3

1 Preface
Before starting with the actual analysis and interpretation I would like to introduce
the topic and how I got into it. Besides watching the movie “The Matrix” for private
amusement and entertainment I was confronted with the movie in my philosophy class
(in Germany) and once more in a class dealing with movies called “Advanced
Communication” in the USA.

I have been interested in philosophy for a long time and when “The Matrix”
received such good criticism I was excited to watch it in my philosophy class. But I had
to find out that the movie's philosophical message was more than just dubious, since the
whole philosophy in the movie is boiled down to legitimize the violence and action. The
movie portrays the world humans believe to live in as an illusion and nothing but a
computer program designed by machines which use humans as batteries to fuel them.
Every human living in this computer program (called “Matrix”) can be used by so
called “Agents” to eliminate the ones that broke out of the Matrix and know the “truth”.
And since the machines have no moral problems to enter into humans, the adept
humans have to fear every human of being a potential agent, which is their license to
kill humans, too. This cuts out all ethic and moral guilt complexes one could have for
killing humans since they are all potential agents.

This “Matrix” also has some positive side effects on the staging of action since the
adept humans can break some other, further rules, above all the natural law of gravity:
They can run up walls and jump extremely far. This seems paradox in two ways: Firstly
they re-enter the system (the “Matrix”) they are trying to fight. Secondly they have to
submit some laws while others can be broken. And even though the cause for their
actions in the “Matrix” takes place in the virtual world, it can have an effect on their
being in the real one: if one dies in “The Matrix” he will die in reality. This and more
seems to be pretty much the whole use of the highly praised philosophical content of
“The Matrix”. But the movie still has its fan-community, not only among action fans,
but also intellectuals. Is this just a misunderstanding?

In this term paper I will make a serious attempt to analyse “The Matrix” and
compare it to Plato's cave allegory which it has quite a bit in common with. In both
analyses I will focus on the means that draw the attention of the recipient and the
fascination that can be brought about by these means. I want to single out five structural
 4

characteristics which both, movie and allegory, have in common:

1. The belief of the world as it is cognized by our senses to be an illusion.

2. The consideration that there is a “real” and “true” world behind this world of
“shadows”.

3. The paradoxes that come to being if the border to either world is crossed. At this
state of living at the borderline between this worlds, the actual action takes place
(Plato – The forced ascend of education and descent of the philosopher king; the
training in the Matrix which actually takes place in the virtual world but affects
the characters knowledge in the “real” world etc.).

4. The formation of a superior society which happens to be able to cross the border
to the worlds.

5. And the fascination of “the One” to be an almighty and supreme leader and on
the other hand the salvation of the small, elected group of adepts by this leader.

2.1 Analysis of Plato's Cave Allegory

In his Cave Allegory, which is part of his book “Republic”, Plato describes the
situation of prisoners in a cave, who have been chained at their hands and heads, so they
can neither move nor look in another direction. Behind them is a fire whose shine draws
their shadows at the wall in front of the chained prisoners.

“Above and behind them a fire is blazing at a distance, and between the fire and the
prisoners there is a raised way; and you will see, if you look, a low wall built along
the way, like the screen which marionette players have in front of them, over which
they show the puppets”.1
Behind this wall are men who carry all sorts of artificial things whose shadow
appear at the wall in front of the prisoners. For the prisoners these shadows seem to be
reality.

Outside of this cave is the sun. This outside world is considered to be the “real”
world by Plato. Nietzsche, a philosopher at the borderline to modernity, would interpret
this world to be the projection of the world seen by us onto the outside to the
transcendency – finally in order to claim an exclusive access to philosophical truth.2 But
Plato himself sees it contrarily – the world of our sensual knowledge is only a shadow

1 Plato – Republic – Cave Allegory – Book VII – 106a.

2 Nietzsche, Friedrich. Götzendämmerung. “Wie die “Wahre Welt” endlich zur Fabel wurde”, Redaction Karl Schlechta, Bd. 22,
S. 409.
 5

of a copy of the real world.

