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3.75 AVERAGE
3.75 AVERAGE
Dull. Dull. Duuuuuuuull. This could have been so much more fun to read, but it wasn't.
I received this for my thirteenth birthday, read it that week, and remember asking the person who gave it to me to never give me a book again.
I received this for my thirteenth birthday, read it that week, and remember asking the person who gave it to me to never give me a book again.
adventurous
informative
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
The story kept me on my toes. Not only was it an excellent philosophy lesson, it also open your eyes to a whole new reality. Who knows maybe we are just like Alberto and Sophie; the figment of someone else's imagination.
Funny how I finished the book just a few days prior to my own birthday...
Hay muchos libros que te gustan y unos pocos que te impactan. Este me impactó... y mucho. De repente me he despertado en un mundo completamente diferente, en el que cuestiono todo e intento verlo sin la idea preestablecida. Y si, tal y como dicen es increíble que consiga meter toda la historia de la filosofía en un libro tan ameno e interesante.
A tour through the history of philosophers, this book is educational. It would have been useful in college; reading it during my leisure time was more of a slog due to its intellectuality and lack of in-depth narrative between lectures.
What an extraordinary book and concept! A story within a story within a story. We can question our existence until our heads hurt. I enjoyed learning about the history of philosophy and the philosophers involved. I heard about this book from a Clubhouse room, "Book Sessions: What Are You Reading?" I wonder, is there anything more to add to philosophy or have we as humans covered it all by now and will just continue to work with the same concepts from ancient times until now?
Book coincidences:
- The word “syncretism” (pg. 100, “the fusion of creeds”) I hadn’t heard before and it’s in this book AND another book I’m reading concurrently (Lies My Teacher Told Me). So interesting how that happens. And now I’ll likely remember the definition of that word better than if I had just read it once.
- The quote from Coleridge (pg. 267) I heard previously in a talk by Dr. Wayne Dyer that helped me feel hopeful and empowered, and to find it here! Amazing.
- On page 322, there’s a short discussion about the use of penicillin creating resistant bacteria, which was also talked about in a recent book I read, The Body by Bill Bryson.
“It all has to do with habit. (Note this!) Mom has learned that people can’t fly. Thomas has not. He still isn’t certain what you can and cannot do in this world.
But what about the world itself, Sophie? Do you think it can do what it does? The world is also floating in space.
Sadly it is not only the force of gravity we get used to as we grow up. The world itself becomes a habit in no time at all. It seems as if in the process of growing up we lose the ability to wonder about the world. And in doing so, we lose something central—something philosophers try to restore. For somewhere inside ourselves, something tells us that life is a huge mystery. This is something we once experienced, long before we learned to think the thought.” pg. 15
“So now you must choose, Sophie. Are you a child who has not yet become world-weary? Or are you a philosopher who will vow never to become so?
If you just shake your head, not recognizing yourself as either a child or a philosopher, then you have gotten so used to the world that it no longer astonishes you. 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.” pg. 16
“‘Everything flows,’ said Heraclitus. Everything is in constant flux and movement, nothing is abiding. Therefore we ‘cannot step twice into the same river.’ When I step into the river for the second time, neither I nor the river are the same.” pg. 28
“Both good and bad have their inevitable place in the order of things, Heraclitus believed. Without this constant interplay of opposites the world would cease to exist.” pg. 28
“The essential nature of Socrates’ art lay in the fact that he did not appear to want to instruct people. On the contrary he gave the impression of one desiring to learn from those he spoke with. So instead of lecturing like a traditional schoolmaster, he discussed.
Obviously he would not have become a famous philosopher had he confined himself purely to listening to others. Nor would he have been sentenced to death. But he just asked questions, especially to begin a conversation, as if he knew nothing. In the course of the discussion he would generally get his opponents to recognize the weakness of their arguments, and, forced into a corner, they would finally be obliged to realize what was right and what was wrong.
