, or (perhaps more precisely) totality. From this point of view, we can say that Hegel created the method of immanent critique (Stern 2002, 41). How are we to understand this immanent critique? In my view, it is the method which will bring individual things into a whole, developing system, so that the individual thing is no longer alienated from the system, but is rather a necessary moment in the system, mak[ing] us feel at home in the world. There are no alienated things in the world all of them are just inner moments in the development of the system. To explain this kind of critical method, Hegel tells us that If the refutation is thorough, it is derived and developed from the principle itself, not accomplished by counter-assertions and random thoughts from outside (Hegel 1977, 13). With this immanent critique, Hegel s Phenomenology criticizes subjective idealism. In order to achieve identity, subjective idealism qua the subjective aspect of Reason should be investigated. We should emphasize that neither Hegel s nor Schelling s identity is an identity without differences both of them refer to identity as difference-in-unity. To Hegel, however, it is difference in quality; to Schelling, it is difference in quantity. As such, only on the basis of Hegel s philosophy of identity will the critique of subjective idealism prove to be critical for Hegel s system. Essentially, subjective idealism qua the subjective aspect of identity is an inner moment which should be investigated in terms of its own principle, and should be regarded as one stage, moving to the next, within the development of the system as a whole. Thus, to Hegel, subjective idealism is an incomplete idealism. In the chapter Reason, Hegel seems to regard Kant and Fichte as the objects of his critique, though he does not openly mention their names. Hegel criticizes Kant s deduction of the categories. For Kant, the category is the essentiality of the existent, and at the same time, it means that

7 The Principle of Production and a Critique of Metaphysics 187 self-consciousness and being are the same essence. I think Hegel agrees with this point of view; what Hegel disagrees with is that this essence is immediately grasped without any negation. As such, for Hegel the deduction of the categories means we can no longer talk of things at all (Hegel 1977, 143), and moreover we cannot resolve the contradiction between individuality and universality, since the differences will find no room for them in the pure schema of categories. 4 For Hegel, to go beyond subjective idealism is to approach the truth. The truth, in Hegelian terms, is Geist, which means differential unity, that is, the unity that does not negate all differences. In Phenomenology, Hegel talks about the notion of Geist through the development of self-consciousness. Hegel has shown us that if we want to approach self-consciousness, we rely on the other : Self-consciousness achieves its satisfaction only in another self-consciousness (Hegel 1977, 110). According to Hegel, the notion of self-consciousness is completed in three moments: in the first, the pure undifferentiated I is its first immediate object; in the second, this immediacy is itself an absolute mediation, it is only as a supersession of the independent object, in other words, it is Desire (Hegel 1977, 110). Hegel uses the concept of Desire to describe the drive which makes consciousness movement, life, and process. It is this process that makes self-consciousness productive. In the process, self-consciousness produces another self-consciousness to make itself appear. At the third point, the truth of self-consciousness, which is certainty of the world, is really a double reflection (Hegel 1977, 110). For Hegel, self-consciousness obtains its representation through reflection. It is the reflection of another self-consciousness which represents that which is the self-consciousness. That is to say: A self-consciousness exists for a self-consciousness. But how is this reflection possible? For Hegel, A self-consciousness, in being an object, is just as much I as object (Hegel 1977, 110). That is to say, in the process of becoming self-conscious, self-consciousness must be objectified. Geist comes before this process of objectification; it is not a noun, but a verb, or a movement. It implies a dichotomy wherein one moment could confirm itself through reflecting the other, as a representation of the other. From this point of view, we can understand that in order to express the notion of Geist, Hegel speaks of the I that is We and We that is I (Hegel 1977, 110). For Hegel, this objectification can be regarded as Labor a very important concept for Hegel and Marx. In the chapter on Lordship and Bondage, Labor or work, qua the negative activity of fashioning the thing, makes the bondsman

8 188 confirm and reflect himself as a real man. In a sense, the dialectics of lordship and bondage come into being only if slaves find their self-consciousness in nature. This sort of reflection, in Hegel s context, is the meaning of the concept of Labor. From this point of view, Marx confirmed Hegel s contribution to philosophy, although the contribution of Hegel is cloaked in the garb of purely speculative thought. In the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Marx systematically critiques Hegel s thought, mentioning the notion of Labor as a positive contribution: The outstanding achievement of Hegel s Phänomenologie and of its final outcome, the dialectic of negativity as the moving and generating principle, is thus first that Hegel conceives the self-creation of man as a process, conceives objectification as loss of the object, as alienation and as transcendence of this alienation; that he thus grasps the essence of labor and comprehends objective man true, because real man as the outcome of man s own labor. (Marx 1959, 66) To think something dialectically is to think something as a process a process of becoming, and a historical process. The notion of Labor is a medium through which something can become historical; that is to say, something can be a process only if something can objectify itself to the other (be it a thing or a person), and at the same time, can transcend this objectification by comprehending it. In a sense, the dialectical principle is the principle of labor. Accepting the principle of labor, Marx created his own philosophy. What is the difference between Hegel and Marx s notion of Labor? The difference does not lie in the process of Labor itself, but in the type of labor. To Hegel, the notion of Labor is used to explain the relationship of self-consciousness; whereas, Hegel s Labor can only happen in thought. To marx, labor is man s actual activity, and deals with the relationship between man and nature. In Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Marx called this kind of labor sensible activity. How could Marx develop another notion of labor? The key is the concept of alienation. Alienation, to Marx, is as objectification is to Hegel. In Hegel s view, there is no difference between these two words: both of them mean a process of the objectification of subject to Marx, however, this kind of objectifying is, in capitalism, alienation, which is negative rather than positive for the subject. To Marx, alienation, as well as labor, is negative objectification. Thus, when Marx tries to distinguish himself from Hegel, he uses the notion of Labor: He (Hegel) grasps labor as the essence of man as man s essence which

