# Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder - Blinkist

What’s in it for me? Follow the intriguing trail from Socrates to Sartre.

Sophie’s World is a unique novel in that it is filled to the brim with non-fiction material. It tells the story of a 14-year-old girl named Sophie who finds herself under the tutelage of a mysterious expert in philosophy by the name of Alberto Knox. With Knox as her guide, Sophie learns the history of European philosophy, from ancient mythologies to the twentieth century musings of existentialism. Along the way, however, Sophie starts to question the very nature of her reality as things get increasingly surreal – or just plain unreal.

In the sections ahead, we’ll go on this journey with Sophie and follow the thread that ties together such influential minds as Aristotle, Descartes, and Kant. We’ll also find out how Sophie’s world becomes its own metatextual illustration of the theories of Irish philosopher George Berkeley.

From mythologies to Socrates

It all started when Sophie found an envelope in the mailbox with her name on it. No stamp. Just her name. Inside, a piece of paper contained three words: “Who are you?” Soon, another envelope showed up, containing another question: “Where does the world come from?”

Sophie thoughtfully considered these questions until finally some answers showed up in another, bigger envelope. They began with the words, “What is philosophy?” As she read on, she discovered that someone intended to teach her about the history of philosophy. Sophie was curious and excited enough to go along – while at the same time eager to find out who was behind these mysterious letters and packages.

As the correspondence explained, philosophy seeks to address a number of questions, including who we are and where the world comes from. In this respect, it makes sense to start with some of the earliest efforts to answer these questions: Norse and Greek mythologies.

Myths served a purpose. People wanted to know the reasons behind thunder, lightning, rain, and drought. So they came up with stories that involved gods like Thor, whose mighty hammer caused loud rumbles and bolts of lightning to flash in the sky.

Mythological stories like these were passed down for generations, until, around 600 BC, ancient Greek philosophy emerged. In Athens, thinkers began to take a more critical eye to these myths and proposed new theories about the natural world. This evolution, from supernatural myths to reasoned inquiry and debate, was a major intellectual breakthrough that shaped the Western tradition.

Figures like Thales, Anaximander, and Heraclitus offered theories about the elemental origins of the universe. They’re considered history’s first natural philosophers. But a big shift occurred when Socrates appeared on the stage, around 450 BC. He didn’t claim to have all the answers. Quite the opposite, in fact. Unlike other wise thinkers of the time, Socrates didn’t want to instruct people or lecture them. One of the famous quotes attributed to Socrates is, “One thing only I know, and that is that I know nothing.” 

Instead, Socrates wanted to start discussions and learn through asking questions and using reason. His entire outlook essentially became the archetype of the philosopher: someone who is troubled by a lack of certainty and seeks wisdom, rather than claiming they were already smart enough and certain about their answers.

Now, there is always a caveat when it comes to Socrates. He was, rather tragically, executed in 399 BC for raising too many questions. And at that time, he had not documented any of his ideas for posterity. So most of what we know about Socrates comes from one of his students, Plato, who wrote influential volumes dramatizing Socrates's dialogues.

By this time, Athens was becoming a democratic republic, so philosophers were also becoming concerned with ethical and moral ideas. Prior to Socrates, there was a popular notion that concepts of “right” and “wrong” varied from society to society, based on their cultural beliefs. Socrates disagreed. He believed there are universal human traits, and things like lying, cheating, and stealing were fundamental roadblocks to happiness.

Plato took this in a different direction by establishing the foundation of what would become known as rationalism. This places an emphasis on measurable truths, like 2 + 2 = 4. This is eternal and universal and can be established as true knowledge. Everything else, what is “felt” and “sensed,” is always up for debate. In fact, Plato had profound questions about the material world we experience. He believed that a perfect, eternal, and universal world existed, but only in our minds. He called it the world of ideas, and it was separate from the sensory world we perceive.

Then came Plato’s student, Aristotle, who took an empirical approach by studying nature and biology. Unlike Plato's world of ideas, Aristotle saw reality in how we perceive things through our senses. His philosophy was based in logic, and he loved classifying and categorizing everything around him. Aristotle believed happiness came from using our capabilities fully, through pleasure, civic freedom, and philosophizing.

