Many must know the film matrix,but what not everyone knows is that it contains philosophical references very rich. The ideas presented in the cinematographic superproduction are related to the Platonic idealist philosophy, making clear references to the allegory of the cave, from Plato.
The film
matrix (right Wachowski sisters, 1999) tells the story of Neo Anderson, a hacker of a computer that, through internet intrusions, discovers the existence of a strange program on the network, the matrix.
after your discoveries, Neo is wanted by a group of people who claim to be hackers and claim to know a truth that most do not know, leaving it up to the protagonist: choose to know the truth and change your life forever or continue being deceived by the matrix and forget about all his discoveries. Neo Anderson then decides to know the truth.
The myth
O cave myth, as it is also known, is a platonic dialogue presented in book VII of the Republic and has as interlocutors Socrates and Glaucon. Socrates presents a situation in which
slaves find themselves trapped at the bottom of a cave with his eyes turned only to the depths of her.Behind them there is a fire pit and behind it pass people and objects. Through fire, objects generate shadows that are designed in a way distorted on the cave wall. All these slaves know so far are these shadows and the echoes of the sounds propagating outside. That to them is the whole world.
On any given day, one of the slaves manages to break free and walks towards the exit of the cave. When he finally leaves, he discovers a totally different world than what he knew before.
At the first encounter with sunlight directly in the eyes, the slave has a vision blur, which little by little is unraveling. Gradually, the slave gets used to looking in the light and learning to contemplate this “new world”.
So he decides to go back to the cave and tell his companions what's outside, but they certainly won't recognize him and won't accept his new version of reality. Therefore, he finds himself in a dilemma: come back and tell others, who might judge you as crazy and even kill you, or stay and contemplate a new world alone?
How to relate the two works
The teacher Marilena Chauí 1, from the Philosophy department at USP, wrote an excellent didactic text exploring the movie relations matrix with Plato's dialogue. This text is published at the beginning of the book. Invitation to philosophy.
Neo Anderson, the movie protagonist, is the figure of the slave who manages to free himself from the cave. This slave freed from the cave represents the philosopher. The philosopher is the one who manages to free himself from the prison that keeps men slaves to perception, to the senses, and who are deceived by them.
break free from the cave means, in a platonic language, access the famous world of ideas, which would be a place where men would be free from deception, keeping in touch, through thought, with the pure essences of the things of the world.
For Plato, O true knowledge comes from pure ideas It's from intellect. All knowledge arising from the sensations of the body is deceitful. Neo, like the freed slave, discovers that there is a reality totally different from the one we believe. In the film, the responsible for our mistake is the Matrix software.
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THE matrix it was designed to keep humans in the “sweet illusion” of living in this world full of comfort and pleasure, when in fact the world was completely destroyed. In this narrative, men actually live as static fetuses immersed in the womb (matrixin Latin it means “womb”) while having intense brain activity that supports the life they believe they have.
Socrates he is considered the "patron of philosophy" - that's because, according to Chauí1, he was never content with established opinions, the prejudices of his society or the unquestioned beliefs of his fellow countrymen. He was an innovator, wanting to break away from customary beliefs and look for the truth behind things.
Socrates discovered that there is a “matrix" or a “cave” that imprisons and deceives us all. He argued that the exit from this cave is to get the knowledge, leaving aside vulgar beliefs, social precepts, prejudices, dogmas, imposed culture or any other element that may prevent man from accessing pure knowledge. By conquering this knowledge, man manages to get out of slavery, from the servitude that imprisons him.
reality is unpleasant
leave the matrix it is extremely painful and unpleasant at first. The life provided by the program is fun, comfortable, pleasant and cozy. How to exchange a beautiful landscape with people having fun, eating well, for its opposite? The reality outside of software is harsh and difficult to adapt.
we can remember the movie scene when Neo leaves the program for the first time and compares it to the moment when the slave leaves the cave for the first time. The slave's first reaction is an unpleasant glare in vision, until he finally gets used to the light.
Neo, when “disconnecting”, sees the unpleasantness of real life and, until his mind and body accept the deconstruction of everything he held for true, he goes through a lot of suffering.
the truth is liberating
Knowing the truth is essential to freeing us from slavery. Who is free is happy. And even if ignorance is comfortable and apparently better, we must overcome it. Only in this way can we become aware of ourselves and the world around us, participate in it, question it, understand it and change it. Knowing the truth allows us emancipation as citizens. See how Socrates, as an interlocutor in the republic, by Plato, ends the dialogue:
The underground den is the visible world. The fire that lights it is sunlight. The captive that ascends to the upper region and contemplates it is the soul that rises to the intelligible world. Or rather, since you want to know, this is, at least, my way of thinking, that only God knows if it's true. As for me, the thing is how I tell you. At the extremes of the intelligible world is the idea of the good, which can only be known with great effort, but which, known, imposes itself on the reason as the universal cause of all that is beautiful and good, creator of light and sun in the visible world, author of intelligence and truth in invisible world, and on which, for this very reason, one must keep one's eyes fixed in order to act wisely in private and public affairs (PLATO, in the republic).
|1| CHAUI, Marilena. Invitation to Philosophy. São Paulo: Ática, 2005, p.9.
by Francisco Porfirio
Graduated in Philosophy