Sophie's World

"What is admirable in the novel is the utter unpretentious-ness of the philosophical lessons, the plain and workmanlike prose which manages to deliver Western philosophy in accounts that are crystal clear.

A Novel About the History of Philosophy

In order to interpret his patients' dreams, Freud often had to work his way through a dense language of symbols--rather in the way we interpret a picture or a literary text."

"Locke emphasized that the only things we can perceive are simple sensations.

The fairy tale genre was passionately cultivated by the Romantics.

Socrates is a good example of a person who managed to free himself from the prevailing views of his time by his own intelligence.

The best way of approaching philosophy is to ask a few philosophical questions:

"In the adroit hands of Jostein Gaarder, the whole sweep of three millennia of Western philosophy is rendered as lively as a gossip column ...

Over the millennia a wild profusion of mythological explanations of philosophical questions spread across the world.

"What is admirable in the novel is the utter unpretentious-ness of the philosophical lessons, the plain and workmanlike prose which manages to deliver Western philosophy in accounts that are crystal clear.

The Top Hat ... the only thing we require to be good philosophers is the faculty of wonder...

If I first establish that "all living creatures are mortal" (first premise), and then establish that "Hermes is a living creature" (second premise), I can then elegantly conclude that "Hermes is mortal."

According to Democritus, there is no conscious "design" in the movement of atoms.

Whenever Sophie's mother was in a bad mood, she would call the house they lived in a menagerie.

A Greek philosopher who lived more than two thousand years ago believed that philosophy had its origin in man's sense of wonder.

"I think I'll go upstairs and do my biology homework," she said, almost apologetically.

Actually, it was an old hedge that had once marked the boundary to the woods, but because nobody had trimmed it for the last twenty years it had grown into a tangled and impenetrable mass.

It had a Nor-wegian stamp on it and was postmarked "UN Battalion."

Sophie's thoughts were in a turmoil because of the postcard she had found down in the hallway.

"Nature is full of enigmas.

Similarly, what the "historical" Socrates actually said will always be shrouded in mystery.

Man thought it was so astonishing to be alive that philosophical questions arose of their own accord.

So we ask: how can the magician change a couple of white silk scarves into a live rabbit?

A lot of people experience the world with the same incredulity as when a magician suddenly pulls a rabbit out of a hat which has just been shown to them empty.

We know that the world is not all sleight of hand and deception because here we are in it, we are part of it.

When Alberto got to Berkeley, Hilde was at least as enthralled as Sophie had been.

This rapturous performance may repeat itself hundreds of times before the child learns to pass a dog without going crazy.

But long before the child learns to talk properly--and Ion before it learns to think philosophically--the world we have become a habit.

You feel as if you are waking from an enchanted slumber.

How do you think she reacts to the sight of Dad floating nonchalantly over the kitchen table?

Socrates (470-399 B.C.) is possibly the most enigmatic figure in the entire history of philosophy.

I will not allow you, of all people, to join the ranks of the apathetic and the indifferent.

Only philosophers embark on this perilous expedition to the outermost reaches of language and existence.

They had let themselves be lulled into the enchanted sleep of their humdrum existence once and for all.

A myth is a story about the gods which sets out to explain why life is as it is.

The Myths ... a precarious balance between the forces of good and evil ...

The Dark Ages, as they were also called, were seen then as one interminable thousand-year-long night which had settled over Europe between antiquity and the Renaissance.

Your real "I"-- which you can only experience if you are able to lose yourself--is, according to the mystics, like a mysterious fire that goes on burning to all eternity.

In order to understand how the early philosophers thought, we have to understand what it was like to have a mythological picture of the world.

So philosophy gradually liberated itself from religion.

Over the millennia a wild profusion of mythological explanations of philosophical questions spread across the world.

And when it rained the corn germinated and thrived in the fields.

Outside Midgard was the kingdom of Utgard, the domain of the treacherous giants, who resorted to all kinds of cunning tricks to try and destroy the world.

The earliest Greek philosophers criticized Homer's mythology because the gods resembled mortals too much and were just as egoistic and treacherous.

Mortals could not just sit idly by and wait for the gods to intervene while catastrophes such as drought or plague loomed.

Mortals could not just sit idly by and wait for the gods to intervene while catastrophes such as drought or plague loomed.

This they did by performing various religious ceremonies, or rites.

They could do this by sacrificing an animal to the god.

The aim of the early Greek philosophers was to find natural, rather than supernatural, explanations for natural processes.

