Comparing Platos The Republic, Rene Descartes...

There are a number of similarities found in certain sections of Platos The Republic, Renee Descartes Meditations I, and the 1999 major motion picture The Matrix. The basic tenet that fuels Socrates Allegory of the Cave and the other two previously mentioned works is that reality through the human senses cannot be trusted, may not be true, and cannot necessarily be validated through the human senses. Based on this central premise, there are a number of specific points of comparison existent between this literature and film, particularly between Meditations and The Matrix. The essential element in doubting the human senses and the information that they reveal to a person about the world is to disavow them, and start over to begin to gather knowledge about ones surroundings and the world. Neo does this consciously when he opts to take the red pill in the movie. Doing so allows him to see that what his senses previously conceived of as reality was merely a computer animated faÃÆ'Â §ade , and that the actual world in existence was much darker and barren that that which his senses previously believed. Similarly, Descartes discusses in section 1 of Meditations I the notion that he cannot trust any of his previous body of knowledge about reality or anything else, and that he must eradicate all he has ever known and believed and replace it with knowledge not based on the senses. The willful eradication of sensory perception is a poignant similarity between these two sources.