Summary of Sophie’s World by chapters 2 of 2

The average age

Sophie had not heard from Alberto for several days, and had been going through all the papers to see if they could give Hilde any clue. On Friday the 25th, as agreed, I was preparing dinner when the phone rang. Alberto said he had to see her, to explain the time of the Middle Ages and prepare a plan against the older one.

With the help of Jorunn’s plan, she said that she would go to sleep with her friend so that she could attend the appointment. At the appointed time he met Alberto, who was dressed as a medieval monk, and resumed philosophical themes.

The Roman Empire was divided into Western and Eastern, each with strong influence of Christianity. The western empire with Christian influence in the Latin language,and in the Eastern or Byzantine empire in the Greek language, influenced by Plato; and North Africa, under Islam, with the influence of Aristotle. One of the philosophers to consider is St. Augustine, one of the fathers of the church, and who has a strong influence of Neoplatonism and Stoicism. Although his vision was that God created the world, other ideas reflect the influence of Plato. Before creation, God was the only one who resided in ideas.

By the middle of this period the Arabs excelled in many subjects such as mathematics, astronomy, medicine, etc. What made many cities in northern Italy invite these Arab scholars to acquire their knowledge. Under these circumstances lived Aquinas. With the influence of Aristotle, he insisted that God was the beginning of everything and that the Bible was the revelation and confirmation of that god. This put an end to the Middle Ages, a time of few philosophical innovations, based mainly on ancient philosophers. After this, Sofia left the church and returned home to Jorum.

The Renaissance

Jorunn had to invent many things during Sofia’s absence because Jorunn’s parents noticed that Sofia was not there and Jorunn said they had quarreled. Sofia told Jorunn everything along the way, who was Alberto and Hilde, but asked her to keep it secret, and then went home. Then he had a dream in which he went to a house in a boat, there was a blonde girl, it was Hilde, and then there was a man in a blue beret. Then, upon awakening, he found a golden cross with the initials HMK, how had he reached the cross?

The next meeting was in a plaza called Plaza Nueva. The subject began explaining the great influence of the Arabs of Spain and the Byzantine Empire in the east, which later in time would lead to the rebirth of philosophy and a culture oriented to man. In this period there was an enormous rupture with the faith and theology and in exchange it orbited around the human being, the humanistic, the philosophy and the science. From the hand of science, a series of inventions that completely changed humanity took place. In philosophy, we returned to the philosophers of antiquity creating a unified theology closer to seeing God in nature. The great revelation is that the Earth was not the center of the universe, before which the Church protested because one of its bases was broken; Apart from that, the Protestant reform promoted by Luther, who refused to pay the indulgences and broke with the Roman Church, also suffered. He also stated that it was not necessary to go through the priests or pay the Church to receive God’s forgiveness, as Jesus taught us that we could speak directly to the parents.

Baroque

Sofia’s mother was in doubt about everything that had been going on, so Sofía decided to tell her all about the letters and about Alberto, and wanted to invite him to her birthday party. Hermes left a new lesson. It was the baroque, a moment of great contradictions. It was torn between idealism and materialism, just like in ancient times. It was argued about whether life would be a dream, because one did not know if one lived or dreamed that one lived. On the other hand, there was debate about matter and spirit; the first can be measured, weighed, divided, but the spirit would correspond to the thoughts, it was argued.

Descartes

He defended rationalism. He deduced that the body works mechanically, thought finds similarity with that of Plato in the separation of spirit and matter. Descartes wanted to make a philosophical conclusion and as a starting point he had to doubt everything, since even a dream seems real. He became famous for his sentence: “I think, therefore I am,” which indicates that one has to act with reason, not with feelings.

Spinoza

For Spinoza, contrary to Descartes, dualism was not the division of spirit and matter, but was of the opinion of a single substance. I thought that God was in creation and not outside of it, God is nature, so the substance was in God, and men have this substance in both the spirit and the body.

Locke

Against Descartes and Spinoza, it was not rational. What we know is received by the reception of the senses, which derives in empiricism, and which is based on experience.Another question is what we call primary senses, what we can touch, weigh, measure, and secondary senses, through which we can perceive smell, taste, color. In this way, we can know that an orange is round, through the primary senses; and we can know that it is sweeter or less sweet through the secondary senses.

