Sofies Welt Roman über die Geschichte der Philosophie

My intro to philosophy. I've mostly forgot the story except the mind-boggling ending, but I'll never forgot your lessons, Alberto Knox. I can't thank you enough for Jostein Gaarder for making philosophy easy for beginners.

TW: the ending will definitely give you a major existential crisis, otherwise intensifying a pre-existing crises you have decided to repress. The book follows a series of "lessons" given by an anonymous philosophical teacher. Sophie, only 14 years old, finds herself questioning her universe and her "reality". The book is a time traveling journal through various topics of spirituality, mythology, religion, science, logical reasoning, and philosophy. '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.'

This is a great book that I would recommend to those who have never appreciated Philosophy class. Or never found it entertaining. There was a point in my life in which this book would have been a blessing for me. But unfortunately the timing is wrong for me. Before I could have loved this book, this is a Philosophy course disguised as a novel, but after taking a Philosophy class with a great teacher I found that class taught me the same things, but in a better way. In short, the class was way better than the book. What can I say except that I had an awesome teacher. Maybe I will revisit this book once that class has been erased from my mind and I need a new dose of Philosophy.

This book allows you do a travel through philosophy's history while other history happens.

the plot was mind-blowing and had a lot of wonderful twists. it has a lot of facts about philosophical history and the greastest most well-known philosophers themselves. lovely.

This book was definitely a challenge. I found the story very fun to follow along with however when it would go to endless pages about the history of Greece in 300 A.D. I would skim read. However this book was definitely fascinating and very cute. It also had some very good life advice. All in all pretty good story, very intriguing to make up for the history parts. Ciao!

Informative, intriguing and original. Sometimes it felt more philosophy textbook than novel, but eventually that was rectified albeit in a way I found a bit unsatisfactory. Still a good read!

Ponderous and meta, sure, but it's also romantic about thinking and I'll forgive a lot for a drop of that. It is a long version of this beautiful idea of Gödel's: Engaging in philosophy is salutary in any case, even when no positive results emerge from it (and I remain perplexed). It has the effect that 'the colors brighten', that is, reality appears more clearly as such. This bit was moving: Actually we are the white rabbit being pulled out of the hat. The only difference beween us and the white rabbit is that the rabbit does not realize it is taking part in a magic trick.

Like all highly condensed treatises, the book gives just enough of a sketch of major themes in philosophy to whet one's appetite to find out more. It's also quite interesting to follow the plot that weaves the introductions together and then takes over the book.

This book is an overview of the history of philosophy in a very relatable way to interpret. You learn about Sophie, God, Athens, the Middle Ages, Descartes, Kant, even Jesus. And during this you wonder about the meaning of so many things. This is one of the best reads I’ve had during the whole year. Truly recommended!

Sophie's World is a really good book. If only there was no Sophie in it. I'll tell you why. This is a crash course on Western philosophy for beginners. I had no idea about this. This was just a random book I picked up. And I don't regret it. Sophie's world is a gateway to western philosophy. Each chapter in the book is about a particular school of thought, arranged chronologically moving swiftly from one to next. We get a crisp and clear yet not too extensive idea of how each branch of philosophy was formed and what it put forward. All this is explained, as conversation between a 14 year old Norwegian girl, Sophie and a 'philosopher' Alberto Knox. I'd recommend anybody who has the slightest interest in philosophy, or spends enough time inside their head to give this book a go. I found the chapters up to Descartes thought-provoking; the few chapters after that went totally above my head, let alone provoke any thoughts.(Spinoza, Locke, Hume, Berkeley, Bjerkely, Enlightenment, Kant - was awesome, romanticism, Hegel, Kierkegaard) My brain started picking it back up at Marxism. Yes, this book reads almost like a textbook. But as someone who has to read even more boring topics, I could wade through the tough pages. The language is easy, but the concepts were too complicated for my understanding at times. 'Remind yourself that you are only living a miniscule part of all nature's life. You are part of an enormous whole.' 'I think I see what you mean...' 'Can you manage to feel it as well? Can you perceive all of nature at one time-the whole universe, in fact-at single glance?' 'I doubt it. Maybe I need some lenses.' 'I don't only mean the infinity of space. I mean the eternity of time as well. Once upon a time, thirty thousand years ago there lived a little boy in the Rhine valley. He was a tiny part of nature, a tiny ripple on an endless sea. You too, Sophie, you too are living a tiny part of nature's life. There is no difference between you and that boy.' The rationalists had almost forgotten the importance of experience, and the empiricists had shut their eyes to the way our own mind influences the way we see the world Dear Hilde, if the human brain was simple enough for us to understand, we would still be so stupid that we couldn't understand it. Love, Dad. Ooh, don't I hate Sophie. That is one irritating, obnoxious girl. The way she talks to her mother will make you want to slap her. And sometimes you'd see that she contributes absolutely nothing to the conversation. Alberto keeps on spouting profundities and she she keeps on spouting bits of nonsense in between. It gets worse later on, but you'll get absorbed into the matter of the book and the 'Sophie part' becomes sort of an annoying fly that you just can't swat. If you can bear with the horribly failed fictionalization of philosophy, this would be a simple yet substantial read.

The book was great, I was really enjoying it but the end kind of let me down. Also, halfway through the book, they start paying more attention to the plot and the philosophers fall to second place. They begin to talk in general about the time's ideas and don't talk in-depth about the philosophers' views and ideas.

DNF. This was an assignment for AP Lit, and we only had to read to page 250. I really didn't like this enough to finish it out. It's basically nonfiction disguised as fiction. Not my style.

A book set in the decade you were born (90s) ✔

In-Genre Rating: 7 Global Rating: 6.5 Reading Fun: 6 Well structured, didactically and literarily strong. However, some chapters are quite dry or go off too far to the other end by being too absurd.

اگه فصل آخرش نبود، اصلا نمی‌تونستم به چشم داستان نگاه کنم بهش. چرا این‌قدر فضاسازی بی‌استفاده داشت؟ اومده می‌گه باغ سوفی فلان چیز و بهمان چیز رو داره؛ پنجاه صفحه بعد همون توصیف رو برای باغ هیلده می‌کنه، آخرش می‌گه باغ‌هاشون عین همه. از لحاظ داستانی، راز فال ورق کاملا ازش سر تره، ولی از لحاظ تاریخ فلسفه خوب بود، اون‌م برای یکی مثل من که حالاحالاها حال نداره سراغ کتاب ویل دورانت بره!

This is a great book which I really recommend for anybody wanting to learn the basics of Philosophy but I didn't think it was life altering this time around and I did not like the ending at all.

Es el libro perfecto para entender las bases de la filosofía occidental de una manera muy didáctica, divertida y clara.

I love it, just amazing

Es el libro perfecto para entender las bases de la filosofía occidental de una manera muy didáctica, divertida y clara.

3.5 un muy buen libro de filosofía, aborda los temas con facilidad y se explica de una manera simple y fácil de comprender. No es un libro para todos, además de ser bastante pesado, pero es increíble si lo que quieres es sufrir una crisis existencial y preguntarte muchas cosas que jamás habías contemplado. p.d. Gracias a Sofia y Hilde dudo de mi propia existencia.

This book was a big part of my teenage reading years.

Mind bender. Excellent story telling. Must read.

makes you wonder...