Sophie's World

by Jostein Gaarder

Climate change comes down to greed. The destruction of biodiversity comes down to greed.

But my identity goes deeper than my own body and my own short time on Earth. I am a part of – and I take part in – something which is bigger and greater than myself.

Favouring our own genes lies deep within our nature. But we don’t have the same instinct to protect our genes four or eight generations down the line. That is something we must learn

If we were never ill, we would not know what it was to be well. If we never knew hunger, we would take no pleasure in being full. If there were never any war, we would not appreciate peace. And if there were no winter, we would never see the spring.

Heraclitus from Asia Minor

The most essential safeguards against sickness, according to the Hippocratic medical tradition, were moderation and a healthy lifestyle.

...said already Hippocrates 400 BC

In order for democracy to work, people had to be educated enough to take part in the democratic process.

But even if we cannot know the answers to all of nature’s riddles, we know that people have to learn to live together.

The Sophists were as a rule men who had traveled widely and seen different forms of government. Both conventions and local laws in the city-states could vary widely. This led the Sophists to raise the question of what was natural and what was socially induced.

An example of how travelling makes you differentiate between what is "natural" (same all people and countries over) and what is socially induced - local traditions.

As you can imagine, the wandering Sophists created bitter wrangling in Athens by pointing out that there were no absolute norms for what was right or wrong. Socrates, on the other hand, tried to show that some such norms are in fact absolute and universally valid.

A philosopher knows that in reality he knows very little. That is why he constantly strives to achieve true insight. Socrates was one of these rare people. He knew that he knew nothing about life and about the world. And now comes the important part: it troubled him that he knew so little. A philosopher is therefore someone who recognizes that there is a lot he does not understand, and is troubled by it. In that sense, he is still wiser than all those who brag about their knowledge of things they know nothing about. ‘Wisest is she who knows she does not know,’ I said previously. Socrates himself said, ‘One thing only I know, and that is that I know nothing.’

The most subversive people are those who ask questions. Giving answers is not nearly as threatening. Any one question can be more explosive than a thousand answers.

Socrates was this joker in Athens. He was neither certain nor indifferent. All he knew was that he knew nothing – and it troubled him. So he became a philosopher – someone who does not give up but tirelessly pursues his quest for truth.

Socrates thought that no one could possibly be happy if they acted against their better judgment. And he who knows how to achieve happiness will do so. Therefore, he who knows what is right will do right. Because why would anybody choose to be unhappy?

However, he did say that a state that does not educate and train women is like a man who only trains his right arm.

Plato

The last question definitely had something to do with purpose: ‘What does it take to live a good life?’ The philosopher had written something about this quite early on in the course. Everybody needs food, warmth, love, and care. Such basics were the primary condition for a good life, at any rate. Then he had pointed out that people also needed to find answers to certain philosophical questions. It was probably also quite important to have a job you liked. If you hated traffic, for instance, you would not be very happy as a taxi driver. And if you hated doing homework it would probably be a bad idea to become a teacher. Sophie loved animals and wanted to be a vet. But in any case she didn’t think it was necessary to win a million in the lottery to live a good life.

Aristotle was a meticulous organizer who set out to clarify our concepts. In fact, he founded the science of Logic.

Had he lived today he might have said that a person who only develops his body lives a life that is just as unbalanced as someone who only uses his head. Both extremes are an expression of a warped way of life.

Aristotle

He says that man is by nature a ‘political animal.’ Without a society around us, we are not real people, he claimed.

Aristotle

Suddenly Sophie said, ‘Have you ever wondered why we are alive, Mom?’ ‘Oh, not again!’ ‘Yes, because now I know the answer. People live on this planet so that someone can go around giving names to everything.’

...we are the eyes the universe perceives itself through...

We also see nowadays how a conglomeration of old and new religions, philosophies, and sciences can form the basis of new offers on the ‘view-of-life’ market. Much of this ‘new knowledge’ is actually the flotsam of old thought, some of whose roots go back to Hellenism.

The story goes that one day Socrates stood gazing at a stall that sold all kinds of wares. Finally he said, ‘What a lot of things I don’t need!’ This statement could be the motto for the Cynic school of philosophy, founded by Antisthenes in Athens around 400 B.C.

