Philosophy in cinema

Let's escape the agenda for a bit. I often take a breather in philosophy to do this. This week, I recommend this kind of breather to you as well. 

The Matrix Trilogy: Causality, Determinism, and Fatalism

The primary goal of the Movies and Philosophy course I teach at a foundation university in Ankara is to bring the abstract and challenging nature of philosophical texts to a more accessible, auditory, and visual plane for today's students. Classical philosophical arguments can sometimes seem inaccessible when one goes beyond the boundaries of academic texts; however, cinema is a living laboratory of thought that gives flesh and bone to ontological and epistemological problems. In this context, one of the most crucial modules of the course is the week where the concepts of causality, determinism, and fatalism are put on the table, accompanied by the films The Matrix (1999) and The Matrix Reloaded (2003).

Causality

Throughout the history of philosophy, causality has been understood as an objective necessity beyond the sequence between events. Aristotle's classification of material, formal, efficient, and final (telos) causes suggests that nature operates with a purposeful order. However, David Hume's radical empiricist critique shook this dogma: We never observe the "cause" itself; our mind only experiences the sequence and regular correlation between events. According to Hume, causality is not an ontological reality, but a habit of the human mind. Immanuel Kant, in response to this skepticism, positions causality not by searching for it in the external world, but as a transcendental category of the human mind that makes experience possible (discussions on the terms 'aşkın' and/or 'aşkınsal' in Turkish literature are exhausting; we are simply glossing over it here).

Determinism and the Illusion of Choice in The Matrix Universe

The Matrix trilogy brings these philosophical debates directly to the center of popular culture. The second film of the series, The Matrix Reloaded, is full of characters who draw the boundaries of causality and free will with dogmatic clarity.

The Merovingian character defends the idea that the universe is woven with a rigid chain of cause and effect with these words:

"Causality. There is no escape from it. We are forever slaves to it. Our only hope, our only peace is to understand it, to understand the ‘why.’ Why is the only real source of power."

These lines are a concise expression of classical determinism, where every action is necessitated by the causes preceding it. Although, if we are speaking strictly about determinism, it is more reasonable to ask "why" (neden) instead of "what for" (niçin). Let's skip this new topic of debate for now. According to the Merovingian, free will is a sweet illusion produced by minds that have failed to grasp the causal chain.

The Oracle and the Paradox of Knowledge

The sentence the Oracle says to Neo turns our perception of time and free will upside down:

"You didn’t come here to make a choice. You’ve already made it. You’re here to try to understand why you made it."

This statement is in perfect harmony with the Kantian perspective or the block universe theory. The past, present, and future exist simultaneously. If time does not flow linearly but stands as a "block," the choices Neo makes have already existed; what he experiences is merely walking within this pre-existing reality.

The Architect and Programmed Destiny

The Architect scene, the climax of the series, reveals the failure of the first versions of the Matrix and that Neo is actually a mathematical anomaly coded for the system to balance itself. Here, fatalism sheds its theological understanding of destiny and transforms into a cybernetic determinism. Even Neo's rebellion is part of a cycle pre-ordained for the sustainability of the system. Although, most of us cannot separate fatalism directly from religion and religious narratives. After all, their starting points are the same. However, in modern philosophy, fatalism is considered separately from religious narrative. The Matrix offers a beautiful laboratory for this way of thinking as well.

Thinking with Cinema

The Matrix does not just offer students an escape from the abstract world of philosophical arguments; it holds up a mirror that makes them question the boundaries of their own cognitive structures, perceptions of time, and claims of freedom. If causality consists only of mental constructs, if time is merely a perceptual illusion, and if our choices are just a pre-written block of code, what exactly does the word "waking up" correspond to? Cinema offers a much more powerful and, in terms of today's human habits, easier mental exercise for asking and discussing these questions than theoretical texts.