Archangel
01-25-2009, 07:29 PM
Interesting article I found on the web paralleling the Matrix movies to Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling (which, as you know, is one of my all time faves).
Pretty interesting read. LINK here. (http://webenhanced.lbcc.edu/philml/phil14ml/LSM%20Ch%2011%20Faith.htm)
Chapter Eleven
Morpheus and the Leap of Faith
You’re going to have to trust me.
-- Morpheus††
Recall the scene from The Matrix in which Morpheus, weak and barely conscious from Agent Smith’s interrogation, charges through a stream of gunfire and then leaps from the skyscraper window into the hands of Neo who is dangling from a helicopter twenty feet away. There is no better image to represent the most striking feature of Morpheus’ character – his unwavering faith. In this radical “leap of faith” Morpheus shows his absolute conviction that Neo is The One.
If you think about it, faith always involves some sort of leap. The concept of faith is rarely invoked when it comes to things that are known. You don’t have faith that 2+2=4, or that the ground will support your weight. These are things that you feel quite certain about, and the greater certainty you have, the less need there is for faith. Faith is what you use to traverse the gap between your reasons and your conclusion. In the cases of knowledge, there is no gap, and hence, no need for faith.
A fairly common perspective on faith is that it is to believe something upon insufficient evidence. On this view, most everyone has faith. To a certain extent we have faith in our friends and our spouses, in our leaders, and in the economy. But this kind of faith comes easily, and for the most part, it requires very little from us. The character of Morpheus shows us that the Wachowskis have something much stronger, more radical, in mind. To fully comprehend it, we must turn to the source of their inspiration, the existentialist philosophy of Søren Kierkegaard.
Søren Kierkegaard: The Philosopher of Faith
Faith begins precisely where thinking leaves off.
-- Søren Kierkegaard
Kierkegaard’s influence can be seen through a number of philosophical parallels between his philosophy and the films, but the Wachowskis also threw in a few overt references for us as well. You may have noticed the first captain to volunteer to aid the Nebuchadnezzar during the Council meeting in Reloaded was Captain Søren of the Vigilant. 1 Also, the name of one of Zion top officials, Councilor Hamann, appears to be a reference to the historian J.G. Hamann2 whom Kierkegaard quoted on the title page of his book on faith, Fear and Trembling. And, further, the character of Ghost, who serves as the Wachowskis’ philosophical mouthpiece throughout the Enter the Matrix video game,3 cites Kierkegaard as a source of his own inspiration. In response to the question of how he can believe something as crazy as the idea that Neo, a single man, can bring an end to a war against an entire race of machines, he says:
Kierkegaard reminds us that belief has nothing to do with how or why. Belief is beyond reason. I believe because it is absurd. …Faith, by its very nature, transcends logic.
Ghost’s comments illustrate just how radical Kierkegaard’s view of faith really is. Faith, as Kierkegaard sees it, is not simply to believe something upon insufficient evidence. Rather, faith is to believe something irrespective of the evidence. It is to leap headlong into the absurd. Most of us are not prepared to make that kind of leap. It is only the rare individual, such as Morpheus, who exemplifies it. Morpheus never falters in his conviction that the prophecy will be fulfilled despite the sometimes-overwhelming evidence to the contrary. His faith endures through Neo’s apparent death in The Matrix, and in spite of 25,000 sentinels swarming on Zion. And he even holds firm to his belief even after Neo’s visit to The Source fails to end the war as prophesied.
Kierkegaard’s philosophy on the subject of faith is most thoroughly developed in his masterwork Fear and Trembling. Written under the pseudonym Johannes de silentio (John the Silent), Kierkegaard explores the psychological, moral and spiritual aspects of radical faith. Although Kierkegaard claimed that the work of his pseudonyms does not necessarily reflect his own views, Fear and Trembling certainly offers key insights into his own philosophy.
Much of the impetus behind the book appears to have been the religious climate of his 19th Century home of Copenhagen. By today’s standards the people of Copenhagen were extremely religious. Just about everyone in Denmark at the time was Christian (specifically, Lutheran), and nearly all of Kierkegaard’s friends and neighbors took themselves to be “persons of faith.” They read their Bibles and attended church with untiring regularity. But Kierkegaard, who pondered religious matters obsessively, was disgusted by the superficiality of it all. He could hardly believe how easy Christianity seemed on most people’s view. They would attend church on Sunday, and then go straight back to a life of vanity, deception avarice and greed, all the while feeling quite secure that heaven awaited them. Kierkegaard seemed to think that if Christianity were to be meaningful, and to provide a central purpose to one’s life, it could not be cheapened in this way. He subtly makes this point in the Preface to Fear and Trembling:
Not just in commerce but in the world of ideas too our age is putting on a veritable clearance sale. Everything can be had so dirt-cheap that one begins to wonder whether in the end anyone will want to make a bid. 4
One of the foremost goals of the book was to raise the stakes. Kierkegaard wanted to make Christianity difficult once again. He wrote:
In the old days it was different. For then faith was a task for a whole lifetime, not a skill thought to be acquired in either days or weeks. 5
And there is no better medium for such a task than the Biblical story of Abraham. On Kierkegaard’s view it is Abraham who shows the way to faith, and Morpheus, I will argue, follows in his footsteps.
Morpheus and Abraham: Twin Knights of Faith
Whatever you think you know about this man is irrelevant.
-- Agent Smith†
The story of Abraham is arguably the paramount story of faith in the Old Testament, and perhaps in the Bible itself. You may recall that in the book of Genesis, Abraham was called upon by God to sacrifice that which he loved most, his only son Isaac. He was fully prepared to thrust his knife into Isaac’s chest when an angel stopped him at the final moment – after he had sufficiently proven his faith. Kierkegaard (or Johannes de silentio) suggests that we should hold Abraham in the highest regard. As he sees it, faith is “the highest passion in a human being,” and Abraham is the exemplar or “hero” of faith. In the Matrix films Morpheus also serves as kind of a hero of faith. No one can match the intensity of his conviction, and it is largely the result of Morpheus’ unwavering faith that Neo is able to free humanity.