Plato now describes what might happen if one of these prisoners was released and
could now see the fire which is shining behind the prisoners. This prisoner “will suffer
sharp pains; the glare will distress him, and he will be unable to see the realities of
which in his former state he had seen the shadows”3. The prisoner will turn back to look
at the shadows which he believes are truer than the fire.

All the more if guided to go out of the cave to see the sun, the prisoner would prefer
not to look at the light, since his eyes are not used to the brightness. His “education” is a
complete turn-around of the whole person and not possible without being forced. But
being required to look at the sun, his eyes will slowly adjust to the brightness until he
will be able to see the true objects.

If this prisoner goes back down to the cave again, his eyes wouldn't be used to the
darkness any more and his former fellows would laugh about him. But the way back
down from the sun into the cave is not the way to enlighten the prisoners, but to reign
them.

This allegory is the climax of Plato's education doctrine within his construction of
an ideal state in which the prisoner described above, who had the chance to see the
light, educates chosen prisoners to be the carrying foundation of what Plato calls a state
of real “justice” (in the meaning of adequacy of duties and responsibilities to ability).
These chosen prisoners are then called “Guardians”. The enlightened prisoner is the one
to rule this state, for he is the ideally best to execute the office of a king, because he saw
“the sun”.

That is to say, the sun is the symbol for truth and value, it is the allegory of what
Plato calls the ideal of “The Good”. The way up to the sun is the ascendancy to
knowledge and true cognition – and in the typical Greek identification of “true” and
“right”: therefore also to the base of moral and legitimate act.

One may ask, why the world of the cave is not directly shown as a world of
shadows, projected by the sun and real objects. Besides different other reasons4 there is
a structural one. The fire and artificial objects allow the strict separation of the two
worlds. The sun only shines for the ones that are able to ascend. Even though the fire

3 Plato – Republic – Cave Allegory – Book VII – 106a.

4 The world of artificial objects correspond to mathematical ideas, not yet to the “real” world. They “lead” the ascending prisoner
to the ideal. But this is only one of two antithetic functions.
 6

and the artificial objects can be seen as a third world in between shadows and “real”
light, Plato's view of the world finally was a strictly dualistic one.

This Dualism was very influential: Not only in Hellenism, but also Christianity,
early Middle Ages, and again in the Italian Renaissance. It appears to be very
interesting that Plato had as much influence on religion as he had on philosophy, which
probably is to ascribe to Plato's dualism and use of absolute terms such as “Truth” and
“true cognition” or “The Good”. The claim to possess those absolute terms and their
metaphysical attributes are not only very commonly found in Plato's philosophy but in
every religion.5

Another explanation for Plato's relevance to religion and general influence is that
Plato uses parables and similes to convince the reader. The convincing effect on the
reader is not (only) brought about by sharp-witted conclusions, but also by rhetorical
means. Plato creates a classical dramaturgy with the ascend and descend of his
philosopher king. The ascend is forced upon the philosopher king and the descend is
forced from within by some kind of discretion or deeper insight.

Plato's vision of the organization of a state is also simple and convenient since he
offers us an authoritarian rule. This seems contradictory, but, as one can easily find out
looking at the numbers of dictators in the 20th century, people believe to need a
“leader”. No matter whether this leader is an “infallible” pope, a “true conducted
caliph”, The avant-garde of the communistic party, or, as I will explain, “The Matrix”
and “The One”. Also the fascination of authoritarian sects refers to the same needs:
need for affiliation, need for power.

2.2 Summary of “The Matrix”

The fascination of especially power is also the beginning, the “entry” so to speak,
into the “The Matrix”: The movie begins with a scene, in which the police is trying to
arrest a seemingly ordinary woman, but in the following fight and chase scene we find
out that she is able to defy the laws of gravity. She finally escapes two “Agents”, who
are provided with the same kind of abilities.