Epicurus also believed that a pleasurable result in the short term must be weighed against the possibility of a greater, more lasting, or more intense pleasure in the long term. (Maybe you abstain from eating chocolate for a whole year because you prefer to save up all your pocket money and buy a new bike or go on an expensive vacation abroad.) Unlike animals, we are able to plan our lives. We have the ability to make a ‘pleasure calculation.’ Chocolate is good, but a new bike or a trip to England is better.

‘Death does not concern us,’ Epicurus said quite simply, ‘because as long as we exist, death is not here. And when it does come, we no longer exist.’

‘Love thy neighbor as thyself because you are your neighbor. It is an illusion that makes you think that your neighbor is someone other than yourself.’

By Indo-European we mean all the nations and cultures that use Indo-European languages. This covers all European nations except those whose inhabitants speak one of the Finno-Ugrian languages (Lapp, Finnish, Estonian, and Hungarian) or Basque. In addition, most Indian and Iranian languages belong to the Indo-European family of languages.

We are not indo-european

Both of the two great Oriental religions, Hinduism and Buddhism, are Indo-European in origin. So is Greek philosophy, and we can see a number of clear parallels between Hinduism and Buddhism on the one hand and Greek philosophy on the other. Even today, Hinduism and Buddhism are strongly imbued with philosophical reflection.

Jesus said that the ‘Kingdom of God’ is loving thy neighbor, compassion for the weak and the poor, and forgiveness of those who have erred.

People were expecting a military leader who would soon proclaim the establishment of the Kingdom of God, and along comes Jesus in kirtle and sandals telling them that the Kingdom of God – or the ‘new covenant’ – is that you must ‘love thy neighbor as thyself.’ But that was not all, Sophie, he also said that we must love our enemies. When they strike us, we must not retaliate; we must even turn the other cheek. And we must forgive – not seven times but seventy times seven.

When we talked about Socrates, we saw how dangerous it could be to appeal to people’s reason. With Jesus we see how dangerous it can be to demand unconditional brotherly love and unconditional forgiveness. Even in the world of today we can see how mighty powers can come apart at the seams when confronted with simple demands for peace, love, food for the poor, and amnesty for the enemies of the state.

There were also some who followed Paul and began to believe in Christianity. One of them, it is worth noting, was a woman named Damaris. Women were amongst the most fervent converts to Christianity. So Paul continued his missionary activities. A few decades after the death of Jesus, Christian congregations were already established in all the important Greek and Roman cities – in Athens, in Rome, in Alexandria, in Ephesos, and in Corinth. In the space of three to four hundred years, the entire Hellenistic world had become Christian.

The German poet Goethe once said that ‘he who cannot draw on three thousand years is living from hand to mouth.’ I don’t want you to end up in such a sad state. I will do what I can to acquaint you with your historical roots. It is the only way to become a human being. It is the only way to become more than a naked ape. It is the only way to avoid floating in a vacuum.

She herself was just an ordinary person. But if she knew her historical roots, she would be a little less ordinary. She would not be living on this planet for more than a few years. But if the history of mankind was her own history, in a way she was thousands of years old.

‘Life is both sad and solemn. We are let into a wonderful world, we meet one another here, greet each other – and wander together for a brief moment. Then we lose each other and disappear as suddenly and unreasonably as we arrived.’

Beautiful

But Renaissance humanism was to an even greater extent characterized by individualism. We are not only human beings, we are unique individuals.

Since the fourteenth century there had been an increasing number of thinkers who warned against blind faith in old authority, be it religious doctrine or the natural philosophy of Aristotle. There were also warnings against the belief that problems can be solved purely by thinking. An exaggerated belief in the importance of reason had been valid all through the Middle Ages. Now it was said that every investigation of natural phenomena must be based on observation, experience, and experiment. We call this the empirical method.’ ‘Which means?’ ‘It only means that one bases one’s knowledge of things on one’s own experience – and not on dusty parchments or figments of the imagination. Empirical science was known in antiquity, but systematic experiments were something quite new.’ ‘I guess they didn’t have any of the technical apparatus we have today.’ ‘Of course they had neither calculators nor electronic scales. But they had mathematics and they had scales. And it was now above all imperative to express scientific observations in precise mathematical terms. “Measure what can be measured, and make measurable what cannot be measured,” said the Italian Galileo Galilei, who was one of the most important scientists of the seventeenth century. He also said that the book of nature is written in the language of mathematics.’

