Sophie’s World

The world of Sufi... A novel by the Norwegian author Jostein Gaarder.

This novel has achieved global fame and has been translated into more than 53 languages worldwide, and has achieved sales reaching 3 million copies.

The novel tells the history of philosophy through a small girl named Sophie, who is taught the science of philosophy by a mysterious man through letters sent to her mailbox.

Of course, the novel talks about many philosophers and sheds light on their ideas, and it is considered an easy starting point for those who want to get to know the history of philosophy. But to be honest, I don't like philosophy and I didn't fully integrate with the book and couldn't finish it, although it is written in a smooth and charming way.

Maybe I need to give it another try at another time.

If one day I become a parent, I will give this book as a gift to my child on his/her 15th birthday. :)

This book holds a special place in my heart. It contains valuable lessons and wisdom that I believe every 15-year-old should know. It can help them navigate through the challenges and opportunities that come their way during this crucial stage of their lives.

Even if I forget to give it to them, please remind me. Because I truly want my child to have this book and benefit from its contents. It will be a precious gift that they can cherish and refer to throughout their lives.

Reading it again was beneficial for me because I remembered the impact it had on me when I first read it. It made me question myself and my beliefs so much and also increased my interest in philosophy.

I had forgotten some parts, and it was good to be reminded. There were also some parts that I didn't understand well the previous time, but this time I did.

I'm glad I read it again.

An interesting little metafiction—at times, meta-metafiction—for aspiring baby philosophers. It offers a digestible, sweet narrative of the history of philosophy, much like many actual philosophers who employ dialogues to explain ideas.

At times, it’s pretty adorable, and I truly wish I’d read this in high school. However, other times, it goes off on tangents, hammers its points home a little too aggressively, and exudes a bit too much glee over its own cleverness.

Sophie Amundsun, a clever fourteen-year-old, is full of wonder about life, death, and identity. She receives a note in the mail that asks “Who are you?” and then “Where does the world come from?” After allowing her to muse over those questions and get annoyed by the fact that nobody else seems to care about such things (while her classmates are absorbed in matters like who has a crush on whom and who’s winning sports events. Sophie, I understand your pain), the mysterious letter-sender begins sending her a course in philosophy—one little snippet at a time.

He tells her, “The only thing we require to be good philosophers is the faculty of wonder.” He adds that children, every time they see a dog or a lion at the zoo, cry ‘Dog!’ or ‘Lion!’ But as they see more and more dogs and lions, they become less impressed and stop shouting excitedly. But it’s a shame, he says—we should all be constantly intrigued by things and take nothing in the world for granted. His intention, he says, is to ensure that Sophie does not grow up to be one of those adults who take the world for granted. Philosophers are like small children in that the world “continues to seem a bit unreasonable—bewildering, even enigmatic. . . . So you must choose, Sophie. Are you a child who has not yet become world-weary? Or are you a philosopher who will vow never to become so?”

The way he describes the Platonic shadows—via the horse explanation—is probably my favorite summary of it that I’ve ever come across. You can make a batch of identical(ish) cookies because you use a cookie mold. The individual cookies are mostly identical, but of course, they might have minor flaws that distinguish them from each other. But the mold is the “perfect” shape off of which the other cookies are modeled. Likewise, in some other reality, the world of ideas, there is a horse that is a “perfect” horse off of which the horses we encounter in this sensory world are copied.

Then he says, “Plato believed the soul existed before it inhabited the body. But as soon as the soul wakes up in a human body, it has forgotten all the perfect ideas. Then something wondrous happens. As the human being discovers the various forms in the natural world, a vague recollection stirs his soul. He sees a horse—but an imperfect horse. The sight of it is sufficient to awaken in the soul a faint recollection of the perfect horse, which the soul once saw in the world of ideas, and this stirs the soul with a yearning to return to its true realm. Plato calls this yearning eros—love. The soul, then, experiences a longing to return to its true origin. From now on, the body and the whole sensory world is experienced as imperfect and insignificant. The soul yearns to fly home on the wings of love to the world of ideas. It longs to be freed from the chains of the body. . . . Plato believed that all natural phenomena are merely shadows of the eternal forms or ideas. But most people are content with a life among shadows. They give no thought to what is casting the shadows. They think shadows are all there are, never realizing even that they are, in fact, shadows. And thus they pay no heed to the immortality of their own soul. Plato’s point was not that the natural world is dark and dreary, but that it is dark and dreary in comparison with the clarity of ideas. A picture of a beautiful landscape is not dark and dreary either. But it is only a picture.”

Re-Read aufgrund unserer Buchbesprechung bei Literat.

1997 fand ich es unterhaltsam, interessant und auch wundschön fantasievoll.

Leider ist dieser Zauber beim jetzigen Lesen nicht mehr auf mich übergegangen. Vielleicht liegt es ja daran, dass es eigentlich ein Jugendbuch ist?

However, upon re-reading this book in 1997 due to our book review at Literat, I found it to be not only entertaining and interesting but also beautifully imaginative. It was like being transported to a magical world.

Unfortunately, this magic didn't transfer to me during my current reading. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's because it's actually a young adult book?

As I grow older, my tastes and perspectives might have changed. What once seemed enchanting and captivating now feels a bit different.

Nonetheless, I still appreciate the creativity and charm that went into writing this book. It's a reminder of how our reading experiences can evolve over time.

Perhaps I'll give it another try in the future and see if I can recapture that initial magic.

Reading "The World of Sufism" was like finding a treasure for me! It was so valuable... so desirable...

In my opinion, it is the sweetest and kindest! It is a book written in the language of philosophy.

