I finally finished watching the second and third Matrix movies this morning. As I watched the voices of the Ancients emerge, I found it a bit ironic that a modern voice seemed in control of the matrix itself.
Take the source, the old guy with the moustachetee (goatee and mustache connecting-what is the word for that?). Did anyone else see Leibniz? We have the source telling Neo that the world he's fighting to save is actually the sixth world. That he'd created a few others and they all experienced the same fate. Each time the source created a new world, he tried to change it but the nature of humans couldn't be changed. The unchanging nature of humanity reminds me of the monads which leads to determinism. For the source, everything happened as it must. The source merely tried to create the best possible world by tinkering with the surroundings of the humans.
The source also seems to resemble Hegel's conception of the Absolute Spirit in that the Absolute Reality is constantly trying to return to what is already known. For Hegel, history exists as a series of actions, reactions and counter-reactions but he calls it thesis, antithesis and synthesis. The synthesis or counter-reaction becomes the new thesis or action and the chain continues on. In mentioning the creation and destruction of Zion, the source seems to refer to this type of recurrence or the Absolute Spirit. In which the humans are always trying to rediscover what is not known, but felt about the world—thus the cycle of humanity resembles the Absolute Reality trying to return to the Absolute Spirit.
Jordan touched on the subject of the nature of humanity and essentially viewed it as a tendency to conform—which suggests that humanity does not change, as if that were a part of the nature of humanity. I'm inclined to side with Heraclitus in that the only thing that doesn't change is change itself. Humanity, in my view, changes as a series of actions, reactions and counter-reactions. In terms of a metaphysical view of the world, apparently I agree with Hegel.
Examples?
Take Voltaire's Candide, a systematic mocking of Leibniz' theory of this world being "the best of all possible worlds": Leibniz had an affiliation with Frederick William I, the father of Frederick the Great, King of Prussia. Leibniz reflected William I's more conservative view points and was thus put in charge of Frederick the Great's younger education. Frederick and William had a tumultuous relationship after which Frederick constantly rebelled against his father, including ideologically. Later, Voltaire and Frederick became friends and Voltaire was the classic suck-up when it came to the in-crowd of royalty that Frederick happened to live at the center of. Voltaire continuously sought out Frederick's approval, and their letters often contained elaborate pseudo-intellectual mocking of William I and all his counterparts, including Leibniz. Voltaire's writing of Candide may be largely related to his efforts to appease Frederich—thesis, antithesis, synthesis/thesis and so on. (Information comes from Evening in the Palace of Reason: Bach Meets Frederick the Great in the Age of Enlightenment by James R. Gaines)
My point with the example above is that people often look at the ideas alone but fail to consider the historical context of those ideas. Historical context is another point that Hegel emphasizes. He argues that philosophy is an expression of its time. In other words, philosophy reflects the ideas of the time that they are in, where they were developed, and who the ideas are exchanged with. When it comes to Voltaire, his book Candide may not actually reflect his own philosophy but may actually be a collection of brownnosing. Still, the criticisms themselves do not cease to be relevant. It is simply important to note the context so that whoever is interested may keep it in mind that new interpretations of ancient, medieval or modern philosophers will most likely not match what the corresponding author intended to say.
This disjunction between original meaning and new interpretations relates to Alan's discussion of how the writers of "The Matrix" trilogies probably did not think or intend to incorporate the ideas of tens of philosophers into the movie's plot. However, that does not make the connections any less relevant. One of the most comforting things about philosophy is that ideas inspire new ideas or a reexamination of old ideas. It's never stagnant until people decide it's irrelevant.
So don't make it irrelevant.
2 comments:
Interesting that you thought of Liebniz when we met the architect.
I thought of Nietzsche and his "eternal return." They're both oddly deterministic and both seem rather thwarted by Neo's choice.
I like that Ray... I thought of Leibniz as well..but first I thought of Democritus.
Maybe it was the final exam prompt pressing itself into my head, or maybe it was the hate you could smell through the screen from his caked-on white makeup that made me think of how much Plato hated Democritus. Hated him so much that, like a child, he snubbed him in his own writings AND THEN in the grandest of all ironies from a philosopher; Plato tried to burn Democritus' books???
Wow. Now thats some hate in response to an exchange of ideas.
Its not like he kept he and his family, and his entire race of people, in a cage for twenty years.
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