Sophie knew the parable of how Jesus turned water into wine, but she had never taken it literally.

What he meant by that we can only surmise.

He thought that our world was only one of a myriad of worlds that evolve and dissolve in something he called the boundless.

It is not so easy to explain what he meant by the boundless, but it seems clear that he was not thinking of a known substance in the way that Thales had envisaged.

Parmenides realized, of course, that nature is in a constant state of flux.

"God is day and night, winter and summer, war and peace, hunger and satiety," he said.

Although we humans do not always think alike or have the same degree of reason, Heraclitus believed that there must be a kind of "universal reason" guiding everything that happens in nature.

So in the midst of all nature's constant flux and oppo-sites, Heraclitus saw an Entity or one-ness.

Heraclitus' sense perceptions made it equally clear that nature was in a constant state of change.

Parmenides says: a) that nothing can change, andb) that our sensory perceptions must therefore be unreliable.

Parmenides says: a) that nothing can change, andb) that our sensory perceptions must therefore be unreliable.

Heraclitus, on the other hand, says: a) that everything changes ("all things flow"), andb) that our sensory perceptions are reliable.

But at the same time Empedocles agreed with Heraclitus that we must trust the evidence of our senses.

We can make a comparison to painting.

Other philosophers before him had tried to show that the primordial substance had to be either water, air, or fire.

After Empedocles' clarification of nature's transformations as the combination and dissolution of the four "roots," something still remained to be explained.

After Empedocles' clarification of nature's transformations as the combination and dissolution of the four "roots," something still remained to be explained.

After Empedocles' clarification of nature's transformations as the combination and dissolution of the four "roots," something still remained to be explained.

Sophie tried once again to use her own common sense, and not to think about what she had learned from others.

Democritus ...the most ingenious toy in the world...

Sophie began to discern a pattern in the deliveries: every afternoon she would find a big brown envelope.

He therefore assumed that everything was built up of tiny invisible blocks, each of which was eternal and immutable.

Once it is accepted that nothing can change, that nothing can come out of nothing, and that nothing is ever lost, then nature must consist of infinitesimal blocks that can join and separate again.

They believe, like Democritus, that "soul" is connected with brain, and that we cannot have any form of consciousness once the brain disintegrates.

He did not accept that there was any spiritual force in life--unlike Empedocles and An-axagoras.

Fate ... the "fortune-teller" is trying to foresee something that is really quite unforeseeable ...

As she thought about it, several more examples of fatalism occurred to her.

It had to be because so many people were superstitious.

Sophie loathed all that soppy talk about love.

Here in the Nordic countries we find a strong belief in "lagnadan," or fate, in the old Icelandic sagas of the Edda.

These might form a certain image or pattern--at least, if we give our imagination free rein.

And precisely because what they "see" is so vague, it is hard to repudiate fortune-tellers' claims.

And precisely because what they "see" is so vague, it is hard to repudiate fortune-tellers' claims.

When we gaze up at the stars, we see a veritable chaos of twinkling dots.

The word "influenza" actually means a malign influence from the stars.

The road to health for everyone is through moderation, harmony, and a "sound mind in a sound body."

It is more important that Hermes also gave his name to the word "hermetic," which means hidden or inaccessible--not inappropriate for the way Hermes takes care to keep the two of us hidden from each other.

Gradually a democracy evolved, with popular assemblies and courts of law.

In philosophy a view like this is called skepticism.

A person who is unable to say categorically whether or not the gods or God exists is called an agnostic.

In the course of the discussion he would generally get his opponents to recognize the weakness of their arguments, and, forced into a corner, they would finally be obliged to realize what was right and what was wrong.

Socrates could feign ignorance--or pretend to be dumber than he was.

Socrates could feign ignorance--or pretend to be dumber than he was.

We call this Socratic irony.

"Athens is like a sluggish horse," he is reputed to have said, "and I am the gadfly trying to sting it into life."

They could certainly both have saved themselves by appealing for mercy, but they both felt they had a mission that would have been betrayed unless they kept faith to the bitter end.

The most subversive people are those who ask questions.

So he became a philosopher--someone who does not give up but tirelessly pursues his quest for truth.

And only he who does right can be a "virtuous man."

Socrates was concerned with finding clear and universally valid definitions of right and wrong.

Aristotle held that there are three forms of happiness.

I think he sounds a bit too impertinent."

"He is neither impertinent nor pertinent," said Sophie.

