Review: Sophie’s World, A Novel by Jostein Gaarder

Recently, I have been so interested on philosophy. But when I accidently saw and read this gorgeous novel, I became crazy of it. This is honestly a mix between a novel and a theory book on philosophy. That’s  perhaps one of strategic way the author did to deliver the history of philosophy without bringing the readers onto the state of boredom. Story starts when a teenager named Sophie Admundsen found a letter in her letterbox. It said ‘Who are you?’ and other silly questions, but philosophical ones.

The letter was actually sent by a philosopher nearby, and Sophie kept on getting the new ones. Each letter explained the history of the earliest philosophers. Like I do, Sophie became so excited on philosophy.

The story went on, and in the middle part of the novel. You will get such a shock, cause you will also find that the whole earlier part of the story was only ‘fiction of fiction’. You will come to a conclusion that like Sophie, you are now also experiencing the philosophy. In the worst case, you can even wonder if you life and world were only fiction. You live as a fictional character in God’s novel.

That was probably the best part of it all.

Here, though you may be boring in reading the beginning, or the philosophically historical part of the novel, I should make you be sure that YOU MUST READ THE SECOND HALF OF THIS NOVEL! This probably will change your perception of life. It might be so frightening if you jump to a wrong and negative conclusion. But, in the least, YOU THINK ABOUT IT.

These are some quotations and values taken from Sophie’s World.

-          “The only thing we require to be good philosophers is the faculty of wonder”

-          That many people are so caught in everyday’s routines. They crawl deep into the rabbit’s fur, become so comfortable with it, and finally stay there all their lifetime. They don’t want to wonder and ask the essence of life, or ‘looking directly to the Magician’s eyes’.

-          Nothing can come from nothing

-          Socrates didn’t do lecturing, but discussing. He helped people ‘gave birth’, just like a midwife.

-          Socrates: “No one could possibly be happy if they acted against their better judgment. And he who knows how to achieve happiness will do so. Therefore, he who knows what is right, will do right. Because why would anybody choose to be unhappy?”

-          “What do you think, Sophie? Can you live a happy life if you actually do things you know deep down are wrong? There are lots of people who lie and cheat and speak ill of others. Are they aware that these things are not right- or fair, if you prefer? Do you think these people are happy? Socrates didn’t.

-          The difference between a teacher and philosopher: a teacher thinks that he knows many things, but a philosopher, together with his pupils, tries to find the truth.

-          Plato: There’s a reality behind the material world: the world of ideas

-          Plato believed similarly that all natural phenomena are mainly shadows of the eternal forms or ideas

-          Aristotle was the first man to state that everything in this world is divided into categories

-          Plato had a contrast opinion with Aristotle. Plato said that the reality is the world in our thinking and reason, while Aristotle mentioned that the real world is that which people can perceive with senses.

-          “I think, therefore I am“(thinking being). - Descartes

-          Descartes doubted everything and that was the only thing he was certain of.

-          Spinoza: God didn’t create the world so He can be in the outside of it. He is the World. Sometimes, the world is in Him.

-          Aristotle: MAN CAN ONLY ACXHIEVE HAPPINESS BY USING ALL HIS ABILITIES AND CAPABILITTIES

-          Aristotle mentioned 3 forms of happiness: 1. Life of pleasure and enjoyment. 2. Life as a free and responsible citizen. 3. Life as thinker and philosopher

-          Ethics of both Plato and Aristotle contain echoes of Greek Medicine: only by exercising balance and temperance will I achieve a happy or ‘harmonious’ life.

-          This life and universe is like a big rabbit pulled from a top hat. The philosophers went up to the highest fur of the rabbit and looked straight at the Magician’s (God’s) eyes.

-          Tower of Babel

-          Cynics: True happiness lies in not being dependent on such random and fleeting things. (wealth, health, etc). And because happiness doesn’t consist in benefits of this kind, it’s within everyone’s reach. Moreover, having once being attained, it can never be lost.

-          Plotinus:  Darkness doesn’t have existence. It’s merely an absence of light.

-          Christian Mystic Angelus Silesius: “Everydrop becomes the sea when it flows oceanward, just as at last the soul ascends and thus becomes the Lord.”

-          The more you want to forget something, the more you remember it.

-          The philosopher said,  “Nobody asked you to like it. But philosophy is not a harmless party game. It’s about who we are and where we come from. Do you think we learn enough about that on school?”

“We don’t even learn to ASK them!” Sophie replied.

-          Life consists of a long chain of coincidences

-          God is God if every land was waste, God is God if every man were dead.

-          Spinoza: Man can strive for freedom in order to live without outer constraint but he will never achieve ‘free will’.

-          Justice only exists between equals.