Sophie's World

Sophie does not hear from Alberto for a few days but manages to tell her mother a spun version of the story, which loosens her mother’s suspicions. However, a few days later Sophie sees on TV that a UN major in Lebanon was killed. She is not sure if it is Hilde’s father, but she bursts into tears. Sophie is overwhelmed by everything going on around her and the way philosophy is changing her view of life. She becomes enraged at her mother, who begins demanding to know the truth. Sophie runs to her bedroom, and her mother follows. Suddenly Sophie announces she wants to have a birthday party on Midsummer Eve. She decides to finally tell her mother what is going on—at least most of the story. Leaving out the supernatural details and her trips to the cabin, she explains that Alberto is a philosopher who has been sending her letters strictly on the topic of philosophy. She tells her mother she has met him a few times. Sophie’s mom suggests inviting him to the birthday party, and Sophie is unsure about that idea. Shortly after, she falls asleep. A couple of days later at school, Sophie gets an A on her paper on the Renaissance. At that moment, a postcard slips out of her books addressed to Hilde. Her father speaks about the tragic death, the way philosophical knowledge can prevent violence, and then finally remarks on Hilde’s lost coin, promising to help find it. She tells Joanna about the note and the party and comes home to find Hermes in the garden.

Sophie leaves a note for her mother and takes Hermes home. On her way, she ponders the nature of animals and humans and the existence of the soul. As she begins to near Alberto’s apartment, she finds a postcard on the sidewalk exactly where she found the coin before. Hermes growls as she picks it up. Hilde’s father explains the journey of the missing coin as it passed between several hands before winding up with Sophie, and quips whether God was responsible. Sophie arrives at Alberto’s apartment feeling frazzled, and she explains what she found. When Alberto hears about the postcard, he is angered to hear that Hilde’s father is comparing himself to God. Alberto is sporting a Baroque costume, fully styled with a wig, cape, and leather shoes. He reminds Sophie of Louis XIV. She finds that his apartment is redecorated with pieces from the Baroque period (1600s). Alberto explains that baroque means irregular, and this period was “characterized by tensions between irreconcilable contrasts” (223): the flamboyant and self-expressive ideal and the monastic and secluded ideal. Vanity and the temporariness of life were overarching values in people, art, architecture, and political and religious life, and differences in class widened dramatically. Theater became a symbol for life, and operas and Shakespearean plays heavily defined theater at the time. Alberto cites Shakespeare’s As You Like It, saying to Sophie,

All the world’s a stage

And all the men and women merely players

They have their exits and their entrances

And one man in his time plays many parts (225).

Baroque philosophers also compared life to a dream, with people such as Ludwig Holberg theorizing it is impossible to tell whether we are the dreamers or the dream itself. Both materialism and idealism were equally present during the Baroque period as science developed and the quest to understand God continued. Finally, mechanistic views of both the universe and people themselves began to emerge and more and more phenomena became attributed to mechanical processes. Alberto tells Sophie that he is going to next explain Descartes and Spinoza, “the two greatest philosophers in the seventeenth century” (229).

Alberto begins his iteration of Descartes and his theories. Descartes was born in 1596 and lived in several European countries throughout his life in the effort to search for knowledge, insight, and new ideas. Like Socrates before him, Descartes believed in the power of reason and his own ignorance of the vast majority of life and its processes. Because Descartes did not agree with the knowledge passed down from the Middle Ages, he sought his own philosophy and developed a philosophical system whereby something could only be proven true by moving from simple to complex ideas, from absolute doubt toward truth. Furthermore, it was necessary to ensure that absolutely no factors were left out of the reasoning process. Since Descartes was also a mathematician, his philosophical method is calculated. Alberto refers to Descartes as the father of modern philosophy due to the two main ideas Descartes questioned: the nature of the relationship between body and mind and what “certain knowledge” (232) is and whether such a thing exists. Many of Descartes’s contemporaries were convinced certain knowledge does not exist, but Descartes set out to prove them wrong. He questioned whether a philosophical method could be arrived at in the same way mathematical equations or scientific processes are. Mechanistic ideology pervaded the Baroque era, and thus the question of where the soul fit into this mechanism and how a spiritual body, such as a soul, could influence a mechanistic material body plagued Descartes. He was also not certain whether life was merely a dream; in fact, he was not certain anything his senses told him was true at all. During this process, Descartes came to the realization that if doubt was all he knew for sure, and doubt he did, then he must be thinking and therefore exist: “I think, therefore I am” (235).