In the next moment we see a guy, who we will get to know as the computer-hacker

5 The German philosopher Martin Heidegger opines that there was almost a necessity for the theological interpretation of Plato's
metaphysics. The dualism of a quasi visual, but intellectual ideal and an apparent world of fallacious senses implicates a
concept of truth as an accordance of seeming and being or of opinion, thought and fact. True cognition became a subjective
aspect, and on the other hand the binding character of truth a theological authority. Martin Heidegger. Platons Lehre von der
Wahrheit. Bern 1947.
 7

“Neo” or as “Mr. Andersen”. He wakes up in front of a black computer screen on which

in green letters a writing appears, telling him what to do. He follows a customer of his
to a party (as the writing told him) and meets a woman called “Trinity”, telling him that
she has the answer to the question that drives him to know, the answer of “What is the
Matrix”6.

The next day at work Neo gets a call telling him to flee from the Agents we have
seen at the beginning of the movie already. But the Agents catch him and have a bug
crawl into Neo. At night Neo gets another call and goes to finally meet the one he was
searching for: “Morpheus”. Neo enters a car in which we find Trinity and two unknown
persons, who eliminate the bug in Neo's body. After a short drive Neo gets to see
Morpheus who offers him to take either a red or a blue pill: The red one will give him
the answer to his questions, whereas the blue one just will make him forget everything
he experienced so far.7

Neo goes for the red one and after a surreal scene, in which a broken mirror gets
fluid as Neo touches it and “flows” over him. The camera follows the mirror-fluid into
Neo's mouth and after a short journey into Neo's inner self Neo wakes up in some kind
of womb.8 In the following scene Neo gets “born” and has an odd trip through a water-
fall. Neo gets saved by Morpheus and his fellows.

Neo and Morpheus enter the so called “construct” by plugging a metal stick in their
heads playing back some kind of a computer program in their heads. 9 The surface area10
of the Matrix appears to be the world Neo lived in his whole life – the daily world in
which one goes to work, eats, and dies. This program has been developed by machines
in order to make humans believe they live in a world of corporal and sensual
experiences while using them as batteries fueling the machines. Few humans –

6 “The Matrix”, Movie directed by the Larry and Andy Wachowsky, 11 th minute.
7 This point “The Matrix” evokes Plato's myth of metempsychosis at the end of his “Politeia”, which stands in some relations in
contrast to the anthropology of the cave allegory. The selected “One” has the choice to stay in the concept to ascend, to
remember and recognize the truth, or to neglect before entering his next, new life (he chooses to stay). In Plato's final myth we
have the choice to be reborn in a life of neglect or of wisdom. We all must drink the “Lethe” of neglect, before we are reborn.
But those who wisely have chosen hold in the believe in the myth, a kind of religious remembrance of the truth. The
philosopher can reactivate this remembrance in the “Thea” (the vision) of “The Good”. Cf. Plato – Republic – The Myth of
“Er” - Book X – 614b – 621d.
8 It would be an own subject to analyse the different meanings of this scene – combining the literal “influence” of a technical
simulacrum of the self (mirror), the way out of the “cave” of illusions as a way into the inner self, and the ascend to cognition
as the rebirth of the person and other allusions.
9 This “construct” is a program made by the crew of Morpheus which works same as the Matrix and can be connected to the
Matrix if needed. In other words: The base for the fight against the “Matrix” is – an “Anti-Matrix” and not “reality”. The
advantage of the “construct” is that Agents don't have access to it and if something goes wrong nothing happens to you.
10 To explain why he has only lived at the surface area: Just like the “Desktop” of our computer is not the program itself (we don't
see the zeros and ones it is made of), Neo has so far only seen the surface area of the Matrix. At the end of the movie, when he
fights Agent Smith, he is able to see through the surface of the program (he sees the Matrix in green letters) by disbelieving it to
be real.
 8

Morpheus and his crew – have found out about the surreality of this “cyber-world” and
could free themselves. Their live is shaped as a constant fight with the machines in the
“real world” and with “Agents” - a control program of the Matrix – in the Matrix. By
freeing Neo, Morpheus and his crew believe to have found the “One”, who is supposed
to be able to free all humans from the Matrix. A so called “Oracle”, who lives in the
Matrix, tells Neo that he has the gift to be “The One”, but seems not to be ready for it,
not yet.