The birth of empirical science during renaissance

The serious threat to the environment we are facing today has made many people see the technical revolution itself as a perilous maladjustment to natural conditions. It has been pointed out that we have started something we can no longer control. More optimistic spirits think we are still living in the cradle of technology, and that although the scientific age has certainly had its teething troubles, we will gradually learn to control nature without at the same time threatening its very existence and thus our own.’

Ever since the Renaissance, mankind has been more than just part of creation. Man has begun to intervene in nature and form it after his own image.

She said, ‘And people just had to accept that they were living on a random planet somewhere in space?’ ‘Yes – the new world view was in many ways a great burden. The situation was comparable to what happened later on when Darwin proved that mankind had developed from animals. In both cases mankind lost some of its special status in creation. And in both cases the Church put up a massive resistance.’

Church being scared, because its power over people was in danger

In the theater one built up an illusion on stage – to expose ultimately that the stage play was just an illusion. The theater thus became a reflection of human life in general. The theater could show that “pride comes before a fall,” and present a merciless portrait of human frailty.’

All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players: They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts.

Shakespeare

‘René Descartes was born in 1596 and lived in a number of different European countries at various periods of his life. Even as a young man he had a strong desire to achieve insight into the nature of man and the universe.

Lived in different countries..

‘Spinoza belonged to the Jewish community of Amsterdam, but he was excommunicated for heresy. Few philosophers in more recent times have been so blasphemed and so persecuted for their ideas as this man. It happened because he criticized the established religion. He believed that Christianity and Judaism were only kept alive by rigid dogma and outer ritual. He was the first to apply what we call a historico-critical interpretation of the Bible.’ ‘Explanation, please.’ ‘He denied that the Bible was inspired by God down to the last letter. When we read the Bible, he said, we must continually bear in mind the period it was written in. A “critical” reading, such as the one he proposed, revealed a number of inconsistencies in the texts.

He lived in the Age of Enlightenment at the same time as great French thinkers like Voltaire and Rousseau, and he traveled widely in Europe before returning to settle down in Edinburgh toward the end of his life.

Hume, again, travelled widely before settling

‘As early as 1787 the Enlightenment philosopher Condorcet published a treatise on the rights of women. He held that women had the same “natural rights” as men. During the Revolution of 1789, women were extremely active in the fight against the old feudal regime. For example, it was women who led the demonstrations that forced the king away from his palace at Versailles. Women’s groups were formed in Paris. In addition to the demand for the same political rights as men, they also demanded changes in the marriage laws and in women’s social conditions.’ ‘Did they get equal rights?’ ‘No. Just as on so many subsequent occasions, the question of women’s rights was exploited in the heat of the struggle, but as soon as things fell into place in a new regime, the old maledominated society was reintroduced.’

The law of causality is eternal and absolute simply because human reason perceives everything that happens as a matter of cause and effect.’

Kant

Kant’s greatest contribution to philosophy is the dividing line he draws between things in themselves – das Ding an sich – and things as they appear to us.’

‘So he does the same as Descartes. First he is very critical of everything we can understand. And then he smuggles God in by the back door.’

Kant xD

‘Exactly. Only then will you be acting in accordance with the moral law within you. Kant also formulates the “categorical imperative” in this way: Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end.’ ‘So we must not exploit other people to our own advantage.’ ‘No, because every man is an end in himself. But that does not only apply to others, it also applies to you yourself. You must not exploit yourself as a mere means to achieving something, either.’

Moral Tribes

but although he had numerous liaisons, true love remained as illusive and as unattainable for him as Novalis’s blue flower.

Byron

‘Well, when a socialist and a conservative sit down together to resolve a social problem, a tension will quickly be revealed between their conflicting modes of thought. But this does not mean that one is absolutely right and the other totally wrong. It is possible that they are both partly right and partly wrong. And as the argument evolves, the best of both arguments will often crystallize.’

Hegel