Hume

Empiricist He concluded that man has two types of perceptions: impressions and ideas. I also talk about simple and complex ideas. Everything that happens must have a cause, and sometimes one only observes the phenomenon, but knows neither the effect nor the cause and may be partial. That one sees a herd of black horses does not mean that all horses are black.

Berkeley

It was an Irish bishop. He conceived the idea that the philosophy and science of the time was threatening Christianity. The idea of ​​an empiricism consisting only of perceptions of matter was not consistent for Berkeley. We are only spirit in the ideas of God, so we would not have free will. It’s like it’s a Major’s dream.

Bjerkely

Hilde Moller woke up, it was June 15, the day of her birthday. He looked out the window, the sky was clear after the storm of the previous day. He had not noticed the package that was on the table, and that it was the gift of his father, Albert Knag, and that he would soon return from Lebanon. He ripped the paper, it was a large folder of rings, he opened it, he scanned the first page and it read: Sophie’s World. He began to read and it was the story of a girl named Sophie, who received a philosophy course through some postcards that are like copies of the ones she receives from her father. It’s the story of Sofia and Alberto.

Illustration

Hilde focused on reading Sophie’s story and forgot her obligations. Hile reached the height where Sophie received Berkeley’s lesson. To be or not to be, that is the question. Sophie and Alberto now knew that Hilde’s father was the one who decided everything. But Hilde thought that we too have reached a point where we also know what history and the laws of nature are like.

Sophie’s birthday arrived. His mother made breakfast and arrived singing the happy birthday. Soon the phone rang and it was Alberto to congratulate her. Sophie was tired and told her that she did not want to continue with the course, but Alberto said that they could not stop, that she had a plan to get rid of the Major. Hilde was left wondering if Sophie went to school on her birthday, but decided to continue reading the other side of the illustration.

The illustration, marked by the French Revolution was a convulsive period. The logic behind this movement was that both faith in God and in some moral norms are inherent in human reason. It was a time of strong rationalism. The revolution against the authorities was evident with the revolution and the overthrow of the monarchy and the nobility. The main idea of ​​the Enlightenment was to illustrate the masses of the people as a people without culture is easy to master. It was to highlight the rationalism, as the most feasible way to know and ended with injustice and ignorance, and make a more egalitarian society. Also many of the dogmas that the Church was eliminated. The declaration of human rights is carried out, although the woman is left out. Among the three most prominent philosophers of this period are Montesquieu, Voltaire and Rousseau.

Hilde closed the case and decided to spend the rest of the night with her mother because it was her birthday.

Kant

It was midnight when the phone rang. It was Albert to congratulate his daughter Hilde and ask him about the gift and how far he had managed to read during the day. After the call Hilde decided to read a little more.

The German philosopher Kant did not agree with the empiricists or the rationalists. Everything depended on the qualities of human reason to clarify some perceptions that fit your conscience. We can never be sure of how things are in themselves, but are we sure of how things are for oneself? The moral law can be explained only by the free man, when he must act well, even going against his own interests. With this treatment the order between rationalists and empiricists can be restored. At that moment, while Alberto and Sofia were talking about Kant, the doorbell rang and, upon opening, they realized that it was Little Red Riding Hood. Alberto was quite irritated by how old he was. Sofia saw the time and ran to avoid being late home.

The romanticism

Hilde continued reading the story of Sofia. In Sofia’s house there was cake and drinks. Jorunn, on the other hand, had invited his parents. Jorunn and Sofia went to the room to prepare the invitations for the birthday party. Later he spoke again with Alberto in the cabin. On that occasion he spoke on the subject of romantic feeling, imagination, experience and nostalgia. Each person is free to express themselves, especially artists and composers like Beethoven who managed to express their feelings freely. The first generation of romantics promoted the first European youth insurrection. A characteristic is the longing for nature and the mystique of it. Some saw a universal spirit, but they also saw the same spirit in the conscience of man. They thought that man was an integral part of the universe, with what he finds an enormous relationship with Neoplatonic philosophy. While they were talking, a young Arab dressed in a lamp appeared in the forest. His name is Aladdin.