On the way back to `reality´ something goes wrong – Agents appear, Morpheus
sacrifices himself for the sake of Neo and gets arrested by the Agents. The viewer
knows that this is only due to Cypher, a member of the crew. Cypher, a double of
Plato's overstrained prisoner, wants to re-enter the world of illusion to not have to stand
the depressing “truth” anymore. In this way Cypher's choice is just the opposite of
Neo's. Cypher gets finally killed by Tank, another member of the crew.

In a couple of fight scenes Neo saves Morpheus, and together with Trinity he gets
loaded back into `reality´. During those fights Neo gets shot. Trinity in `reality´ talks to
Neo's `dead´ body, telling him that he can't be dead, because the Oracle prophesied her
that she will love “The One”. She kisses her beloved Neo, and Neo's heart starts beating
and he gets up. At this moment Neo recognizes his identity as “The One”.

The movie ends with Neo promising the audience that he will show them a world
without borders and control. In the final scene one sees Neo flying out of the frame. It is
not clear if the addressee of his message are the people inside the Matrix or the viewers
of the movie, the addressee of a final and supernatural salvation.

2.3 Comparison between the religious allusions of “The Matrix”

and the proto-religious structures in Plato's Cave Allegory
Asked how many different layers of meaning in the Matrix lie, the Wachowski
brothers answered: “More than you will ever know.”11. This becomes already clear by
the names we are confronted with: Trinity, Neo, Oracle and Morpheus, to name just a
few.

Just as the religious interpretations of Plato did not happen by chance (explained
above), the Matrix appears to be a somewhat religious movie. Trinity is not only a name

11 “Taking the Red Pill – Science, Philosophy and Religion in The Matrix” – edited by Glenn Yeffeth, back cover.
 9

in “The Matrix”, but also part of the Christian concept of God. The Trinity in the movie
probably refers to the threesome unity of Neo, Morpheus and herself, in which the
characters play similar roles as the trinity of God – Morpheus takes the role of the
Father12, Trinity is probably representing the Holy Spirit – here as the spirit of love - ,
whereas Neo is the son, some kind of Jesus, who is doing the action (literally and
figuratively).

“Neo” is a clever anagram of “One”, pointing to Neo being the savior. Interestingly
it is also part of the binary code (ones and zeros) computers calculate with. However the
name can also be taken differently, depending on which part of the movie one is
watching. Right at the beginning of the movie the name seems to be best explained as
an anagram for the binary code, since Neo is a computer-hacker. About an hour later
Neo is a new member of the crew. “New” is the original meaning of the Greek prefix
“Neo”. There seems to be an undercurrent telling the viewer that Neo will herald a new
era in the plot of the movie. This “new era” is predestined by Morpheus's expectation,
the prophecy of “The Oracle” and in Neo's last promise and prophecy.

Morpheus is the most complicated and dubious name. Morpheus is the god of
dreams in Greek mythology and literally means `he, who forms, shapes, molds´13.
Seemingly in contrast to this meaning, the common role of Morpheus is that he is
responsible for the selection of Neo as the one to be awakened and enlightened. The
other role would give the movie a whole new appearance: Morpheus is the one that sets
Neo to sleep and makes him dream to perceive `reality´: `Morphine´, a mind-expanding
drug, does not derive its term from `Morpheus´ by chance! In this point of view
Morpheus is not enlightening Neo and the rest of the crew, but confuses their perception
of `reality´. The crew of Morpheus flies in a kind of space-ship through an artificial
scenery of a might-be horror-movie. They `tune´ themselves by connecting to a
program. They fight not as hackers with a virus against the Matrix-program, but as
artificial figures on its surface against artificial enemies. And furthermore: The final
prophecy of Neo is completely supernatural.

