The Minority Report: Spinoza's Deterministic Society
1284 Words6 Pages
Soobin Kim
Professor Ashline
Freshmen Writing Intensive Seminar
October 19 2017
The world in The Minority Report: Spinoza’s Deterministic Society
The film takes place in the year 2045, Washington D.C. PreCrime system succeeds in stopping murderers before they act, thereby reducing the murder rate to zero in D.C. Murders are predicted by the so-called “Precogs" who "predetermines" the scene of the crime by receiving visions. The United States government is on the verge of enlarging the program in a nationwide scale.
The main character Captain John Anderton gets a new prediction that Anderton himself will murder a man named Leo Crow in 36 hours while Department of Justice official Danny Witwer is investigating the system. Anderton flees and…show more content… The intention itself is very much a threat but not yet a crime. However, to commit a crime, verbally, such action is considered as a crime which is followed with legal punishment. In the world of Minority Report; on the other hand, the intention becomes a threat, and a real one too, real enough to be considered as a crime. Such considerations are justified since the predictive abilities of the precogs are recognized. The precogs discern the exact time and date when a murder will occur, allowing PreCrime division officials to detect the premeditation of murder. The existence of the Precogs states the fact that people have no free will. Factors such as void of individual’s free will and predetermined fate depicted in the world of The Minority Report indicates that the film or the director of the film bases the idea from Spinoza’s Deterministic Society
According to Spinoza, people have no free will. Every individuals’ actions are a result of necessity. Spinoza claims that fate is predetermined and that individuals cannot avoid the future. Predeterminism implies that all the information in the universe today was implicit in the earliest moments of the universe. In the film, the PreCrime system is built upon the faith that free will is an illusion. The operation of the system is justified by the idea of predetermined fate; once an individual is proven to murder, they would commit such…show more content… Lamar did not want the termination of the Precog system by telling everyone the existence of the minority report. For this sole purpose, Lamar was embracing the possibility of innocent people being imprisoned and their memories wiped out. According to Spinoza, this is called self-preservation. Spinoza referenced self-preservation in his writing, “Each thing, in so far as it is in itself, endeavors to persist in its own being”. He explains that the desire to survive is primarily innate. Hence, according to Spinoza and his theory, it is natural for Burgess to act in the way he did in order to protect