From Kierkegaard’s perspective, while men like Abraham and Morpheus are to be greatly admired, their actions are nevertheless incomprehensible. “Abraham I cannot understand,” he tells us, “in a way all I can learn from him is to be amazed.” 6 But most people seem oblivious to just how incomprehensible men like Abraham and Morpheus really are. For instance, most Christians are familiar with the story of Abraham, but they don’t seem too worried about the picture of faith that it presents. Abraham’s trial is so often seen as just a “wonderful story of faith.” But here is an account of a man who was fully prepared to take the innocent life of his young son – a terrifying prospect if you really think about it. Do Christians really understand Abraham? Johannes thinks that surely they do not, for if they did, they would be terrified by this story. The story raises several questions, which should greatly disturb anyone who takes it, and their faith seriously:
(1) If God were to call on me in a similar manner, would I know what to do?
(2) Even if I knew what to do, would I have the strength to do it?
(3) And even if I had the strength to do it, would I willingly choose to?
(4) Might my very salvation depend on having the kind of knowledge, strength and will that Abraham had?
These questions leave Johannes de silentio lying awake at night in utter fear and trembling. The possibility of failure lurks behind each one. And while they are difficult questions on any account, they become infinitely more difficult from Kierkegaard’s philosophical perspective. For, on his view: (a) faith is entirely subjective – the individual must create their own interpretations – their own truth, and (b) faith is entirely absurd – it transcends reason altogether. In the sections below we will examine how these two aspects of faith are played out in the lives of Abraham and Morpheus, and how it makes them simultaneously admirable and terrifying to Johannes de silentio.
The Subjectivity of Faith
No one can tell you… You just know it; through and through, balls to bone.
-- The Oracle†
The Bible tells us that God put Abraham’s faith to the test in Genesis 22. There, God says to Abraham:
Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.
Next we are told that:
Abraham rose up early in the morning, and saddled his ass, and took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son, and clave the wood for the burnt offering, and rose up, and went unto the place of which God had told him. 7
What the story leaves out, and which frustrates Johannes to no end, are the steps between God’s command and Abraham’s obedience. If you want to truly understand Abraham, and to have the kind of faith that he did, you really need the details. What was he thinking? How did he feel? Did he sleep at all that night? Did he tell his wife Sarah of what he was about to do? These crucial details are left to our own imagination. Nevertheless, Abraham seems to have known exactly what to do with God’s command. God instructed, he obeyed – it’s as simple as that. But Kierkegaard shows us that while it may have been that simple for Abraham, the task of interpretation – of knowing what to do – is infinitely more complicated. Abraham’s interpretation seems to be:
(a) This is a command from God.
Therefore I must sacrifice my son.
But how did he know this? For us, looking at the whole ordeal after the fact, it is easy to say that Abraham did the right thing. He was, after all, rewarded. God told him: “I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven…and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because though hast obeyed my voice.” 8 But assuming he did the right thing, the question remains, how did he know at the time? His interpretation was certainly not the only one – or even, the most reasonable. Consider some of the other possibilities:
(b) God is testing my moral character.
To pass the test, I must refuse to commit such an immoral act.
(c) This is not a command from God – I must be going insane.
I must refuse to listen to these hallucinations.
(d) This is not a command from God – it must be the voice of devil or demons.
The Lord will be pleased to know that I did not fall for such a trick.
It is common to slip into thinking that the meaning was obvious, but it only seems this way if you create a distance between yourself and these events by not taking them as real. Imagine, for instance, that it is your next-door neighbor who tells you that God had commanded him to sacrifice his son. Would you believe him, or think that he is insane? Or, suppose that it happened to you. If you “heard” God, commanding you to murder, would you believe it? Would you take it to be God? If you are anything like me, you’d sooner think that you were insane. The key point for Kierkegaard is that faith is always subjective. It rests entirely on the individual. You must take it to be God, you alone must interpret the message, and you alone must decide whether to comply.
We see this very same issue arise in Reloaded. The Oracle shows her complete agreement with Kierkegaard when she tells Neo:
It is a pickle, no doubt about it. The bad news is that there is no way for you to really know whether I’m here to help you or not. So it’s really up to you. You just have to make up your own damn mind to either accept what I’m going to tell you, or reject it. ††
And just as God’s instructions to Abraham admit of several interpretations, so do those of the Oracle. For instance, one might suppose:
(a) The Oracle knows the future and wants to help us.
Therefore, Neo must go to The Source as directed.
(b) The Oracle is a program and therefore just another system of control.
Her instructions are a trick and should not be followed.
(c) Like all other fortune-tellers, The Oracle is a fraud.
Think about it -- last time she said that Neo was not The One, and now she says that he is. She’s full of B.S. and it is a waste of valuable time to consult her opinion.
Both Neo and Morpheus choose the first interpretation. But only Morpheus does so in a way that would make him a true “knight of faith” in Kierkegaard’s eyes. Neo believed her for the moment, but quickly lost his conviction after returning from The Source. In his conversation with Morpheus back on the Nebuchadnezzar, we see that he lost his faith as soon as the evidence turned her:
Morpheus: I don’t understand it. Everything was done as it was supposed to be done. Once The One reaches the source, the war should be over…
Neo: It was a lie Morpheus. The prophecy was a lie. The One was never meant to end anything. It was all another system of control.
Morpheus: I don’t believe that.
Neo: But you said it yourself. How can the prophecy be true if the war isn’t over?