At this point I want to go into the first two of the five structural characteristics I
have listed above in the Preface. As I have shown above, the movie could have had a

12 As Tank says: “Morpheus, you are more than a leader to us, you are a father”. “The Matrix”, Movie directed by the Larry and
Andy Wachowsky, 89th minute.
13 He can take any human appearance and is the brother of Phobetor, the god of fearsome dreams, and Phantasos, the god of
unreal dreams (who's name the words “fantasy” and “phantasmagoria” are derived from).
 10

whole new dimension. It is apparent that the movie was not made to have us think
about if there is such thing as “true cognition”, but to have us think that there is “true
cognition”. The viewer, who follows the suggestive invitation to identify with
Morpheus and his crew, believes to stand his ground on the base of `reality´. But
usually this belief in “true cognition” is not cognition, but believe: the belief of adepts
forming a circle around some kind of modern action-Jesus called Neo.

It is a deeply rooted habit of human beings to believe that this world is not the only one
to live in. Religions such as Christianity and Islam, but also the messianic movement of
Judaism offer the people a better world after this life, a better world above this world.
Nowadays a lot of people dream of living on another planet. Scientology is a
characteristic mixture of pseudo-science, pseudo-religion and real science-fiction of our
days - and the US government has already been selling ground on the Mars:
Congratulations! No wonder that Science Fiction movies like “Star-Wars” become a
kind of spiritual world-view. “In England and Wales 390,000 people (0.7%) stated their
religion as Jedi [a Star-Wars order of knights] on their 2001 Census forms, surpassing
Sikhism, Judaism, and Buddhism, and making it the fourth largest reported religion in
the country.”14 Also salvation and well-fare, vision and television get more and more
indistinguishable.

Usually such belief is linked with a supreme leader person (getting to the fifth
structural characteristic). Psychologists have tried to find the mainsprings for the reason
why humans need such a leader. Sigmund Freud thought that the figure of God takes the
role of some kind of father to us.15 But that doesn't explain it all. The meaning of life
and the way we are created lead to think that there is a God. But the idea of God is a
quite complicated one to deal with. The philosopher Hume once famously stated “that
all our ideas are nothing but copies of our impressions”16. In context to this statement
Hume says that therefore most (simple minded) people need to reify the abstract figure
of God – they draw pictures of Jesus for example. That, what we call Superstition and
what Christians call “pagan” religions, usually has a great amount of reifications (but
this applies to Christianity, too). The colorful statues of the Hindu gods and goddesses,
the pictures of the virgin Mary and the belief of transubstantiation in Catholicism, the
idolatry in the Christian Orthodox churches, the cult of relics, they all work through

14 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jediism (02/11/2007).
15 cf. inter alia Sigmund Freud. Der Mann Moses und die monotheistische Religion (1939), Abhandlung III, Abschnitt E – H,
page 568 ff.
16 David Hume – A Treatise on Human Nature – quoted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hume (2. Feb 2007).
 11

some kind of reification. And in the times of the ancient Greek, Plato's ideas were
something like visible things – visible by an intellectual `view´ outside the `cave´.

The most common example of this leader in a pseudo-religious movie, is, of course,
Neo. His superpowers show not only what humans have always desired (the desire to
fly, to name one of the many), but he personifies the power of secular miracles. He is
the connection between some kind of God and the restricted human world. The author
and media critic Read Mercer Schuchardt opines that the Matrix of “The Matrix” is an
allegory to the Christian motive of sin and at the same time criticizes our “addiction” to
technique:

““You are a slave” and “We are born into bondage” are the two sentences
Morpheus speaks to Neo that reveal the analogy to the Judeo-Christian
understanding of sin as slavery. Like the biblical understanding, our technoslavery
is a bondage of mankind's own making, a product of our own free will, as
evidenced by Agent Smith's revelation that this is the second Matrix. The first
Matrix, Smith says, was perfect, but we humans decided we wanted to define
ourselves through our misery, and so we couldn't accept it.”17
The appearance of the “Oracle” adds another “religious touch”. It applies to the
famous Oracle of Delphi in Greek history. As most of the women of the Oracle in
Delphi, the Oracle in the Matrix is about fifty years of age, and they both make their
prophecies sitting on a Tripod. Both foresee the future, give enigmatic predictions, and
have a priestess (the woman opening the door for Neo to enter is referred to as a
priestess in the script). But the most significant similarity between the two Oracles is
that the Oracle in Delphi has as its motto “Know Thyself” written in Greek at the
entrance of the temple and the one in the Matrix has “Know Thyself”, written in Latin,
at a plaque above its door frame. This phrase will become important during the action
of the movie, since the movie suggests that Neo will greatly improve his powers in the
course of time by getting to know himself.18 But as I have explained above, starting
with the name and role of Morpheus, the movie can be regarded as a `morphine´ of
technical phantasmagoria, but not as criticism of our addiction to technique.

2.4 Dualism and Paradox in “The Matrix” and Plato's Cave Allegory
The philosophical credo that the world is an illusion, and that there is a real world
behind it has been found and made clear in both, allegory and movie. In this part of the
paper I want to go into the last three structural characteristics I have listed above in the

17 “What is the Matrix” by Read Mercer Schuchardt – taken from “Taking the Red Pill – Science, Philosophy and Religion in the
Matrix” edited by Glenn Yeffeth, page 11.
18 “Like a Splinter in your Mind – The philosophy behind the Matrix Trilogy” by Matt Lawrence, page 70.
 12

Preface.

The crew of the Matrix, especially Neo, know the “Truth”. This knowledge can be
used by them in order to create spectacular stunts and action effects. This gets us to the
third structural characteristic – the paradox that come to being if the border between
the real world and the illusive world are crossed to either side. Depending on how far
the crew can imagine the world of the Matrix to be fake, they can jump very far and
move very fast. Inconsequently they can imagine the distance they jump not to be real,
but fail to convince themselves that the bullets shot at them are not real, too. But besides
this little non-logical happenings there are more basic ones. Plato and also the
Wachowski brothers let most of the action take place at the borderline to the two
worlds. Crossing and re-crossing these borders is elemental to the plot. Even though the
two worlds in the allegory and the movie are strictly separated, they have to have some
kind of connection. And even though in each world there are different laws of nature
(especially in “The Matrix”), different beings and things, they have to connect somehow
– in short: One world can effect the other and the other way around. This also means
that the world of illusions can effect the true world (which is not what Plato has in
mind). This goes for the training in “The Matrix”, with which you can take knowledge
from the “real” world into the Matrix, for the fights in the “Matrix”, and for the descend
of the prisoner, who keeps his knowledge of “The Good”.

The consequences drawn from this border-crossing are very similar: Plato's prisoner
descends to reign as a philosopher king. Morpheus, Neo and Trinity go into the Matrix
(onto the surface of this program) to play off their supremacy to the Matrixians. Hence,
deeply rooted to the crossing of the borders are in both cases the fascination of a
supreme leader and the foundation of a superior society. It is a psychological
phenomenon that people usually like to devolve their responsibility to somebody else,
most commonly a leader. And the higher the hierarchical position of the leader, the
more responsibility you can devolve to him, and the more power you can derive as an
adept19. This is one of the reasons people call out: “Man proposes, God disposes.” or
“God speed you”. It is not only in the interest of the philosopher king to reign, but also
in the interest of his subjects (if he doesn't reign to cruel fully).

19 According to Morpheus there is a whole city of adepts, called “Zion”, which is withstanding attacks of machines and tries to
`free´ more people.
 13

3 Conclusion
So far I have only analyzed the philosophical and religious content of the movie and
compared it to the one of the Cave Allegory. Therefore I have saved me this space for
something that none of the books I read could tell me – my opinion.

