Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder - Notes

A Novel about the History of Philosophy Main ideas from the most well-known
philosophers and epochs in history
Philosopher
I. Mythological World Picture

II. Natural Philosophers (Pre-socratics)

Ideas
In the earliest age of humanity people
explained natural phenomena by
attributing them to Gods, ie. Thor
God of Thunder, Freyja Goddess of
fertility etc.
These gods were considered higher
powers that governed peoples faith.
People also believed that there is a
constant battle between the forces of
good and evil.
And so religious rituals and
ceremonies were used to please the
gods and to bring forth prosperity.
The Egyptians, Greeks and Romans
developed complex mythologies to
explain the world.

*Xenophanes
A. Thales from Miletus

They tried to explain nature without

referring to super-natural factors.*
This means they tried to distance
themselves from the mythological
view on the world.
They assumed that the world always
existed, so they didnt look for the
reasons of its existence (why it exists)
Instead they tried to find the worlds
main substance**, meaning the
precise thing the world is made of,
and which causes change within the
world and to which all things return to
(They focused on change).
**The substance all things are made
of.
The main substances they identified
were air, fire, water and earth.
The first philosopher to claim that
men created gods in their own image.
The source of all things is water.
=> All things come from water and
return to it.
He also said that all things are full of

B. Anaximander (also from Miletus)

C. Anaximenes (also from Miletus)

III. Eleatics

A. Parmenides

B. Heraclitus

*** Parmenides: Nothing changes. Senses are

changes. Senses are reliable.
C. Empedocles

gods (aka little life germs)

Our world is one of many and it
dissolves into the boundless
substance (he doesnt explain it very
well but it is presumed it is distinct
from any other substance.)
The source of all things is air/vapor.
Fire is rarefied air.
They studied the problem of change,
namely how substances change to
something else.
Everything that exists in the world is
everlasting.
Nothing can come out of nothing.
And nothing that exists can become
anything other thant what it is.
=> There is no such a thing as
change.
=> Nature is in a constant state
of flux.
=> The world is timeless, uniform,
necessary, and unchanging.
He considered reason above sensing,
and that is why he can be called a
rationalist.
Everything is in constant flux and
movement.
=> We cannot step twice in the
same river because neither we
nor the river are the same from
one moment to the next.***
The world is characterized by
opposites.
The interplay between opposites is
essential to the world.
God is a kind of universal reason
(Logos) that guides everything that
happens in nature.
God is one-ness, the source of all
things.
unreliable vs. Heraclitus: Everything
The source of nature cannot be only
one element.
Actually, there are four major
elements which characterize the
world: air, water, fire and earth.
All things are a mixture of these four

D. Anaxagoras

E. Democritus

elements, but in different proportions.

When something dies, the elements
are separated.
All change implies combining,
separating, and recombining these
four elements. It can be said that
Parmenides and Heraclitus are both
right and both wrong (Everything
changes, and yet nothing changes, it
is only combined, separated, and
recombined.)
The eye is composed of all the four
elements and that is why it can see
them in nature.
Love binds things together and strife
separates them.
Nature is built up of an infinite
number of minute particles invisible
to the eye.
And everything can be divided into
even smaller parts, ad infinitum.
This means there is "something of
everything" in every single cell. The
whole exists in each tiny part.
He called these particles seeds.
Order is the force that creates things
plants, animals and even humans. It
is synonym with mind or intelligence.
By studying a meteorite he figured
that all heavenly bodies were made
from the same substances as the
Earth is.
He assumed that everything was built
up of tiny invisible blocks, each of
which was eternal and immutable.
He called them atoms (un-cuttable)
Most importantly, atoms are
indivisible, because if they could
eternally be broken down into ever
smaller parts, nature would begin to
dissolve.
Atoms are not the same, instead they
have different shapes, and that is why
they can combine.
When a body dies, its atoms disperse
in the universe, only to be combined
with other atoms and create new
things. So they can be used over and

over, just like lego blocks.