All of this was a lot for Sophie to take in, but it was also exciting. Sophie tracked the source of her mysterious correspondence to an old cottage in the woods. It turned out that the philosopher who’d been teaching her was named Alberto Knox. But … was he real? We’ll find out more in the next sections.

From Aristotle to Berkeley

As Sophie continued to be guided through history by the mysterious Alberto Knox, things got more complex. They were about to enter an European era defined by Christianity: first, the Middle Ages, and later, the Renaissance, when philosophers would continue to wrestle with faith, rationalism, and materialism.

In the Hellenistic era following Plato and Aristotle, Greek culture spread through the conquests of Alexander the Great. Philosophy then focused on ethics and spiritual serenity, which blurred lines with religion. 

The Hellenistic era lasted three hundred years, ending just before the birth of Jesus, a Jewish man who brought to the Greco-Roman world new ideas rooted in the monotheistic beliefs of Semitic culture. While he prophesied about the end times, he shocked the traditionalists by preaching forgiveness, mercy, and calling God “Father.” Not unlike Socrates, Jesus was executed for his teachings. It was his disciple, Paul, who spread the new religion of Christianity across the empire through missionary work. Despite tensions with Greek rationalism, Christianity permeated the Hellenistic world within centuries.

For the next 1500 years or so, as the Roman Empire came to an end, many questions went unasked. Christianity was more or less treated as an unquestionable reality. But eventually, new inventions – like the printing press in the fifteenth century – paved the way for the next era: the Renaissance, an intellectual revival that celebrated human creativity and potential while merging art, science, and philosophy.

One prototypical “Renaissance man” was Copernicus, a polymath who shook up the medieval worldview by showing that the Earth orbits the sun. Scientific reasoning and observation offered people a new lens for understanding. As a result, materialism was on the rise. Science was proving more and more of what we see and hear to be measurable, knowable things. The rules of the universe were becoming better understood by the day.

Due to these developments, the seventeenth century, known as the Baroque era, became a time when there was a real showdown between materialism and idealism. Idealism, in the philosophical sense, is the belief that the bottom line is spiritual, not material. English philosopher Thomas Hobbes was perhaps the most influential materialist during this era. He believed everything, including the human soul, could be explained materially, as particles moving around in the brain and body.

Another prominent philosopher of this era was René Descartes. He applied rationalism to philosophy, putting the mind above all else, saying, "I think, therefore I am." Another English philosopher, John Locke, was an empiricist, meaning that he believed what mattered most was the human sensory experience. On the other hand, Baruch Spinoza, another titan of the Baroque era, equated God with nature’s laws. God was the unifying thing. God doesn’t pull the strings – instead, God manifests in every thought we have and everything that happens in nature. So, in a way, God is the “inner cause” of everything.

Wrapping her head around Spinoza’s ideas wasn’t exactly easy for Sophie. But the coup de grace was George Berkeley. Born in the late seventeenth century, Berkeley was an Irish philosopher who denied all existence of a material world outside of the mind. Like Spinoza, he believed that our sense perceptions came from God – but then again, he asked, can we really trust our sense of reality? Who’s to say our “reality” isn’t a dream? 

As Sophie learned of Berkeley’s philosophy, a strange thing happened. The world around Sophie and Alberto Knox began to come apart at the seams. They both realized that they were not the individuals they thought they were. They were, in fact, characters in a book that a father was writing for his daughter. As strange as Berkeley’s philosophy might be, it rang uncomfortably true for Sophie.

From Kant to the Big Bang

While Sophie and Alberto Knox were now aware of being just characters in a story controlled by someone else, it didn’t mean their journey was coming to an end. Rather, it was with new self-awareness that they moved on to the eighteenth century, which is remembered as the Age of Enlightenment.

