Re-reading a book that you read in your childhood can be an interesting experience. You might be reading it again just because you remember it being a brilliant story, or to see if it makes you feel the same as it did when you were a kid, or because you’ve simply forgotten what happened. I recently read Jostein Gaarder’s Sophie’s World for a second time, for all of these reasons.
Sophie’s World is a children’s book which aims to explore and explain 4000 years in the history of Western Philosophy, weaving the historical facts in and around an engrossing story about a 14 year old schoolgirl. I approached it the first time around when I was roughly the age of the protagonist, Sophie, and just interested in Philosophy. I was approaching it the second time around from the perspective of a University student in Philosophy and was wondering if it was truly a great read, or if my memory was just based on the cardboard packaging of what I remember the story being.
I recalled little of either the story, or the presentation of the philosophy, but my memory of it being a very thorough account of a vast swathe of Philosophy, from the ancient Greeks to the great 20th century thinkers, was correct. And it seems to me now that such a comprehensive account, although an enormously impressive achievement, was attempting too much. Gaarder switches between telling the story of Sophie and her mysterious Philosophy teacher, and discussing the Philosophy itself, and there is little continuity between the two narratives; through excessive thoroughness in his explanation of Philosophical ideas, he sacrifices some of the time he could devote to developing the fictional storyline. He appears to have confused the two aims of creating an exciting book to get children thinking about Philosophical problems, and summarising a readable history of Philosophy for the non-Philosopher. He has written a book in one respect for children and in another for adults, and he hasn’t quite succeeded at either.