Sophie's World

by Jostein Gaarder

An all-important principle in the study of ethics has been the golden rule, otherwise known as the reciprocity principle: Do to others what you would like them to do to you.

how long we can claim these rights for without accepting they come with fundamental obligations.

unbridled lawlessness still reigns.

what is difficult is living by the answer.

He who cannot draw on three thousand years is living from hand to mouth.

khane k liye jee rahe h

And the bigger and clearer one side of the coin became, the bigger and clearer the other side became too.

How tragic that most people had to get ill before they understood what a gift it was to be alive.

… the only thing we require to be good philosophers is the faculty of wonder …

there are questions that certainly should interest everyone. They are precisely the questions this course is about.

But there is something else – apart from that – which everyone needs, and that is to figure out who we are and why we are here.

it is easier to ask philosophical questions than to answer them.

So even if it is difficult to answer a question, there may be one – and only one – right answer. Either there is a kind of existence after death – or there is not.

the only thing we require to be good philosophers is the faculty of wonder.

It all has to do with habit.

Sadly it is not only the force of gravity we get used to as we grow up. The world itself becomes a habit in no time at all. It seems as if in the process of growing up we lose the ability to wonder about the world. And in doing so, we lose something central – something philosophers try to restore.

For the first time it was said that the myths were nothing but human notions. One exponent of this view was the philosopher Xenophanes, who lived from about 570 B.C. Men have created the gods in their own image, he said. They believe the gods were born and have bodies and clothes and language just as we have. Ethiopians believe that the gods are black and flat-nosed, Thracians imagine them to be blue-eyed and fair-haired. If oxen, horses, and lions could draw, they would depict gods that looked like oxen, horses, and lions!

xenophanes

So philosophy gradually liberated itself from religion. We could say that the natural philosophers took the first step in the direction of scientific reasoning, thereby becoming the precursors of what was to become science.

the earliest Greek philosophers’ project concerned the question of a basic constituent substance and the changes in nature.

Thales thought that the source of all things was water.

The next philosopher we hear of is Anaximander, who also lived in Miletus at about the same time as Thales. He thought that our world was only one of a myriad of worlds that evolve and dissolve in something he called the boundless.

According to Anaximenes, air was therefore the origin of earth, water, and fire.

These three Milesian philosophers all believed in the existence of a single basic substance as the source of all things. But how could one substance suddenly change into something else? We can call this the problem of change. From about 500 B.C., there was a group of philosophers in the Greek colony of Elea in Southern Italy. These ‘Eleatics’ were interested in this question.

Parmenides thought that everything that exists had always existed. This idea was not alien to the Greeks. They took it more or less for granted that everything that existed in the world was everlasting. Nothing can come out of nothing, thought Parmenides. And nothing that exists can become nothing. But Parmenides took the idea further. He thought that there was no such thing as actual change. Nothing could become anything other than it was. Parmenides realized, of course, that nature is in a constant state of flux.

He believed that our senses give us an incorrect picture of the world, a picture that does not tally with our reason.

This unshakable faith in human reason is called rationalism. A rationalist is someone who believes that human reason is the primary source of our knowledge of the world.

rationalism

‘Everything flows,’ said Heraclitus. Everything is in constant flux and movement, nothing is abiding. Therefore we ‘cannot step twice into the same river.’ When I step into the river for the second time, neither I nor the river are the same. Heraclitus pointed out that the world is characterized by opposites.

To Heraclitus, God – or the Deity – was something that embraced the whole world. Indeed, God can be seen most clearly in the constant transformations and contrasts of nature. Instead of the term ‘God,’ Heraclitus often used the Greek word logos, meaning reason. Although we humans do not always think alike or have the same degree of reason, Heraclitus believed that there must be a kind of ‘universal reason’ guiding everything that happens in nature.

So in the midst of all nature’s constant flux and opposites, Heraclitus saw an Entity or one-ness, This ‘something,’ which was the source of everything, he called God or logos.

Parmenides and Heraclitus both say two things: Parmenides says: a) that nothing can change, and b) that our sensory perceptions must therefore be unreliable. Heraclitus, on the other hand, says: a) that everything changes (‘all things flow’), and b) that our sensory perceptions are reliable.

Empedocles believed that all in all, nature consisted of four elements, or ‘roots’ as he termed them. These four roots were earth, air, fire, and water.

Empedocles believed that there were two different forces at work in nature. He called them love and strife. Love binds things together, and strife separates them. He distinguishes between ‘substance’ and ‘force.’ This is worth noting. Even today, scientists distinguish between elements and natural forces. Modern science holds that all natural processes can be explained as the interaction between different elements and various natural forces.

Anaxagoras held that nature is built up of an infinite number of minute particles invisible to the eye.

philosophy was not something you can learn; but perhaps you can learn to think philosophically.

The word ‘a-tom’ means ‘un-cuttable.’

A person who is unable to say categorically whether or not the gods or God exists is called an agnostic.

Socrates saw his task as helping people to ‘give birth’ to the correct insight, since real understanding must come from within. It cannot be imparted by someone else. And only the understanding that comes from within can lead to true insight.

philosopher knows that in reality he knows very little. That is why he constantly strives to achieve true insight.

Socrates felt that it was necessary to establish a solid foundation for our knowledge. He believed that this foundation lay in man’s reason. With his unshakable faith in human reason he was decidedly a rationalist.

Unlike the Sophists, he believed that the ability to distinguish between right and wrong lies in people’s reason and not in society.

Plato, the death of Socrates was a striking example of the conflict that can exist between society as it really is and the true or ideal society.

We’ve seen how the Sophists and Socrates turned their attention from questions of natural philosophy to problems related to man and society.

Very briefly, the Sophists thought that perceptions of what was right or wrong varied from one city-state to another, and from one generation to the next. So right and wrong was something that ‘flowed.’ This was totally unacceptable to Socrates. He believed in the existence of eternal and absolute rules for what was right or wrong. By using our common sense we can all arrive at these immutable norms, since human reason is in fact eternal and immutable. Do you follow, Sophie? Then along comes Plato. He is concerned with both what is eternal and immutable in nature and what is eternal and immutable as regards morals and society. To Plato, these two problems were one and the same. He tried to grasp a ‘reality’ that was eternal and immutable.

That which is eternal and immutable, to Plato, is therefore not a physical ‘basic substance,’ as it was for Empedocles and Democritus. Plato’s conception was of eternal and immutable patterns, spiritual and abstract in their nature, that all things are fashioned after.

The pre-Socratics had given a reasonably good explanation of natural change without having to presuppose that anything actually ‘changed.’

Plato came to the conclusion that there must be a reality behind the ‘material world.’ He called this reality the world of ideas; it contained the eternal and immutable ‘patterns’ behind the various phenomena we come across in nature. This remarkable view is known as Plato’s theory of ideas.

Plato’s point is that 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.

We could say that reason is eternal and universal precisely because it only expresses eternal and universal states.

In short, we can only have inexact conceptions of things we perceive with our senses. But we can have true knowledge of things we understand with our reason.

According to Plato, man is a dual creature. We have a body that ‘flows,’ is inseparably bound to the world of the senses, and is subject to the same fate as everything else in this world – a soap bubble, for example. All our senses are based in the body and are consequently unreliable. But we also have an immortal soul – and this soul is the realm of reason. And not being physical, the soul can survey the world of ideas.

Plato believed similarly that all natural phenomena are merely shadows of the eternal forms or ideas.