9 The Principle of Production and a Critique of Metaphysics 189 stands the test: he sees only the positive, not the negative side of labor. Labor is man s coming-to-be for himself within alienation, or as alienated man. The only labor which Hegel knows and recognizes is abstractly mental labor. (Marx 1959, 67) Despite their differences concerning the notion of Labor, we should stress Marx and Hegel s similarity. As far as the principle of Labor is concerned, Marx agrees with Hegel. This principle of Labor as the process of alienation is called production by Marx. When Marx tries to state the major thrust of Hegel s thought, he writes: The whole history of the alienation process [Entäußerungsgeschichte] and the whole process of the retraction of the alienation is therefore nothing but the history of production of abstract (i.e., absolute) thought of logical, speculative thought. (Marx 1959, 66 67) The notion of production thus comes out. To Marx, production is a way of thinking which refers to thinking something historically, or in the midst of the alienation process. From this point of view, German philosophy as a whole describes the productivity of logical and speculative thought. Marx is not against productivity itself; he objects to productivity that is purely of the mind rather than actual. As we all know, production is also very important to Marx, as it is the central concept of historical materialism. The mode of production, the force of production, and the relation of production all these notions are created by Marx to describe elements of the development of society, and all are constructed by production. Marx has grasped the essence of modern society, which concerns only two questions: what to produce and how to produce. Therefore, Marx has reason to use production as the central concept of his philosophy. However, as we have mentioned above, metaphysics changed in form between Kant and Hegel, although not in its principle of dichotomy and activity. In a sense, activity is the description of the restless movement to and fro through all its moments proposed by Hegel, which could be regarded as the principle of production, just as Fichte talks about his Tathandlung as productivity. Metaphysics prefers to divide the world into two, and making representation (reflection) as the certainty of knowledge (which is why metaphysics should always be regarded as idealism). Baudrillard connects the principle of production with Western metaphysics, and grasps the essence of metaphysics as a result. In order to produce, we have to presuppose the division of subject and object, of world and man, of idea and

10 190 reality; production as activity is the medium of the identity of division. Is Baudrillard right on target when he criticizes Marx in the critique of production? I do not think so. Marx s production is not on the level of principle, or purely activities in thought, it is man/women s activities in the real world, in the living world, in which such division can be made. Marx s production is a way to overcome the limitations of metaphysics, not a means of conducting metaphysical thought. From this point of view, Baudrillard s critique is right for German idealism on the whole, but not for Marx. That said, Baudrillard s critique may be instructive for those of us researching the relationship between Marx and German idealism which is a very classical and important topic. 5 Baudrillard regards principle of production as a principle of modern metaphysics. The next question will be what kind of principle will transgress upon the principle of production? In other words, what is Baudrillard s utopia? In Baudrillard s view, production goes along with the dominion of political economics. Just through the concept of production, we could analyze the force of labor as special commodity to expose surplus (surplus value) (Baudrillard 2006, 10). Therefore, the principle of production is the principle of reason, which is expressed as political economics and as value theories. To my view, Marx s most important contribution is discovering the surplus value that is the inner cause of accumulation. In order to obtain continuous accumulation, it is necessary to gain more and more surplus value, which brings about compulsive development. In this context, society s development must be restless. We seem to have no choice now in the context of political economics: what we have to do is go on, forever. Therefore, we can see that the principle of production, or to put it differently, the mode of production, is not just one element of political economics: it is the root of all the troubles of political economics, and also the root of the problem of reason and logic. Accordingly, in order to criticize the principle of production, we have to transgress upon the logic of reason, the principles of political economics, and the logic of value, and so on, all at the same time. Conversely, in order to transgress upon all of these logics, it is enough for us to criticize the principle of production. The logic or the principle used by Baudrillard to transgress upon the principle of production is anti-productive; therefore, it is anti-surplus, and anti-valuable, and all in all it is non-economic. With all of these attributes, the principle supplied by Baudrillard must escape not only from the field of political economics, but also from the critique of political economics. To Baudrillard, this principle is Symbolic Exchange.

