Sophie's World Research Paper

Sophie’s World Essay
Before reading Sophie’s World I always worried about death and what my purpose in life was. After reading, I realized that there is much more to life and I’ve just been grazing the surface. This book was just a taste of the philosophical world and it has urged me to learn more about the different philosophers and their ideas. Sophie’s World has made me determined to climb up the fine hairs of the rabbit’s fur and stare into the magician's eyes (Gaarder 16). Aristotle was the first philosopher that really intrigued me. I strongly believe in his idea that “...horse was simply a concept that we humans had formed after seeing a certain number of horses. The idea or form thus had no existence of its own” (107). This completely

I strongly agree with the idea that the goal in life is to achieve the greatest amount of sensory enjoyment. Epicurus was wise to say that “...the pleasurable amounts of an action must always be weighed against the possible side effects” (131). Sadly, I don’t always do this and regret it afterward. I understand now that I must take better care of my mind and body. Epicurus was the philosopher that completely put my mind at ease about dying when he said, “Death does not concern us, because as long as we exist, death is not here. And when it does come, we no longer exist” (132). After reading that I realized that I should no longer live like each day would be my last. I should not be overly cautious and worry about something way into the future that I have absolutely no control over. I should instead enjoy life and seek every pleasurable

Everything that is beautiful and satisfying is good (378-379). Therefore, I am an Epicurean living in the aesthetic stage. Kierkegaard talked about more than stages of life, he was also a major individualist. Gaarder puts it beautifully when he wrote, “The tiniest twig was like a fairy-tale world about which a thousand stories could be told” (372). Unlike the Romantics who thought of everything as one large ego (371), Kierkegaard gives more meaning to an individual no matter how simple they appear to be.
Several philosophers before Kierkegaard tried to prove the existence of God, but Kierkegaard didn’t follow that same path. He felt that it is more valuable to discover more subjective and personal truths than one universal Truth (375). Reading this made me feel more secure about being agnostic. The truth for me is that there is no way for me to prove or disprove that God exists. The truth for my family is that God absolutely does exist. There is no black and white in this theory, no one Truth only