Reading Journal: Sophie's World

Published: 13 Nov 2023
2 mins read

Sophie’s World is an easy-to-grasp, well-curated collection of bite-size Western philosophy from the time of Socrates to Jean Paul Sartre. It also happens to be a charming mystery novel filled with fun and intrigue. How in the world do you mix Philosophy and children’s mystery together into something coherent and entertaining? Well, Jostein Gaarder did just that and then sold 40 million copies in 55 languages.

Given the book’s massive scope, which covers over 2000 years of philosophical thoughts, there’s plenty of broad-brushing and omissions. Yet its over-generalizations should not be seen as a shortcoming; rather, they’re precisely its strength. The real triumph of Sophie’s World is that there is no final exam, no pop quizzes, no 1000-word essay due next Friday dissecting what Kant meant by the Sublime. Instead, Sophie’s World is pure joy: a delightful tasting menu of philosophy with an engaging mystery to boot.

In the span of around 500 pages, we get introduced to:

  • The Natural Philosophers (600 BC)
  • Sophists (500 BC)
  • Socrates (500 BC)
  • Plato (400 BC)
  • Aristotle (300 BC)
  • Hellenistic Philosophers (300 BC to 30 BC)
  • Jesus of Nazareth (1 BC)
  • The Middle Ages (500 AD to 1500 AD)
  • Protestant Reformation (1600 AD)
  • The Renaissance (1600 AD)
  • The Baroque (1600 AD)
  • Rene Descartes (1600 AD)
  • Baruch Spinoza (1600 AD)
  • John Locke (1700 AD)
  • David Hume (1700 AD)
  • George Berkeley (1700 AD)
  • Immanuel Kant (1700 AD)
  • Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1700 AD)
  • Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1800 AD)
  • Soren Kierkegaard (1800 AD)
  • Karl Marx (1800 AD)
  • Charles Darwin (1800 AD)
  • Sigmund Freud (1900 AD)
  • Friedrich Nietzsche (1900 AD)
  • Jean-Paul Sartre (1900 AD)

As for the mystery novel aspect (spoilers ahead), it’s both simple and brilliant. It turns out Sophie is an imaginary girl who resides inside a novel a father is writing for her daughter birthday. Half way through the book, the perspective switches to the daughter, Hilde. There’s some blurring between reality and fiction as the perspectives switch back and forth between Hilde and Sophie. Eventually, Sophie realizes she is a character in a philosophy book and tries to escape. Ironically, the readers know that Hilde and Sophie have more in common than they realize.

All things considered, If you are looking for a nuanced, in-depth discussion of Socrates, Hume or Descartes, look elsewhere. Sophie’s World is a 30,000 ft zoomed-out aerial view of Philosophy, not a microscope peering into any thinker in particular. Indeed, the goal of Sophie’s World is twofold: 1.) to elicit interest in young readers, and 2.) to present philosophy not as convoluted and pointless pontifications, but as practical, perhaps even essential, part of our daily lives. And to those ends, Sophie’s World could not have been more successful.


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