Simulacrum

In Pierre Klossowski's *Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle*, the simulacrum (simulacre; Ger. Trugbild) is the willed reproduction of a phantasm — "the actualization of something in itself incommunicable and nonrepresentable: the phantasm in its obsessional constraint" (Translator's Preface §4). Where the phantasm is an involuntary obsessional image produced from the life of the impulses, the simulacrum is its skilful, deliberate reproduction in a literary, pictorial, or plastic form. The decisive Klossowskian thesis is that "simulation is the attribute of being itself": existence is sustained only through fabulation, so the simulacrum is not a degraded copy of a real original but the very mode in which an "incommunicable" impulsive intensity is made to "put in an appearance." The concept is Klossowski's most influential contribution to later French thought — it is the seed of Deleuze's "overturning of Platonism" (the simulacrum that denies the primacy of model over copy) and stands behind the broader poststructuralist career of the term (Foucault, Baudrillard).

Key Points

Phantasm vs. simulacrum: the phantasm is involuntary (an "obsessional image produced instinctively from the life of the impulses"); the simulacrum is its willed reproduction — "a willed reproduction of a phantasm... that simulates this invisible agitation of the soul" (Pref. §4).
Simulation is the attribute of being itself (Ch. 6): "the only being guaranteed to us is being that represents itself, and is therefore changing, non-identical to itself, completely relative" — existence is fabulation, and the simulacrum is the form fabulation takes.
The simulacrum vs. the stereotype: every simulacrum presupposes a prior set of stereotypes — "the code of everyday signs" — which it must use and which "necessarily inverts and falsifies the singularity of the soul's intensive movements." Klossowski's later "science of stereotypes" accentuates the stereotype "to the point of excess" so it traces "the outline of [the phantasm's] opaque physiognomy" (Pref. §5).
The function of the simulacrum is "to lead human intention back to the intensity of forces, which generate phantasms" (Ch. 6) — the inverse of science, which denies intention but compensates for it in "efficacious" activity.
Science too invents simulacra: when science reconstitutes a process, "it is through the simulacrum, calculating the process, that the intention of the knower intervenes." The "simulacrum of the calculus wills the calculator to become the simulated author of the reconstituted process" (Ch. 6).
The imposter-philosopher wields the simulacrum: "The beautiful simulacra are ours! Let us be the deceivers and the embellishers of humanity! — In fact, this is precisely what a philosopher is" (Ch. 6, quoting Nietzsche). One "demystifies only in order to mystify better."
The actor/histrionic is the figure of the simulacrum in person: "the phenomenon of the actor became, in Nietzsche, an analogue for the simulation of being itself" (Ch. 9). The authentic artist is "conscious of producing something that is false, namely a simulacrum"; Wagner is merely a histrionic because he uses the simulacrum while "remaining totally unconscious of the false."

Details

The derivation: phantasm → simulacrum → language (Ch. 10)

Klossowski's most compressed statement of the mechanism comes in the Additional Note on Nietzsche's Semiotic. The impulses generate a phantasm — an unintelligible obsessional image. "We interpret it under the constraint of our environment, which is so well installed in us by its own signs that... we never have done with declaring to ourselves what the impulse can indeed will: this is the phantasm. But under its own constraint we simulate what it 'means' for our declaration: this is the simulacrum." Language is then "the simulacrum of the obstinate singularity of our phantasm" — through the fixity of signs it offers "an equivalent to our obstinate singularity" while also simulating "the resistance of the institutional environment." The simulacrum is thus a fraudulent exchange between the singular case and the gregarious generality, "willed as such by both."

Why the word "simulacrum" (and not "image" or "representation")

The Latin simulacrum (from simulare, to copy/feign) referred, in the late Roman empire, to the statues of the gods lining a city's entrance (Pref. §4). Klossowski retains the religious-figural charge: the simulacrum is not a representation of something pre-existing but the making-present of an intensity that has no other mode of appearance. This is why the term resists the Platonic semantics in which it is parasitic on an original — the point Deleuze will make explicit.

The reflexive method

Klossowski's own classical prose is, by his admission, an exercise in the "science of stereotypes": "Practiced advisedly, the institutional stereotypes (of syntax) provoke the presence of what they circumscribe; their circumlocutions conceal the incongruity of the phantasm but at the same time trace the outline of its opaque physiognomy" (Pref. §5). The book is therefore a simulacrum about simulacra — its method enacts its thesis.