When considering philosophers with a unique outlook, one must look to the Scottish philosopher David Hume. Unlike a lot of the thinkers who came before, Hume was interested in how we experience the everyday world. Importantly, he distinguished between "impressions," or the immediate sensations of external reality, and "ideas," or our recollections of those impressions. He argued that our perception of an inalterable self is false. As he saw it, we are constantly changing as we continue to collect new experiences.

Hume was also an agnostic. He rejected attempts to prove the immortality of the soul or the existence of God. In his mind, there were some things we could never know for sure, and if that were the case, we shouldn't put so much philosophical emphasis on them. Instead, he emphasized the importance of not jumping to conclusions and avoiding superstition.

Another trend that Hume opposed was reason, which made him similar to another prominent eighteenth-century philosopher, a German, Immanuel Kant. Now, you might be thinking, hey, wasn’t the Age of Enlightenment also known as the Age of Reason? That’s right. Many French philosophers like Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Rousseau had an unwavering faith in human reason. But not Hume, and not Kant.

Kant realized that other human factors like sentimentality can cloud one’s judgment. After all, even things like time and space can be experienced differently from person to person. So much of how we experience the world is relative. Therefore, Kant believed we needed universal, ethical guidelines. To this end, he posited the “categorical imperative.” Essentially, it says that when I do something, I am certain that I would want everyone else to do the same thing in my situation.

Following the Age of Enlightenment, the nineteenth century was kicked off by a new age, Romanticism. This era is perhaps best reflected in the German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. He believed that truth is subjective. So, in direct opposition to someone like Kant, he opposed the idea of universal or eternal truths in philosophy. He believed that what we hold true can change from generation to generation. Meanwhile, he emphasized the significance of "objective" powers such as the family, civil society, and the state, often downplaying individualism in favor of community integration.

The antithesis to many of Hegel’s ideas can be found in the thought of Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, who emphasized the importance of individual existence. He believed that any broad description of human nature was uninteresting. What mattered was each person's "own existence." Kierkegaard stressed that individuals relate to their own existence through their choices and actions. He also made a significant distinction among three equally important life aspects: the esthetic stage, which is made up of pleasure and superficiality; the ethical stage, marked by moral seriousness; and the religious stage, where individuals make a leap of faith. This was in direct opposition to Hume, who believed that matters of faith should not be of philosophical concern. His ideas influenced both Christian and non-Christian thinkers and played a significant role in the development of existentialism in the following century.

Before we get there, let’s briefly mention another citizen of the nineteenth century who also had a major impact on religion and philosophy: Charles Darwin. In kick-starting the science behind human evolution, Darwin changed our understanding of the world. At the time, many believed that the world itself was only around 6,000 years old. Darwin helped us realize that number was closer to 4.6 billion years. Maybe, instead of focusing on how we are different from other species, we should marvel at how we can all be traced back to the first DNA molecules created on the planet.

But perhaps the defining trend in the twentieth century was existentialism. This philosophy drew inspiration from thinkers like Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Karl Marx. One of its leading minds was French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. He asserted that existentialism was rooted in humanity itself and explored the human condition in the absence of a higher power. He argued that existence took precedence over essence, meaning that humans had to create their own meaning in life. Sartre's philosophy emphasized individual responsibility and the need to improvise in the absence of predetermined purpose. His ideas influenced various aspects of art, literature, and even feminism through the work of his partner, Simone de Beauvoir.

Existentialism can be a common response in our time, given what we now know about the Big Bang, and the fact that everything in the universe, including us, is made from the same cosmic stardust. But even Darwin had to wonder if it was possible that something as perfect as the human eye could have been created by something as imperfect as natural selection. Indeed, no matter how much we learn about the universe, there will always be questions to be asked – and a continued need for philosophers to ask them.

Final summary

For centuries, diverse thinkers have probed the relation of mind to body and faith to reason. Old dogmas have given way to new systems of thought, as well as game-changing scientific discoveries. But the human striving for knowledge has been constant throughout. Understanding human nature and ethics has always been philosophy's core aim, and the nature of the philosopher has always been to ask questions without assuming they know the answer. The philosophical approach to life has always followed the lead of Socrates, who strove to remain open-minded and ask questions that are free of presumptions and prejudice.