Plato's Allegory of the Cave has been incorporated in hundreds of movies and books. The idea behind the cave, which has been widely discussed in this blog, is that we humans blindly accept whatever we see as the truth, even though it may not be a proper reflection of reality. When we look at movies, metaphors for the cave are rampant - whether you're watching
The Matrix,
The Village (or any M. Night Shyamalan movie for that case), or even the newly-released
Wreck-It Ralph, you'll see that society is engulfed by the cave. However, in most Hollywood movies that depict the cave, the main character escapes the cave, but unlike Plato's Allegory, they usually pull society out of the cave. This is because in the romanticized version of the cave, the one person who escapes is an Übermensch.
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This is the scene where the Übermensch, Neo, walks
out of the cave.
Courtesy of Warner Brother Studios |
WARNING: There will be spoilers below for the aforementioned films.
The
Übermensch is a term coined by the German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, and translates as "over man" or "super man." The
Übermensch is a person who is
"...willing to risk it all for the sake of the enhancement of humanity." Although the word
Übermensch may have a negative connotation due to Adolf Hitler's use of it to perpetuate the idea of Aryan superiority, Nietzsche gave figures such as Jesus Christ as examples of an
Übermensch. Plato's Allegory of the Cave lacked the inclusion of a powerful figure who could not only escape the cave him/herself, but also pull others out of the cave. In
The Matrix and
Wreck-It Ralph, the two
Übermensches, Neo and Wreck-It Ralph respectively.
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These are the "bonds" that Plato describes, which keep
humanity in the Matrix.
Courtesy of Warner Brother Studios |
In
The Matrix, the main character is, Neo (whose actual name is Thomas Anderson), who is a programmer by day and a hacker by night. Then one night, a legendary hacker named Morpheus, seeks out Neo, and sheds light on the dark truth about the Matrix. The Matrix is an imaginary world, in which the minds and consciousness of human beings are plugged in into a stimulated, digital world. To those plugged into the Matrix, everything seems absolutely real;
it makes you wonder: would we know it if we lived in the Matrix?
The Matrix trilogy is a long one, so I'll just skip to the end. Neo becomes the so-called "Chosen One" who has the power to defeat the Matrix. At the end of the series, he essentially destroys the Matrix (he doesn't actually destroy the Matrix, and the ending is open to debate, but for all-intensive purposes and for those who haven't seen and don't care for watching the films, let's just say that the Matrix was destroyed). At the cost of his life, Neo was the
Übermensch who brought about the end of the Matrix, effectively freeing a portion of humanity from the illusion.
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Wreck-It Ralph and Vanellope von Schweetz.
Courtesy of Walt Disney Studios |
In the movie
Wreck-It Ralph, Wreck-It Ralph is the main character who ends the illusion that has mesmerized the citizens of the arcade game, Sugar Rush. Although at first, Wreck-It Ralph goes into the game Sugar Rush for personal glory, he finds a friend, Vanellope von Schweetz, there. Unbeknownst to Wreck-It Ralph or Vanellope, the evil king of Sugar Rush, King Candy, changed the code of the game and altered the memories of his citizens. When Wreck-It Ralph realizes this, he is immediately thrown out of the cave. He then attempts to sacrifice himself, so that Vanellope would have have the chance to reacquire her memory. However, as it is a children's movie, Vanellope both saves Wreck-It Ralph and gets her memory back. Wreck-It Ralph is basically an
Übermensch because he was willing to die in a Diet Coke and Mentos explosion in order to help Vanellope and the citizens get their memories back (a metaphor for escaping the cave).
In Plato's Allegory of the Cave, the man who comes back to the cave is seen as crazy, ridiculed, and killed by the cave-dwellers. My theory behind this failure is that the man who escapes the cave needs to, but doesn't, have the vindication, charisma, and power, to lure his fellow cave-dwellers out of the darkness. Although this might be the grim reality of escaping the cave in the real world, the idea that there could arise an
Übermensch, a hero, who has strength and love for humanity enough that he/she could pull off the veil over our eyes is satisfying.
