The Stages of Sophie

The Gaarder novel “Sophie’s World,” is an existentialist exploration of the world of existence through the philosophical epochs of historical development. The story revolves around the interaction or interplay of protagonists Sophie and Hilde, which are two sides of the same person. The questions that the author is trying to address in the second part of the book are the nature of the existence of humans and God, and the existentialist concern for the absurd. Gaarder explores Western philosophy through the mystery of Hilde’s book, exploring each possibility through the story of Sophie’s philosophy lessons and personal growth. 

Main Topics

A central theme of the novel is the Hegelian Dialectic, with the thesis, antithesis, and synthesis model of counterarguments through the historical development of philosophy. As is the case in philosophical inquiry, a philosopher’s ideas are studied over the course of a lifetime and develop into primary beliefs about the nature of god, human consciousness and moral and ethical decision-making. Spinoza believes that god and nature are one and the same, and ethical questions are based on the natural laws that occur out of necessity, where one must learn to control their feelings (Gaarder, 2007, p. 122). For Locke, all knowledge is taken in through the senses, and humans being with the ‘empty slate,’ where ideas are worked on by thinking and reasoning (Gaarder, 2007, p. 127). Then because knowledge can be traced back to simple sensations and experience, with primary and secondary qualities, where what is primary can be objectively known (Gaarder, 2007, p. 127). What we believe, such as moral questions, are ‘extended reality’ (Gaarder, 2007, p. 128).

In the same way, Kierkegaard was an ‘existential thinker,’ who draws his existence into philosophical reflection, Sophie’s truths about her own existence in the mind of the major is a matter of life and death (Gaarder, 2007, p. 186). In other words, she must decide for herself if she is real and able to interact with Hilde or not. The story continues in a similar way that Kierkegaard’s theory of the “three stages on life’s way” proceed through the aesthetic, ethical and religious stages (Gaarder, 2007, p. 188). Sophie develops along these same stages, growing a conscious mind that thinks about the nature of moral and ethical choices through her philosophy lessons, and in the end finds herself at the religious stage, where she must confront her beliefs in existence and God or spirit. 

Another central theme of the novel is the proofs for God’s existence. For Spinoza, God is nature or creation, who manifests as thought and extension (Gaarder, 2007, p. 121). For Hume, God is a complex idea that tries to understand something infinitely more intelligent than we are and he rejected attempts to prove God and immorality (Gaarder, 2007, p. 132). As an agnostic, he abstained from drawing conclusions on what could not be reduced to sense perception or disproven by experience (Gaarder, 2007, p. 132). Sophie is most excited to learn about Berkeley, who believed that the individual’s soul is caused by something beyond our consciousness, that makes up the ‘corporeal world,’ and that God is more clearly understand that our own existence because it is more immediate (Gaarder, 2007, p. 137). Perhaps the most impactful theory is Kant’s idea that God’s existence must remain a function of faith, otherwise, we risk assuming something that cannot be proven (Gaarder, 2007, p. 161). Just like questions of morality and ethics, it is a “practical postulate” to assume the existence of God, but not through reason or argumentation but through faith in the immortal soul and God (Gaarder, 2007, p. 161). The existence of god is a primary concern for philosophers because it is a fundamental function of consciousness and is tied to questions of truth, knowledge, and existence of the material world and all that it contains. 

Gaarder covers many of the master philosophers of each of the significant eras of Western civilization. One of the most influential philosophers of rationalism was Spinoza, from the seventeenth century. For Spinoza, God and the world or material reality are one and philosophic reflections, including ethical and moral questions, are subject to universal laws (Gaarder, 2007, p. 120). There is only one substance, where both thought and extension are spiritual, and the expressions of this substance is a particular way in which nature assumes a mode of existence (Gaarder, 2007, p. 121). Gaarder uses the philosophy of Spinoza to show Sophie and Hilde that they are expressions of something bigger than themselves, and in doing so begins to move them along their spiritual path of understanding. According to Spinoza, the individual can only move according to the nature of being a human, having his or her own place in the structure of existence because God (or the laws of nature) are the cause of everything (Gaarder, 2007, p. 122). This leads Gaarder to an anecdote to better explain this theory to Sophie as she continues her journey.

