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Bertrand russell the value of philosophy
The matrix and Plato's allegory of the cave
The matrix and Plato's allegory of the cave
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The Wachowski Brothers continually highlight in their film, The Matrix, the importance of choice. The Matrix follows Neo, a computer programmer who is drawn out of a simulated reality, the Matrix, and into "the real world". This journey of leaving the Matrix and discovering a greater reality parallels the plight of the fugitive in Plato's Allegory of the Cave. However, in The Matrix, Neo's experience diverges from that of the prisoner's because Neo has choices. That element of choosing what to do or what to believe provides the certainty necessary for determining reality, according to Bertrand Russell's Problems of Philosophy. The defining moments of Neo's journey that detach The Matrix from Allegory of the Cave are Neo's three major choices: the choice to leave the Matrix, the choice to save Morpheus and the choice to believe that he is the One.
Up until the point of Neo's first choice, the choice to leave the Matrix, The Matrix follows Plato's script. Those living in the simulated reality sense nothing is wrong; to them, their reality is everything. However, there is one person who defies the rest. This person, the prisoner for Plato and Neo for the Wachowski Brothers, discovers the true reality. However, their finding out is very different. the prisoner is unchained and forcibly dragged, while Neo is pursued, yet both getting that final push to follow the truth. Yet, the prisoner "conceive[s] some one saying to him, that what he saw before was an illusion, but that now, when he is approaching nearer to being and his eye is turned towards more real existence, he has a clearer vision". The prisoner is compelled to find the light and leave, he is never warned about the consequences that will follow this discovery. Neo is. Morphe...
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... makes three defining choices that distinguish The Matrix completely. After Neo makes the choice to leave the Matrix, the choice to save Morpheus and the choice to believe that he is the One, The Matrix is resolved with a successful protagonist ready to make a change in his reality, which differs from the prisoners who is forced to return back into the cave. Both texts are given meaning with Russell's definition of philosophy: "philosophy, if it cannot answer so many questions which increase the interest of the world, and show the strangeness and wonder lying just below the surface even in the commonest things of daily life" (Russell, 4). Both stories challenge the perception of reality through the portrayal of a protagonist, and while The Matrix has a happier ending than Plato's Allegory of the Cave, both successfully force their audiences think like a philosopher.
Let me briefly explain a simplified plot of The Matrix. The story centers around a computer-generated world that has been created to hide the truth from humans. In this world people are kept in slavery without their knowledge. This world is designed to simulate the peak of human civilization which had been destroyed by nuclear war. The majority of the world's population is oblivious to the fact that their world is digital rather than real, and they continue living out their daily lives without questioning their reality. The main character, Neo, is a matrix-bound human who knows that something is not right with the world he lives in, and is eager to learn the truth. He is offered the truth from a character named Morpheus, who proclaims that Neo is “the One” (chosen one) who will eventually destroy the Matrix, thereby setting the humans “free.” For this to happen, Neo must first overcome the Sentient Program agents who can jump into anyone's digital body. They are the Gate Keepers and hold the keys to The Matrix.
Firstly Neo got shown the enlightenment with his free will while the people in the cave got dragged out of the cave and forced to see the enlightenment if they wanted to or not. Also with The Cave Plato was the first to found out about this enlightenment while Morphis got shown it by a different guy. And Neo and the prisoners come from different backgrounds, Neo comes from a normal life (according to him) while the prisoners have to just sit there shackled and stare at a wall with shadows dancing across them. Furthermore within the matrix the agents are trying to stop people from getting enlightened while the people who drag out the prisoners from the cave want the prisoners to get enlightened. To summarize the characters in The Matrix and The Cave are close to being the same but not fully there are a few differences between the
“ Here they have been from their childhood, and have their legs and necks chained so they cannot move” ( Plato 1). The mind of the individual is being taught the wrong things and they will just sit there and accept the false information. Similarity, Neo is in the world that he has known for his whole life and a man named Morpheus will guide him out of the dark world that he has been use to to finally see the light of things. When Neo is given the decision to either stay in the illusion world or to find out what is actually real. Morpheus says, “ All I 'm offering is the truth” (Matrix). The truth is what Neo wants, he knew from a long time that there was a Matrix, however he didn 't fully understand it. The truth is power to those who obtain the knowledge. Morpheus offers Neo a blue pill which sends him back to the world of illusion and a red pill which will show him what the Matrix is. Neo accepts the red pill and there was a Alice and Wonderland reference that Morpheus says, “Down the rabbit hole.” However there is no going back up the rabbit hole it 's a reverse of the story. Aristotle says, “The roots of education are bitter,but the fruit are sweet.” Neo knew this new information he was about to get will be unpleasant and he still he took the pill, to not step back into the illusion world. He awoke wrapped in wires and plugs connected in him. He was surrounded by a field of
The second stage of the hero, according to Seger, is when the real shaping of him/her begins. Something happens to the hero and he/she must make a choice. In the Matrix, Neo is told, through the computer, by Trinity (Played by Carrie-Anne Moss) to "Follow the white rabbit." He then meets Trinity at a club, and she warns him that he is in danger. Neo, is then captured by agent Smith, (Played by Hugo Weaving) Brown, (Played by Paul Goddard) and Jones (Played by Robert Taylor). They tell him to help them capture Morpheus (Played by Laurence Fishburne) or be tried for computer hacking, but he refuses. This is the choice he had to make, that is when the a...
