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Description

Às vésperas de seu aniversário de quinze anos, Sofia Amundsen começa a receber bilhetes e cartões postais bastante estranhos. Os bilhetes são anônimos e perguntam a Sofia quem é ela e de onde vem o mundo em que se vive. Os postais foram mandados do Líbano, por um major desconhecido, para uma... read more

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis

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Cast of Characters/Important People

  • Sophie Amundsen: The main character in this novel. She learns philosophy from a philosopher, Alberto Knox.
  • Alberto Knox: The name of the philosopher who is giving Sophie the course in Philosophy
  • Hilde Moller Knag: Albert Knag's daughter
  • Joanna: Sophie Amundsen's friend
  • Plato: A philosopher who believed that everything in nature changes, but that there is an eternal world of ideas outside of the natural world
  • Aristotle: Pupil of Plato. His project involved studying the changes within nature, and he believed in the use of one's senses.
  • The Cynics: A group of people during Hellenism period who believed that happiness had nothing to do with material goods.
  • The Stoics: A group of people during Hellenism period who came after the Cynics, believed that there was a universal natural law that "governed all mankind." They felt that we are all part of the same nature.
  • The Epicureans: A group of people during Hellenism period who were less interested in political affairs and felt that pleasure should be sought in life.
  • Descartes: Descartes doubted everything that was not certain and then realized that the very fact of his doubting meant he must be thinking. His famous quote was "I think, therefore I am"
  • Spinoza: He was heavily influenced by Descartes. However, he rejected Descartes's dualism and believed that thought and extension are simply two of God's features that we can perceive. He had a deterministic view of the world, believing that God controlled all through natural laws. Spinoza felt that only God was truly free but that people could attain happiness through seeing things "from the perspective of eternity."
  • Hume: Add a description of this character.
  • Socrates: A philosopher who lived in Athens. Pretty much everything that we know about him come from the writings that was written by his pupil, Plato.
  • Albert Knag: Hilde's father
  • Locke: He believed that we could perceive simple sensations, and that we build these up through reflection to form complex ideas. However, he also divided the world into primary and secondary qualities, and only the first—such as size or number—are accurately reproduced. Secondary qualities, like taste, vary from person to person.
  • Soren Kierkegaard
  • St. Augustine: He was a Christian Platonist who brought Plato's philosophy into Christianity.
  • St. Thomas Aquinas: He brought Aristotle into the Christian religion and he tried to show that reason and faith do not come into conflict.
  • Sigmund Freud
  • St. Paul
  • Parmenides: Greek philosopher who believed that nothing actually changed. He was the first rationalist because he held to his reason despite the evidence of his senses
  • Heraclitus: Greek philosopher who believed in his senses and felt that nothing stayed the same
  • Empedocles: Greek philosopher who suggested that there were four basic substances and that all changes are the result of intermingling of the four
  • Anaxagoras: He believed that nature was made up of infinitesimal particles but each one contained part of everything
  • Democritus: The Greek philosopher who believed that everything was made up of tiny, invisible and eternal particles call atoms
Show all 25 characters

Memorable Quotes

  • “And only the understanding that comes from within can lead to true insight”
  • “A philosopher never gets quite used to the world”
  • “At some point something must have come from nothing”
  • “But it is we ourselves who must create this meaning in our own lives”
  • “By philosophy we mean the completely new way of thinking that evolved in Greece about six hundred years before the birth of Christ”
  • “Ethiopians believe that the gods are black and flat-nosed”
  • “If oxen, horses, and lions could draw, they would depict gods that looked like oxen, horses, and lions”
  • “Not believing in the splendor of one's own soul is what we call atheism”
  • “Nothing is ever actually invented by the mind”
  • “The essential nature of Socrates' art lay in the fact that he did not appear to want to instruct people”
  • “The only thing we require to be good philosophers is the faculty of wonder”
  • “When we look up at the sky, we are trying to find the way back to ourselves”
  • “...both children and adults did things that they probably regretted afterwards, precisely because they had done them against their better judgement”
    Sophie Amundsen
  • “(Sophie's mother explained to her that she didn't feel like she changed at all after her 15th birthday and Sophie answered...) ...You haven't. Nothing changes. You have just developed, gotten older...”
    Sophie Amundsen
Show all 14 quotations from this book

Setting & Important Places

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First Sentence

Sofie Admundsen was op weg van school naar huis.