The Absurdity of Faith
A casual stroll through the insane asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
What Neo lacked was the ability to completely embrace the absurd. He was willing to believe The Oracle upon insufficient evidence, but he did not believe her irrespective of the evidence. And this, for Kierkegaard, is the real movement of faith.
On Kierkegaard’s account, true faith involves a “double movement,” a movement of infinite resignation and a movement of faith. In order to become what Kierkegaard calls a “knight of infinite resignation,” one must be prepared to give up the very thing that one hopes to keep. We see this in Abraham as he is fully prepared to give up Isaac, who for him was all the joy of this world. Similarly, we see this in Morpheus, the moment that the Nebuchadnezzar is destroyed. In despair he calls out: “I have dreamed a dream, but now that dream is gone from me.” But to become a true “knight of faith” one cannot stop at there. Johannes de silentio tells us that such immense resignation, while a component of faith, is insufficient on its own. What makes men like Morpheus and Abraham truly amazing is that they simultaneously make a movement of faith. At the very moment that they give up their dreams and every hope for this world, they continue to expect the impossible:
All along he had faith, he believed that God would not demand Isaac of him, while still he was willing to offer him if that was indeed what was demanded…and it was indeed absurd that God who demanded this of him should in the next instant withdraw the demand.9
On this picture, Abraham believed “on the strength of the absurd.” His faith transcended logic, for he believed two contradictory propositions:
(a) Isaac is lost to him.
Which he believes in his movement of infinite resignation.
(b) Isaac is not lost to him.
Which he simultaneously believes in his movement of faith.
We see the same double-movement in Morpheus. After Neo’s story of how it was all just another system of control, and then the destruction of the Nebuchadnezzar, he resigns himself to the loss, saying: “I have dreamed a dream. But now that dream has gone from me.” But despite its utter absurdity, he continues to believe in the prophecy. In the opening scenes of Revolutions we see him continue to search the Matrix for Neo, despite the fact that he is not even jacked in. So Morpheus also simultaneously believed two contradictory propositions:
(a) The prophecy has failed.
Neo’s trip to The Source did not end the war as it was supposed to.
(b) The prophecy will come to pass.
Despite all signs to the contrary, his dream will be fulfilled.
Of course it is irrational to believe both of these propositions simultaneously. And it is not that the knight of faith somehow forgets about his resignation through an act of self-deception. Rather, Kierkegaard tells us that the knight of faith believes on the strength of the absurd.
Heroes or Criminals? Suspending the Ethical
If it were up to me Captain, you wouldn’t set foot on a ship for the rest of your life.
-- Commander Lock††
The most terrifying thing about knights of faith is what they might be prepared to do at any given moment in virtue of their faith. Abraham was ready and willing to kill his own son. Morpheus disobeyed his commanding officer, and continuously put his crew at risk on the basis his own absurd yet unwavering faith. In the end, of course, both men are vindicated. Their faith pays off, and they are ultimately regarded as heroes. But should they be seen as heroes? Isn’t it vastly more reasonable to regard them as criminals? Certainly Commander Locke would have loved to see Morpheus thrown into the brig, if not altogether court marshaled.
Commander Lock’s position is similar to that of the 19th Century British Philosopher W.K. Clifford, whose philosophical notoriety comes largely for his intense criticism of faith. Clifford sums up his view with the bold statement: “It is wrong always, everywhere and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.” 10 Clifford, like Commander Lock, believes that faith is a grave danger to society. He illustrates his point with an example that is in many ways similar to Morpheus’ own exploits. Clifford tells the story of a ship owner, who has good reason to doubt the sea-worthiness of his ship. He nevertheless convinces himself, without sufficient evidence, that the ship is fine and sends it across the ocean full of immigrant passengers. Morpheus, in a similar manner risks the lives of crew, and all of Zion, on the basis of a conviction that cannot be rationally justified. On Clifford’s analysis, if the ship goes down (or if Zion falls):
What shall we say of him? Surely this, that he was verily guilty of the death of those men. It is admitted that he did sincerely believe in the soundness of his ship [or of the prophecy]; but the sincerity of his conviction can in no wise to help him, because he had no right to believe on such evidence as was before him…And although in the end he may have felt so sure about it that he could not think otherwise, yet inasmuch as he had knowingly and willingly worked himself into that frame of mind, he must be held responsible for it. 11
Of course, in the end, Morpheus is successful. The prophecy was true and his unrelenting faith is largely responsible for the salvation of Zion. But even this is does not justify his actions in the eyes of men like Clifford and Lock. As Clifford concludes:
Suppose that the ship was not unsound after all; that she made her voyage safely and many others after it. Will that diminish the guilt of her owner? Not one jot…. No accidental failure of its good or evil fruits can possibly alter that. …The question of right or wrong has to do with the origin of his belief, not the matter of it…not whether it turned out to be true or false, but whether he had a right to believe on such evidence as was before him. 12
This attitude is pretty extreme, but then so is Morpheus’ particular brand of faith. Even Johannes de silentio suggests that from an ethical point of view, Abraham should be “remitted to some lower court for trial and exposed for murder.” 13 But nevertheless, we tend to greatly admire Morpheus, and Abraham is revered around the globe. We admire, for instance, the way that Morpheus was willing to “lay it all on the line” for his convictions, and we despise the tight-assed Lock, for whom everything must be logical and controlled. In fact, we cannot help but wonder what Niobe could have possibly seen in him.
But philosophically we must be careful not to put ourselves at too much of a distance – as it is so easy to do with fiction, or with stories that occurred a long time ago in a land far, far away. 14 For instance, suppose it were not Abraham, but your neighbor, who told you that God had asked him to sacrifice his son upon an alter – and that luckily he was spared at the last moment. Could you find any room in your heart for admiration towards him – or merely suspicion, fear, and contempt? Or, suppose that you were in Commander Lock’s position. Would you stand for Morpheus’ insubordination on the basis of the rather absurd possibility that he could be right?