Plato's first deed as a philosopher was to publish Socrates' Apology, an account of his plea to the large jury.

Plato's first deed as a philosopher was to publish Socrates' Apology, an account of his plea to the large jury.

(In addition to Socrates' Apology, Plato wrote a collection of Epistles and about twenty-five philosophical Dialogues.)

We know at all events that Hume rejected any attempt to prove the immortality of the soul or the existence of God.

Plato's ideal state is not unlike the old Hindu caste system, in .which each and every person has his or her particular function for the good of the whole.

Plato's ideal state is not unlike the old Hindu caste system, in .which each and every person has his or her particular function for the good of the whole.

Nowadays we would perhaps call Plato's state totalitarian.

Aristotle...a meticulous organizer who wanted to clarify our concepts ...

But the "idea" horse was simply a concept that we humans had formed after seeing a certain number of horses.

And here the metaphor of the gingerbread mold does not hold up because the mold exists independently of the particular gingerbread cookies.

The real chicken and the "form" chicken are thus just as inseparable as body and soul.

The example demonstrates that Aristotle's logic was based on the correlation of terms, in this case "living creature" and "mortal."

One comprises plants, and the other creatures.

When Aristotle divides natural phenomena into various categories, his criterion is the object's characteristics, or more specifically what it can do or what it does.

We must be neither cowardly nor rash, but courageous (too little courage is cowardice, too much is rashness), neither miserly nor extravagant but liberal (not liberal enough is miserly, too liberal is extravagant).

We must be neither cowardly nor rash, but courageous (too little courage is cowardice, too much is rashness), neither miserly nor extravagant but liberal (not liberal enough is miserly, too liberal is extravagant).

We must be neither cowardly nor rash, but courageous (too little courage is cowardice, too much is rashness), neither miserly nor extravagant but liberal (not liberal enough is miserly, too liberal is extravagant).

Aristotle describes three good forms of constitution.

One is monarchy, or kingship--which means there is only one head of state.

For this type of constitution to be good, it must not degenerate into "tyranny"--that is, when one ruler governs the state to his own advantage.

Another good form of constitution is aristocracy, in which there is a larger or smaller group of rulers.

This constitutional form must beware of degenerating into an "oligarchy"--when the government is run by a few people.

An example of that would be a junta.

The third good constitutional form is what Aristotle called polity, which means democracy.

PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE AND TOLERANCE 1.

What is meant by priority of values?

"Well, you did say it was important to have a personal point of view."

This is called syncretism or the fusion of creeds.

Late Antiquity was generally characterized by religious doubts, cultural dissolution, and pessimism.

But philosophy was also moving increasingly in the direction of "salvation" and serenity.

The Cynics

Antisthenes had been a pupil of Socrates, and had become particularly interested in his frugality.

Nowadays the terms "cynical" and "cynicism" have come to mean a sneering disbelief in human sincerity, and they imply insensitivity to other people's suffering.

Nowadays the terms "cynical" and "cynicism" have come to mean a sneering disbelief in human sincerity, and they imply insensitivity to other people's suffering.

Stoicism was later to have great significance for Roman culture.

They thought that each person was like a world in miniature, or "microcosmos," which is a reflection of the "macro-cosmos."

As true children of their time, the Stoics were distinctly "cosmopolitan," in that they were more receptive to contemporary culture than the "barrel philosophers" (the Cynics).

It was he who formed the very concept of "humanism"--that is, a view of life that has the individual as its central focus.

Closest to God are the eternal ideas which are the primal forms of all creatures.

We sense more of this unfathomable mystery in a butterfly that flutters from a twig--or in a goldfish swimming in a bowl.

As they approached the outskirts of the town they heard a few sporadic shots.

About 4,000 years ago, the primitive Indo-Europeans lived in areas bordering on the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea.

Wherever they went, the Indo-Europeans assimilated with the local culture, although Indo-European languages and Indo-European religion came to play a dominant role.

The ancient Indian Veda scriptures and Greek philosophy, and for that matter Snorri Sturluson's mythology are all written in related languages.

Not infrequently we find in Hinduism and Buddhism an emphasis on the fact that the deity is present in all things (pantheism) and that man can become one with God through religious insight.

Therefore in the Orient, passivity and seclusion can be religious ideals.

In ancient Greece, too, there were many people who believed in an ascetic, or religiously secluded, way of life for the salvation of the soul Many aspects of medieval monastic life can be traced back to beliefs dating from the Greco-Roman civilization.

