Sophie's World
Looking in her mailbox one afternoon, a fourteen- year- old Norwegian schoolgirl
named Sophie Amundsen finds a surprising white envelope containing a piece of paper.
On it are written two questions: "Who are you?" and "Where did the world come
from?". And at the same time she is also receiving letters for a girl named Hilde Moller
Kang and Sophie also finds a silk red scarf in her bedroom, not belonging to her, but to
this girl Hilde.
The writer is an enigmatic philosopher named Albert Knox and his messenger is his
dog Hermes. Albert Knox's two teasing questions are the beginning of an extraordinary
journey through philosophy from philosophers such as what I have read so far: Thales,
Anaximenes, Parmenides, Heraclitus, Empedocles, Anaxgoras, Democritus, Socrates,
Plato, and Aristotle. Albert Knox, whom Sophie has not met in person or even seen for
that matter, has been inquiring Sophie's mind to fundamental questions that philosophers
have been asking since the dawn of civilization.
Sophie is soon enough enrolled in this correspondence course. Everyday she gets
either a white envelope containing puzzling questions or a brown envelope containing type
written papers teaching her about what philosophy is and explaining to her all these
philosophers and their theories.
Sophie's first lesson in philosophy was, "What is philosophy?". How I
understood what was being said was that philosophy is the examination for beliefs and an
analysis of the basic concepts said in the expression of such beliefs. Philosophy is often
used to mean a set of values and attitudes toward life, nature, and society. Next Sophie
learned about was Thalas. According to Thalas, the origin...
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...le, "All humans are mortal" and "All
Greeks are humans" therefore the conclusion is that "All Greeks are mortal". Aristotle
was also trying to say human nature involves a capacity for forming habits, but the habits
the individual choices depends on the individual's culture and personal choices. All
humans beings want happiness, an active realization of their innate capacities, but this
goal can be achieved in a multiplicity of ways. Aristotle argued for the existence of a
divine being described as the Prime Mover, who is responsible for the unity and
purposefulness of nature. The prime mover, GOD, is perfect and therefore the aspiration
of all things in the world, because all things desire to share perfection.
After Sophie finished reading Aristotle felt a need to be orderly, and that she
started to value personal commitment and value judgments.
There is one letter in particular. which shows how important this correspondence is to her. I hate you. you do not write back nor be my Pen Friend I think you are the Ice Queen instead of a king.
Aristotle believed the highest good is happiness, once we choose happiness as an end that is the ultimate goal. The path a person takes to reach their end goal is numerous or can lead to more means and not to an end, in the New York Times article Man Who Gave Psychics $718,000 ‘Just Got Sucked In’ By Michael Wilson. Niall Rice, was placed in a strange situation he visited psychics whom claimed to reconnect him to his distant love no matter the cost or dimension.
Brother and Sister Hans and Sophie Scholl are forever recognized for their gallantry, witnessed by their community, recorded in official court documents, and reestablished in a dramatic film directed by Macr Rothemund and written by Fred Breinersdorfer (IMDb). In their film, Sophie Scholl: The Final Days, the audience is introduced to “The White Rose”; a Nazi resistance group constructed in 1992 by a group of young Germans. Out of respect for human life, this group used powerful altercation reflected in the distribution of 6 leaflets (An Honorable Defeat). The film concentrates on The Scholl’s siblings final attempt to distribute copies of these leaflets, their arrest, and interrogation leading up to their execution.
with regards to its analysis of the place of human beings in nature, whether the
Joyce Carol Oates began her short story, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?,” with a 15 year old girl named Connie whose mother that had always compared her to her sister June. This gave the reader a chance to establish a connection with Connie. Since almost every teenager has felt a comparison to another sibling at least once in their life, unless they were an only child, but then they were probably compared to family friend’s child. Her mother would say things like “Why don’t you keep your room clean like your sister?” or “How’ve you got your hair fixed – what the hell stinks? Hair spray? You don’t see your sister using that junk” (Oates, 1). Perhaps this is the reason that Connie has created a fantasy against the reality of the life she lives where “everything about her had two sides to it, one for home and one for anywhere that was not home” (Oates, 1). However, this is challenged when Connie meets the strange figure of Arnold Friend, who ultimately ends up changing Connie.
Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that studies knowledge. It is mainly concerned with the nature and scope of knowledge. It attempts to answer the basic question of what distinguishes true or adequate knowledge from otherwise false or inadequate knowledge (Heylighen). The major branches of epistemological theory are rationalism, empiricism and mysticism. Rationalism implies that knowledge is obtained through reason and introspection. Ones ideas are justified by sense experience, but if the senses and intuition are in conflict, the sensory evidence must be discarded. In empiricism, knowledge is obtained through observation and experiment. Models and theories may be used to organize this sensory experience, but if theories contradict experience they are wrong. In mysticism, knowledge is obtained through faith, emotions or revelation but if observation or intuition contradict, the knowledge is thus deemed wrong (“Rationalism”). Doubt, as a Persian Proverb once said, is the key to knowledge. It is one of the influencing factors in the expansion of knowledge. A fact that is conside...
...themselves struggling to describe what the actual definition of philosophy. The main problem to describe the philosophy is not because there are a lot of sub-discipline component list. The main problem to describe the meaning of philosophy is when combine all of the sub-discipline to become one discipline. (Rosenberg, 2012). There are four mains classification of philosophy assumption, they are; ontology, epistemology and axiology (McClean, 2012).
Human nature is characteristics that generally apply to all people. It is our natural habits such as being impatient, wanting to be accepted, and so on. It is within human nature that peopl...
philosophy does not consist in knowing what men have said, but in knowing the truth
The quote above demonstrates how many different factors all input into the person that we become. A person’s habitus is all of those factors within them. Not only does the habitus concern a person’s behaviour and morals, the habitus also affects the choices a person makes about their body. “Through the habitus, society is impressed on the individual, not only in mental habits, but even more in corporeal ones.” (Hanks, 2005) The habitus is formed from the collective structure of the group the individual is part of, such as social class sub-groups. It is also formed from the individual experiences that the person goes through.
In Sophie's World, Jostein Gaarder teaches philosophy and it explains basic philosophical ideas better than any other reading book or textbook that I have ever read. The many philosophical lessons of the diversified thinkers of their own time were dexterously understood. The author has a wonderful knack for finding the heart of a concept and placing it on display. For example, he metamorphoses Democritus' atoms into Lego bricks and in a stroke makes the classical conception of the atom dexterously attainable. He relates all the abstract concepts about the world and what is real with straightforward everyday things that everyone can relate to which makes this whole philosophy course manageable. ''The best way of approaching philosophy is to ask a few philosophical questions: How was the world created? Is there any will or meaning behind what happens? Is there a life after death? How can we answer these questions? And most important, how ought we to live?'' (Gaarder, Jostein 15).
The novel Breath, Eyes, Memory, by Edwidge Danticat, is a bildungsroman. The narrator, Sophie, embarks on a journey towards her freedom. Sophie's freedom comes from her therapy. Sophie's treatment and her sex phobia group help her to cope with problems and move past them. The therapy helps Sophie to take logical steps towards her freedom.
Socrates, to name a few. Each man at the dinner party has a different point of
In common speech, a "statement of belief" is typically an expression of faith or trust in a person, power or other entity—while it includes such traditional views, epistemology is also concerned with what we believe. This includes 'the' truth, and everything else we accept as 'true' for ourselves from a cognitive point of view.