First of all, I really enjoyed reading the link you posted about the programming experiment. That's a really cool way to think about this problem - it just goes to show that political theorists and engineers see the world a little bit differently. Also, way to go for tying in Nietzsche.
ReplyDeleteIt would be nice if, provided we are living in a Cave, one of us would lead us out into the sunlight as happens in these movies. But I see three major problems with this hope. First, how do we know for sure we're living in a Cave, other than just trusting someone who tells us we are? Second, these are movies. Who's to say that an übermensch of this kind could have the power to bring us out of the cave, since Plato implies that this is impossible? Third, let's say that we are living in a cave, and an übermensch has come to Moses us out of there. Would we, as individuals and a civilization, be able to handle that revelation? Or would we simply fritz out? This is the question that I think is the really uncomfortable one. And I don't have an answer to any of these, by the way, I just think they're worth thinking about.
Thanks Conner!
DeleteTo answer your first and third question, I would say that realizing that we are in a cave is both a matter of trust and knowledge. We have walked out of the cave in our own history, for example: for centuries we believed that the Earth was flat and that the Earth was also at the center of the universe. When people (ex. Galileo) proclaimed these truths, they were persecuted, however, eventually with advances in knowledge and technology these truths were fully realized. So I don't think that we would necessarily believe the truth at first or fritz out, but rather we would slowly accept the truths. Basically my argument goes as this quote by Arthur Schopenhauer, "All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."
As for your second question, the ubermensch doesn't possess supernatural strengths, but rather a mesmerizing charisma. With the charisma of the ubermensch backed with knowledge, I believe that an ubermensch would have enough strength to at least put the truth out there, if not pull everyone out of the cave.
I found your post really interesting because I hadn't yet thought of the ubermensch in relation to Plato's allegory. I think there is a truth to part of what you're talking about. In Nietzsche the ubermensch is a somewhat enlightened human being, sort of like the one Plato discusses in the allegory of the cave. But Nietzsche does not believe in absolute truths. For him, there is no one answer and no point at which man should stop improving. I think this makes sense in the context of Connor's point, that is, how do we know we are leaving the cave? How do we even know that there is a reality outside of the cave? What if there are only a bunch of caves? Socrates makes this point when he claims wise men really know nothing. I think the ubermench is comparable to someone who might at least be examining the possibility of reality outside the cave, but isn't necessarily guaranteed to find it.
ReplyDeleteYou're making an interesting claim here. I've never thought about the Übermensch in terms of the allegory of the cave, but a lot of your argument does make sense. I'm not sure Nietzsche himself would accept the allegory of the cave; in his writings Nietzsche sets out to make a very clear distinction between himself and Plato, and their approach to the betterment of humankind seems very different. In essence, Plato believed that to remove oneself from ignorance, it was necessary to rise from the world of the "cave", whereas Nietzsche described a more top-down approach in which the Übermensch imparts knowledge he has received from the peak of the "mountain". I don't think this necessarily defeats your entire argument, it's just important to consider that Nietzsche and Plato did disagree very fundamentally on this issue.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading your post and thinking back on Plato's Allegory, I can't help but wonder.... do people really want an Übermensch? Do they want to be saved from the Matrix, the video game or the cave? I feel as if movies are made around this theme and enjoyable to for us because we are able to watch the protagonist. We get a deep look at the protagonist, his struggles accepting the truth, and then his struggles leaving behind the truth. However, the rest of his society is not on this journey with him. Most of the people in the societies are living their lives just as they always have been. Some of the people don't even know that anything has happened when the protagonist sacrifices himself. So then was it worth it? Is the age old statement of ignorance is bliss true?
ReplyDeleteNietzsche claimed that the work of many philosophers were just manifestations of the moral prejudices they had which they sought to rationalize, and that it reveals more about the philosopher himself than it reveals about the world. I wonder if his concept of the Ubermensch is an example of that? Nietzsche himself was a very weak and sickly individual, but rights about how great dancing and overcoming is. I think his concept of the Ubermensch might just be him venting and creating an image of something that he wants to but could never beocme.
ReplyDelete