Philosophers Through the Ages

There are a wide variety of intriguing belief systems and philosophies within Sophie’s World, but several of them in particular stuck with me. The philosophies of Democritus, Descartes, Kant, and Freud were understandable, and I found them to be accurate and to go along with what I already believe in. There were a couple others, such as Plato and Berkeley, that I did not agree with. Regardless, I have found that after reading about each philosopher’s theories, I can either agree with them, or at least see where they are coming from in the case of most of them.

I was able to agree easily with Democritus, mostly because I know that what he hypothesized has been found to be true, for the most part. However, there were some facets of information about the earth that Democritus believed that I do not believe are true. A couple of these are the facts that Democritus was sure that atoms were indivisible and eternal. Modern science has determined that atoms are capable of being divided and God created the earth at some point, so the atoms that everything is made of couldn’t have existed before the earth was created. Not taking these differences into account, I do agree with Democritus that the world is made up of tiny particles of matter called atoms.

Descartes is an entirely different case than Democritus for me, mostly because I only agree with his very main goal, not necessarily what he believed was true about the world. Descartes’ thought about creating a new philosophical system that combined everything which had been learned in philosophy to date was fantastic, in my opinion. I also agree with Descartes that God exists, but after this point I do not agree with his points as much, if at all. It it hard for me to think that nothing in my environment is totally real, and I am just dreaming. Still, Descartes definitely had a brilliant idea when he wanted to create a system combining the theories created by philosophers before him.

Kant’s ideas about philosophy itself, not what he thought should be done with it, made sense to me. The idea that everyone may perceive the world differently seems very likely because, in my opinion, if we all perceived the world in the same way, we would all think very similarly, and there would not be much originality in the world. Freud also had an interesting thought about how humans act and make decisions. It seems practical to think that we make our decisions, at least some of them, based on what we feel or desire in our subconscious rather than by reasoning.

Plato and Berkeley each had ideas that I just could not agree with, mostly because they are simply so far out from what I envision reality to be. Plato’s thoughts about the world of ideas seem irrational to me, being as how God only created one world. I agreed with a few other aspects of Plato’s beliefs, but not his main focus. Berkeley also had very different ideas, in my opinion. As I mentioned earlier, I find it hard to think that reality is nothing but a different type of dream state, so I strongly disagreed with Berkeley.

After pondering everything that I have felt and believed to be true throughout all of Sophie’s World, I think that I probably reside in the middle of the rabbit’s fur. It has been somewhat of a struggle to open my mind to the different views of the philosophers, but I was able to, for most of them. I hope that I can continue to be aware of the world and keep asking insightful questions, just like Sophie learned to.