When I was reading about the evolution of philosophical thoughts and their positions against each other, a sentence that we had read in our textbooks about the prophets kept echoing in my mind:

"The duty of the prophets is to return society to balance."

That is, if the societies were in a state of excess or extravagance in different aspects of their lives, the prophets would guide the people towards balance with their teachings.

The term "prophet" may not have a philosophical meaning from a philosophical perspective, but philosophers, in a way, also had that role in society (especially the later philosophers who mostly focused on practical philosophy and pursued practical or political goals...). That is, as if each new philosopher who took a position against the previous philosopher's idea was exactly correcting and adjusting the excessive aspects of that intellectual current, but sometimes he himself would become excessive or extravagant in another aspect and prepare the ground for the emergence of a new idea...

Hegel has presented this subject in the form of a theory that, in my opinion, can be a summary of the history of philosophy:

"Whenever an excessive claim is proposed (thesis)

the opposite claim is brought forward against it (antithesis)

the synthetic point of view is reached, which is the midpoint between the two schools of thought (synthesis = identity), and in this way, the contradiction between the two ways of thinking is elevated.

And each synthesis will be refuted by a new antithesis... and this story continues...

Besides, regardless of what thoughts each of us pursues and what we believe in, there was a poem in this book by Thomas Hardy called "The Other One" which was inspired by Darwin's theory. I wanted to record it here as a remembrance:

A part of this tree

Is a man whom my great-grandfather knew,

And now lies beneath it

What if this branch becomes the mate of his

A living and blooming human

Who has now become a young green one.

These plants must have come from him

From a woman who, a century ago, for her peace

Used to tend to her grave.

And the beautiful daughter whom I tried to get to know all those years ago

And who knows if she has led to this red flower?

So they are not beneath the earth,

But like nerves and blood vessels everywhere

They are at work in the rise and appearance of the high air,

And again and again the sun and rain

And a force that made them like this...

The two things this book has going for it are: the plot and narrative frame are original and creative, and the story is more informative than most.

The basic premise is that a 14-year-old Norwegian girl embarks on a correspondence course with a philosopher, and he teaches her the major points of Western philosophy, from the ancient Greeks up until the existentialists. What makes the narrative structure more original than your average novel is that everything becomes very meta and self-referential towards the end, when it comes to light that the girl and the teacher are not what they appear to be. The book is somewhat postmodern in this respect, but brought down to a level suitable for young adult readers.

As far as the story being informative -- by the end of the book, I had learned a lot about trends in the history of philosophy, as well as the major ideas of each major philosopher's project, so in that respect Sophie's World was useful and educational.

However, the book was weighed down by several elements of the story that a good editor could have foreseen and cut out. In general the author devotes too much energy to trivial details, which ultimately results in him writing a 500-page novel that could have been improved by being merely a 300-page novel. On top of that, Gaarder is not adept at the mystery genre, but tries to make this book a mystery story anyway. Sophie is under-characterized and has several unnecessary flaws that contribute nothing to the story and only serve to make the reader dislike her. The man who teaches Sophie philosophy is condescending, patronizing, and pedantic.

Throughout the entire story, I found it very unrealistic that no one else thought that it was untoward or creepy that a 40-year-old man and a 14-year-old girl were alone together for hours in his house several days a week. Sophie's mother was very curious about this man, but she never forbade Sophie from seeing him or asked Sophie if everything was all right, and she only met him after the correspondence course had been going on for several months. Sophie was ditching schoolwork and family to be with this man and was totally obsessed with him. He remained totally in control throughout the whole story and commanded her in a way that made me uncomfortable at times. It seems that Gaarder would have been uncomfortable having the philosophy teacher be female -- Gaarder himself used to be a philosophy teacher, and so he probably found it more comfortable to have the character representing him be the same sex as him -- but he was too squeamish to confront the realities of such a socially suspect relationship, and I found that irresponsible of him, especially in a book geared towards young adults.

My other major criticism of the book is that it deals entirely with Western philosophy and only the dead white men of Western philosophy, at that. Gaarder tries to compensate for this by having Sophie be his mouthpiece for feminism, but not only do I find it highly unlikely that a 14-year-old girl would take up arms about women's rights the way she did, but I also found most of her comments to be the kind of canned, stereotypical comments that a male who didn't know much about feminism would assume a feminist would say.

My one final thought will be to say that if you read this book (and you should only read it if you have nothing better at hand), pay attention to the role of motherhood and fatherhood in the story. Although the book is not about mothers and fathers, parents play a large role in the characters' lives, and the way Gaarder portrays mothers as meddling, clueless, domestic drones and fathers as intelligent, authoritative (and absent) heroes says more about Gaarder's own life than I think he intended it to.

This has been an upsetting reread.

On one hand, I've found that the book, in its own quiet way and within the minds of its readers, leaves me hungry for more. There's a certain allure that makes me long for deeper exploration.

Yet, on the other hand, it also provides a strange sort of balance. Years ago, when I first read this book that changed my life for the better, I truly believed it was the best read in the world.

How naive I was back then! I also thought that all philosophy books were as easily digestible as "Sophie's World." What a delusion!

Now, upon rereading, the book seems slow and uncouth. It's as if it's cut from the same cloth as Aristotle's imbecilities, Kant's willful religiosity, and Spinoza's heartbreaking and enthusiastic views.

This book is like "Philosophy For Dummies," a crash course in philosophy. Sophie is a girl, but is she real? Was she real and will she continue to be real? How does she survive?

You could do worse than trying to find answers to those questions by reading this book. But finally, I must admit defeat. This book is ephemeral. I simply couldn't fully grasp it.

It remains an enigma, one that continues to both fascinate and frustrate me.