This realization led to another, which was that his thoughts were more real than anything his senses perceived. Descartes went on to suggest that because God is perfect, he must exist since people are not perfect and could not know of a perfect being unless it were inherent and did in fact exist. Sophie criticizes this logic by noting it is a jump from one point to the other. Alberto goes on to say that Descartes also suggested that measurable properties, such as speed and length, were more likely to be real than anything people sense about the world. In fact, smells, colors, and other subjective experiences would not exist if there was nothing to sense them. Descartes believed that matter (extended reality) and mind (thought and soul) were separate, and God exists apart from them both. As long as it resides within the body, the soul interacts with the body through the pineal gland. Alberto muses on what Descartes would have thought of artificial intelligence, noting that he may have begun to doubt his ability to reason freely. He takes Sophie over to his computer and shows her an advanced AI program that can have conversations with her. Sophie begins asking about Hilde, but the program provides only the info that Alberto inputted. The program is prompted to shut itself down, but Sophie begins again and asks it about “Knag.” A message from Major Albert Knag appears on the screen wishing Hilde a happy birthday and laughing at Alberto for being so vulnerable. Alberto becomes infuriated that the major has infiltrated his computer and created a similar name for himself, and he erases knag from the program. Sophie stares in silence.

After the scare with Hilde’s father and the computer, Alberto jumps right into discussing Baruch Spinoza (1623-1677). Spinoza was exiled from Amsterdam for suggesting the Bible contained many inconsistencies and could not necessarily be relied on in full. He believed in the teachings of Jesus, calling his a “religion of reason” (245), but he rejected religious dogma and ritual. Spinoza slowly lost everyone dear to him as they considered his beliefs heretical, so he resigned himself to solitude and philosophy. Alberto explains that Spinoza believed in seeing life “from the perspective of eternity” (246), which means being aware that each person, including oneself, is a small piece of endless space and time. He also believed that God existed in everything and that God was the fundamental substance that made up all things; in other words, he disagreed with Descartes that thought and extension of thought were separate. Simultaneously, Spinoza also built upon Descartes’s idea of thought and extension by suggesting God manifests itself through either thought or extension. Furthermore, humans possess these same two attributes, and everything humans do is either through thought or extension or both.

Ultimately, Spinoza believed that everything was one. Alberto explains to Sophie that, although it feels like she is the one moving and thinking, it is really nature, or something infinitely bigger, moving through her. Spinoza argued that since God exists in everything, it is not a “puppeteer” (249) acting from outside; rather, it controls the world through natural laws. With this, Sophie begins to feel unsettled at the thought that she is not acting of her own free will. Alberto assures her that, while this is technically what Spinoza argued, that it is not something to fear or worry about. On the contrary, Alberto feels that it is a comforting notion to know that they are part of everything, and they always have been and always will be. Spinoza hoped that people would learn to see the world “sub specie aeternitatis” (251) or from the perspective of eternity. Alberto offers Sophie some fruit before she leaves, and she chooses a banana. Inside the peel, Sophie finds a birthday message from Hilde’s father. Alberto remarks that he “must be mentally disturbed. But he must also be quite ingenious” (252). Alberto calls Sophie Hilde again as she leaves.

Sophie’s mother becomes increasingly concerned about who Alberto is and what his intentions are with Sophie. She demands to meet him or at least see him, so Sophie shows her mom the video tape of Alberto in ancient Athens. Her mother watches flabbergasted, and Sophie explains that it is not Alberto who is the threat, but Hilde’s father. Sophie’s mom comments that Alberto looks a lot like the man who lived in the major’s cabin 15 years prior, but she notes he does not appear to have aged a day. Two weeks go by with no word from Alberto, so Sophie goes to his apartment to check on him. She finds a note on his door hinting at a “moment of truth” (255) that has to do with Berkeley. A few more days pass, and finally on the day before her and Hilde’s birthday, Sophie finds Hermes in the garden. She wonders if something spectacular will happen tomorrow. As they walk through the park on their way to Alberto’s, Hermes suddenly stops and utters the words “Happy birthday, Hilde” (256) before resuming his usual dog behavior. Sophie is stunned, wondering if she simply imagined it.