Only atoms and the void exists, he
claims, so he can be called a
materialist.
**** Sophists = Although answers to philosophical questions may exist, man cannot
know the truth about the riddles of nature and of the universe. -> Man is the
measure of all things. Good/bad, right/wrong are relative.
IV. Socrates
Real understanding must come from
within. -> Everybody can grasp
philosophical truths if they just
use their innate reason.
A true philosopher knows that in
reality he knows very little. That is
why he constantly strives to achieve
true insight, in other words he does
not give up but tirelessly pursues his
quest for truth.
He had an unshakeable faith in
human reason. (So he is a rationalist)
Right thinking leads to right action.
When we do wrong it is because we
don't know any better. That is why it
is so important to go on learning.
Right and wrong are moral absolutes
anyone can reach by using their
reason.
V. Plato
Theory of Forms: Absolutely
everything that belongs to the
"material world" is made of a material
that time can erode, but everything is
made after a timeless "mold" or
"form" that is eternal and immutable.
Plato's conception was of eternal and
immutable patterns, spiritual and
abstract in their nature that all things
are fashioned after.
The reality beyond the material one,
also called the Sensible World, he
called the World of Ideas.
We can never have true knowledge of
anything that is in a constant state of
change. We can only have opinions
about things that belong to the world
of the senses, tangible things. We can
only have true knowledge of things
that can be understood with our
reason.
Plato was drawn to mathematical

VI. Aristotle

VII. Hellenism
A. Cynics

states because they never change.

The soul is the realm of reason. It is
immaterial and therefore immortal;
opposed to the body which is material
and mortal.
The soul knows all Ideas but forgets
them once it is born.
A recollection of that lost knowledge
happens when it analyzes the world
rationally.
The soul longs to return to the World
of Ideas. It wants to be freed from its
body which can only sense the world
imperfectly.
And of course, most people cling to
the sensory world's "reflections" of
ideas, while few seek to discover true
knowledge.
So all natural phenomena are merely
shadows of the eternal forms or ideas.
Truth, Beauty and Good are all one.
Reason leads to wisdom.
Reason, courage and temperance are
the core virtues of man.
Ideas are actually a things particular
characteristics.
Common characteristics make up the
form of the thing.
Ideas are not external to things,
otherwise said they do not have a
separate existence, instead they are
in the things they refer to.
Nothing exists in consciousness that
has not first been experienced by the
senses.
People have an innate ability to
categorize things.
"Substance" always strives toward
achieving an innate potentiality.
Every change in nature represents a
movement from potential to actual.
Each thing has a potentiality in it.
Anything can be categorized and subcategorized.
Man can only achieve happiness by
using all his abilities and capabilities.
True happiness is not found in
external advantages such as material

B. Stoics

C. Epicureans

D. Neoplatonism - Plotinus

luxury, political power, or good

health.
True happiness is internal.
Hardship and suffering are inevitable,
so they must be endured.
Everyone is a part of the same
common sense--or "logos."
Each person is like a world in
miniature, or "microcosmos," which is
a reflection of the "macro-cosmos."
A natural law governs the world.
This law is universal and absolute.
Soul and body are one.
Man must learn to accept his destiny
because nothing happens
accidentally, instead everything
happens through necessity, so it is of
little use to complain against fate.
"The highest good is pleasure, the
greatest evil is pain."
The pleasurable results of an action
must always be weighed against its
possible side effects.
A pleasurable result in the short term
must be weighed against the
possibility of a greater, more lasting,
or more intense pleasure in the long
term.
Pleasure comes not only from the
senses, ie. Artistic pleasure,
friendship etc.
Self-control, temperance, and serenity
are strongly linked with happiness.
Defining quotes: Death does not
concern us, because as long as we
exist, death is not here. And when it
does come, we no longer exist.
(Epicurus)
The gods are not to be feared. Death
is nothing to worry about. Good is
easy to attain. The fearful is easy to
endure. (Epicurus)
The world is a span between two
poles. At one end is the divine light
which he calls the One. Sometimes he
calls it God. At the other end is
absolute darkness, which receives
none of the light from the One. But