And then there is the question of whether anything at all can justify their actions. In this regard there is a divergence between Abraham and Morpheus. While for Morpheus, though his faith itself was beyond reason, his motivation for disobeying orders was not. Insofar as he sincerely believed that the life of every person in Zion depended upon his success, his actions were, if not ethically justified, at least ethically intelligible. But for Abraham it is different, as Johannes tells us:
In his action he overstepped the ethical altogether, and had a telos15 outside it, in relation to which he suspended it. …It is not to save a nation, not to uphold the idea of the State, that Abraham did it, not to appease angry gods. If there was any question of the deity’s being angry, it could only have been Abraham he was angry with, and Abraham’s whole action stands in no relation to the universal. 16
On Kierkegaard’s view the ethical is to be identified with the universal. Taking the life of one’s son goes against a moral duty that applies to everyone at all times. Acting on his faith, Abraham acts instead on the personal. His reasons are uniquely his. They pertain to his personal relationship with God. From the outside, it is impossible to distinguish him from others who have murdered in response to their own delusions or insanity. So Johannes concludes, “either Abraham was every minute a murderer, or we are confronted by a paradox which is higher than all meditation.” And, of course, it is the latter interpretation that he chooses. He argues for what he calls the teleological suspension of the ethical. That is, he contends that the personal can override the universal or ethical, precisely when it is done in obedience to God. So Abraham’s faith, as he sees it, is “a paradox capable of transforming a murder into a holy act well-pleasing to God.”
Kierkegaard’s analysis of faith, and his interpretation of the story of Abraham are both highly controversial, to say the least. But it does provide us with an interesting way to think about the sort of faith that Morpheus demonstrates throughout the Matrix films. Ultimately Kierkegaard’s philosophy cannot prove to us that Abraham and Morpheus are heroes. To come to that conclusion involves a kind of leap of faith of its own. Certainly it is a far less radical leap than these men have made, but it is a leap nonetheless. I for one find it easy to regard Morpheus as a hero throughout the films, but my admiration of him requires the distance that fiction creates. The moment I truly take him seriously, as a potential neighbor, brother, or friend, I can no longer admire or trust him. I cannot make the final movement, the paradoxical movement of faith. Instead, I find myself, much like Johannes de silentio, very, very afraid.
Notes to Chapter Eleven
Unfortunately, Captain Søren and his crew died an early death as their ship was overtaken by Sentinels while they tried to take out the power grid. (This was part of the plan to enable Neo to enter The Source.) Søren Kierkegaard also died prematurely at the age of forty two.
The reference to J.G. Hamann is quite interesting. The Wachowski’s made this reference knowing full well that its symbolism would be lost on almost everyone who saw the film. In a similar vein, the meaning of the Hamann quote that begins Fear and Trembling (which is itself about the very nature of symbolism) was lost on almost all of Kierkegaard’s readers. The quote from Hamann states:
What Tarquin the Proud said in his garden with the poppy
blooms was understood by the son but not by the messenger.
Kierkegaard, like the Wachowskis, did not explain the reference even though he knew that it would be unintelligible to anyone who was unfamiliar with the larger context. The passage refers to Tarquin (an early king of Rome) at a time when he was at war with Gabil. In order to send a message to his son (who was living in Gabil under the pretense that his father had mistreated him) he cut off the heads of the tallest poppies in his garden before the eyes of a messenger. When the messenger reported this event to the son, he (and only he) knew the meaning. He soon put to death all the leading men of Gabil. This allowed Tarquin a swift victory. Kierkegaard uses this quote to foreshadow one of his main theses in Fear and Trembling – that the act of interpretation, and therefore faith itself, is always subjective and personal.
Throughout the Enter the Matrix video game, the completion of particular levels unlocks certain video segments that were not included in the films. Most of the videos document the adventures of Niobe and Ghost in events that would have occurred during The Matrix Reloaded. If you play through with the character of Ghost, you’ll find that he makes direct references to the thought of David Hume, William James, Jean Baudrillard, Friedrich Nietzsche, St. Thomas Aquinas, and Soren Kierkegaard. Niobe tends to be less philosophical, though her conversation with the Oracle yields some important insights.
Søren Kierkeagaard, Fear and Trembling, translated by Alastair Hannay, Penguin Books, New York, 1985, p. 41.
Fear and Trembling, p. 41.
Fear and Trembling, p. 66.
Genesis 22.Biblical quotations are from the King James Version.
Ibid.
Fear and Trembling, p. 65.
W.K. Clifford,“The Ethics of Belief,” in Philosophy of Religion: An Anthology, 4th edition, ed. by Louis P. Pojman, Wadsworth, 2003, p.367.
Ibid, p. 364.
Ibid, p. 364.
Fear and Trembling, p. 84.
The reader is left to their own conclusions about whether the trials of Abraham should be read as fact or fiction.
A telos is an aim or purpose – an overarching goal.
Fear and Trembling, p. 88.
Suggested Readings
W.K. Clifford,“The Ethics of Belief,” in Philosophy of Religion: An Anthology, 4th edition, ed. by Louis P. Pojman, Wadsworth, 2003.
William James, “The Will to Believe,” in Philosophy of Religion: An Anthology, 4th edition, ed. by Louis P. Pojman, Wadsworth, 2003.
Søren Kierkeagaard, Fear and Trembling, translated by Alastair Hannay, Penguin Books, New York, 1985.
Søren Kierkeagaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, translated by David F. Swenson and Walter Lowrie, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1960.
Donald Palmer, Kierkegaard for Beginners, Writers and Readers Publishing Inc., New York, 1996.
Ludwig Wittgenstein, “A Lecture on Religious Belief,” in Philosophy of Religion: An Anthology, 4th edition, ed. by Louis P. Pojman, Wadsworth, 2003.
