Worlds Within Sophie's World
In elementary school, I read a novel called Sophie's World. I read it because it was on the reading list but I absolutely hated it back then. I was bothered by numerous philosophical concepts mentioned in the book which were parently beyond what a 10-year-old child could understand. But I started to reread this book in October and was lucky enough to finish it last month so that I could share the thoughts lingering in my mind here.
This book, consisting of pieces in multiple forms of letters, questions, dialogues, etc. with vivid examples, guides people to approach the study of philosophy in a fun way. The genre of the novel makes it a story full of suspense. And in the second half, the story itself, as the most important example, is integrated into the introduction of philosophical ideas, such as the relationship between God and the world, and the influence of the subconscious on behavior.
Looking at the history of philosophy through this book, we can find that from ancient Greece to modern times, the two significant propositions that philosophers attempted to explain are the nature of the world and the definition of self. For a long period, the essence of their study is actually the dispute between rationality and sensibility. The materialistic education we received tells us that the world is made of material, and I once accepted this idea with no doubt. But recently, I have increasingly felt that the problem is not so simple. Our understanding of the world comes from our senses, and what we can confirm is only the feelings coming out of our senses, not the world itself. Maybe everything we feel is illusory — the surrounding material and people could be illusive, and even time and space might be illusive. The movie The Matrix borrowed this philosophical concept. Interestingly, this book directly defines the title "Sophie's World" as this kind of illusory world and compares the author to God. Whatsoever, it’s not important who the "God" is because perhaps the space where this "God" resides is also illusory.
As for the meaning of self, I have thought about it frequently. As a child, I wondered what the word "I" meant. I know that I am human and I am made of molecules and atoms. But to whom do these molecular atoms belong, before my birth and after my death? What is my consciousness? It does not appear to be molecular atoms. Why is my consciousness hosted in this body and why is it able to direct this body? My name stands for one person, and there are thousands of other names for other people, but my name means something very different to me. I will say my name so many times and ask myself what those two words mean. For thousands of people, there are thousands of "I." What do I look like in their eyes, and how do they look at themselves?
Natural science tells us that life is like a ship, and its purpose is to carry genes to the next port. I believe that most people today are not satisfied with this explanation. Everyone has different needs to supplement the meaning of their lives, whether they realize it or not. For me, there may be some traces left after my death, such as a bunch of photos of me traveling around the world, or a blog full of movie and book reviews, but these will eventually disappear. Therefore, whether it is life or self, the process of existence is the key.
So besides passing on genes, what is the meaning of self-existence? Philosophers of all ages have given various explanations for this. Among them, Sartre's theory is the most convincing to me. He said that there are no eternal values and norms in the world, and everyone must discover and create their own meaning and seek their own answers to each question. We do not have the freedom to choose whether to come into this world, but as free individuals, we must constantly choose and be responsible for everything we do. Avoiding choice is self-deception and forgoing the opportunity to create meaning. How inspiring!
Just because I accept Sartre's point of view in a certain aspect does not mean that he is "right". This is also a major change in my way of thinking brought by Sophie's World. In the past, while reading the opinions of various scholars in the history of philosophy, I always tried to think about whose theory was correct, or the most "reasonable", and I also wanted to combine theories of different schools. Later, I found that this is as unanswerable as the question of "whether the world is illusory” or “whether God exists".
At the end of the book, I couldn't help but feel that in the eyes of some advanced aliens, human technology may not be worth mentioning, but the efforts and achievements in philosophy are the true treasure. However, when I looked up at the starry sky, I figured that, as said at the end of this book, each of us and these stars came from the beginning of the Big Bang, and the entire human history is just like a speck of stardust in the universe.
