“Born into Bondage”

From a traditional Western philosophical perspective, The Matrix (Larry and Andy Wachowski, 1999) practically teaches itself. Like Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982), another film popular among philosophy and film studies professors alike, The Matrix weaves into its narrative many of the basic problems found in the history of philosophy, including classic oppositions between appearance and reality, faith and reason, free will and determinism, the human and nonhuman, nature and culture, as well as questions concerning existence, self-knowledge and identity, memory, technology, and the possibility of meaning. Even in philosophy courses that do not take film as their primary subject matter, The Matrix serves as a useful way to illustrate the basic problems of philosophy and present their continued relevance to introductory philosophy students. It is not much of a surprise, then, that the film and its sequels have inspired a large number of critical volumes and essays dedicated to the elaboration of these themes, a phenomenon that has caused Myriam Diocaretz and Stefan Herbrechter, editors of one such volume, to muse whether the now-established “canonicity” of The Matrix in academic writing constitutes theory's low point or its renewal, with The Matrix taking up the position of a “master text.” ¹