Excursions in the World of Philosophy

During the late eighties Jostein Gaarder, a young Norwegian philosophy teacher, felt a disquiet noticing the swelling unconcern about abstract questions of philosophy amongst his teenage students. As a teacher who cared, devising an effective antidote was an imperative for Jostein Gaarder. He had to prescribe a therapeutic remedy for the indifference toward seemingly esoteric but indispensable questions. We can escape them, he was convinced, only by forfeiting our claim to any share in our common human heritage. To regenerate the diminishing interest in enduring philosophical questions, he decided to meet the challenge by offering a ‘strange and wonderful book’ for the young readers.

Jostein Gaarder chose to reveal the life of western philosophy from its origins in the form of a mystery novel running into 400 pages. In writing this novel, Sophie’s World, he accomplished a rare feat – a creative fusion of the crafts of magical fiction, cultural historiography and philosophising. Authoring this novel was, for Jostein Gaarder, a novel way of sharing with the readers his perspicacious reflections into some of the most difficult and brilliant arguments about the mysteries of life, world and existence.