Heidegger, Plato's Cave, Baudrillard and The Matrix

Heidegger, Plato's Cave, Baudrillard and The Matrix

How does Heidegger, Plato’s Cave and Baudrillard relate to The Matrix?

Martin Heidegger introduced Dasein- the being and “Das Man”. Jean Baudrillard wrote the Simulacra and Simulation (S&S) - likeness and imitation. Plato emphasized our ignorance and narrow sightedness in Plato’s Cave. The movie “The Matrix” shows us many of the important theories and ideas of post-modernist metaphysic. Let’s take a look at the connections between them all…


When Baudrillard refers to simulacra, he is talking about the signs of culture and media that create the world as we perceive it. In his work – Simulacra and Simulation – he is convinced we, society, are losing control over which world is the real; by depending too much on the simulacra, it is losing contact with the real world, on which it is based on . When Morpheus is revealing the world outside the computer generated simulation (where all human minds are imprisoned) he announce, in respect to Baudrillard’s ideas; “welcome to the desert of real”. And Baudrillard’s idea of simulation is seen in the world related to as The Matrix; a digital world. This whole computer-generated world is based on simulacra; a media created world- the way things are “supposed” to be. I quote Morpheus; “What is real? How do you define real? If you're talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste and see, than real is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain.” Here we see how the computers interpret the smells, testes and sight as what they are “supposed” to see, what they want them to see.

Heidegger wrote Being and Time- which is one of the works The Matrix is based on. He would talk about Das Man (The One), and this is seen in the beginning of the movie when Neo is brought to Morpheus after being chased by the agents. When Neo is asked to pick a pill – either a red (the call of conscience; opportunity to discover the truth) or a blue (Das Man pill of...