Intro and Chapters 1 & 2 - The Garden of Eden and The Top Hat

[Orion]

Sophie's World

Read by Sophie P

I have a confession to make. I've never read Sophie's World. I've been lying about it for years.
Really this isn't so much a re-read as a read, but more than that, it’s a chance to put all those years of deceit behind me.

I was given a copy by a philosophically-minded uncle at 15 and never quite managed to get all the way though. Sadly as a teenager I was simultaneously very like Sophie Amundsen (her complaints about how unreasonable it is not to be allowed any say in what you look like and frustration at what her school considered important enough to teach felt very familiar) and at the same time I was not remotely interested in who I was or where the world came from. It's not hugely surprising that I didn't make it much past the Greeks. As Sophie’s mysterious mentor tells us . . .

‘understanding will always require some effort'

I’m ashamed to say that at 15 I really wasn’t up to the effort (I distinctly recall giving up on Sophie’s World to read Stephen King’s Pet Cemetery). Now, over a decade later, I think I’m ready to give it another go. . .

Sophie’s World opens with 14-year-old Sophie receiving two mysterious letters in the post. They contain two questions…

Who are you?

Where does the world come from?

The plot thickens when Sophie also receives a postcard addressed to Hilde Møller Knag, c/o Sophie Amundsen. The postcard is from Hilde's father, Albert Knag, wishing her a happy 15th birthday, Sophie has never heard of either of them.

Sophie's next delivery is the first part of a short course on philosophy. Her new mentor explains that . . .

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

The reason that not everyone becomes a philosopher is that in the process of growing up most people lose the ability to wonder about the world. We grow up to accept the way things are without question.

Sophie has been given this course in the hope that it will stop her from getting too used to the world.

'Watch out! You are on thin ice. And this is why you are receiving this course in philosophy, just in case. I will not allow you, of all people, to join the ranks of the apathetic and the indifferent. I want you to have an inquiring mind'

And here begins Sophie's guide to 3000 years of Western thought.