Plato and "The Matrix"

Paper Summary:

This paper, written in the first person as if by the Greek philosopher Plato, makes a comparison of the allegory of the cave from his "Republic" with the science fiction movie, "The Matrix". It describes the allegory of the cave and looks at how it represents people living in a darkened philosophical state and how the real world refers to people thinking clearly on a philosophical level, basing thoughts on the good as the highest principle. In comparison, it looks at how, in "The Matrix", the real world refers to actual reality, as opposed to the matrix, where the world presented is a computer-generated illusion.

From the Paper:

"In the film The Matrix, I see that my allegory of the cave has been transformed to a new format. My allegory of the cave was an absurd situation and not one that was supposed to be considered as possibly occurring. In short, my allegory of the cave represented the state of the human soul. In The Matrix, this allegory has been transformed into a scenario that seems to linger on the border between what can be believed and what cannot. My allegory has been given the detail that makes it almost feasible. In doing so, I find that the meaning behind the allegory has been partly lost. There are some areas where the film offers similar ideas to my own, but for the main part, I find that my allegory has been reinvented to create new meaning, with little of this matching my original philosophy."

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