Socrates, whose mother was a midwife, used to say that his art was like the art of the midwife. She does not herself give birth to the child, but she is there to help during its delivery. Similarly, Socrates saw his task as helping people to ‘give birth’ to the correct insight, since real understanding must come from within. It cannot be imparted by someone else. And only the understanding that comes from within can lead to true insight.” pg. 51
“But Socrates differed from the Sophists in one significant way. He did not consider himself to be a ’sophist’—that is, a learned or wise person. Unlike the Sophists, he did not teach for money. No, Socrates called himself a philosopher in the true sense of the word. A ‘philo-sopher’ really means ‘one who loves wisdom.’” pg. 53
“A philosopher is therefore someone who recognizes that there is a lot he does not understand, and is troubled by it. In that sense, he is still wiser than all those who brag about their knowledge of things they know nothing about. ‘Wisest is she who knows she does not know,’ I said previously. Socrates himself said, ‘One thing only I know, and that is that I know nothing.’” pg. 53
“Not until the seventeenth century did philosophers make any attempt to assemble the new ideas into a clarified philosophical system, and the first to attempt it was Descartes. His work was the forerunner of what was to be philosophy’s most important project in the coming generations. His main concern was with what we can know, or in other words, certain knowledge. The other great question that preoccupied him was the relationship between body and mind. Both these questions were the substance of philosophical argument for the next hundred and fifty years.” pg. 181
“‘So you are a single person that has a stomach-ache one minute and is in a thoughtful mood the next. Spinoza maintained that all material things and things that happen around us are an expression of God or nature. So it follows that all thoughts that we think are also God’s or nature’s thoughts. For everything is One. There is only one God, one nature, or on Substance.’
‘But listen, when I think of something, I’m the one who’s doing the thinking. When I move, I’m doing the moving. Why do you have to mix God into it?’
‘I like your involvement. But who are you? You are Sophie Amundsen, but you are also the expression of something infinitely bigger. You can, if you wish, say that you are thinking or that you are moving, but could you not also say that it is nature that is thinking your thoughts, or that it is nature that is moving through you?It’s really just a question of which lenses you choose to look through.” pg. 194
“But in the final analysis, all the material for our knowledge of the world comes to us through sensations. Knowledge that cannot be traced back to a simple sensation is therefore false knowledge and must consequently be rejected.” pg. 203
“And we are still at the crux of Hume’s philosophy of experience. He would have added that the child has not yet become a slave of the expectations of habit; he is thus the more open-minded of you two. I wonder if the child is not also the greater philosopher? He comes utterly without preconceived opinions. And that, my dear Sophie, is the philosopher’s most distinguishing virtue. The child perceives the world as it is, without putting more into things than he experiences.” pg. 213
“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.” pg. 256 (mind blown, what a paradox!)
“Alberto nodded. ‘True enough. I believe Kant said something to that effect. We cannot expect to understand what we are. Maybe we can comprehend a flower or an insect, but we can never comprehend ourselves. Even less can we expect to comprehend the universe.’” pg. 256
“The English Romantic poet Coleridge expressed the same idea; saying something like this:
What if you slept? And what if, in your sleep, you dreamed? And what if, in your dream, you went to heaven and there plucked a strange and beautiful flower? And what if, when you awoke, you had the flower in your hand? Ah, what then?” pg. 267
“‘Schelling saw a “world spirit” in nature, but he saw the same “world spirit” in the human mind. The natural and the spiritual are actually expressions of the same thing.’
‘Yes, why not?’
‘World spirit can then be sought both in nature and in one’s own mind. Novalis could therefore say “the path of mystery leads inwards.” He was saying that man bears the whole universe within himself and comes closest to the mystery of the world by stepping inside himself.’” pg. 269
“‘Let me recapitulate: Before such complex molecules, of which all life consists, can be formed, at least two conditions must be present: there must be no oxygen in the atmosphere, and there must be access for cosmic radiation.’” pg. 325 [I did not know this—so once oxygen was introduced, nothing new could be formed? Also with the ozone layer in place, no/less cosmic radiation]
“‘Freud showed that we must distinguish between the actual dream as we recall it in the morning and the real meaning of the dream. He termed the actual dream image—that is, the “film” or “video” we dream—the manifest dream. This “apparent” dream content always takes its material or scenario from the previous day. But the dream also contains a deeper meaning which is hidden from consciousness. Freud called this the latent dream thoughts, and these hidden thoughts which the dream is really about may stem from the distant past, from earliest childhood, for instance.’” pg. 337
“‘Sartre says that man feels alien in a world without meaning. When he describes man’s “alienation,” he is echoing the central ideas of Hegel and Marx. Man’s feeling of alienation in the world creates a sense of despair, boredom, nausea, and absurdity.’ . . .