Pretty interesting read. LINK here. (http://webenhanced.lbcc.edu/philml/phil14ml/LSM%20Ch%2011%20Faith.htm)
Chapter Eleven
Morpheus and the Leap of Faith
You’re going to have to trust me.
-- Morpheus††
Recall the scene from The Matrix in which Morpheus, weak and barely conscious from Agent Smith’s interrogation, charges through a stream of gunfire and then leaps from the skyscraper window into the hands of Neo who is dangling from a helicopter twenty feet away. There is no better image to represent the most striking feature of Morpheus’ character – his unwavering faith. In this radical “leap of faith” Morpheus shows his absolute conviction that Neo is The One.
If you think about it, faith always involves some sort of leap. The concept of faith is rarely invoked when it comes to things that are known. You don’t have faith that 2+2=4, or that the ground will support your weight. These are things that you feel quite certain about, and the greater certainty you have, the less need there is for faith. Faith is what you use to traverse the gap between your reasons and your conclusion. In the cases of knowledge, there is no gap, and hence, no need for faith.
A fairly common perspective on faith is that it is to believe something upon insufficient evidence. On this view, most everyone has faith. To a certain extent we have faith in our friends and our spouses, in our leaders, and in the economy. But this kind of faith comes easily, and for the most part, it requires very little from us. The character of Morpheus shows us that the Wachowskis have something much stronger, more radical, in mind. To fully comprehend it, we must turn to the source of their inspiration, the existentialist philosophy of Søren Kierkegaard.
Søren Kierkegaard: The Philosopher of Faith
Faith begins precisely where thinking leaves off.
-- Søren Kierkegaard
Kierkegaard’s influence can be seen through a number of philosophical parallels between his philosophy and the films, but the Wachowskis also threw in a few overt references for us as well. You may have noticed the first captain to volunteer to aid the Nebuchadnezzar during the Council meeting in Reloaded was Captain Søren of the Vigilant. 1 Also, the name of one of Zion top officials, Councilor Hamann, appears to be a reference to the historian J.G. Hamann2 whom Kierkegaard quoted on the title page of his book on faith, Fear and Trembling. And, further, the character of Ghost, who serves as the Wachowskis’ philosophical mouthpiece throughout the Enter the Matrix video game,3 cites Kierkegaard as a source of his own inspiration. In response to the question of how he can believe something as crazy as the idea that Neo, a single man, can bring an end to a war against an entire race of machines, he says:
Kierkegaard reminds us that belief has nothing to do with how or why. Belief is beyond reason. I believe because it is absurd. …Faith, by its very nature, transcends logic.
Ghost’s comments illustrate just how radical Kierkegaard’s view of faith really is. Faith, as Kierkegaard sees it, is not simply to believe something upon insufficient evidence. Rather, faith is to believe something irrespective of the evidence. It is to leap headlong into the absurd. Most of us are not prepared to make that kind of leap. It is only the rare individual, such as Morpheus, who exemplifies it. Morpheus never falters in his conviction that the prophecy will be fulfilled despite the sometimes-overwhelming evidence to the contrary. His faith endures through Neo’s apparent death in The Matrix, and in spite of 25,000 sentinels swarming on Zion. And he even holds firm to his belief even after Neo’s visit to The Source fails to end the war as prophesied.
Kierkegaard’s philosophy on the subject of faith is most thoroughly developed in his masterwork Fear and Trembling. Written under the pseudonym Johannes de silentio (John the Silent), Kierkegaard explores the psychological, moral and spiritual aspects of radical faith. Although Kierkegaard claimed that the work of his pseudonyms does not necessarily reflect his own views, Fear and Trembling certainly offers key insights into his own philosophy.
Much of the impetus behind the book appears to have been the religious climate of his 19th Century home of Copenhagen. By today’s standards the people of Copenhagen were extremely religious. Just about everyone in Denmark at the time was Christian (specifically, Lutheran), and nearly all of Kierkegaard’s friends and neighbors took themselves to be “persons of faith.” They read their Bibles and attended church with untiring regularity. But Kierkegaard, who pondered religious matters obsessively, was disgusted by the superficiality of it all. He could hardly believe how easy Christianity seemed on most people’s view. They would attend church on Sunday, and then go straight back to a life of vanity, deception avarice and greed, all the while feeling quite secure that heaven awaited them. Kierkegaard seemed to think that if Christianity were to be meaningful, and to provide a central purpose to one’s life, it could not be cheapened in this way. He subtly makes this point in the Preface to Fear and Trembling:
Not just in commerce but in the world of ideas too our age is putting on a veritable clearance sale. Everything can be had so dirt-cheap that one begins to wonder whether in the end anyone will want to make a bid. 4
One of the foremost goals of the book was to raise the stakes. Kierkegaard wanted to make Christianity difficult once again. He wrote:
In the old days it was different. For then faith was a task for a whole lifetime, not a skill thought to be acquired in either days or weeks. 5
And there is no better medium for such a task than the Biblical story of Abraham. On Kierkegaard’s view it is Abraham who shows the way to faith, and Morpheus, I will argue, follows in his footsteps.
Morpheus and Abraham: Twin Knights of Faith
Whatever you think you know about this man is irrelevant.
-- Agent Smith†
The story of Abraham is arguably the paramount story of faith in the Old Testament, and perhaps in the Bible itself. You may recall that in the book of Genesis, Abraham was called upon by God to sacrifice that which he loved most, his only son Isaac. He was fully prepared to thrust his knife into Isaac’s chest when an angel stopped him at the final moment – after he had sufficiently proven his faith. Kierkegaard (or Johannes de silentio) suggests that we should hold Abraham in the highest regard. As he sees it, faith is “the highest passion in a human being,” and Abraham is the exemplar or “hero” of faith. In the Matrix films Morpheus also serves as kind of a hero of faith. No one can match the intensity of his conviction, and it is largely the result of Morpheus’ unwavering faith that Neo is able to free humanity.