E. Mysticism

VIII. Renaissance Period

IX. Baroque

X. Descartes

this darkness actually has no

existence.
There is some divine mystery in
everything that exists.
Everything is one--for everything is
God.
A mystical experience is an
experience of merging with God or
the "cosmic spirit."
Silesius: Every drop becomes the sea
when it flows oceanward, just as at
last the soul ascends and thus
becomes the Lord.
You lose yourself only in the form you
have at the moment, but at the same
time you realize that you are
something much bigger. You are the
universe. In fact, you are the cosmic
spirit itself, you are one with God.
Purification is needed in order to
merge with the One. One can achieve
it through meditation.
Characterized by humanism a
strong focus on the individual and his
abilities to improve himself.
Beauty, balance and order are sought
in art and architecture.
A slightly more pessimistic movement
than the Rennaissance (since it was a
period when many wars took place).
Balance and order are not so
important in art and architecture, and
beauty is portrayed as frail and
ephemeral (That is why in many
beautiful paintings a skull is also
shown; death is lurking over it every
moment)
In philosophy, the conflict that takes
place is Idealism (World is Spirit) vs.
Materialism (World is Matter).
With Newton comes the mechanistic
view of the World (Materialism).
Fun-fact: The original meaning of the
words 'soul' and 'spirit' is, in fact,
'breath' and 'breathing.' This is the
case for almost all European
languages.
He is called the father of modern

XI. Spinoza

philosophy, and of the first persons to

have a complete philosophical
system.
His main philosophical subjects was
the acquirement of knowledge and
the body-soul relation.
There is a sharp division between
spirit and matter, according to him.
He was a rationalist who used a
mathematical approach to know the
world (Mathematical postulates are
pretty certain.)
One must shed away all knowledge
and start from scratch. (The only way
to certainty is to doubt everything.)
Any issue must be weighted and
measured carefully through our
reason and then used as a building
block in our system of world
knowledge.
Dubito ergo, cogito, cogito ergo sum.
The idea of a perfect entity must have
originated from that perfect entity
itself, or in other words, from God - >
The existence of God is self-evident
(and also innate, stamped on us from
birth.)
When our reason recognizes
something clearly and distinctly--as is
the case for the mathematical
properties of outer reality--it must
necessarily be so. Because a perfect
God would not deceive us.
Mathematical properties (size, width,
length. Depth) can be perceived with
our reason.
Qualitative properties (color, smell,
taste) can be perceived with our
senses.
Two substances exist: thought and
extension. They are independent of
each other, but they interact via the
pineal gland. (This is called Dualism)
Our body can become weak, but not
our reason, thats why reason is
superior and we should rely on it.
God is Nature.
Human life is subject to the universal

XII. Locke

laws of nature. We must therefore

free ourselves from our feelings and
our passions. Only then will we find
contentment and be happy, he
believed.
He suggested one should look at the
world under the aspect of eternity (To
comprehend everything that exists in
an all-embracing perception).
Spinoza is a Monist, he says there is
only one Substance in the world.
God--or Nature--manifests itself
either as thought or as extension. It
may well be that God has infinitely
more attributes than 'thought' and
'extension,' but these are the only
two that are known to man.
A 'mode' is the particular manner
which Substance, God, or nature
assumes.
Everything is a mode of God.
You can, if you wish, say that you are
thinking or that you are moving, but
could you not also say that it is nature
that is thinking your thoughts, or that
it is nature that is moving through
you? It's really just a question of
which lenses you choose to look
through.
Everything in the material world
happens through necessity. => Like
the Stoics, he says that the key to
happiness and fulfillment is to accept
all things, good and bad, sad and
joyful, beautiful and ugly, and to look
upon them as One.
We do not have free will, our limited
body controls us.
We have no innate ideas or
conceptions about the world we are
brought into before we have seen it.
(Empiricism)
=> At birth we are an empty
blackboard (tabula rasa).
The single sense ideas are worked on
by thinking, reasoning, believing, and
doubting, thus giving rise to what he
calls reflection.