‘Sartre was describing the twentieth-century city dweller. You remember that the Renaissance humanists had drawn attention, almost triumphantly, to man’s freedom and independence? Sartre experienced man’s freedom as a curse. “Man is condemned to be free,” he said. “Condemned because he has not created himself—and is nevertheless free. Because having once been hurled into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.”’
‘But we haven’t asked to be created as free individuals.’
‘That was precisely Sartre’s point. Nevertheless we are free individuals, and this freedom condemns us to make choices throughout our lives. There are no eternal values or norms we can adhere to, which makes our choices even more significant. Because we are totally responsible for everything we do. Sartre emphasized that man must never disclaim the responsibility for his actions. Nor can we avoid the responsibility of making our own choices on the grounds that we “must” go to work, or we “must” live up to certain middle-class expectations regarding how we should live. Those who thus slip into the anonymous masses will never be other than members of the impersonal flock, having fled from themselves into self-deception. On the other hand our freedom obliges us to make something of ourselves, to live “authentically” or “truly.”’” pg. 351
“’The new and the old jumbled all together. . .’
‘Yes. Because the very questions we started our course with are still unanswered. Sartre made an important observation when he said that existential questions cannot be answered once and for all. A philosophical question is by definition something that each generation, each individual even, must ask over and over again.’
‘A bleak thought.’
‘I’m not sure I agree. Surely it is by asking such questions that we know we are alive. And moreover, it has always been the case that while people were seeking answers to the ultimate questions, they have discovered clear and final solutions to many other problems. Science, research, and technology are all by-products of our philosophical reflection. Was it not our wonder about life that finally brought men to the moon?’” pg. 354-355
“‘The only way we can look out into space, then, is to look back in time. We can never know what the universe is like now. We only know what it was like then. When we look up at a star that is thousands of light-years away, we are really traveling thousands of years back in the history of space.’” pg. 388
“‘When radio telescopes can pick up light from distant galaxies billions of light-years away, they will be charting the universe as it looked in primeval times after the Big Bang. Everything we can see in the sky is a cosmic fossil from thousands and millions of years ago. The only thing an astrologer can do is predict the past.’” pg. 392
“‘You and I also began with the Big Bang, because all substance in the universe is an organic unity. Once in a primeval age all matter was gathered in a clump so enormously massive that a pinhead weighed many billions of tons. This “primeval atom” exploded because of the enormous gravitation. It was as if something disintegrated. When we look up at the sky, we are trying to find the way back to ourselves.’
‘What an extraordinary thing to say.’
‘All the stars and galaxies in the universe are made of the same substance. Parts of it have lumped themselves together, some here, some there. There can be billions of light years between one galaxy and the next. But they all have the same origin. All stars and all planets belong to the same family.’” pg. 393
Book: borrowed from SSF Main Library.
Book coincidences:
- The word “syncretism” (pg. 100, “the fusion of creeds”) I hadn’t heard before and it’s in this book AND another book I’m reading concurrently (Lies My Teacher Told Me). So interesting how that happens. And now I’ll likely remember the definition of that word better than if I had just read it once.
- The quote from Coleridge (pg. 267) I heard previously in a talk by Dr. Wayne Dyer that helped me feel hopeful and empowered, and to find it here! Amazing.
- On page 322, there’s a short discussion about the use of penicillin creating resistant bacteria, which was also talked about in a recent book I read, The Body by Bill Bryson.
“It all has to do with habit. (Note this!) Mom has learned that people can’t fly. Thomas has not. He still isn’t certain what you can and cannot do in this world.
But what about the world itself, Sophie? Do you think it can do what it does? The world is also floating in space.
Sadly it is not only the force of gravity we get used to as we grow up. The world itself becomes a habit in no time at all. It seems as if in the process of growing up we lose the ability to wonder about the world. And in doing so, we lose something central—something philosophers try to restore. For somewhere inside ourselves, something tells us that life is a huge mystery. This is something we once experienced, long before we learned to think the thought.” pg. 15
“So now you must choose, Sophie. Are you a child who has not yet become world-weary? Or are you a philosopher who will vow never to become so?
