The Matrix and Philosophy: Welcome to the Desert of the Real (Popular Culture and Philosophy, 3) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 081269502X ISBN 13: 9780812695021

Publisher: Open Court, 2002

Synopsis

The Matrix conveys the horror of a false world made of nothing but perceptions. Based on the premise that reality is a dream controlled by malevolent forces, it is one of the most overtly philosophical movies ever to come out of Hollywood. These thought-provoking essays by the same team of young philosophers who created The Simpsons and Philosophy discuss different facets of the primary philosophical puzzle of The Matrix: Can we be sure the world is really there, and if not, what should we do about it? Other chapters address issues of religion, lifestyle, pop culture, the Zeitgeist, the nature of mind and matter, and the reality of fiction.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly

The many faces of Keanu Reeves as hero Neo-Christ, Buddha, Socrates-are explored in these essays on the philosophical implications of the sci-fi martial arts blockbuster The Matrix, collected by the editor of Seinfeld and Philosophy and The Simpsons and Philosophy. According to the academics assembled here, when messianic hacker Neo kick-boxes the Matrix's virtual-reality dream-prison, he is really struggling with some of mankind's biggest conundrums: the nature of truth and reality, the possibility of free will, the mind-body problem and the alienation of labor in late-capitalist society. The tacit goal here is to make philosophy fun for the general reader by orienting it to pop-culture reference points, so while some articles contain rather dense philosophical jargon, most are pitched at the level of a freshman intro course. But only a few chapters delve into the movie's aesthetics; the rest seem to use The Matrix as a peg on which to hang a canned philosophy lecture. The results are occasionally engaging, as with David Mitsuo Nixon's nifty refutation of the "reality is just an illusion" conceit, but they're too often dryly academic and liable to elicit no more than a drowsy "whoa" from the movie's legions of fans.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"This collection of essays has something for nearly everyone interested in the intersection between philosophy and pop culture." -- Utopian Studies Book Review, September, 2004

Edition details

• Publisher: Open Court
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 081269502X
• ISBN 13: 9780812695021
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320
• Editor: Irwin William