Anecdotes

One of Gaarder’s anecdote is the comparison of knowledge to trees growing in different places in a large garden. Two trees grow in different conditions, in different soil and sunlight. As a result, each tree will grow different fruit. The tree that is free to develop ins “inherent abilities” will still not have the ability to grow different kinds of fruit; the same is true for humans who are often hindered from growing by outer circumstances (Gaarder, 2007, p. 122). When the individual is free to develop those innate abilities, he or she can live free to develop inner potential and outer possibilities (Gaarder, 2007, p. 123). Still, we are not in control of everything, only God or nature is expressed totally by its own cause and with complete freedom that is ‘nonaccidental’ (Gaarder, 2007, p. 123). Gaarder then illustrates through the philosophy of Spinoza how Sophie is to “see everything from the perspective of eternity,” and this is how he hopes the stories will encourage the dual protagonists to think of themselves in perspective as they make the leap to the spiritual stage of existence (Gaarder, 2007, p. 123). The choice must be theirs individually because philosophy is a personal choice as the individual is confronted with questions about the nature of being human.

The philosopher David Hume is another figure who is explored by Sophie in her personal growth towards existential and spiritual enlightenment. Hume is an empiricist and naturalists from the Enlightenment period of the eighteenth century. His ‘impressions’ and ideas are the two different types of perceptions, where the immediate sensation of reality is different than the recollection of these as ideas (Gaarder, 2007, p. 130). For Hume, ideas can be simple or complex and single ideas can be cut and pasted together into more complex ideas that are actually false (Gaarder, 2007, p. 130). 

Gaarder uses another anecdote to illustrate Hume’s philosophy. In order to explain how habitual thoughts of cause and effect gives rise to the ideas of “unbreakable laws of nature,” and how this is really just the limitations of our experience, Sophie’s instructor compares it the small child at a magic show. Professor Alberto suggests that she imagine who would be more surprised by the levitating rock that is made to float in the air, her or a child that does not understand how rocks typically fall (Gaarder, 2007, p. 133). Sophie understands that she would be more amazed because she knows what laws of nature are being defied, where the small child does not yet have a concept of these laws (Gaarder, 2007, p. 13e3). The force of habit from the “law of causation” means that the child perceives the world as it is rather than seeing more than what he or she experiences (Gaarder, 2007, p. 132). Hume rejects these habits because we are not experiencing the laws themselves because there is no necessary causal link, and in much the same way he develops his theory against the rationalist ethics because they are not based on reason but sentiments and feelings (Gaarder, 2007, p. 133). 

Another anecdote that is used to illustrate a philosopher’s ideas is the meeting in the café. Sophie’s professor shows up late for their meeting in the café and tells her how Sartre met Beauvior in a café. Sartre used the example of people in the café to show how our perception eliminates the parts of life that are irrelevant to us, as we meet in crowded areas we are only concerned with what we want or is important to us (Gaarder, 2007, p. 229). The existentialists wanted to point out the absurdity of everyday life and be liberated from the prejudices or ideas that we are stuck in (Gaarder, 2007, p. 230).

