“Who am I ?” What was the last time you asked this question to yourself ? This is the first question asked by Sophie. In my opinion, this is the most important question which mankind has ever asked. Curiosity about oneself is the origin of many questions e.g. How stuffs are made of ?, What is the origin of our world ? Well, many questions have been addressed by modern science already. But in the past, it was a different matter, in order to answer them, philosophers of the past use only reasoning and observation without any help from modern instruments. Many ideas from them still resonates well with the current state of our world. I’m quite fascinated how they came up with such breakthrough ideas given their circumstances.
This book by Jostein Gaarder will embark you on a journey into history of philosophy (mainly the western one) from pre-socratic philosophers to Karl Marx. You can think of this book as a crash course into philosophy with simplified explanations driven by a story which Sophie take lessons from her mysterious mentor, Alberto. The story began with a letter in Sophie’s mailbox. That letter contains big questions: “Who are you?”, “Where does this world come from?”. Throughout the book, Alberto explored these questions in both rationalist and empiricist view. Rationalism and empiricism is a simple dichotomous way to divide philosophers. A rationalist believes that knowledge stems from reasons only. On contrary, an empiricist believes that knowledge is originated from senses.
In our lifetimes, with an introduction of artificial intelligence, the attention economy, social networks, etc. I think that we ought to question more to maintain our humanity. Many ones never question their beliefs. Our thoughts are shaped by social network algorithms. So what’s left for us human beings. It’s a right time to step out of Plato’s cave.
Without wonder, we’re nothing more than hollow shells. As Plato quoted it two thousand years ago “The unexamined life is not worth living”.
Sophie’s World - Jostein Gaarder