Alberto introduces Sophie to empiricist philosophy beginning with John Locke (1632-1704). Empiricism is the principle that only that which is observed by the senses or measured by instruments is a source of knowledge. Everything else is merely speculation, and nothing that exists in the mind is innate; it is all inspired by experience. In relation to God, empiricists such as Locke believed it was impossible to reason about the existence of God since nobody has experienced or known God personally. In Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding, he attempts to answer two questions: whether the senses are a reliable source of information and where ideas come from. He argues that people are born with a “tabula rasa” (blank slate) and that the only source of knowledge is through experience and inner reflection of said experience. As people experience things in the world, they develop “complex ideas” (260) based on basic sensations that combine. For instance, one can know one is eating an apple based on its size, taste, texture, and even sound when being bitten. Locke addressed the question of the reliability of the senses by distinguishing sense perception into two categories: primary and secondary qualities. Primary qualities are those fundamental concepts such as motion, weight, and amount; secondary qualities are those that are not only subjective, but are also entirely reliant on the senses and would not exist otherwise. This includes experiences such as taste, smell, preference, and even color. Finally, Locke suggested that people were born with natural rights (including for women) based on their innate ability to reason, and this reason is also their source of knowing that God exists.

Alberto makes an exception in his usual linear order of philosophers and explains that Berkeley was a “category of his own” (263) and thus David Hume (1711-1776) will be discussed first. Sophie even states she would rather hear about Berkeley, to which Alberto replies “that’s of no importance” (263). Sophie goes on to protest that she has not heard about any women, only men, and that these men’s lives may not reflect true human nature at all since “life begins with pregnancy and birth” (264). Alberto assures her that Hume is a different type of philosopher and goes on. Hume is the primary empiricist of the period and a major influence on Immanuel Kant, whom Alberto discusses later on. Hume wrote A Treatise on Human Nature, which holds all of his philosophical ideas united. Hume took on the project of cleaning up the mess that had been growing through the philosophies of the past and insisted on a return to reflection of everyday experiences. Alberto uses the example of angels and asks Sophie whether she has seen an angel, and then a human, and then if she has seen wings. Sophie answers no, yes, and “not on a human figure” (265) to which Alberto replies that an angel is an example of two experiences combined in a person’s imagination: wings and people. Hume urged that these “complex ideas” (265) were not to be trusted and should be rejected because they are false. By observing and reflecting on the way children experience the world, Hume concluded that people have two different ways of perceiving: impressions and ideas. Impressions consist of the immediate experience or sensation of something in the external world, and ideas are the recollections and reflections of those experiences or impressions. Impressions and ideas can each be divided further into simple and complex types. Alberto notes that Hume’s philosophy applies to religion as well, as people put unrelated elements such as angels and pearly gates, which are complex ideas themselves, into even more complex ideas. Hume summarized this by claiming the metaphysical and philosophical ideas of the past were largely a result of these complex but false ideas. Alberto goes on to argue that the ego is a complex idea made up of impressions of the self, and that ultimately it is a constantly changing, rather than united and constant, thing. He quotes Hume: “[The mind is] a kind of theater, where several perceptions successively make their appearance; pass, re-pass, slide away, and mingle in an infinite variety of postures and situations” (269). In this sense, personality, ego, and identity are illusions to Hume. To make this idea clear, Alberto compares it to a movie: Although a film is made up of single images, they are so close together playing it conveys the illusion of a moving image. For the first time in his teachings, Alberto points to Eastern philosophy, noting that Buddha produced the same idea 2500 years prior to Hume. Hume did not deny the existence of God nor the soul, but he did not believe human reasoning could arrive at any conclusions about either; This made him an agnostic. He applied this position to all things, believing it was impossible to experience any type of “always” that would lead a person to be certain something would always occur. Even experiencing something a thousand times is not enough to be certain of the same result on the 1001st. This is because the actual cause of the pattern has never been directly experienced, and two correlated events do not necessarily cause one another. “Finding the white crow” (274) when only black crows are known to exist is what Alberto calls the purpose of science. 

As Sophie and Alberto ponder Hume, a plane flies by the window with a tail sign reading “Happy Birthday, Hilde!” (278). Alberto wonders if the major is the cause of the upcoming storm, and Sophie asks him if the major is God, to which Alberto offers no reply. He then begins teaching Sophie about George Berkeley (1685-1753), an Irish bishop and philosopher. Berkeley questioned materialism and Locke’s presumption that the material world was a reality. Using empiricist strategies, he concluded the only thing certain to exist is God and once again revived the idea that God was the absolute substance that made up all things. God is also the initiator of thought and consciousness, and Berkeley questioned whether people even exist or if they are just a part of God’s mind. Alberto begins telling Sophie that he believes Hilde’s father is a type of God for both Alberto and Sophie and explains that he is becoming more and more confused by the minute. Hilde, Alberto states, is an angel that the major communicates with, and then tells Hilde happy birthday once again. The storm intensifies and thunder shakes the house. Sophie leaves and she believes she hears Hermes say, “See you later, Hilde” (282). She runs home but finds her mother running across a playing field toward her. Her mother asks, “What is happening to us, little one?” (282) and Sophie tells she doesn’t know and it is becoming like a bad dream.