Plato’s Philosophical Concepts in The Matrix

Andy and Larry Wachowski’s The Matrix (1999) may seem like your ordinary Science Fiction film at first viewing. With advanced technology, special effects, and action scenes jam packed into almost every frame, it is initially challenging to separate this picture from other great Sci-Fi films of the late 20th century. Only after viewing this film several times and focusing solely on the text and not the graphics, the viewer may recognize the depth of the script and the many philosophical concepts throughout. Plato’s work “The Allegory of the Cave”, a selection from his text “The Republic”, is the strongest example of the use of philosophical views in The Matrix.

Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” is a story used to describe the control that society and the government has over ordinary citizens. He begins his story by describing a dark underground cave where a group of citizens or prisoners have been chained since birth to a wall. The prisoners are chained in such a way that they have an extremely limited view of the cave, they are only able to see the wall in front of them and no one or nothing else. The prisoners view of reality is solely based upon this limi

ted view of the cave wall which is a poor copy of the real world. From childhood, "...their legs and necks [have been] in bonds so that they are fixed, seeing only [what is] in front of them.... As Plato goes on to later explain, "the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images (The History Guide)." Since this life is all the prisoners have known since birth, they do not realize that they are prisoners at all, they simply believe that this is the extent of living.

has been fed false realities since birth. He has been controlled by machines and agents for his entire life, and therefore is shocked and unprepared for the new world that is presented to him. Just as the freed man from the cave suffers mental and physical challenges so does Neo. His eyes are also sensitive to this new world and therefore experiences some of the same pains as the prisoner. When Neo questions why his eyes are sore, Morpheus tells him that it is because "You've never used them [your eyes] before (The Matrix Unplugged)."

The movie The Matrix parallels Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” in a number of ways. Similar to the prisoners of the cave, the humans trapped in the matrix only see what the machines or the modern day puppet-handlers, want them to see. They are tricked into believing that what they hear in the matrix and see before them is the true reality that exists. They accept what their senses are telling them and they believe that what they are experiencing is truly life. Much like the prisoners in the cave, the people in the matrix have only known this one world t

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