The protagonist Thomas Anderson in the series is one of billions of humans connected to the Matrix, he is a quiet programmer for the "respectable software company" Metacortex. Thomas Anderson is the character in the movie whose later alias becomes “Neo”. Which an anagram for “the one” a name that is most profound parallel to the Bible. Coincidence I think not. Neo is the Christ-figure in The Matrix who is sent to liberate men from their fallen and enslaved state Zion that is the last human city on earth, paralleling the Zion of the Bible. Morpheus and other believers herald him as the “One.” Neo or Christ sets humans free from the matrix or sin as agent Smith who in terms is Satan. Neo has a resurrection scene at the end of the first installment of The Matrix. In this scene Smith kills him, and his coming back to life serves as a testament to his power, and sets the stage for Neo’s final sacrifice at the end of the third movie. It is the scene at the end of the trilogy when Neo makes his Christ-like death. After this sacrifice, Neo is lifted into the sky, the same way one might describe Christ’s resurrection. Neo's performance was so good that famous hollywood director Quienten
...’s threat to the whole system. Neo sacrificed his life in order to kill Smith, and that way he could liberate Zion from the machines. With this scene, the Wachowski brothers brought us back to the allusion made on the first movie of Neo being “Jesus Christ.” All of these events were made posible because Neo knew that Zion believed in him, therefore he felt that he had to do something. Because of Morpheus and Zion’s faith in him, he did all the posible to accomplish his purpose in life.
2 To be concrete about the difference between the matrix and the "real world," I will refer to one as the matrix and the other as the ideology of the "real." The quotes are necessary as the ideology of the "real" is still a fictional ideology. Furthermore, it must be remembered that Althusser saw ideology as inescapable and a necessary feature of society ("there is no practice except by and in an ideology") (Althusser 93). Therefore, referring to the world outside of the matrix as the real world is insufficient and inaccurate. The ideology of the "real" (as Morpheus says, "welcome to the real") serves to enforce the notion of Neo not as rejecting ideology in favor of reality, but rather moving from the ideology of the machines (the matrix) to that of Morpheus (the ideology of the "real").
In The Cave prisoners are chained, from birth, to face a wall within a dark cave. These prisoners have never had any interactions with the outside world. Their only understanding of the outside world comes from a bridge and a fire at their backs. When people, animals, or objects cross the bridge, the fire projects their shadows upon the cave wall which the prisoners are facing. To these prisoners, the obscure shadows which dance along the walls of the cave are the only “real” thing they know. To their brains, which have never experienced, seen, or came into any contact with anything in the outside world, this is reality. To the prisoners, reality is a jumble of dark shadows which occasionally move from one end of a cave wall to another. This is their perception of reality because it is all they have ever known. While The Matrix does not involve prisoners being chained to a cave wall, the ideas within it are very much the same as in The Cave. Neo, the main character in The Matrix, has unknowingly been living in the matrix his whole life. The matrix world is his reality much like the shadows on the cave wall are the prisoner’s reality. As the world outside of the cave is the true world for the prisoners, the true reality for Neo is the real world which exists outside of the matrix, which is a highly advanced
The movie "Matrix" is drawn from an image created almost twenty-four hundred years ago by the greek philosopher, Plato in his work, ''Allegory of the Cave''.The Matrix is a 1999 American-Australian film written and directed by the Wachowski brothers. Plato, the creator of the Allegory of the Cave was a famous philosopher who was taught by the father of philosophy Socrates. Plato was explaining the perciption of reality from others views to his disciple Aristotle. The Matrix and the Allegory of the Cave share a simmilar relationship where both views the perciption of reality, but the Matrix is a revised modern perciption of the cave. In this comparison essay I am going to explain the similarities and deifferences that the Matrix and The Allegory of the Cave shares.In the Matrix, the main character,Neo,is trapped in a false reality created by AI (artificial intelligence), where as in Plato's Allegory of the Cave a prisoner is able to grasp the reality of the cave and the real life. One can see many similarities and differences in the film and the allegory. The most important similarity was between the film and the Allegory is the perception of reality.Another simmilarity that the movie Matrix and the Allegory of the Cave shares is that both Neo and the Freed man are prisoners to a system. The most important difference was that Neo never actually lived and experienced anything, but the freed man actually lived and experinced life.