If you just shake your head, not recognizing yourself as either a child or a philosopher, then you have gotten so used to the world that it no longer astonishes you. 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.” pg. 16
“‘Everything flows,’ said Heraclitus. Everything is in constant flux and movement, nothing is abiding. Therefore we ‘cannot step twice into the same river.’ When I step into the river for the second time, neither I nor the river are the same.” pg. 28
“Both good and bad have their inevitable place in the order of things, Heraclitus believed. Without this constant interplay of opposites the world would cease to exist.” pg. 28
“The essential nature of Socrates’ art lay in the fact that he did not appear to want to instruct people. On the contrary he gave the impression of one desiring to learn from those he spoke with. So instead of lecturing like a traditional schoolmaster, he discussed.
Obviously he would not have become a famous philosopher had he confined himself purely to listening to others. Nor would he have been sentenced to death. But he just asked questions, especially to begin a conversation, as if he knew nothing. In the course of the discussion he would generally get his opponents to recognize the weakness of their arguments, and, forced into a corner, they would finally be obliged to realize what was right and what was wrong.
Socrates, whose mother was a midwife, used to say that his art was like the art of the midwife. She does not herself give birth to the child, but she is there to help during its delivery. Similarly, Socrates saw his task as helping people to ‘give birth’ to the correct insight, since real understanding must come from within. It cannot be imparted by someone else. And only the understanding that comes from within can lead to true insight.” pg. 51
“But Socrates differed from the Sophists in one significant way. He did not consider himself to be a ’sophist’—that is, a learned or wise person. Unlike the Sophists, he did not teach for money. No, Socrates called himself a philosopher in the true sense of the word. A ‘philo-sopher’ really means ‘one who loves wisdom.’” pg. 53
“A philosopher is therefore someone who recognizes that there is a lot he does not understand, and is troubled by it. In that sense, he is still wiser than all those who brag about their knowledge of things they know nothing about. ‘Wisest is she who knows she does not know,’ I said previously. Socrates himself said, ‘One thing only I know, and that is that I know nothing.’” pg. 53
“Not until the seventeenth century did philosophers make any attempt to assemble the new ideas into a clarified philosophical system, and the first to attempt it was Descartes. His work was the forerunner of what was to be philosophy’s most important project in the coming generations. His main concern was with what we can know, or in other words, certain knowledge. The other great question that preoccupied him was the relationship between body and mind. Both these questions were the substance of philosophical argument for the next hundred and fifty years.” pg. 181
“‘So you are a single person that has a stomach-ache one minute and is in a thoughtful mood the next. Spinoza maintained that all material things and things that happen around us are an expression of God or nature. So it follows that all thoughts that we think are also God’s or nature’s thoughts. For everything is One. There is only one God, one nature, or on Substance.’
‘But listen, when I think of something, I’m the one who’s doing the thinking. When I move, I’m doing the moving. Why do you have to mix God into it?’
‘I like your involvement. But who are you? You are Sophie Amundsen, but you are also the expression of something infinitely bigger. You can, if you wish, say that you are thinking or that you are moving, but could you not also say that it is nature that is thinking your thoughts, or that it is nature that is moving through you?It’s really just a question of which lenses you choose to look through.” pg. 194
“But in the final analysis, all the material for our knowledge of the world comes to us through sensations. Knowledge that cannot be traced back to a simple sensation is therefore false knowledge and must consequently be rejected.” pg. 203
“And we are still at the crux of Hume’s philosophy of experience. He would have added that the child has not yet become a slave of the expectations of habit; he is thus the more open-minded of you two. I wonder if the child is not also the greater philosopher? He comes utterly without preconceived opinions. And that, my dear Sophie, is the philosopher’s most distinguishing virtue. The child perceives the world as it is, without putting more into things than he experiences.” pg. 213
“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.” pg. 256 (mind blown, what a paradox!)
“Alberto nodded. ‘True enough. I believe Kant said something to that effect. We cannot expect to understand what we are. Maybe we can comprehend a flower or an insect, but we can never comprehend ourselves. Even less can we expect to comprehend the universe.’” pg. 256
“The English Romantic poet Coleridge expressed the same idea; saying something like this:
What if you slept? And what if, in your sleep, you dreamed? And what if, in your dream, you went to heaven and there plucked a strange and beautiful flower? And what if, when you awoke, you had the flower in your hand? Ah, what then?” pg. 267
“‘Schelling saw a “world spirit” in nature, but he saw the same “world spirit” in the human mind. The natural and the spiritual are actually expressions of the same thing.’
‘Yes, why not?’