11 The Principle of Production and a Critique of Metaphysics 191 Symbolic exchange is a special mode of exchange traceable back to primitive society. The French anthropologist Marcel Mauss researched it in his famous book The Gift, but it is Baudrillard who first deploys the term in social criticism, and who outlines an ideal mode of exchange in contrast to economic exchange. For modern society, it is an alternative, whilst for Baudrillard, it is a utopia. It is symbolism that makes the exchange necessary and possible in primitive society, in which the notion of value has not yet come into being. In other words, in primitive society, the end of exchange is the exchange itself. The so-called exchange means the process of giving and receiving, with the recipient then giving something back to the giver. It is the process of going back and forth, as with the gift. The value of the gift cannot be valued: we give the gift not in exchange for another gift, but to express good wishes or respect, or something else that cannot be valued according to the value of the gift. For example, in the course of exchange, mountain of gold could be exchanged for a feather. We cannot deem it an unfair exchange. This is the logic of exchange in primitive society, which lies outside of the logic of value. This kind of exchange is what is known as symbolic exchange. What does symbolic mean? It is the impetus of exchange in primitive society. According to Baudrillard, the symbolic is not concept, is not institute or category, not construction, but the activity of exchange, and some kind of social relation. With it, the real melts away, and at same time, the opposite of the real and the imagination melts away too (Baudrillard 2006, 206). That is to say, symbolism is a social relation, a kind of reciprocal exchange in which no one dominates. The reciprocity is the end, in contrast to the production which always regards the surplus value to be the end. Hence, this kind of exchange not only lies outside the logic of value, but also against the principle of production, for there is no surplus in symbolic exchange. The lack of surplus is very important for the our understanding of primitive exchange. The notion of the harmony of nature and humanity makes us believe that surplus wealth should be given back to others, because the wealth is given to us as a gift from God. Therefore, the primitive gives back surplus in many ways, such as the potlatch, or sacrifice to God, the aim of which is to expend food or some other valuable commodity. The surplus melts away in all these kinds of symbolic exchanges. Obviously, symbolic exchange is contrary to the principle of production, as it works against surplus; in modern society, however, exchange is not the principle means to produce surplus value, but rather it is the way to realize surplus value. From this point of view, Baudrillard takes symbolic exchange to be the opposite of economic exchange, and makes it out to be a utopia wherein one escapes the rule of production.

12 192 Many scholars think that symbolic exchange is too ideal to be realized, and that Baudrillard s offering this notion will change nothing at all. To them, Baudrillard s critique of capitalism is romantic but leads to illusions, not to positive strategy. In my view, such critics focus on the exchange over the symbolic leads them to ignore the fact that the symbolic qua form or mode of exchange has its own meaning for the critique of production. If we stress symbolic over exchange, we can regard the symbolic as another principle of the construction of society, similar to the principle of production. Reciprocity is the key word in this principle: it will overthrow the principle of production, which refers to one-way exchange, in favor of the reciprocal, which refers to two-way exchange. Therefore, these two kinds of principle oppose one another, respectively representing different philosophies: the principle of production stresses dichotomy and derivation; it is the logic of the mirror and the principle of subjectivity. Meanwhile, the principle of the symbolic emphasizes reciprocal and mutual confirmation, and as such it is the principle of the subject-object, which can escape the field of value and break the mirror of production. Only once we have regarded the symbolic as a principle can we understand the meaning of the concept of Seduction in the later works of Baudrillard. In a word, seduction is the strategy of the woman against male chauvinism. According to Baudrillard, the feminist movement cannot win if it confines itself within the dichotomy of man and woman, for this sort of dichotomy evinces the logic of male chauvinism. Baudrillard makes the analogy of male chauvinism to production, both of which make the same presupposition. From this point of view, as its reciprocity is concerned, seduction represents the principle of the symbolic. Therefore, we find continuity in Baudrillard s concepts. All in all, opposing the principle of production is Baudrillard s main task. In my view, although Baudrillard s critique of Marx is not entirely effective, his critique of production is instructive for us to understand modern metaphysics which is also the target of Marx s philosophy. From this point of view, Baudrillard s critique is a contribution that we should not ignore. References Baudrillard, Jean The Mirror of Production, translated by Mark Poster. USA: Telos Press. Baudrillard, Jean Symbolic Exchange and Death (Chinese version), translated by Che Jinshan. Nanjing: Yilin Chubanshe. Bowie, Andrew Schelling and Modern European Philosophy. New York: Routledge. Hegel, G. W. F Phenomenology of Spirit, translated by A.V. Mill. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hegel, G. W. F Lectures on the Philosophy of World History, Vol. 4 (Chinese version),

13 The Principle of Production and a Critique of Metaphysics 193 translated by Helin and Wangtaiqing. Beijing: Shangwu Yinshuguan. Henrich, Dieter Between Kant and Hegel. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Kant, Immanuel Erklärung in Beziehung auf Fichtes Wissenschaftslehre, in Bw, vol. III, ; English: Cor., Marx, Karl Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, translated by Martin Milligan. Moscow: Progress Publishers. Stern, Robert Hegel and Phenomenology of Spirit. London: Routledge.