Many philosophers have created ideas that the real world is an illusion, and the Matrix trilogy contains many references to the people who have entertained this idea. Although the films are meant to stand on their own and create their own set of philosophical questions, the Wachowski brothers, the directors of the film series, seek advice from these philosophers. Three philosophical references that can be compared to the Matrix trilogy are Platos allegory of the cave, Herman & Chomskys Manufacturing Consent, and the work of John de Graaf. The films refer to and compare the ideas established in the work of these philosophers throughout the series, and I will discuss throughout this paper the similarities and differences with how these different philosophers view freedom.
Plato, a greek philosopher from over 2,000 years ago, explored the idea that the real world is an illusion in the allegory of the cave in his work, The Republic. The Allegory Of The Cave is a theory concerning the human perception of reality and what is fake. Plato claimed that knowledge gained through the human senses is no more than opinion and that, in order to have real knowledge, we must gain it through philosophical reasoning. The brief summary of the story is that Plato imagines a cave in which people have been kept prisoner since
birth. These people are bound by chains in such a way that they can look only straight ahead, not behind them or to the side, and have been stuck there their entire lives. On the wall in front of them, they can see flickering shadows in the shape of a variety of figures. Because these images are all theyve ever seen, they believe these images constitute reality. One day, a prisoner escapes the chains and looks behind him and sees that what he thought was the real world is actually an elaborate set of shadows. He is freed from the cave altogether and sees the world for the first time. Fully aware of true reality, he must return to the cave and try to teach others what he knows, but the other prisoners reaction to the escapee returning represents that people are scared of knowing philosophical truths and do not trust philosophers. In the matrix, Neo is pulled from a kind of cave in the first Matrix film, when he sees the real world for the first time. Everything he thought was real is only an illusionmuch like the shadows on the cave walls. Plato insists that those who free themselves and come to perceive reality has a duty to return and teach others, and this holds true in the Matrix films as well, as Neo takes it upon himself to save humanity from widespread ignorance and acceptance of a false reality.