XIII. Hume

The mind is not merely a passive

receiver. It classifies and processes all
sensations as they come streaming
in.
Little by little we bundle many similar
sensations together and form
concepts like 'apple,"pear,"orange.'
"By primary qualities he meant
extension, weight, motion and
number, and so on. When it is a
question of qualities such as these,
we can be certain that the senses
reproduce them objectively. But we
also sense other qualities in things.
We say that something is sweet or
sour, green or red, hot or cold. Locke
calls these secondary qualities.
Sensations like these--color, smell,
taste, sound--do not reproduce the
real qualities that are inherent in the
things themselves. They reproduce
only the effect of the outer reality on
our senses."
Hume proposed the return to our
spontaneous experience of the world.
Man has two different types of
perceptions, namely impressions and
ideas. By 'impressions' he means the
immediate sensation of external
reality. By 'ideas' he means the
recollection of such impressions.
We sometimes form complex ideas for
which there is no corresponding
object in the physical world. So,
according to Hume, an 'angel' is a
complex idea. It consists of two
different experiences which are not in
fact related, but which nevertheless
are associated in man's imagination.
In other words, it is a false idea which
must be immediately rejected.
All the elements we put together in
our ideas must at some time have
entered the mind in the form of
'simple impressions.'
Our idea of God might also be that
he is a 'severe but just Father'--that is

XIV. Berkley

XV. Enlightenment

to say, a concept made up of

'severity','justice,' and 'father.' Many
critics of religion since Hume have
claimed that such ideas of God can be
associated with how we experienced
our own father when we were little. It
was said that the idea of a father led
to the idea of a 'heavenly father.' "
Hume emphasized that the
expectation of one thing following
another does not lie in the things
themselves, but in our mind => The
laws of nature are neither reasonable
nor unreasonable, they simply are.
The only things that exist are those
we perceive. But we do not perceive
'material' or 'matter.'
You had a sensation of something
hard, but you didn't feel the actual
matter in the table.
All our ideas have a cause beyond
our consciousness, but that this cause
is not of a material nature. It is
spiritual.
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. (We exist only in
the mind of God.).
=> Berkley denied existence of a
material world beyond the human
mind.
Key points:
Opposition to authority
(democratization)
Rationalism (When the British speak
of 'common sense,' the French usually
speak of 'evident.' The English
expression means 'what everybody
knows,' the French means 'what is
obvious'--to one's reason, that is.")
Enlightenment movement (Education
of the masses)
Cultural optimism (Once reason and
knowledge became widespread,
humanity would make great progress.
It could only be a question of time

XVI. Kant

before irrationalism and ignorance

would give way to an 'enlightened'
humanity).
Return to nature
Natura religion (Religion also had to
be brought into harmony with
'natural' reason, ie. by removing
irrational dogmas and sticking to the
simple teachings of Jesus).
Human rights (natural rights for
freedom of expression and
association, and rights to happiness
and education, among others.)
Kant thought that both 'sensing' and
'reason' come into play in our
conception of the world.
So he agreed with the Empiricists that
all our knowledge of the world comes
from our sensations, but in our reason
there are also decisive factors that
determine how we perceive the world
around us (like having lenses of a
different color).
"Whatever we see will first and
foremost be perceived as phenomena
in time and space. Kant called 'time'
and 'space' our two 'forms of
intuition.' And he emphasized that
these two 'forms' in our own mind
precede every experience.
Time and space are first and foremost
modes of perception and not
attributes or the physical world.
"Kant claimed that it is not only mind
which conforms to things. Things also
conform to the mind.
Similarly, the law of causality is
eternal and absolute simply because
human reason perceives everything
that happens as a matter of cause
and effect.
We cannot know with certainty what
the world is like 'in itself.' We can only
know what the world is like 'for me'-or for everybody.
He believed that it is essential for
morality to presuppose that man has
an immortal soul, that God exists, and

XVII. Hegel

that man has a free will.

