Senior Library Books
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brief, basic information laid out in an easy-to-read format. May use informal language. (Includes most news articles)
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Key Terms
- Buddhist Samsara Samsara, (Sanskrit: “flowing around”) in Indian philosophy, the central conception of metempsychosis: the soul, finding itself awash in the “sea of samsara,” strives to find release (moksha) from the bonds of its own past deeds (karma), which form part of the general web of which samsara is made. Buddhism, which does not assume the existence of a permanent soul, accepts a semipermanent personality core that goes through the process of samsara.
- Socrates - Know Thyself This assertion, imperative in the form, indicates that man must stand and live according his nature.Man has to look at himself. To find what? By what means?
- Gnosticism (Jesus) Gnosticism, any of various related philosophical and religious movements prominent in the Greco-Roman world in the early Christian era, particularly the 2nd century.
- Epicurus - Free will Epicurus' theory of freedom deserves attention not only because of its place within Hellenistic philosophy, but because of the way it has shaped how we conceive of the issue of free will today. Epicurus plays a key role in the birth of the traditional 'problem of free will and determinism'--that is, the seeming incompatibility of causal determinism and the sort of 'ability to do otherwise' that is necessary for moral responsibility. Because Epicurus believes that freedom and determinism are incompatible, and because he denies that determinism is true in order to preserve our freedom,
- Stoics - Determinism Determinism is the philosophical idea that every event or state of affairs, including every human decision and action, is the inevitable and necessary consequence of antecedent states of affairs.
- Rene Descartes - The External World I distinguish the two as follows: there is conviction when there remains some reason which might lead us to doubt, but knowledge is conviction based on a reason so strong that it can never be shaken by any stronger reason. (1640 letter to Regius, AT 3:65)
- Bishop G. Berkeley - Immaterialism Immaterialism' was Berkeley's name for his theory of the perceived world. This theory consists of the negative thesis that there are not, and could not be, material substances or substrata, and the positive thesis that the existence of bodies consists in their being perceived (as Berkeley says: their esse is percipi).
- David Hume - Problem of Induction Problem of induction, problem of justifying the inductive inference from the observed to the unobserved.
- Kant Critique of Pure Reason Period of the three Critiques In 1781 the Kritik der reinen Vernunft (spelled Critik in the first edition; Critique of Pure Reason) was published, followed for the next nine years by great and original works that in a short time brought a revolution in philosophical thought and established the new direction in which it was to go in the years to come. The Critique of Pure Reason The Critique of Pure Reason was the result of some 10 years of thinking and meditation. Yet, even so, Kant published the first edition only reluctantly after many postponements; although convinced of the truth of its doctrine, he was uncertain and doubtful about its exposition. His misgivings proved well founded, and Kant complained that interpreters and critics of the work were badly misunderstanding it. To correct these wrong interpretations of his thought, he wrote the Prolegomena zu einer jeden künftigen Metaphysik die als Wissenschaft wird auftreten können (1783; Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics That Will be Able to Come Forward as Science) and brought out a second and revised edition of the first Critique in 1787. Controversy still continues regarding the merits of the two editions: readers with a preference for an idealistic interpretation usually prefer the first edition, whereas those with a realistic view adhere to the second. But with regard to difficulty and ease of reading and understanding, it is generally agreed that there is little to choose between them. Anyone on first opening either book finds it overwhelmingly difficult and impenetrably obscure. The cause for this difficulty can be traced in part to the works that Kant took as his models for philosophical writing. He was the first great modern philosopher to spend all of his time and efforts as a university professor of the subject. Regulations required that in all lecturing a certain set of books be used, with the result that all of Kant’s teaching in philosophy had been based on such handbooks as those of Wolff and Baumgarten, which abounded in technical jargon, artificial and schematic divisions, and great claims to completeness. Following their example, Kant accordingly provided a highly artificial, rigid, and by no means immediately illuminating scaffolding for all three of his Critiques. The Critique of Pure Reason, after an introduction, is divided into two parts of very different lengths: A Transcendental Doctrine of Elements, running to almost 400 pages in a typical edition, followed by a Transcendental Doctrine of Method, which reaches scarcely 80 pages. The Elements deals with the sources of human knowledge, whereas the Method draws up a methodology for the use of “pure reason” and its a priori ideas.
- La Place Causal Determination First published Thu Jan 23, 2003; substantive revision Thu Jan 21, 2016 Causal determinism is, roughly speaking, the idea that every event is necessitated by antecedent events and conditions together with the laws of nature.
