Philosophers in History

Throughout Sophie’s World Jostein Gaarder introduces many philosophers all through the book. The philosophers I agreed with most were Spinoza, Hume, Kant, and Freud. Someone that I completely disagreed with was Darwin; I do not believe in the majority of what he thought.

Along with Spinoza, I believe that God controls all the natural laws. I believe that God is the only, truly free being in the universe. Though we can decide what we wear each day, or what to eat for our meals, I am convinced that God has a plan for everyone on the earth and knows every decision that we will make even before we make it. A point that Alberto makes is that, though God does control things, he is no “a puppeteer”. “So God - or nature - is the ‘inner cause’ of everything that happens.” This is something I do agree with greatly.

Some of what Hume believed and thought really stood out to me.  I do agree with some of the things that he came up with. First, when he mentions an angel being a “complex” idea, I understand what he is saying. Every year at Christmas, my family and I put some sort of angel ornament on our tree. It’s always been accepted that angels exist and they exist in human forms with wings. However, since I have never seen an angel, I realize that they are, indeed, a complex idea as Hume stated. However, I do believe in the idea of an eternal soul and I also believe in God, unlike Hume.

The third philosopher I agreed with was Kant. He believes that there are things that us humans cannot know the answers to because they are beyond human reasoning. Unable to reason through these questions, he believes that we are able to find the answers in our faith. I also believe in this strongly. We are only human, and we are not omniscient. We cannot think of everything ourselves, therefore we need someone with much more knowledge to guide us through difficult parts of life. I agree with Kant and believe that we can prove natural laws. While Alberto is explaining Kant’s theories, Sophie says, “We are - in a way - a tiny part of the ball that comes rolling across the floor. So we can’t know where it came from.” This is a good analogy and causes me to think about this statement. Though we can never truly know exactly how the world came into existence, there are things seen every day that point to a higher power that is out there. 

The last philosopher that I agreed on their thoughts was Freud. He believed that we have unconscious urge that influences our actions, even though we may not know about them. Accompanying this, he believed that people buried certain events deep in their unconscious and these events caused their unhappiness. There have been times that I have simply tried to forget about things that have happened; it always comes back to me somehow and ends up being worse than it was first.

       I do not agree with the ideas that Darwin had. Darwin "had to distance himself from the church's view of the creation of man and beast." Darwin believed that all vegetables and animals were descended from earlier, more ancient forms in a type of biological evolution. When learning about Darwin, I have been told that he believed humans descended from apes. I do not believe in this evolution in the least. I believe that God created the world and everything in it. I have always been taught that God created Adam and Eve within the six days that He created the rest of the world.

Lastly, I do believe that I am somewhere buried underneath the rabbit’s fur. I would like to learn more about the amazing and wondrous world that I am a part of, but seem to be lost while doing so. I am trying to get out and unfold the mysteries of life.

A Different Outlook In My Life

In the chapter “Kant” Alberto makes Sophie put on a pair of red glasses. As she puts them on and her perspective changes. At first, everything becomes either pink or red but stays exactly the same as it was before. There is one thing in my life that really stands out that allows me to have a different perspective on things.

As I have mentioned before, I did not grow up in the States. My parents were missionaries for fifteen years and I grew up in a country called Kazakhstan. Shortly before my parents moved to Kazakhstan, it had just broken apart from the former Soviet Union. When they heard about this new country that had been formed, they were very intrigued. Following that, they moved (with my three older sisters) and began to settle down in Kazakhstan. A few years later I was born and lived there until I was twelve years old. Looking back on it now, sometimes it seems like it was a completely different life I had back then. Kazakhstan was a beautiful place; I had a view of the mountains in every house we owned. The culture was very different. The locals there loved to have people over and do things for them out of the kindness of their hearts. When you live somewhere for twelve years, it will always have a place in your heart.

It’s been four years since I’ve been in Kazakhstan, and I have found America to be very different. There are things that happen here that most people don’t notice because they’ve grown up with it. America is a very materialistic country. Though I myself enjoy material things, I grew up in a place where it wasn’t unusual to see many people who didn’t have anything. Growing up in a country that had many unfortunate people and seeing how my parents reached out to them really opened my eyes to the world. It’s easy to see the world differently when you have lived in more than one place and have been able to experience things that no one else has. Often when I find myself in a difficult situation, I am able to think about the times in Kazakhstan where I would visit special needs orphanages and see children that really could not do anything about the situation they were in. It gives me hope that I will be able to get through the situation I am in and allows me to look at the positive that may come out of the situation. Along with that, when thinking about my future, I know that somehow I want to do something to help others. Either missions work or a medical field; even a teaching position.

Overall, the experience that I had growing up in a third culture country has had an impact on my life. It has definitely changed my perspective on things in life and made me the person I am today. There is not a day that I do not think of Kazakhstan and how it has changed my life forever.

Joining Philosophy With Christianity

In the “Middle Ages” chapter, Alberto explains how St. Augustine influenced Platonic ideas. St. Augustine was not the only one to attempt to Christianize philosophy as Aquinas also found truths in Aristotle’s ideas, however, kept the beliefs of Christianity. As Alberto states, “But by ‘christianizing’ these two great Greek philosophers, we only mean that they were interpreted and explained in such a way that they were no longer considered a threat to Christian dogma.” 