From Kierkegaard’s perspective, while men like Abraham and Morpheus are to be greatly admired, their actions are nevertheless incomprehensible. “Abraham I cannot understand,” he tells us, “in a way all I can learn from him is to be amazed.” 6 But most people seem oblivious to just how incomprehensible men like Abraham and Morpheus really are. For instance, most Christians are familiar with the story of Abraham, but they don’t seem too worried about the picture of faith that it presents. Abraham’s trial is so often seen as just a “wonderful story of faith.” But here is an account of a man who was fully prepared to take the innocent life of his young son – a terrifying prospect if you really think about it. Do Christians really understand Abraham? Johannes thinks that surely they do not, for if they did, they would be terrified by this story. The story raises several questions, which should greatly disturb anyone who takes it, and their faith seriously:
(1) If God were to call on me in a similar manner, would I know what to do?
(2) Even if I knew what to do, would I have the strength to do it?
(3) And even if I had the strength to do it, would I willingly choose to?
(4) Might my very salvation depend on having the kind of knowledge, strength and will that Abraham had?
These questions leave Johannes de silentio lying awake at night in utter fear and trembling. The possibility of failure lurks behind each one. And while they are difficult questions on any account, they become infinitely more difficult from Kierkegaard’s philosophical perspective. For, on his view: (a) faith is entirely subjective – the individual must create their own interpretations – their own truth, and (b) faith is entirely absurd – it transcends reason altogether. In the sections below we will examine how these two aspects of faith are played out in the lives of Abraham and Morpheus, and how it makes them simultaneously admirable and terrifying to Johannes de silentio.
The Subjectivity of Faith
No one can tell you… You just know it; through and through, balls to bone.
-- The Oracle†
The Bible tells us that God put Abraham’s faith to the test in Genesis 22. There, God says to Abraham:
Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.
Next we are told that:
Abraham rose up early in the morning, and saddled his ass, and took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son, and clave the wood for the burnt offering, and rose up, and went unto the place of which God had told him. 7
What the story leaves out, and which frustrates Johannes to no end, are the steps between God’s command and Abraham’s obedience. If you want to truly understand Abraham, and to have the kind of faith that he did, you really need the details. What was he thinking? How did he feel? Did he sleep at all that night? Did he tell his wife Sarah of what he was about to do? These crucial details are left to our own imagination. Nevertheless, Abraham seems to have known exactly what to do with God’s command. God instructed, he obeyed – it’s as simple as that. But Kierkegaard shows us that while it may have been that simple for Abraham, the task of interpretation – of knowing what to do – is infinitely more complicated. Abraham’s interpretation seems to be:
(a) This is a command from God.
Therefore I must sacrifice my son.
But how did he know this? For us, looking at the whole ordeal after the fact, it is easy to say that Abraham did the right thing. He was, after all, rewarded. God told him: “I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven…and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because though hast obeyed my voice.” 8 But assuming he did the right thing, the question remains, how did he know at the time? His interpretation was certainly not the only one – or even, the most reasonable. Consider some of the other possibilities:
(b) God is testing my moral character.
To pass the test, I must refuse to commit such an immoral act.
(c) This is not a command from God – I must be going insane.
I must refuse to listen to these hallucinations.
(d) This is not a command from God – it must be the voice of devil or demons.
The Lord will be pleased to know that I did not fall for such a trick.
It is common to slip into thinking that the meaning was obvious, but it only seems this way if you create a distance between yourself and these events by not taking them as real. Imagine, for instance, that it is your next-door neighbor who tells you that God had commanded him to sacrifice his son. Would you believe him, or think that he is insane? Or, suppose that it happened to you. If you “heard” God, commanding you to murder, would you believe it? Would you take it to be God? If you are anything like me, you’d sooner think that you were insane. The key point for Kierkegaard is that faith is always subjective. It rests entirely on the individual. You must take it to be God, you alone must interpret the message, and you alone must decide whether to comply.
We see this very same issue arise in Reloaded. The Oracle shows her complete agreement with Kierkegaard when she tells Neo:
It is a pickle, no doubt about it. The bad news is that there is no way for you to really know whether I’m here to help you or not. So it’s really up to you. You just have to make up your own damn mind to either accept what I’m going to tell you, or reject it. ††
And just as God’s instructions to Abraham admit of several interpretations, so do those of the Oracle. For instance, one might suppose:
(a) The Oracle knows the future and wants to help us.
Therefore, Neo must go to The Source as directed.
(b) The Oracle is a program and therefore just another system of control.
Her instructions are a trick and should not be followed.
(c) Like all other fortune-tellers, The Oracle is a fraud.
Think about it -- last time she said that Neo was not The One, and now she says that he is. She’s full of B.S. and it is a waste of valuable time to consult her opinion.
Both Neo and Morpheus choose the first interpretation. But only Morpheus does so in a way that would make him a true “knight of faith” in Kierkegaard’s eyes. Neo believed her for the moment, but quickly lost his conviction after returning from The Source. In his conversation with Morpheus back on the Nebuchadnezzar, we see that he lost his faith as soon as the evidence turned her:
Morpheus: I don’t understand it. Everything was done as it was supposed to be done. Once The One reaches the source, the war should be over…
Neo: It was a lie Morpheus. The prophecy was a lie. The One was never meant to end anything. It was all another system of control.
Morpheus: I don’t believe that.
Neo: But you said it yourself. How can the prophecy be true if the war isn’t over?
The Absurdity of Faith
A casual stroll through the insane asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
What Neo lacked was the ability to completely embrace the absurd. He was willing to believe The Oracle upon insufficient evidence, but he did not believe her irrespective of the evidence. And this, for Kierkegaard, is the real movement of faith.
