PLATO’S PHILOSOPHIES BEHIND THE FILM “THE MATRIX”

The movie focuses on an ordinary man named Thomas Anderson who is living two lives.

He works as a software engineer for Metacortex by the day while at night, he has a different

identity. He is a computer hacker known as Neo. Neo has been searching for answers to the most

important question: “What is the Matrix?”

A dangerous terrorist named Morpheus searches for Neo his entire life believing that he

is the One. Morpheus says that the “real” world that Neo thinks is just a part of a “neural

interactive simulation” called the Matrix. Morpheus then awakens him to the actual world which

is completely devastated. Morpheus explains that at some point in the 21st century, the world

gave birth to artificial intelligence and the machines turned humans into sources of power. He

says that Matrix is a computer-generated dream world built to keep them under control in order

to change a human being into a battery. 1

The film is associated to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, which prisoners are kept in a cave

since birth and that they can only look straight ahead. In front of them is a wall where they can

see shadows in the shape of different moving things and hear echoes by the things they do not

see. Because of those appearances, they are convinced to believe that those things make up the

actual world.2 However, Plato discusses that the prisoners could be mistaken. For example, a

prisoner sees a shadow and he assumes that it is a tree. He could be wrong since he is only

looking at the projection of the real thing. It is just in his mind’s perception that makes him say

that what he sees is a tree. When one prisoner escapes, he turns to see the real objects and he

1
IMDb, “Synopsis for The Matrix (1999),” IMDb, accessed March 14, 2015,
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0133093/synopsis?ref_=ttpl_pl_syn
2
Cohen, “The Allegory of the Cave," University of Washington, March 17,
http://faculty.washington.edu/smcohen/320/cave.htm
realizes that everything that he believed in was not it actually appears to be. He has a hard time

adjusting his eyes to the brightness of the sun but eventually, he does. Plato also presents the idea

that the world we see is just a shadow of what truly exists. We have never seen the reality.

The humans trapped in the matrix are like the prisoners in the cave. What they suppose as

“real” is not what it actually is. Everything they thought was real is just an illusion, just like the

shadows on the wall. Those who are released from the matrix are the only ones who could see

true reality.

The mind perceives everything that occurs in the matrix as real, which makes the matrix

another type of reality. Thus, if you are killed within the matrix, you will die in the “real world”

because that’s what your mind perceives.

The allegory of the cave is correlated to Plato’s Theory of Forms, in which forms or

concepts are unchangeable and in the sense that to really know and understand the existence of a

certain thing, you have to use your mind, utilize your reasoning and not just rely on your senses.

The things that the prisoners see are actually shadows of the true forms. When the other prisoner

has escaped his bonds, he finally saw the statues of the true forms. Plato believes that people are

all living in a world of appearances, in other words, the material world. In the material world,

things like trees and animals will all soon vanish but the world of forms hold the true form of

everything in the world and that they cannot disappear. Also, in the material world we can for

example label a certain thing as beautiful, but this does not tell us what beauty really is.

Plato uses the allegory of the cave to show the theory of forms. He says that the trapped

prisoners are like the people who can only see the shadows of the true forms, the escaped

prisoner is the philosopher who escaped from the material world and is trying to reach the world
of forms, the outside of the cave is the world of forms where true forms lie, and the sun is the

form of the Good, which is the most fundamental form and the universal author of all things

beautiful and right.3

3
“Platos Theory of Forms – What does it really mean?,” philosophyzer.com, last modified October 8, 2012,
http://www.philosophyzer.com/2012/10/platos-theory-of-forms/
 Bibliography

Cohen, S. Marc. "The Allegory of the Cave", University of Washington, March 17, 2006.

http://faculty.washington.edu/smcohen/320/cave.htm

IMDb. "Synopsis for The Matrix (1999)", IMDb, accessed March 14, 2015.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0133093/synopsis?ref_=ttpl_pl_syn

"Platos Theory of Forms – What does it really mean?." philosophyzer.com. Last modified

October 8, 2012. http://www.philosophyzer.com/2012/10/platos-theory-of-forms/

GARCIA, Andrea Rose G.

2014 – 04220 | Philo 1 D | Prof. Fritz Correa