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Ga Young Lee

Professor Martin Leever

PHL 1000

2 August 2019

Film Analysis: The Matrix

René Descartes is a 17th-century French philosopher and mathematician who wrote a

famous philosophical work Meditations on First Philosophy. In the Meditations on First

Philosophy, Descartes discusses a method of doubt, three reasons for doubting his current beliefs,

proof of the existence of the self, and argues that the reason is the only path to the truth and

knowledge. In The Matrix (1999), true reality is believed to be hidden and humans are constantly

being deceived by the computer program called Matrix. Thomas Anderson is a computer

programmer for a well-known company and also has another life as a hacker Neo. He starts to get

mysterious messages on his computer and after meeting with Morpheus, he figures out that the

reality is totally different from what he and other people perceive it to be. The movie reflects the

idea of Descartes and illustrates his arguments in many scenes. In this paper, I will discuss the

film, The Matrix, from the perspective of Descartes’ Meditations.

In his First Meditation, Descartes explains his method of doubt where he puts all beliefs,

ideas, thoughts, and matter in doubt. He argues that in order to find beliefs that have certainty and

to find the truth, we must begin by doubting everything until we arrive at beliefs that cannot be

doubted. The method of doubt is illustrated in several scenes of the movie The Matrix. At the

beginning of the movie, Neo wakes up to mysterious messages on his computer screen which tells

him, “The Matrix has you” and “Follow the white rabbit.” Neo thinks that there could possibly be

another world, which is entirely different from what he sees. He follows the white rabbit and meets
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Trinity. Trinity tells him she knows that Neo is looking for an answer and the question, “What is

the Matrix’’ drives him. Neo starts to wonder about the Matrix and meets Morpheus. Morpheus

tells Neo that he is living in a dream world. Even though he has lived in the world for many years

and has seen many things with his own eyes, he doubts about everything after Morpheus’ words.

To figure out what the truth is and how the real world looks like, Neo takes the red pill and enter

into the real world. Neo’s questioning about the Matrix and doubt about the world in which he

lives parallel with Descartes’ methodic doubt since they both are open to doubt and look for the

truth and knowledge. Also, the scene when Neo asks Morpheus if the couch is not real in the

Construct illustrates the method of doubt. Although he sees and touches the couch, Neo doubts

about the reality and tries to define what is real.

In his work, Descartes discusses three reasons for doubting his current beliefs. He states

that sense experience is deceptive, we dream and may mistake it for reality, and an evil demon

might be deceiving us, so we should doubt everything that we believe to be true. All of these three

reasons are described in The Matrix. When the crew members eat soup together, Mouse wonders

how do the machines of the Matrix know what Tasty Wheat tasted like and says that maybe other

people thought it tasted like oatmeal or tuna fish. This scene illustrates Descartes’ reason that

sensory information is deceptive. When Agent Smith puts a spider-like transmitter inside Neo’s

body, Neo wakes up in his bed and thinks that he had a dream. But later on, when Trinity takes out

the transmitter from Neo, he then realizes that what he perceived as a dream was actually not a

dream but a reality. In another scene, Morpheus asks Neo, “Have you ever had a dream, Neo, that

you were so sure was real? What if you were unable to awake from that dream? How would you

know the difference between the dream and the real world?” These two scenes illustrate Descartes’

argument which claims that since the dream is based on the reality we cannot know for certain if
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we are in a dream or not. In the movie, Morpheus explains to Neo what the Matrix is. He says that

what Neo has perceived as real was actually a computer-simulated artificial reality that the

machines generate in order to deceive humans. When Cypher eats steak with Agent Smith, he says

that he knows the steak does not exist, and when he put it in his mouth, the Matrix is telling his

brain that it is juicy and delicious. The Matrix is “an evil demon” described in Descartes’ The

Meditations that tricks us.

One of the most famous quotes of René Descartes is, “I think, therefore I am.” In the

Second Meditation, Descartes realizes that he can be absolutely certain of at least one thing, that

he exists. He claims that since he can be certain that he thinks, he can also be certain that he exists.

He thinks the only thing we can be sure of is the existence of our own mind, thinking, because, in

doubting everything, we see that the mind is the thing doing the thinking and to do that, it must

therefore exist. In The Matrix, Neo constantly “thinks.” Even when he doubts about the world he

lives in and wonders what the Matrix is, there exists a “Neo” that is doing the doubting and

wondering. Even after he takes the red pill that Morpheus gave him, his mind stays the same in

terms of “thinking” because the only thing that is able to transcend the doubt is the mind. While

Neo is not sure if he lives in a dream or a reality, he is certain of self-existence since, in his mind,

thinking is happening.

Descartes was a rationalist who held that our current beliefs were completely unreliable

because our method of deriving them was flawed. He believed that knowledge is derived through

reason and reason alone. The Matrix also emphasizes the importance of reason in the same

perspective as Descartes’. To train Neo, Morpheus tells him again and again that his true limit is

his belief in limitation and his perception that those limits are real. During the jump program,

Morpheus tells Neo that to do the impossible things “You have to let it all go, Neo. Fear, doubt,
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disbelief. Free your mind.” When Neo struggles to spar with Morpheus in the Construct, Neo

attributes his defeat to Morpheus being “too fast,” to which Morpheus responds “Do you believe

that my being stronger or faster has anything to do with my muscles in this place?” Neo shakes his

head no but continues to breathe heavily, still trapped in the limited abilities of his muscles and

body. It’s not until Morpheus taunts him “You think that’s the air you’re breathing now?” that Neo

seems to realize he can transcend the limitations he has taken for granted are his reality, because,

as it turns out, they are actually illusions. When Neo finally becomes The One, he can stop bullets,

block punches, and cut an agent in half, because he now realizes that his “mind” makes everything

real in the Matrix. All of these scenes illustrate Descartes’ rationalist view putting emphasize on

mind and reasoning rather than experience and sensation and believing that reason can find a way

to reliably distinguish appearance from reality.

The Matrix certainly exists in our own society. Our world and our understanding of reality

are distorted in many ways and to a large extent. Media controls how and what we think. It

influences our beliefs, values, behaviors, and democratic processes. It has the power to make the

innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent by controlling the mind of people. Two different

news media present two different views regarding the same topic. Newspapers fortify long-held

views, reinforced over the years by the same newspaper. Social media and magazines produce

body image distortion towards those who see the highly photoshopped face and body and create

an unrealistic view of how someone sees their body. To conclude, everything we say, buy, and use

can be said to be under the influence of the 21th-century version Matrix.

In conclusion, The Matrix is a clear demonstration of René Descartes’ Meditations on First

Philosophy. Both question the reality in which they are living and eager to find what is the truth

and knowledge. Neo in The Matrix and Descartes doubt everything they used to know and believe
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as the truth in order to find the real and certain truth. Descartes reason that since it is unable to

distinguish the dream from the reality, since his sense is deceptive, and since there might be an

evil genius deceiving him, he should be doubting his current beliefs. And all of these three reasons

are also demonstrated in the film The Matrix. Neo in The Matrix and Descartes both illustrated the

proof of the existence of the self with the fact that they “think,” and they both emphasized the

importance of reason for finding a way to reliably distinguish what is the reality and what is not.

The concepts of Descartes’ work and The Matrix can also be applied to our world today since the

media controls our thoughts and our lives greatly.