On Kierkegaard’s account, true faith involves a “double movement,” a movement of infinite resignation and a movement of faith. In order to become what Kierkegaard calls a “knight of infinite resignation,” one must be prepared to give up the very thing that one hopes to keep. We see this in Abraham as he is fully prepared to give up Isaac, who for him was all the joy of this world. Similarly, we see this in Morpheus, the moment that the Nebuchadnezzar is destroyed. In despair he calls out: “I have dreamed a dream, but now that dream is gone from me.” But to become a true “knight of faith” one cannot stop at there. Johannes de silentio tells us that such immense resignation, while a component of faith, is insufficient on its own. What makes men like Morpheus and Abraham truly amazing is that they simultaneously make a movement of faith. At the very moment that they give up their dreams and every hope for this world, they continue to expect the impossible:
All along he had faith, he believed that God would not demand Isaac of him, while still he was willing to offer him if that was indeed what was demanded…and it was indeed absurd that God who demanded this of him should in the next instant withdraw the demand.9
On this picture, Abraham believed “on the strength of the absurd.” His faith transcended logic, for he believed two contradictory propositions:
(a) Isaac is lost to him.
Which he believes in his movement of infinite resignation.
(b) Isaac is not lost to him.
Which he simultaneously believes in his movement of faith.
We see the same double-movement in Morpheus. After Neo’s story of how it was all just another system of control, and then the destruction of the Nebuchadnezzar, he resigns himself to the loss, saying: “I have dreamed a dream. But now that dream has gone from me.” But despite its utter absurdity, he continues to believe in the prophecy. In the opening scenes of Revolutions we see him continue to search the Matrix for Neo, despite the fact that he is not even jacked in. So Morpheus also simultaneously believed two contradictory propositions:
(a) The prophecy has failed.
Neo’s trip to The Source did not end the war as it was supposed to.
(b) The prophecy will come to pass.
Despite all signs to the contrary, his dream will be fulfilled.
Of course it is irrational to believe both of these propositions simultaneously. And it is not that the knight of faith somehow forgets about his resignation through an act of self-deception. Rather, Kierkegaard tells us that the knight of faith believes on the strength of the absurd.
Heroes or Criminals? Suspending the Ethical
If it were up to me Captain, you wouldn’t set foot on a ship for the rest of your life.
-- Commander Lock††
The most terrifying thing about knights of faith is what they might be prepared to do at any given moment in virtue of their faith. Abraham was ready and willing to kill his own son. Morpheus disobeyed his commanding officer, and continuously put his crew at risk on the basis his own absurd yet unwavering faith. In the end, of course, both men are vindicated. Their faith pays off, and they are ultimately regarded as heroes. But should they be seen as heroes? Isn’t it vastly more reasonable to regard them as criminals? Certainly Commander Locke would have loved to see Morpheus thrown into the brig, if not altogether court marshaled.
Commander Lock’s position is similar to that of the 19th Century British Philosopher W.K. Clifford, whose philosophical notoriety comes largely for his intense criticism of faith. Clifford sums up his view with the bold statement: “It is wrong always, everywhere and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.” 10 Clifford, like Commander Lock, believes that faith is a grave danger to society. He illustrates his point with an example that is in many ways similar to Morpheus’ own exploits. Clifford tells the story of a ship owner, who has good reason to doubt the sea-worthiness of his ship. He nevertheless convinces himself, without sufficient evidence, that the ship is fine and sends it across the ocean full of immigrant passengers. Morpheus, in a similar manner risks the lives of crew, and all of Zion, on the basis of a conviction that cannot be rationally justified. On Clifford’s analysis, if the ship goes down (or if Zion falls):
What shall we say of him? Surely this, that he was verily guilty of the death of those men. It is admitted that he did sincerely believe in the soundness of his ship [or of the prophecy]; but the sincerity of his conviction can in no wise to help him, because he had no right to believe on such evidence as was before him…And although in the end he may have felt so sure about it that he could not think otherwise, yet inasmuch as he had knowingly and willingly worked himself into that frame of mind, he must be held responsible for it. 11
Of course, in the end, Morpheus is successful. The prophecy was true and his unrelenting faith is largely responsible for the salvation of Zion. But even this is does not justify his actions in the eyes of men like Clifford and Lock. As Clifford concludes:
Suppose that the ship was not unsound after all; that she made her voyage safely and many others after it. Will that diminish the guilt of her owner? Not one jot…. No accidental failure of its good or evil fruits can possibly alter that. …The question of right or wrong has to do with the origin of his belief, not the matter of it…not whether it turned out to be true or false, but whether he had a right to believe on such evidence as was before him. 12
This attitude is pretty extreme, but then so is Morpheus’ particular brand of faith. Even Johannes de silentio suggests that from an ethical point of view, Abraham should be “remitted to some lower court for trial and exposed for murder.” 13 But nevertheless, we tend to greatly admire Morpheus, and Abraham is revered around the globe. We admire, for instance, the way that Morpheus was willing to “lay it all on the line” for his convictions, and we despise the tight-assed Lock, for whom everything must be logical and controlled. In fact, we cannot help but wonder what Niobe could have possibly seen in him.
But philosophically we must be careful not to put ourselves at too much of a distance – as it is so easy to do with fiction, or with stories that occurred a long time ago in a land far, far away. 14 For instance, suppose it were not Abraham, but your neighbor, who told you that God had asked him to sacrifice his son upon an alter – and that luckily he was spared at the last moment. Could you find any room in your heart for admiration towards him – or merely suspicion, fear, and contempt? Or, suppose that you were in Commander Lock’s position. Would you stand for Morpheus’ insubordination on the basis of the rather absurd possibility that he could be right?
