Imagine several prisoners who have been chained up in a cave for all of their lives. They have never been outside the cave. They face a wall in the cave and they can never look at the entrance of the cave. Sometimes animals, birds, people, or other objects pass by the entrance of the cave casting a shadow on the wall inside the cave. The prisoners see the shadows on the wall and mistakenly view the shadows as reality.…
3 At the end of the cave allegory, Socrates implies that most men would want to escape the cave and see reality as it really is. However, in his betrayal of Morpheus, Cypher implies that it is better to live in the artificial world of the Matrix. Which is…
Plato and Niccolo Machiavelli magnificent ideologies for leaders of the world. First Plato’s dialogue Allegory of the Cave described what would happen if prisoners were chained to a wall and could only see the shadows before them. The shadows were visuals on the wall from the fire blazing behind them. Plato stated a quote about what would happen if those prisoners were to be released out of the cave? His reasoning for this was to produce what the human natures method is of gaining knowledge. Then, Niccolo Machiavelli described in The Prince why qualities are essential in succeeding as a prince. He stated that “qualities bring either blame or praise (Machiavelli). Therefore, it is significant to suppress negative qualities and let the positive…
One of the similarities is that there are two realities in both which includes the fake reality and the true reality. In both texts one of the people living in the fake reality escapes and goes to the real reality which they realise is completely different than they expected. Another similarity in both the texts is that the person who escapes the fake reality wants to go back and help others to understand that they are living in a fake reality. One of the differences between the two texts is the fact that in The Matrix Neo has other people show him the true reality, whereas in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave the prisoner breaks free and finds the real reality all on their own. The prisoner had no one to guide them as to what was going on whereas in Neo’s case he had people that helped him to see what was going on pretty much straight away. Both of the texts have many similarities as well as a few differences between…
The literal parallels between Neo and Moses are similar and share a related background in the beginning to middle of their stories, but both diverge from their actions towards the cause very differently. To start, both of the heroes start out in their normal lives and are introduced to their true destinies sometime in the middle of the stories and discover their purpose. Both main characters start out as slaves, Moses in Exodus is the son of a Hebrew slave and Neo is a slave to the system controlled by the Machines. Both heroes have a similar goal they are tasked, but are set up differently from each other. In Exodus, Moses encounters God from the burning bush and is given the task to save all the Hebrew slaves from Pharaoh’s reign and bringing them to Mount Sinai. In The Matrix however, it is Neo that is rescued from a chase with “The Agents” (bad guys of the film) and is brought…
In Plato's Allegory of the Cave there were multiple beliefs brought upon by the prisoners of this cave. The prisoners of the cave are supposed to parallel everyday people in the sense of how reality is perceived. The prisoners of the cave believed and only knew that reality of the shadows and developed their own belief structure and way of processing that information. Plato connected that to everyday people due to the fact that although we strongly believe the reality we have made for ourselves, there can be more that we have never been exposed to. For example, when one of the prisoners were unchained and brought out of the cave into the world, he was overwhelmed and wanted to tell the other prisoners. Due to the fact that other prisoners could…
The movie Matrix can be considered a modern allegory of the allegory of the cave. Like the people in the cave, humans, trapped in the Matrix, see only what the machines want them to see. They are deceived into believing that what they hear and see is the only reality that exists, and accept the illusions of their senses as the only part of truth. But Neo, the main character, is forced to face the painful truth, when he is pulled out of the capsule that kept him prisoner of the virtual reality of the Matrix. Neo suddenly discovers that what was before his life, were only shadows, reflections of…
Focusing specifically on The Allegory of the Cave and The Matrix, there are many similarities between the questionable perceptions described in each story. In The Allegory of the Cave, Socrates paints a picture of a group of prisoners that have been confined to a dark…
Comparing and contrasting the synopsis “The Matrix” to Plato's “The Allegory Of The Cave” and also Descartes “Meditation I Of The Things Of Which We May Doubt” which have several similarities and also some differences. In all three of these stories the main idea is that reality is in question. In the Matrix, the human being is in a pod like machine that is controlled by a computer simulating what we think and know to be reality. Reality is not only created but manipulated to deceive what is truly surrounding you, when you are clearly in a pod unaware of what reality really is. In Plato's “The Allegory of the Cave” this also focuses on two different realities based on what is in fact real and what is perceived. Plato's view on the prisoners being fooled into a false reality by placing fake objects around them to trick their perception of reality and also put them in a one track state of mind, while life goes on outside of where they are captive. This is similar to The Matrix because in both stories the people are being manipulated to believe a reality outside of what is truly happening at the present time. In both stories, the person that has been captive for a certain period of time but then is able to experience reality outside of just manipulated perception has doubts, they are in disbelief of what they are actually able to witness for the first time. Reality, not perception but what is truly real happening and not being simulated or manipulated so that you would be fooled into believing something that is not real. In the Matrix, Neo lived a pretty normal life as an everyday human being but could not sleep well and like Plato stated that the prisoner would have to sense something, get some kind of feeling that something just was not quite right about his surroundings and the way they were existing. Another similarity is that the prisoners and pods were being manipulated to believe a false reality by people above them.…