For a hundred years now, movies exist, and during this time Hollywood has found
the recipe for attracting millions of people to watch their movies. The biggest amount of
money a single movie has grossed was 1.835.300.000 Dollar (Titanic). But, in some way
or another, most of Hollywood movies have only aimed to entertain and not to educate.

This arouses the question which is asked in the book “Taking the Red Pill”: Is “The
Matrix” made to educate or to entertain, is it an “intellectual poseur”? 20 Read Mercer
Schuchardt opines that:

“The Wachowskis seem to have asked themselves this question: How do you speak
seriously to a culture reduced to the format of comic books and video games?
Answer: You tell them a story from the only oracle they'll listen to, a movie, and
you tell the story in the comic-book and video-game format that the culture has
become so addicted to. In other words, The Matrix is a graduate thesis on
consciousness in the sheep's clothing of an action-adventure flick.”21
Is “The Matrix” only wrapped in action, as Schuchardt states, or is it its core? Firstly
I think we have to determine the reason and the means by which philosophy and
religion are used for the action of the movie.

The first half of the movie is used to “enlighten” Neo and the viewer about the
Matrix. The idea of the world being an illusion can be called philosophical in some
way. But the resulting consequences are vastly non-philosophical. The movie starts out
somewhat wanna-be philosophical just to give way to the religious part of the movie.
But not even the religious part of the movie can be complete without Neo taking the
action and getting to `know himself´ and therefore fulfilling the prophecy. The
philosophy and even the religious meanings as they can be found in the many symbols
of the movie, are just a mean to justify the end.

The criticism of technique the movie is supposed to contain was very hard for me to
find. Maybe it is a fault of mine not to be able to find it, maybe my fancifulness is over-
strained by this task. It seems to me that the creators of the movie, on the contrary, love

20 “The Matrix: Paradigm of Postmodernism or Intellectual Poseur?” by Andrew Gordon, taken from “Taking the Red Pill –
Science, Philosophy and Religion in the Matrix” edited by Glenn Yeffeth, page 102.
21 “What is the Matrix” by Read Mercer Schuchardt – taken from “Taking the Red Pill – Science, Philosophy and Religion in the
Matrix” edited by Glenn Yeffeth, page 20.
 14

technique: Instead of having Morpheus's crew just hacking into the Matrix's main
computer and shutting it off, they go back into Matrix over and over again. And by the
way, the real world isn't much different from the cyberspace of the Matrix either, since
Morpheus, Neo, Trinity and the rest of the crew are living in some kind of spaceship,
and are getting attacked by spider-like technical creatures, which the viewer of the
movie might only have seen in computer games. As you see, “The Matrix” is much
deals more with fascination of technique than it takes a critical distance to it. But this
phenomenon is apparent in daily life, too: The issue of the “Times” magazine at the 23 rd
December 2007 reported about the so-called “Second Life”, which is a computer game
in the Internet. You can create your Avatar (the virtual person that represents you in the
game) very freely and then go into Discos, clubs, you can even create your own store
and sell things, for real money. Some people even make their living with the money
they earn – and you do all this just as long as you can escape from reality.22 Who says
you need to be forced to live in the Matrix?

Lets take a look at the philosophy of the movie, which I have stated a couple times
to be a wanna-be philosophy. The old fear of philosophers that the world might be an
illusion is borrowed from the Wachowski brothers to be the hub of the movie. The
Wachowski brothers seem to have confused something: The Matrix world is not a world
that is blinding our senses, but blinding our brain. The Matrix plays some kind of
computer-game telling us that we are perceiving something, but it is not a perceived
world. When Morpheus explains to Neo the function of the Matrix he doesn't only
unmask the illusion produced by the Matrix, but also our commonly held definition of
the reality by perception. Our perception is, just as the Matrix, electrical signals
interpreted by our brain. The absurdity drawn from this is, that Morpheus and his crew
differ between the Matrix and our `reality´23. Now you have the choice to let your
skepticism go as far as to doubt everything, for my part even to doubt that you doubt
(which Montaigne did), or take another option, which I will come to explain later. It is
remarkable that many skeptics were very critical towards the world perceived through
our senses and had no problem doubting everything, but when it came to a being like
God, which we are not able to perceive, nor to imagine, nor to even know its existence,