Perhaps the most enigmatic philosopher’s covered in the book is Immanuel Kant. He was in some ways the personification of philosophical synthesis and can have the greatest impact on the reader of the novel or the history of philosophy. He believed that the rationalists and the empiricists were both partly right and partially incorrect (Gaarder, 2007, p. 157). He agreed that knowledge comes from our direct experience with the world through sensations, but that reason also plays a decisive role in the determination of how we perceive the world and the truth that we make of it (Gaarder, 2007, p. 157). The individual will perceive his or her reality differently than any other individual, because their experience is different, therefore experience itself as a basis for knowledge will be different from person to person because their interactions with the external sensations will be different. This is like the old question of how do we know what chicken really tastes like to anyone else, even though we often say many things taste like chicken. These sorts of qualities about the human experience are necessarily different because we are separate individuals who think and are prone to misunderstanding and exaggeration based on our past experiences or lack of attention. There are lots of ways that an individual can have a different experience of the same situation as any other person. For Kant, the two ‘forms of intuition’ are space and time, where these two forms precede every experience that we can have (Gaarder, 2007, p. 157). The world that we experience is a “series of processes in space and time,” where the human condition is a mode of perception that is not an actual attribute of the physical world (Gaarder, 2007, p. 158). Our perception adapts to these conditions, and the things in the world also adapt to the human mind in what Kant called the “Copernican Revolution” (Gaarder, 2007, p. 158). Human reasoning and perception happen as the law of causality, where we must divide between the things in themselves and the things as they appear to us (Gaarder, 2007, p. 158). This law is part of the human powers of perception, and the external conditions and the material world limit what we can know because of these two elements of space and time and their impact on human knowledge (Gaarder, 2007, p. 159).

Evaluation and Conclusion

One of the ways in which Gaarder’s novel has had a personal impact is on the clear illustration of the philosophical argument of moving from an “is” to an “ought” statement. Hume teaches us that it is incorrect to draw a conclusion from a descriptive statement, to move from what is to a normative argument (Gaarder, 2007, p. 135). He believed that we should not draw conclusions from what one can say is true, and make arguments about what a person ought to do universally. 

Gaarder’s work contributes greatly to the scholarship of philosophy. It makes philosophical theories and inquiry accessible to everyone, through a clear description of many of the masters and how their theories integrate into the historical development of western thought. He traces the themes of reason, materialism, and the proofs of God’s existence through their various stages of thesis and antithesis. Sophie’s journey and Hilde’s philosophical development are expressions of the Hegelian Dialectic through the synthesis of philosophical thought as it continues to develop into the later stages of existentialism and beyond in the leap to the spiritual mode of existence that the book ends in. The book lacks a bit in the exploration of Nietzsche’s ideas on moral relativism, perspective and master morality that informs most of the post-modern philosophy of the latter part of the twentieth century. Nietzsche contributed greatly with his ideas about the end of God’s influence of morality, existentialism, and his influence on postmodern theories of history (Wilkerson, n.d., para. 2). The author also quickly passes over Heidegger, whose ideas on being would have played well into the in-between stages of Sophie’s existence and escape from the major’s mind. Heidegger studied language as a way to find the nature of being as it appears in history (Korab-Karpowicz, n.d., para. 2). These ideas could help explain Sophie’s experiences in the world that she cannot interact with directly, as she feels confused by her lack of influence on those around her. 

Gaarder’s novel is a great introduction to philosophy and western thought. It sheds light on the transformation of reason and rationality through the different stages of religious thought and materialist scrutiny. It shows how the fundamental questions of the existence of a divine creator, prime mover or intelligent design persist through millennia of agnostic doubt and atheistic dismissal, through materialist monists and scientific dissection. This is in no small way because of Aristotle’s argument for the original cause and Hume’s force of habit and the law of causation. Gaarder’s use of anecdotes to show how a theory can be experienced through thought experiments that relate to our real world experiences are very helpful in understanding how the ideas of philosophy have a real impact on human understanding of the world around us. It is an informative and imaginative way to explore philosophical thought through the ages, as we learn that we are not so different than the ancient Greeks, or the Romantic philosophers. Sophie’s world passes between the thoughts of philosophy into a real world experience, just like the synthesis of ideas across history.

References

Gaarder, J. (2007). Sophie’s World: A Novel about the History of Philosophy. New York: Garrar, Straus and Giroux.

Korab-Karpowicz, W. J. (n.d.). Martin Heidegger. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved https://www.iep.utm.edu/heidegge/from 

Wilkerson, D. (n.d.). Friedrich Nietzsche. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved https://www.iep.utm.edu/nietzsch/