2001 as Philosophy: A Technological Odyssey

Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey is a brilliant epic film about the universal history of humanity beginning with early primates and culminating in the space age and the creation of a new superhuman being. Traditionally philosophers find the plot of 2001: A Space Odyssey to descend from Homer’s Odyssey and the philosophy of 2001 to descend from nineteenth-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s Also Sprach Zarathustra, which also inspired Richard Strauss’s Also Sprach Zarathustra, which opens the film. While Homer’s Odyssey provides the basic plot of an odyssey, along with some characters such as the new Cyclops “Hal,” and elements of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra appear in the film, Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey far more powerfully illustrates twentieth-century French philosopher Henri Bergson’s philosophy of creative and technological evolution found in Creative Evolution and Two Sources of Morality and Religion.