Icon worshipers unknowingly enacted God’s death through representation

Evidence

One can see that the iconoclasts, whom one accuses of disdaining and negating images, were those who accorded them their true value, in contrast to the iconolaters who only saw reflections in them and were content to venerate a filigree God. On the other hand, one can say that the icon worshipers were the most modern minds, the most adventurous, because, in the guise of having God become apparent in the mirror of images, they were already enacting his death and his disappearance in the epiphany of his representations (which, perhaps, they already knew no longer represented anything, that they were purely a game, but that it was therein the great game lay - knowing also that it is dangerous to unmask images, since they dissimulate the fact that there is nothing behind them). — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 15

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Iconoclasts destroyed images because images concealed that God never existed at all — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 14; Sublating sensuous immediacy leaves God presented to knowledge as representation; Thinking the negation of negation requires passing through the death of God — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 156 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Sublating sensuous immediacy leaves God presented to knowledge as representation #expands (0.85)
• The death of God can be read as God saying farewell to himself #expands (0.85) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 148
• For Hegel the death of God lodges negation within God’s own being #expands (0.84) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 154
• Thinking the negation of negation requires passing through the death of God #expands (0.82) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 156