Hegel

Sophie and Alberto sat by the window overlooking the lake. Hegel was a child of romanticism, and he again brought philosophy out of the spirit field to which much of romanticism had reduced it. However, although it retains the concept of “universal spirit” it acquires a more human tine, a kind of “universal reason”, conformed by the totality of natural and human manifestations.

Hegel rejects that the truth changes with each generation. What happens is that as we move forward, new contributions are made. It is like a river that is born small, but as it advances receives the influx of tributaries and grows as it moves towards the sea. The river is the philosophical history born in antiquity and the sea is the universal truth and knowledge that comes through absolute reason.

Kierkegaard

Sophia heard a knock on the door opening, it was a girl and she told him it was Alice, which was supposed to be the wonderland. He offered her two bottles, one red and one blue. Sofia decided, with Alberto’s consent, the one in red, and everything changed in a moment, everything seemed to be connected, everything seemed like one consciousness. Alberto said he had drunk the spirit of romantic pantheism. Then he drank from the other and everything returned to the part of Kierkegaard’s individualism. The decision to choose between one and the other was with the aim of highlighting the importance of individual decision on one’s own life. Kierkegaard He was very critical of the church. The idea that Christianity was so overwhelming or irrational, since it had to be one or the other, since Jesus died or did not die for us. According to Kierkegaard objective truths do not matter, the important thing is our own life; a classic of individualism.

Marx

Hilde stopped reading, meanwhile she went to call her relatives in Copenhagen to help them pass a joke to her father at the airport as soon as he arrived.After getting the aunt’s complicity, he decided to make up the lost day and spend the afternoon with his mother. They went to the cinema and at night, in his room, he decided to resume reading. Alberto had called Sofia to finalize details and have everything ready for the secret plan, he also told him that their lives were fictitious. While she was crossing the woods she found new characters from different stories. Alberto began to talk about Marx, materialist, who did not intend to analyze the world but to change it. These are the important changes that change the spirit. It is the specific forces of society, especially the economic ones, that produce the changes. The economy is organized in different ways, from slaves and masters, to the works of today. The material conditions are the economic and social bases of society.

Darwin

Hilde fell asleep reading how Albero taught Sofia about Marx. After that, an unusual character hit the cabin; Sofia opened and found a character rarely dressed and identified as Noah, who gave him a sheet with the drawing of a boat on one side and on the other with different species of animals. Alberto decided to continue with the class. Darwin caused a commotion in the version of the Church of Genesis. This earned him great problems at all levels, but he was stubborn. An acquaintance gave him the opportunity to conduct a research trip on a Navy ship, around the world for four years. He was able to verify that the animals and plants of the same species vary according to their needs for physical survival, both for food and for defense. There is a mechanism of natural selection that causes the evolution of the species. This also applies to man, who adapted to his habitat.

Freud

Hilde got up from the bed with the folder, when her mother called her for breakfast. Low Hilde, but opted to go first to take a boat trip across the bay to mature the plan to punish her father for the way he treated Sophie and Alberto. This day he did not read again until too late at night. There was another knock on the door of the cabin and this time it was a man with a crown on his head, it was a completely naked emperor. This episode motivates Alberto to talk about the father of psychoanalysis, Dr. Freud. This scientist also did not escape from the problematic circumstances of the time, in reference to sexuality. Freud explained the problem of hiding dishonest thoughts, obscene or not well seen by society in the depths of the subconscious, so that they are hidden and do not surface; but later than early they tend to come out and express themselvesin strange ways and that can only be known through a psychoanalyst. After the lesson Sophie returns to her home, but not before doing the most absurd things that occur to her in order to try to get attention so that Alberto can continue with his plan.

Our time

Hilde lies on the bed, but could not sleep thinking and trying to organize all the thoughts that came from within. What would Alberto be up to? Although he also thought that it was really his father who was plotting Alberto to plot something. Then he remembered that he had dreamed that his father had returned from Lebanon. When Sophie left the Mayor’s cabin, she could still see some Disney characters, although they faded away as she approached.

She tried to draw even more attention. Then, when he got home, he started preparing the garden for the party, as well as a shopping list for the next day.The next day he met with Alberto at a cafe in the center of the city, although he got a good reprimand for being late. They would talk about existentialism, before entering fully into the twentieth century. Existentialism, the philosophy of what exists.