22 The “Times” magazine issue from the 23rd of December 2006 and January first 2007 – Article written by: Joel Stein, page 56-
57.
23 The Matrix could have become a movie dealing with modern philosophy, if it would have abolished the definition of reality, but
it regresses back to the quasi-platonic Dualism, differing and separating between a real and a deceiving one. Therefore the
Matrix reference to Baudrillard (Neo stores some discs with secret content in Baudrillard's book “Simulacra and Simulation”
(1981)) is simply wrong.
 15

they failed to doubt (among these skeptics are Locke, Berkeley and Descartes). The
problem of most skeptics is that they are not immune to themselves, their privat desire:
They doubt, what they want to doubt, which can be very random. Each skepticism leads
to guessing and claiming, which it tries to avoid. Even if a Skeptic dares to doubt that
the world exists he claims something. So you either go as far as to doubting and
distrusting yourself, which leads to a dead end, or you do what Kant and Nietzsche did
in a quite different way – stay on earth with all its might-be illusions. Kant left God out
of evaluation and analyzed how we perceive. He re-justified objective judgments and
cognitions (which is not possible according to skeptics). Nietzsche on the other hand
famously claimed God to be dead. The death of God means the ascent of man, the
ascent of what Nietzsche calls “super-man”24. But this is not be taken in the the way
“The Matrix” does by the figure of Neo. Hereby the meaning of God is to be understood
in many ways. Nietzsche meant that many philosophers strive to believe in
metaphysical existences such as the ideal of the “Good”, or pure reason, or even a God.

As I have already said in the preface the “Matrix” of “The Matrix” was a pragmatic
invention of the Wachowski brothers to have all ethical problems put aside and let the
viewer enjoy the amok run of the protagonists. It is ironic that quite a few intelligent
people have found lots of layers of meaning in “The Matrix”, which is a puzzle of
various symbols, but fail to find out that the movie is a rapture of one's brain. “The
Matrix” reminds me of a picture of Jackson Pollock who one day was sick of all kind of
art and took a paint brush, dipped it in color and threw it at a piece of paper and
declared it to be art. It was now up to art connoisseurs to interpret the random mess of
the picture and to diagnose a kind of deeper meaning of the picture. If I was Pollock I
would have had enormously much fun! The sad thing about the movie is that it was not
supposed to be a satire of the deadly serious intellectual upper class interpreting some
kind of deep meaning into the movie, but a serious attempt to make an intelligent
movie. I guess it is now up to me to laugh... The more intelligent the viewer, the more
intelligent the movie. Whereas the real intelligent viewers find the movie . . . dumb.

24 The English “Superman”, which is a translation of Nietzsche's “Übermensch”, is wrong. This misinterpretation is typical, it is
the reason why Nazis for example have identified themselves with Nietzsche's “Übermensch”. “Über” in the way Nietzsche
meant it to be, is supposed to be taken in the meaning of “over” or “across”. The “Übermensch” is surpassing himself over and
over again in Nietzsche's “Also sprach Zarathustra”. Therefore the Latin equivalent to “über” is not “supra” (super in English)
meaning “supreme” or “better”, but “trans”. “Superman” leads to a literal translation of “being supreme” (like Hitler's supreme
race). But especially the “Superman” being “better” is the opposite of what Nietzsche wanted it to be, since “better” or “good”
is a moral valuation, whereas the “Trans-man” is “Beyond Good and Evil”.
The reason for this long explanation of the meaning of “Superman” is that I wanted to clarify the differentiation between the
Matrix-type “Superman” and the “Superman” (or better “Trans-man”) of Nietzsche.