Assai più che eutanasia. Prelegomeni a ogni futura interpretazione filosofica del tradimento

Abstract

At the very central point of the first episode in the Matrix Trilogy (1999-2003) is the cornerstone of the film’s narrative: the scene of Cypher’s betrayal, also known as the restaurant scene, which immediately received special attention from scholars. As regards the tone of interpretations, so far it has been almost a competition to issue the more sophisticated and persuasive verdict of guilty, and all of them agree, even the not incriminating ones, in believing Cypher as an incurable selfish hedonist. Their hermeneutical common limits are basically three: a) they treat the Cypher case only by analyzing the verbal level, that is the script, and then by abstracting from the fact that it’s a story in a filmic text; b) they isolate and crystallize the character in Chapter 19 of Matrix (the dialogue between Neo and Cypher and the restaurant scene), as though he appeared only in this specific context and not already at the beginning of the film; c) they apply from above and extrinsically the theoretical formulas of some philosophers (no matter if Kant, Mill, Nietzsche, Nozick etc.) dealt with as if taken from a handbook. The suggested interpretation sounds like a completely different register. We do not refer to any philosopher, instead we refer to the verse from a book of VT, Judges 16.30, in which a very similar impulse to the one moving Cypher is found. And of this character, who has an extraordinary tragic depth, the simulational and cryptogramatic structural shape is shown.