‘World spirit can then be sought both in nature and in one’s own mind. Novalis could therefore say “the path of mystery leads inwards.” He was saying that man bears the whole universe within himself and comes closest to the mystery of the world by stepping inside himself.’” pg. 269
“‘Let me recapitulate: Before such complex molecules, of which all life consists, can be formed, at least two conditions must be present: there must be no oxygen in the atmosphere, and there must be access for cosmic radiation.’” pg. 325 [I did not know this—so once oxygen was introduced, nothing new could be formed? Also with the ozone layer in place, no/less cosmic radiation]
“‘Freud showed that we must distinguish between the actual dream as we recall it in the morning and the real meaning of the dream. He termed the actual dream image—that is, the “film” or “video” we dream—the manifest dream. This “apparent” dream content always takes its material or scenario from the previous day. But the dream also contains a deeper meaning which is hidden from consciousness. Freud called this the latent dream thoughts, and these hidden thoughts which the dream is really about may stem from the distant past, from earliest childhood, for instance.’” pg. 337
“‘Sartre says that man feels alien in a world without meaning. When he describes man’s “alienation,” he is echoing the central ideas of Hegel and Marx. Man’s feeling of alienation in the world creates a sense of despair, boredom, nausea, and absurdity.’ . . .
‘Sartre was describing the twentieth-century city dweller. You remember that the Renaissance humanists had drawn attention, almost triumphantly, to man’s freedom and independence? Sartre experienced man’s freedom as a curse. “Man is condemned to be free,” he said. “Condemned because he has not created himself—and is nevertheless free. Because having once been hurled into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.”’
‘But we haven’t asked to be created as free individuals.’
‘That was precisely Sartre’s point. Nevertheless we are free individuals, and this freedom condemns us to make choices throughout our lives. There are no eternal values or norms we can adhere to, which makes our choices even more significant. Because we are totally responsible for everything we do. Sartre emphasized that man must never disclaim the responsibility for his actions. Nor can we avoid the responsibility of making our own choices on the grounds that we “must” go to work, or we “must” live up to certain middle-class expectations regarding how we should live. Those who thus slip into the anonymous masses will never be other than members of the impersonal flock, having fled from themselves into self-deception. On the other hand our freedom obliges us to make something of ourselves, to live “authentically” or “truly.”’” pg. 351
“’The new and the old jumbled all together. . .’
‘Yes. Because the very questions we started our course with are still unanswered. Sartre made an important observation when he said that existential questions cannot be answered once and for all. A philosophical question is by definition something that each generation, each individual even, must ask over and over again.’
‘A bleak thought.’
‘I’m not sure I agree. Surely it is by asking such questions that we know we are alive. And moreover, it has always been the case that while people were seeking answers to the ultimate questions, they have discovered clear and final solutions to many other problems. Science, research, and technology are all by-products of our philosophical reflection. Was it not our wonder about life that finally brought men to the moon?’” pg. 354-355
“‘The only way we can look out into space, then, is to look back in time. We can never know what the universe is like now. We only know what it was like then. When we look up at a star that is thousands of light-years away, we are really traveling thousands of years back in the history of space.’” pg. 388
“‘When radio telescopes can pick up light from distant galaxies billions of light-years away, they will be charting the universe as it looked in primeval times after the Big Bang. Everything we can see in the sky is a cosmic fossil from thousands and millions of years ago. The only thing an astrologer can do is predict the past.’” pg. 392
“‘You and I also began with the Big Bang, because all substance in the universe is an organic unity. Once in a primeval age all matter was gathered in a clump so enormously massive that a pinhead weighed many billions of tons. This “primeval atom” exploded because of the enormous gravitation. It was as if something disintegrated. When we look up at the sky, we are trying to find the way back to ourselves.’
‘What an extraordinary thing to say.’
‘All the stars and galaxies in the universe are made of the same substance. Parts of it have lumped themselves together, some here, some there. There can be billions of light years between one galaxy and the next. But they all have the same origin. All stars and all planets belong to the same family.’” pg. 393
Book: borrowed from SSF Main Library.
adventurous
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
medium-paced
Good overview of the history of European philosophy; nice existential twist. Too kind to Christianity.
adventurous
informative
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
N/A
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
N/A
A must-read for all high schoolers and adults who want to start their philosophical journey. However, still keep your critical glasses on while reading because this presentation of history of philosophy is by no means complete or flawless.