The Matrix, once being released was a world-famous film that involved a lot of thinking and the ability to interpret complex ideas. However, these two topics of fate and freewill were creatively and smartly submerged in this film. The pill, jujitsu and Oracle scene were three main examples of the effect this all had on The Matrix, however there were a few others scattered throughout the film. It remained to be quite a mysterious concept but gradually as more in-depth thoughts came to mind, it seemed to be quite interesting. By exploring these themes it forces us to think if we are in a Matrix and what are reaction would be like if we were to find out that the world we lived in was a fake, never our true reality.
In this allegory, the depictions of humans as they are chained, their only knowledge of the world is what is seen inside the cave. Plato considers what would happen to people should they embrace the concepts of philosophy, become enlightened by it, and see things as they truly are. As we have mentioned in class, Plato’s theory did not only present itself in his allegory, but also in the Wachowski brothers’ hit film, The Matrix. In the film, the protagonist, Neo, suffers from a similar difficulty of adapting to reality, or the truth, which we will see later on. In order to understand Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, one must consider how Plato’s use of symbols to explain what true knowledge (or enlightenment) really is along with the comparisons to the Wachowski brothers’ film, The Matrix.
The Matrix, directed by the Wachowski brothers, a film about the journey of Neo discovering the real and simulation world, revolves around how he is “The One” destined to save mankind. As critics may say that The Matrix is either an action packed movie containing philosophy or a philosophical movie containing action, critics also miss the fact that it could possibly be considered as a religious themed movie because it contains a plethora of Biblical references, such as symbolic evidence. In Gregory Bassham’s article, “The Religion of The Matrix and Problems of Pluralism”, he discusses how the film contains Christian themes, non-Christian themes, and lastly, religious pluralism. The rhetorical
Imagine living through life completely bound and facing a reality that doesn’t even exist. The prisoners in Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” are blind from true reality as well as the people in the movie “The Matrix” written and directed by the Wachowski brothers. They are given false images and they accept what their senses are telling them, and they believe what they are experiencing is all that really exists. Plato the ancient Greek philosopher wrote “The Allegory of the Cave”, to explain the process of enlightenment and what true reality may be. In the movie “The Matrix”, Neo (the main character) was born into a world of illusions called the matrix. His true reality is being controlled by the puppet- handlers called the machines who use the human body as a source of energy. In the movie, Neo, finds and alternate reality and he has to go on a journey to discover himself and what is around him. Much like “The Allegory of the Cave” the prisoners in a dark underground cave, who are chained to the wall, have a view of reality solely based upon this limited view of the cave which is but a poor copy of the real world. Both the prisoners of the cave, and Neo from the Matrix, have to transcend on the path of ‘enlightenment’ to know the truth of their own worlds.
In the movie The Matrix we find a character by the name of Neo and his struggle adapting to the truth...to reality. This story is closely similar to an ancient Greek text written by Plato called "The Allegory of the Cave." Now both stories are different but the ideas are basically the same. Both Stories have key points that can be analyzed and related to one another almost exactly. There is no doubt that The Matrix was based off Greek philosophy. The idea of freeing your mind or soul as even stated in "The Allegory of the Cave" is a well known idea connecting to Greek philosophy. The Matrix is more futuristic and scientific than "The Cave" but it's the same Idea. Neo is trapped in a false reality created by a computer program that was created by machines that took over the planet. Now the story of course has many themes such as Man vs. Machine, Good vs. Evil, and our favorite Reality vs. Illusion. Neo is unplugged from the matrix and learns the truth and becomes "the one" who is to save the humans from their machine oppressors. "The Cave" is similar in that it has humans trapped in a cave and chained up to only face one direction. The "puppeteers" then make shadows against the wall the humans face using the fire from the outside as a light source. One big difference is that "The Cave" is about two philosophers conversing about the cave as one explains what needs to happen and that the prisoners must free their souls to find truth. The Matrix is the actions of what the philosopher describes actually happening. The comparing of the two stories will show how things said in "The Cave" are the same as in The Matrix, of course with the exception that one is futuristic ...
The identity and reality that Neo faces all begins with the famous choice given upon his encounter with Morpheus, “the red pill or the blue pill?” This question poses a very difficult decision for Neo. Should he take the blue pill and live without knowing the truth and who he actually is, or should he take the red pill and discover the truth and figure out what his life is really all about. The film as a whole and especially this particular scene is deeply compelling. On one hand you have everyone you love and everything that you have built your life upon, though being fed with false sensory information by a giant virtual reality computer called the Matrix. On the other, you are promised only truth. Is it better to live in a harsh reality or a comfortable fantasy? How could a choice possibly be made? In essence, the choice is one that is between truth and happiness, and Neo hungered for the truth. Neither living as a hacker nor working for a company would suffice. Neo wanted to find his “true” identity, and he does so through...