This thought is clearly influenced by Kierkegaard, Hegel and Marx. Perhaps the most outstanding philosopher of this current was French Sartre. Existence implies thinking or reasoning. Sartre says that being is the subject of nature, of what is all done, but man is of another nature therefore, he has to create himself. One of the variants is hyperrealism as the absence of a more authentic and real life, such is the case of the films of Charles Chaplin, where he is not surprised by the absurdity of life and the public reacts in search of authentic existence and real.

Although multiple forms of philosophical existentialism emerged, these ways of thinking, together with new communication technologies, come to constitute what is called as a new era. Before they left the bookstore, they passed through the shelves with books of supernatural things, others of philosophy. Alberto, stops there and sees one specifically titled: Sophie’s world, and asks Sophie if she would like him to buy it, although in principle I doubt it, then she returned home with the book in her hand. Before leaving Sophie he remembered that the next day would be his birthday party, Alberto confirmed his presence and even that it would bring some surprises.

The party in the garden

Flying home Sophie met her mother on the bus and noticed the book. Sophie explains that it is a gift from Alberto. They spent the afternoon making preparations. The next day Jorunn came to help decorate the garden and help prepare the food, along with the desserts, salad, chicken pasta and candy. The guests arrived bringing the gifts. Jorunn’s mother looked like a Barbie of flesh and blood. They all settled down at the table, but Sophie’s mother was worried about Alberto’s absence, although she would soon appear a little extravagant. Sophie met him and the guests present. After lunch and dessert, Alberto would make a small philosophical philosophical speech where he mentions not having much to say after having the certainty of being a dream image in the numb conscience of another person. After that Alberto takes some time to implement his plan in secret. Sophie took and together they marched through the fence, crossed the forest and came to the cabin of the Major, entered it and went to the basement, where they were in complete darkness.

Counterpoint

Hilde finished reading The World of Sophie. During the following days he went ahead with his plan and having everything ready, the Copenhagen contacts and most of his high school class to welcome his father. Sofia and Alberto sat on the grass of the field,the plan had been successful and they were out of the greater manipulation. Sophie tries to approach a couple to ask where they are, but the young people seem not to hear or see, leaving her a little annoyed. Alberto explains that they have become invisible to the rest of humanity. When the Major arrived at the Copenhagen airport, on his scale, he began to receive several notes in the style of which he sent to Sophie. He found several different notes at the airport. When he got home, he found his daughter sitting on the dock. But Alberto and Sofia who had escaped the Major’s control had managed to get there. Sofia told Hilde: Hilde! IM Sofia. But Hile, in principle, gave no sign of having heard anything, but then had the feeling that there was something there, something like a rumos in the way of Sophie’s dream. Then a voice was heard: Hildecita! It was his father who had arrived and Hilde ran to hug him. During the dinner he commented with some humorous occurrences of Hilde at the airport.

The big bang

After dinner, the eldest and Hilde were sitting on the seesaw. The eldest (Albert) began to tell the story of the origin of the universe that began with the big bang or Big Bang, also how the universe is formed, and how the galaxies separate from each other at enormous speeds. Talk about distance in space, measured in minutes, hours, or light years. This is what it takes for light to travel a distance knowing that light travels at 300,000 kilometers per second. For example, the sun is away from Earth at 8 light minutes. He also explained that by observing the stars we can see in the past since its light takes millions of light years to reach Earth. It is not known what the destiny of the universe will be,it may expand eternally, or it may shrink to possibly expand and shrink again, and so on.

Hilde put her hand to her head, as if something had stung her, but it was nothing; although Sophie and Alberto had been listening to them and it had really been Sophie who had hit her with a wrench, from the invisible dimension in which they were.Alberto tells Sophie that before they were the ones who could not see Hilde and Albert, and that now it was Hilde and Albert who could not see them. Then Sophie and Alberto try to release the boat and go on it, but they cannot move it a millimeter. The conversation between Hilde and her father continues when she exclaims:The boat has been released!

-It reminds me of Sofia, when she borrowed Alberto’s boat.

Do you remember that you left it adrift?

“Maybe she’s the one who’s been here. “You take it as a joke, but I have the feeling that there has been someone here all night.

-One of the two has to swim there.

-We’ll do it, dad

Image: Voltaire sculpture / Source: pixabay.com