In ancient Greece, too, there were many people who believed in an ascetic, or religiously secluded, way of life for the salvation of the soul Many aspects of medieval monastic life can be traced back to beliefs dating from the Greco-Roman civilization.

One of the Old Testament words for "god" has the same semantic root as the Muslim Allah.

This is called monotheism.

The city comprises prominent (Jewish) synagogues, (Christian) churches, and (Islamic) mosques.

The city comprises prominent (Jewish) synagogues, (Christian) churches, and (Islamic) mosques.

(In the Greek Orthodox Church--that is, in

This is what Christians usually call the "Passion" of Christ Jesus was the "suffering servant" who bore the sins of humanity in order that we could be "atoned" and saved from God's wrath.

She was nervous, but not scared out of her wits.

Although she realized that the monk had to be Alberto Knox, she regretted her outburst in this venerable place of worship.

But she had been nervous, and when you're nervous its comforting to break all taboos.

"But you can find this information in a biography of John Steinbeck.

This scheme of things was not difficult to align with Christian theology.

We can moreover note that, according to Aquinas, it is only as nature-being that woman is inferior to man.

In Heaven there is complete equality of the sexes because all physical gender differences cease to exist."

In Heaven there is complete equality of the sexes because all physical gender differences cease to exist."

In spite of being a woman, she worked as preacher, author, physician, botanist, and naturalist.

...O divine lineage in mortal guise...

"He gets more and more audacious.

The study of Greek humanism also had a pedagogical aim.

The new weapons gave the Europeans military superiority over American and Asiatic cultures, although firearms were also an important factor in Europe.

But Renaissance humanism was to an even greater extent characterized by individualism.

"As simple as that, and this very same simplicity was Newton's whole point.

In calculating the planetary orbits he had merely applied two natural laws which Galileo had already proposed.

When Newton had proved that the same natural laws applied everywhere in the universe, one might think that he thereby undermined people's faith in God's omnipotence.

As philosophy and science gradually broke away from theology, a new Christian piety developed.

There were also ecclesiastical reformers who chose to remain within the Roman Catholic church.

"And the next great epoch in the history of mankind is the Baroque.

He also wore white stockings and thin patent leather shoes with bows.

But this trick was both pompous and tasteless.

Can't you see how he has the effrontery to compare his own shabby surveillance of us with God's providence?"

On the one hand there was the Renaissance's unremitting optimism--and on the other hand there were the many who sought the opposite extreme in a life of religious seclusion and self-denial.

On the one hand there was the Renaissance's unremitting optimism--and on the other hand there were the many who sought the opposite extreme in a life of religious seclusion and self-denial.

Another Latin expression that was widely quoted was 'memento mori,' which means 'Remember that you must die.'

"In many senses, the Baroque period was characterized by vanity or affectation.

Baroque buildings were typified by a lot of ornate nooks and crannies.

During his time there had been a rule of 'enlightened despotism,' similar to that in the reign of Louis XIV almost a hundred years earlier.

"How very pessimistic."

"He was preoccupied with the brevity of life.

"We had in Norway a genuine Baroque poet called Fetter Dass, who lived from 1647 to 1707.

He thought that both the idealism of the Romantics and Hegel's 'historicism' had obscured the individual's responsibility for his own life.

"He felt that current philosophies and science were a threat to the Christian way of life, that the all-pervading materialism, not least, represented a threat to the Christian faith in God as creator and preserver of all nature."

"Spinoza said that it was our passions--such as ambition and lust--which prevent us from achieving true happiness and harmony, but that if we recognize that everything happens from necessity, we can achieve an intuitive understanding of nature as a whole.

Such 'quantitative' properties are just as clear and distinct to my reason as the fact that I am a thinking being.

'Qualitative' properties such as color, smell, and taste, on the other hand, are linked to our sense perception and as such do not describe outer reality."

Few philosophers in more recent times have been so blasphemed and so persecuted for their ideas as this man.

The teachings of Jesus therefore represented a liberation from the orthodoxy of Judaism.

The teachings of Jesus therefore represented a liberation from the orthodoxy of Judaism.

He earned a meager living by polishing lenses, some of which have come into my possession."

"There is almost something symbolic in the fact that he lived by polishing lenses.

"I don't mean only the infinity of space.

So we usually make a distinction between British empiricism and Continental rationalism."

Locke's view was that to ensure a legal State, the people's representatives must make the laws and the king or the government must apply them."