And then there is the question of whether anything at all can justify their actions. In this regard there is a divergence between Abraham and Morpheus. While for Morpheus, though his faith itself was beyond reason, his motivation for disobeying orders was not. Insofar as he sincerely believed that the life of every person in Zion depended upon his success, his actions were, if not ethically justified, at least ethically intelligible. But for Abraham it is different, as Johannes tells us:
In his action he overstepped the ethical altogether, and had a telos15 outside it, in relation to which he suspended it. …It is not to save a nation, not to uphold the idea of the State, that Abraham did it, not to appease angry gods. If there was any question of the deity’s being angry, it could only have been Abraham he was angry with, and Abraham’s whole action stands in no relation to the universal. 16
On Kierkegaard’s view the ethical is to be identified with the universal. Taking the life of one’s son goes against a moral duty that applies to everyone at all times. Acting on his faith, Abraham acts instead on the personal. His reasons are uniquely his. They pertain to his personal relationship with God. From the outside, it is impossible to distinguish him from others who have murdered in response to their own delusions or insanity. So Johannes concludes, “either Abraham was every minute a murderer, or we are confronted by a paradox which is higher than all meditation.” And, of course, it is the latter interpretation that he chooses. He argues for what he calls the teleological suspension of the ethical. That is, he contends that the personal can override the universal or ethical, precisely when it is done in obedience to God. So Abraham’s faith, as he sees it, is “a paradox capable of transforming a murder into a holy act well-pleasing to God.”
Kierkegaard’s analysis of faith, and his interpretation of the story of Abraham are both highly controversial, to say the least. But it does provide us with an interesting way to think about the sort of faith that Morpheus demonstrates throughout the Matrix films. Ultimately Kierkegaard’s philosophy cannot prove to us that Abraham and Morpheus are heroes. To come to that conclusion involves a kind of leap of faith of its own. Certainly it is a far less radical leap than these men have made, but it is a leap nonetheless. I for one find it easy to regard Morpheus as a hero throughout the films, but my admiration of him requires the distance that fiction creates. The moment I truly take him seriously, as a potential neighbor, brother, or friend, I can no longer admire or trust him. I cannot make the final movement, the paradoxical movement of faith. Instead, I find myself, much like Johannes de silentio, very, very afraid.
Notes to Chapter Eleven
Unfortunately, Captain Søren and his crew died an early death as their ship was overtaken by Sentinels while they tried to take out the power grid. (This was part of the plan to enable Neo to enter The Source.) Søren Kierkegaard also died prematurely at the age of forty two.
The reference to J.G. Hamann is quite interesting. The Wachowski’s made this reference knowing full well that its symbolism would be lost on almost everyone who saw the film. In a similar vein, the meaning of the Hamann quote that begins Fear and Trembling (which is itself about the very nature of symbolism) was lost on almost all of Kierkegaard’s readers. The quote from Hamann states:
What Tarquin the Proud said in his garden with the poppy
blooms was understood by the son but not by the messenger.
Kierkegaard, like the Wachowskis, did not explain the reference even though he knew that it would be unintelligible to anyone who was unfamiliar with the larger context. The passage refers to Tarquin (an early king of Rome) at a time when he was at war with Gabil. In order to send a message to his son (who was living in Gabil under the pretense that his father had mistreated him) he cut off the heads of the tallest poppies in his garden before the eyes of a messenger. When the messenger reported this event to the son, he (and only he) knew the meaning. He soon put to death all the leading men of Gabil. This allowed Tarquin a swift victory. Kierkegaard uses this quote to foreshadow one of his main theses in Fear and Trembling – that the act of interpretation, and therefore faith itself, is always subjective and personal.
Throughout the Enter the Matrix video game, the completion of particular levels unlocks certain video segments that were not included in the films. Most of the videos document the adventures of Niobe and Ghost in events that would have occurred during The Matrix Reloaded. If you play through with the character of Ghost, you’ll find that he makes direct references to the thought of David Hume, William James, Jean Baudrillard, Friedrich Nietzsche, St. Thomas Aquinas, and Soren Kierkegaard. Niobe tends to be less philosophical, though her conversation with the Oracle yields some important insights.
Søren Kierkeagaard, Fear and Trembling, translated by Alastair Hannay, Penguin Books, New York, 1985, p. 41.
Fear and Trembling, p. 41.
Fear and Trembling, p. 66.
Genesis 22.Biblical quotations are from the King James Version.
Ibid.
Fear and Trembling, p. 65.
W.K. Clifford,“The Ethics of Belief,” in Philosophy of Religion: An Anthology, 4th edition, ed. by Louis P. Pojman, Wadsworth, 2003, p.367.
Ibid, p. 364.
Ibid, p. 364.
Fear and Trembling, p. 84.
The reader is left to their own conclusions about whether the trials of Abraham should be read as fact or fiction.
A telos is an aim or purpose – an overarching goal.
Fear and Trembling, p. 88.
Suggested Readings
W.K. Clifford,“The Ethics of Belief,” in Philosophy of Religion: An Anthology, 4th edition, ed. by Louis P. Pojman, Wadsworth, 2003.
William James, “The Will to Believe,” in Philosophy of Religion: An Anthology, 4th edition, ed. by Louis P. Pojman, Wadsworth, 2003.
Søren Kierkeagaard, Fear and Trembling, translated by Alastair Hannay, Penguin Books, New York, 1985.
Søren Kierkeagaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, translated by David F. Swenson and Walter Lowrie, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1960.
Donald Palmer, Kierkegaard for Beginners, Writers and Readers Publishing Inc., New York, 1996.
Ludwig Wittgenstein, “A Lecture on Religious Belief,” in Philosophy of Religion: An Anthology, 4th edition, ed. by Louis P. Pojman, Wadsworth, 2003.