Table of Contents

1. EDENS HAGE
...til syvende og sist måtte et eller annet en gang ha blitt til av null og niks...
2. FLOSSHATTEN
...det eneste vi trenger for å bli gode filosofer, er evnen til å undre oss...
3. MYTENE
...en prekær maktbalanse mellom gode og onde krefter...
4. NATURFILOSOFENE
...ingenting kan bli til av ingenting...
5. DEMOKRIT
...verdens mest geniale leketøy...
6. SKJEBNEN
...spåmannen forsøker å tyde noe som egentlig er helt utydelig...
7. SOKRATES
...klokest er den som vet hva hun ikke vet...
8. ATHEN
...opp fra ruinene hadde det reist seg flere høye bygninger...
9. PLATON
...eN lengsel tilbake i sjelens egentlige bolig...
10. MAJORSTUA
...piken i speilet blunket med begge øynene...
11. ARISTOTELES
...en pertentlig ordensmann som ville rydde opp i menneskenes begreper...
12. HELLENISMEN
...en gnist fra bålet...
13. POSTKORTENE
...jeg pålegger meg selv en streng sensur...
14. TO KULTURKRETSER
...bare slik unngår du å sveve i det tomme rom...
15. MIDDELALDEREN
...å komme et stykke på vei er ikke det samme som å ta feil av veien...
16. RENESSANSEN
...o guddommelige slekt i menneskelig ikledning...
17. BAROKKTIDEN
...av samme stoff som drømmer veves av...
18. DESCARTES
...han ville fjerne alle gamle materialer på byggeplassen...
19. SPINOZA
...Gud er ikke en dokketeatermann...
20. LOCKE
...like tom og innholdsløs som en tavle før læreren kommer inn i klasserommet...
21. HUME
...overgi den da til flammene...
22. BERKELEY
...som en svimmel klode rundt en brennende sol...
23. BJERKELY
...et gammelt trollspeil som oldemor hadde kjøpt av en sigøynerkone...
24. OPPLYSNINGSTIDEN
...fra måten de lager en nål på til hvordan de støper en kanon...
25. KANT
...stjernehimmelen over meg og den moralske lov inni meg...
26. ROMANTIKKEN
...den hemmelighetsfulle vei går innad...
27. HEGEL
...det som er fornuftig, er det som er liv laga...
28. KIERKEGAARD
...Europa er på vei mot bankerott...
29. MARX
...et spøkelse er på ferde i Europa...
30. DARWIN
...en båt som seiler gjennom livet med en last av gener...
31. FREUD
...det stygge, egoistiske ønsket som var dukket opp i henne...
32. VÅR EGEN TID
...mennesket er dømt til å være fritt...
33. HAGESELSKAPET
...en hvit kråke...
34. KONTRAPUNKT
...to eller flere melodier som klinger samtidig...
35. DET STORE SMELLET
...også vi er stjernestøv...

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Glossary

  • Medieval: Anything that is over-authoritative and inflexible
  • A-tom: Un-cuttable
  • Epicurean: To describe someone who lives only for pleasure
  • Rationalist: Someone who believes that human reason is the primary source of our knowledge of the world
  • Dualist: Someone that effects a sharp division between the reality of thought and extended reality
  • Empiricist: A person who derives all knowledge of the world from what the senses tell him
  • Fatalist: A person who believes that everything in life was predetermined
  • Pantheism: Belief in many gods like those practiced by Indo-European culture
  • Monotheism: Belief in only one god like those practiced by Semitic culture

Authors & Contributors

  1. Jostein Gaarder (Author)

Other Contributors:

  1. Kirsten Vagn Jensen (Translator)

First Edition

Original Language: Norwegian
Publisher: H. Aschehoug & Co., Oslo
Country: Norway
Publication Date: 1991
ISBN: Add the ISBN.
Page Count: Add the page count.

Classification

 

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