What the Concept Does

The simulacrum does four jobs in Klossowski's reading:

It dissolves the original/copy hierarchy. If "simulation is the attribute of being itself," there is no original of which the simulacrum is a copy; the phantasm it reproduces is itself "without preconditions," not a model. This is the move Deleuze isolates as Nietzsche's "overturning of Platonism."
It re-routes the will to power into expression. The simulacrum is how the impulses' intensity becomes communicable without being falsified into a gregarious concept — it "leads intention back to intensity" rather than intention away from it.
It supplies a positive concept of the false. Against the demystifying labour of science (the destruction of values), the simulacrum is a remystification — "a positive notion of the false, which, as the basis of artistic creation, is now extended to every problem raised by existence" (Ch. 6).
It names the structure of the Turin breakdown. Nietzsche's signing as Dionysus and the Crucified is the practice of the simulacrum pushed past art into life: "he simulated Dionysus or the Crucified and took a certain delight in the enormity of his simulation. The madness consisted in this delight" (Ch. 9).

What It Rejects

The Platonic copy/original hierarchy — the simulacrum is not "deficient" with respect to a model; it is the mode of being of the non-representable.
Scientific realism — the claim that knowledge apprehends a reality-in-itself; science itself "invents simulacra" and introduces an intention into a process that had none.
Expressive sincerity — the Romantic idea that art expresses an inner truth; the simulacrum is a willed fabrication, and "sublimation in no way guarantees the morality of an individual" (Ch. 8).

Stakes

If "simulation is the attribute of being itself," then the categories that organize Western thought — true/false, original/copy, real/apparent — are not the framework within which simulacra are judged but products of a prior fabulation. This is the lever by which Klossowski converts a reading of Nietzsche's "physiognomy" into a general ontology of the false, and the reason the book could seed both Deleuze's Difference and Repetition (the simulacrum chapter) and the wider poststructuralist suspicion of representation. The risk is inflation: detached from the impulse-theory that grounds it, "everything is a simulacrum" becomes an empty slogan — Klossowski's simulacrum is specifically the willed reproduction of a phantasm born of impulsive intensity, not a generic anti-realism. (confidence: medium — the genealogical claim to Deleuze is strong but the downstream Baudrillardian lineage is asserted from general knowledge and marked for verification against the Deleuze source.)

Problem-Space

The simulacrum addresses the problem: how can a singular, non-communicable intensity appear at all, given that every means of appearance (language, the code of everyday signs) falsifies it into a gregarious generality? Klossowski's answer — that appearance is always simulation, so the falsification is not a failure but the condition of any appearance — reframes the problem of expression as the problem of being. The same problem recurs under different vocabularies: the agent's self-constitution, the circulus vitiosus's self-inclusion, MP's "one cannot make a direct ontology."

Connections

is the willed reproduction of phantasm — the involuntary/voluntary pair is the concept's core distinction
presupposes semiotic-of-impulses — and in particular the "code of everyday signs" / stereotype it must use and exceed
leads intention back to tonality-of-the-soul — the simulacrum reconstitutes the impulsive intensity that generated the phantasm
is enacted by the actor/histrionic and, at the limit, by the Turin breakdown (vicious-circle-selective-doctrine)
has cross-tradition cousin circulus-vitiosus-deus — both name a self-fabulating being that "represents itself"; the registers diverge (Klossowski's affective-impulsive vs. MP's ontological-methodological)
seeds gilles-deleuze's overturning of Platonism — the simulacrum that denies the primacy of model over copy
contrasts with the Platonic eikon / copy — the simulacrum is not parasitic on an original

Open Questions

Does "simulation is the attribute of being itself" commit Klossowski to a generalized anti-realism, or is it strictly tied to the impulse-theory? The page reads it as the latter; the former would over-extend it.
How exactly does Klossowski's simulacrum become Deleuze's? The dedication and the shared anti-Platonism are clear, but the precise transmission needs the Deleuze source (Difference and Repetition, "Plato and the Simulacrum") — flagged as a Phase 8 / genealogical claim candidate.
Is the simulacrum/circulus vitiosus cousinhood a genuine structural parallel or a terminological echo? Both turn on a being that "represents itself," but the philosophical work differs (see the false-friend caution on circulus-vitiosus-deus).

Sources

klossowski-1969-nietzsche-vicious-circle — Translator's Preface §4–5 (the phantasm/simulacrum/stereotype glossary); Ch. 6 (the imposter-philosopher; "simulation is the attribute of being itself"; science's simulacra); Ch. 9 (the actor as analogue of the simulation of being; the Turin breakdown as practice of the simulacrum); Ch. 10 (the phantasm→simulacrum→language derivation)