I have gone over the many similarities in both the Matrix and the Allegory of the cave such as how both protagonists have been deceived about what is real, that they cannot trust their senses, that they can accomplish great endeavors, and that it is their responsibility to tell others the…
In this movie, we are introduced to a world in which machines had imprisoned man into a virtual world called “the matrix”. There the main protagonist “Neo” founds himself living in this world in questioning whether is real or not, and manages to scape with the help of a group of survivors from the real world. Yet the real world was not what he expected, earth was devastated by a long war between man and machines, and what is left of humanity lives in an underground city were the sewers of the old world use to be. We can consider the Matrix to be the cave, and the shadows projected by the fire, it also presents two possible outcomes from finding true knowledge. In the allegory, Plato believes that if an individual manages to escape from the cave it could end up in two ways. The first way indicates that if a man manages to escape the cave, he would be overwhelmed by the light, and the actual shapes of the shadows he saw, “Don’t you think he would be puzzled, and believe what he saw before was truer than what was shown to him?”(Plato pg2) indicating that the individual who got out would have trouble believing the things from outside the cave would be real. In the movie Neo faces the same problem when he is liberated from the matrix believing that the real world was actually a dream. The second way this could end up is if the individual finds himself to overwhelm by the real world to the point that…
In “The Allegory of the Cave,” Plato embodied a metaphor that compares the way in which we see and believe is actual reality. He creates a cave where prisoners are chained down and are forced to stare at the dark wall in front of them. They are sheltered from any light. You can also perceive this in a different sense, for example all that they see in the world is darkness and that they do not know the difference between what is real and what they consider as “real.” “Like ourselves, I replied; and they see only their own shadows or the shadows of one another, which the fire throws on the opposite wall of…
What if the world everyone perceives as a reality is only an elaborate deception? Human beings believe they are living in realities because they do not know of anything else. What they feel, see, hear, taste, and feel all contribute to their subconscious belief of physical existence. As people dream, however, they usually cannot recognize that they are not living through the events—that is, until they wake up. What if they do not wake up? How would they know the difference between their false perceptions and reality? The Ancient Greek philosopher Plato explores this concept within an example he uses in his work The Republic. In his example, known as the “Allegory of the Cave”, Plato uses an allegorical cave to show how humans are uncomfortable when exposed to the truth and that they are manipulated by higher authorities. In their 1999 motion picture The Matrix, the Wachowski brothers use a computer program to display similar ideals of Plato's allegory, including how humans are controlled and negatively react to the truth. Plato's “Allegory of the Cave” serves as a philosophical basis to The Matrix, as both works suggest that humans express discomfort while exposed to truth and both argue that people are controlled by higher authorities.…
The following essay which were I am comparing and contrasting the differences and similarities of the movie The Matrix and Plato’s and Descartes articles. The similarities that all three has is they are all asking is the world we live in is it real or is it a figment of our imagination and someone is playing a mean joke on us. They also talk about our minds being controlled by someone or something outside of us, much more like an outer body experience. The Matrix is not real and focuses more on the mind and how the mind is being manipulated and Pluto is talking about the senses and how the senses can be manipulated and can confuse us and put doubts in our mind. In the Matrix, Mr. Anderson who is better known by the name Neo, works for a software corporation but at night he is a computer hacker. All articles discuss some type of reflections and different meaning about life and how we view it. The Matrix was a computer with programming simulation of the world that was experienced by virtual lives by being an individual player. They saw what it felt like to be born, growing up, getting a job, getting old, and dying. Mr. Anderson aka “Neo” couldn’t accept “The Matrix”, he had all types of mixed emotions and then thought that his life was a lie.…
The Matrix directly relates to Plato's Allegory of the Cave. In both works, discovering the truth about reality is the major concept. In the cave, men are chained up and all they know is shadows of puppets that are displayed before them, illuminated by a fire that blazes in the distance. These shadows that the men see on the wall are all they know; this is reality to them. Much like in The Matrix how the people that are in the "Matrix" are unaware of that they are living in a world that doesn't actually expose the people to reality. What they know of in the matrix is reality to them. The shadows on the wall and the matrix both cover up the true reality that exists outside of the people's comfort zone. Neo and Plato's released prisoner go through similar realizations. Both Neo and the released prisoner are chained down (literally and metaphorically) from understanding the truth behind reality. The released prisoner is tied in a way that he cannot move and his head always faces in the direction of the wall. He finds out the truth behind the shadow's that he has known as reality. He soon figures out the real creatures that merely cast their shadows before him. In comparison, Neo is tied down to a massive wall where machines control the lives of the people in the matrix. Neo also realizes the truth when he takes the red pill, which allows him to escape from the Matrix and into the real world, therefore living the truth of reality, even though it is more difficult than life inside the Matrix. Neither the released prisoner nor Neo realize they are prisoners until they are introduced to the truth of reality. The prison of the Matrix is described by Morphius when he says to Neo, "It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth." Both Neo and the prisoner can be seen as heroes because they want to help the people who are still blinded by their false conception of reality. Neo is successful in fulfilling his prophecy of becoming "The…