St. Augustine believed that there was a limit on how far philosophy could go. He did believe that God created the world whereas Greeks usually believed that the world had always existed.  St. Augustine did thoroughly believe in God and the teachings of the Bible, but he still believed in using reason for somethings. This is how he was able to combine the teachings of the Bible and Plato. However, when it came to the aspects of history that St. Augustine believed in, he did not have much of Plato’s works included in that. 

Similar to what St. Augustine had done, St. Aquinas also tried to make philosophy compatible with Christianity. Aquinas did not think that there should be any arguments between what philosophy teaches people and what faith teaches us. He believed in God, however, he did not think the only way to get to Heaven was through faith. He also believed that through reason and our senses one could get to God. Aquinas wanted to prove that both reason and faith were correct. Aristotle had ideas that were not against the ideas of Christians. Aristotle describes the animal and plant kingdoms in a similar way that they are revealed to us in the Bible. “Aristotle’s philosophy also presumed the existence or a God - or a formal cause - which sets all natural processes going.” Though he believed that, he gave no more information on God, and because of this, we rely on the teachings of the Bible to tell us more about God. Aquinas also believed that through Aristotle’s philosophy, he could prove God’s existence. 

All in all, St. Augustine and St. Aquinas were not that different from each other. Both believed in God, and both believed that philosophy could be tied into the teachings of the Bible. They took the teachings of two different philosophers and put those ideas together with a different twist.

Differentiating Views On Women

The eleventh chapter of Sophie’s World is about the philosopher Aristotle. In Alberto’s letter to Sophie he mentions how Aristotle thought women were “incomplete in some way.”  He believe that men were, in a sense, superior to women. He believed that during reproduction the child would only receive traits and “...all the child’s characteristics lay complete in the male sperm.”  With the science and knowledge that people were provided with back then there is no way that they would have been able to know what we do now. Putting this into perspective, it is easy to see why, at the time, Aristotle believed that men were of higher quality than women. 

While Aristotle had a very biased view on women, Plato believed that men and women could perform the same tasks. “But it is worth noting that he believed women could govern just as effectively as men for the simple reason that the rulers govern by virtue of their reason.” Plato also believed if women were given the same training and did not participate in child rearing and housekeeping they would be able to reason in the same way as men. That statement is very much true. I believe that anyone who is brought up the same way will be able to perform the same types of tasks. While men and women are very much equal, there are most definitely things that men can do better than women and vice versa. Though I may be biased (because I am female) I do think that Plato’s answer to the many questions of equality regarding gender is very admirable. 

While reading the book, it is easy to see that many of the characters are men. In the time period that was mostly talked about in Sophie’s World men did seem to be superior to women. Regarding that, it makes sense why the philosophers that were talked about most were male. The women that were included did not seem as if they were even remotely as important as the men. The female philosophers were never as successful as the males mainly because of the view society had on women then. However, since Sophie and Hilde are both female it did not completely stand out that plenty of the characters were men. 

In conclusion, though I did not agree with Aristotle’s views on women, he was not the only great philosopher in his time. Plato was able to look past some of the differences that Aristotle saw as he looked at society’s roles. 

Discovering Myself In God's World

At any time that I think of who I am, I begin to think of my life. Where I grew up, how I grew up, the people I grew up with and so on. I believe that my parents have a big influence on the person I am today. My parents were missionaries overseas for fifteen years and a big part of our family now belongs with missions work. Although I do have some sort of idea who I am, I believe that with time I will continue to change and develop as a person. In a few years my interests may change, I may have different friends, live in a different place, and I might feel differently than I do now. 

The question “Who are you?” is rather difficult to answer. At first I begin to think, “Well, I’m Stephanie Winslow.”  Then I begin to think about the question more. Who is Stephanie Winslow? What makes me different from any of my friends or my neighbors? If someone were to ask me who I was, I’d simply respond with saying that I am a high school student along with my name, but I wouldn’t have much more to say. Often, when people ask about my life, I will tell them that I grew up overseas. I do believe that the fact that I didn’t grow up in America is a huge part of who I am today. The culture from Kazakhstan, the country I grew up in, is very different from the culture here in America. Seeing how the locals there acted and the things they did on a daily basis is very different from the way us Americans live. My opinion on things and how people act has been greatly influenced by the people I was surrounded by when growing up. When you are surrounded by people who act a certain way, one usually begins to act like that as well. A huge part of me is certainly influenced from all that I experienced in the twelve years I lived in Kazakhstan, while another part of me is slowly changing and becoming more American after being here for four consecutive years. 

The second question “Where does the world come from?” is answered differently by all sorts of people. There are two very popular theories about the beginning of the world: God’s creation and the big bang theory.  For me, the answer is very obvious. Ever since I was born I have been taught that God created the world. As I began to mature and learn to think more for myself, I began to think increasingly about where the world came from. Yes, I do still believe that God created the world in the exact way He planned to, but when thinking about how God Himself came into existence, it almost gives me a headache to think about. I’ve learned God has simply always existed. How is that possible, though? How could something, or rather someone, have always existed? Explaining how the world became is a very difficult task. There will always be somebody who is not satisfied with the answer you might give them. Every possible thought on how the world was created seems mind-boggling. There are different thoughts that people have on how the world became, but they all seem bigger than us. For example, I believe God created the world, but how was He created? Along with Sophie, I am also baffled how something could have created itself or always existed.  

Even though I live in America now, my roots are still in Kazakhstan. That’s where I grew up, where I began on my journey of faith and a big part of who I am today. Kazakhstan was also a beautiful country where I could see that there is in fact a creator of the world.