There's the judicial power, or law courts, and then there's the executive power, that's the government."

Locke had first and foremost emphasized that the legislative and the executive power must be separated if tyranny was to be avoided.

No. Commit it then to the flames, for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion."

He said he wanted to 'dismiss all this meaningless nonsense which long has dominated metaphysical thought and brought it into disrepute.'

So now I guess I must figure out if I have had a corresponding 'complex impression' of my own ego.

My temperament and how I see myself alter from one minute to the next.

"Every time I feel prejudice I get a bad feeling."

"An empiricist of our own century, Bertrand Russell, has provided a more grotesque example.

Alberto continued: "According to Berkeley, my own soul can be the cause of my own ideas--just as when I dream--but only another will or spirit can be the cause of the ideas that make up the 'corporeal' world.

From time to time he had had a few poems and sketches of the archipelago published in a national journal.

He had dropped so many cryptic hints in his cards from Lebanon.

Absurd!

It may be just as difficult to escape his omniscience as it is to run away from your own shadow.

Then we shall take the main outline of Kant's philosophy so that we can get to Romanticism.

And if we can manage a few closing comments on Sartre and Existentialism, our plan can be put into operation."

But the revolutionary ideas arose much earlier.

People thought that poverty and oppression were the fault of ig-norance and superstition.

It is no accident that the science of pedagogy was founded during the Enlightenment."

And we constantly find individuals, or even whole nations, that claim this 'natural right' when they rebel against anarchy, servitude, and oppression."

Yet it was the French Revolution that gave us the first inklings of feminism."

But he believed he could prove their absolute validity by showing that in reality we are talking about the laws of human cognition."

By a 'practical postulate,' Kant meant something that had to be assumed for the sake of 'praxis,' or practice; that is to say, for man's morality.

It started in Germany, arising as a reaction to the Enlightenment's unequivocal emphasis on reason.

In his aesthetics he investigated what happens when we are overwhelmed by beauty--in a work of art, for instance.

They had a decidedly anti-middle class approach to life and could refer to the police or their landladies as philistines, for example, or simply as the enemy."

He believed that history is characterized by continuity, evolution, and design.

The philosopher Fichte said that nature stems from a higher, unconscious imagination.

"The statement is so paradoxical that we can certainly emphasize it with a new section."

He believed that history itself revealed this dialectical pattern.

"Well, when a socialist and a conservative sit down together to resolve a social problem, a tension will quickly be revealed between their conflicting modes of thought.

Niels Bohr, who, like our own Norwegian poet Vinje, was known for his ambivalence, once said: There are two kinds of truths.

There are the superficial truths, the opposite of which are obviously wrong.

"It was because of this melancholia that he felt obliged to break off his engagement, something the Copenhagen bourgeoisie did not look kindly on.

"The typical Romantic is thus also the typical aesthete, since there is more to it than pure sensory enjoyment.

On the other hand, we must be wary of identifying everything that calls itself Marxism with Marx's own thinking.

In the feudal society of the Middle Ages, it was between feudal lord and serf; later on, between aristocrat and citizen.

But in Marx's own time, in what he called a bourgeois or capitalist society, the conflict was first and foremost between the capitalists and the workers, or the proletariat.

But in Marx's own time, in what he called a bourgeois or capitalist society, the conflict was first and foremost between the capitalists and the workers, or the proletariat.

The first sentence in this manifesto says: A spectre is haunting Europe--the spectre of Communism."

Capitalism is an economic system which is self-destructive because it lacks rational control."

There is no doubt that socialism has largely succeeded in combating an inhumane society.

Both in ecclesiastic and scientific circles, the Biblical doctrine of the immutability of all vegetable and animal species was strictly adhered to.

A placid or melancholy bull with no interest in cows will have no interest for genealogy either, since with characteristics like these, its line will die out at once.

Sophie found the naked man's pomposity so absurd that she burst out laughing.

He had also seen how numerous forms of neurosis or psychological disorders could be traced back to conflicts during childhood.

Freud called this 'pleasure principle' in us the id.

In interpreting the dream, we must go through the reverse process and unmask or decode the motif to arrive at its theme."

The comic effect in these silent movies was often Chaplin's laconic acceptance of all the absurd things that happen to him.

"Charlatan!" exclaimed Alberto.

This penultimate lap had been by plane from Rome.

"And they can compare with the great paradox of eternity that Sophie once sat pondering in her garden: either the universe has always been there--or it suddenly came into existence out of nothing ..."