According to Kant, everybody has
'practical reason,' that is, the
intelligence that gives us the capacity
to discern what is right or wrong in
every case." (So we all have an innate
ability to discern right from wrong).
Act as if the maxim of your action
were to become through your will a
Universal Law of Nature. (Categorical
Imperative)
Only when we follow our 'practical
reason'-- which enables us to make
moral choices--do we exercise our
free will, because when we conform
to moral law, it is we who make the
law we are conforming to.
=> You're not especially free or
independent if you just do whatever
you want.
Truth is subjective - > There are no
eternal truths; all truths depend on
their context.
Reason is dynamic and progressive ->
Its a process that spans throughout
all history.
There are two kinds of truths. There
are the superficial truths, the opposite
of which are obviously wrong. But
there are also the profound truths,
whose op-posites are equally right (ie.
Life is short/Life is long.)
There is only one true reason, that of
the people. (world spirit)
The world spirit has developed--and
progressed--from Plato to Kant.
The 'world spirit' is developing toward
an ever-expanding knowledge of
itself.
And the study of history shows that
humanity is moving toward greater
rationality and freedom.
Knowledge takes the form of thesisanti-thesis and synthesis.
Usually, the best of all arguments will
crystallize. -> Whatever survives is
right.
A dialectic tension can result in a

XVIII. Kierkegaard

XIX. Marx

spontaneous act which leads to a

sudden change.
The world spirit becomes conscious of
itself in three stages: A. In the
individual (subjective spirit) B. In
family/society/state. (objective spirit,
created through interaction) and C. In
religion, philosophy and art. (absolute
spirit, because it contemplates itself).
Everyone of us is an unique individual
who only lives once.
To Kierkegaard, Christianity was both
so overwhelming and so irrational
that it had to be an either/or. It was
not good being 'rather' or 'to some
extent' religious.
Truth is subjective, but rather than
searching for the Truth with a capital
T, it is more important to find the kind
of truths that are meaningful to the
individual's life. (the truths for me)
Truths known through reason are of
little consequence to the individual;
but those concerning faith are worth
pondering over.
It's only when we act--and especially
when we make significant choices-that we relate to our own existence.
Aesthetic Stage. Ethical Stage.
Religious Stage.
Angst makes us jump from one stage
to the next.
Material change creates new spiritual
relations, not the other way around.
In Antiquity production was mainly
based on slave labor, so the citizens
had no need to increase production
with practical innovations.
Society Superstructure.
Conditions of Production (Resources).
Means of Production. Production
Relations (Owner/Worker)
History is principally a matter of who
is to own the means of production
(class struggle).
Significant social change can only
come through revolution.
How we work affects our

XX. Freud

XXI. Sartre

consciousness, but our consciousness

also affects the way we work.
=> In Capitalism workers do not work
from themselves, their work is
external to them. -> His work is alien
to him, and therefore he is also alien
to himself.
Capitalism is an economic system
which is self-destructive because it
lacks rational control. -> It progresses
towards communism as power is
concentrated more and more, social
problems increase and the revolution
becomes imminent.
Communism = 'from each according
to his abilities, to each according to
his needs.'
Psychoanalysis is a description of the
human mind in general as well as a
therapy for nervous and mental
disorders.
Basic needs can be disguised or
'sublimated,' thereby steering our
actions without our being aware of it.
Id. Superego. Ego.
The stage is set for a lifelong conflict
between desire and guilt.
He reserved the term 'unconscious'
for things we have repressed. That is,
the sort of thing we have made an
effort to forget because it was either
'unpleasant','improper,' or 'nasty.'
Surrealism is the art of the
unconscious.
Man's existence takes priority over
whatever he might otherwise be.
Man has no innate 'nature.' Man must
therefore create himself. He must
create his own nature or 'essence,'
because it is not fixed in advance.
In a world without meaning man feels
alienated.
Man is condemned to be free.
=> We are free individuals, and this
freedom condemns us to make
choices throughout our lives. There
are no eternal values or norms we
can adhere to, which makes our

choices even more significant.

Because we are totally responsible for
everything we do.
One must create his own meaning in
life.