Inception, Directed by Christopher Nolan

Inception makes us question the world we live in. When Saito proposes an offer on performing inception on a rival corporation, Cobb accepts this in hopes of returning back to his children. After performing the inception, Cobb does see his children’s faces once again. But, he comes to challenge their existence by spinning his totem. How do we tell whether if we are in a dream or in reality? Most people would answer this question by how they feel, but as Ariadne points out, “…I thought the dream space would be all about the visual, but it’s more about the feel of it” (Tullmann 78). Since we truly don’t know how to determine our reality over our dreams, it leads to a constant problem, epistemic angst. Tullmann looks at epistemic angst and the responses to it.

Epistemic angst is the feeling of anxiety caused by the uncertainty of anything. To see how we would respond to epistemic angst, we need to know how angst is formed. The skeptical argument concluded that Cobb may not know for certain that he has children. Being the main reason why Cobb wants to return to the states, his children are very important to him. Questioning his children’s existence would surely bring angst to Cobb. According to Descartes, epistemic angst is described as “…someone who is suddenly dropped into a deep whirlpool that tumbles him around so that he can neither stand on the bottom nor swim to the top” (Tullmann 79). The instability of our dreams also causes epistemic angst. When Ariadne questions how she got to the café, the whole dream explodes: vegetables fly apart, glass shatters, and buildings erupt. Cobb and Mal were able to tear down buildings behind them by just pushing down sand castles. Having to question reality with an unstable dream would certainl...

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...mind off things regardless of the possibility that they aren’t real. Likewise, in the end of Inception, Cobb becomes distracted from his children and walks away from the totem. This was Cobb’s choice. He chose to spend time with his children even though there’s a lingering thought of perpetual anxiety. Cobb’s response is different than the basement dreamers. Whenever he is in someone else’s dream, he is certain that it is not a reality. Only when he comes back to reality he starts to doubt. He wants to live in a world where he’s certain of its reality, unlike the basement dreamers. Cobb chooses to escape limbo and knows the limits to his dreams. He also chooses to spend time with his children, in what seems to be reality, even if he’s not sure. Similar to Hume, Cobb finds that the epistemic questions do not matter because he believes he has reunited to his children.