- Schopenhaur The World as Will and Idea Hence, Schopenhauer regards the world as a whole as having two sides: the world is Will and the world is representation. The world as Will (“for us”, as he sometimes qualifies it) is the world as it is in itself, which is a unity, and the world as representation is the world of appearances, of our ideas, or of objects, which is a diversity.
- Karl Marx - Marxism Marxism, a body of doctrine developed by Karl Marx and, to a lesser extent, by Friedrich Engels in the mid-19th century. It originally consisted of three related ideas: a philosophical anthropology, a theory of history, and an economic and political program
- Friedrich Nietzsche - The Herd Mentality A herd morality inverts the natural values of life. The individual who is strong and independent – who attains feelings of power spontaneously through their creative endeavors and “great health” – is deemed by herd morality to be “evil”. On the other hand, all those who belong to the herd: the mediocre last men, and the weak and impotent slaves – the “vengeful disguised as judges” (OGM) – are deemed to be “good”.
- Sartre -Existentialism Sartre too was concerned with Being and with the dread experienced before the threat of Nothingness. But he found the essence of this Being in liberty—in freedom of choice and the duty of self-determination.
- Kuhn - Scientific Revolutions In his landmark second book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, he argued that scientific research and thought are defined by “paradigms,” or conceptual world-views, that consist of formal theories, classic experiments, and trusted methods.
- Baudrillard - Simulacra and Simulation Baudrillard broke with Marxism to develop an account of postmodern society in which consumer and electronic images have become more real (hyperreal) than physical reality and in which simulations of reality (simulacra) have displaced their originals, leaving only “the desert of the real.” This phrase was quoted in the popular American science-fiction film The Matrix (1999), whose hero hides contraband in a copy of Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation (originally published as Simulacres et simulation, 1981). An accomplished photographer, Baudrillard asserted that “every photographed object is merely the trace left behind by the disappearance of all the rest.”
- Nozick - The Experience Machine Nozick introduced an experience machine thought experiment to support the idea that happiness requires pleasurable experiences that are “in contact with reality.” In this thought experiment, people can choose to plug into a machine that induces exclusively pleasurable experiences.
Tips for Making your Movie
- Tips for Making Your MovieWant to make your movie pop and get noticed. Here are some great youtube movies and links to help you out.
Introduction
This guide has been created for year 10 students studying the impact of Philsophy on the movie The Matrix.
Databases
- World Book Encyclopedia This link opens in a new window
Online version of the complete reference work along with dictionary, atlas, links, magazines, historical documents, audio, video, images, and 3D photograph
- Britannica Schools This link opens in a new window
Britannica School covers the core subject areas of English, Maths, Science and History. Interactive lessons, activities, games, stories, worksheets, manipulatives, study guides and research tools.
- JSTOR This link opens in a new window
Scholarly resources on JSTOR include Archival and Current Journals, Books, and Primary Sources.
Reassessing The Matrix/Reloaded
- Fielding, J. ( 2003, October). Reassessing the Matrix/Reloaded. 7 . (2). Retrieved fromhttps://library.scotch.wa.edu.au/ld.php?content_id=45331832Much has been written about Larry and Andy Wachowski's movie The Matrix and on practically every angle: from philosophical precedents to the realities of artificial intelligence. Religious scholars, too, have thrown their hats into the academic ring, expounding on the Gnostic, Buddhist and Christian aspects found therein.
The Matrix Unloaded Revelations
- Godawa, B (2004). The Matrix: Unloaded Revelations. 27 (1). Retrieved fromhttps://library.scotch.wa.edu.au/ld.php?content_id=45331856Everyone who has seen The Matrix trilogy knows that it presents a religious/philosophical worldview; what that worldview is, however, is a matter of debate. Some have argued it is Christian; some, Platonic (the philosophy of Plato); others, Gnostic (a Christian heresy); and still others, Buddhist. The films seem to use a combination of all of the above as metaphors for a postmodern worldview that deconstructs universal “savior” mythology into a Nietzschean “superman” philosophy in which one creates one’s own truth in a universe without God.
The Matrix
The Matrix Trilogy Further Study
- Sparknotes. (2018). Context. Retrieved from https://www.sparknotes.com/film/matrix/context/In early 1999, strange posters appeared throughout the United States, advertising an enigmatic movie created by a little-known writer-director team with only one movie to its credit. The mystery extended to the film’s unusual name, The Matrix.
