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Description
Discovering two thought-provoking philosophical questions in her mailbox, Sophie enrolls in a correspondence course with a mysterious philosopher and begins to receive some equally unusual letters.
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
Memorable Quotes
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“And only the understanding that comes from within can lead to true insight”
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“A philosopher never gets quite used to the world”
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“At some point something must have come from nothing”
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“But it is we ourselves who must create this meaning in our own lives”
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“By philosophy we mean the completely new way of thinking that evolved in Greece about six hundred years before the birth of Christ”
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“Ethiopians believe that the gods are black and flat-nosed”
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“If oxen, horses, and lions could draw, they would depict gods that looked like oxen, horses, and lions”
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“Not believing in the splendor of one's own soul is what we call atheism”
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“Nothing is ever actually invented by the mind”
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“The essential nature of Socrates' art lay in the fact that he did not appear to want to instruct people”
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“The only thing we require to be good philosophers is the faculty of wonder”
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“When we look up at the sky, we are trying to find the way back to ourselves”
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“...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
First Sentence
Sophie Amundsen was on her way home from school.
Table of Contents
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
- Jostein Gaarder (Author)
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