Sophie’s World: A Graphic Novel about the History of Philosophy, by Vincent Zabus, Nicoby and Jostein Gaarder

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Sophie's World

The quote from Goethe at the start sets the agenda: “He who cannot draw on three thousand years is living from hand to mouth.” An international bestseller, now available in English translation, Sophie’s World presents 2,500 years of Western philosophy in graphic novel form. It’s the story of a teen girl, worried about climate change and other contemporary issues, who receives a life-changing question on a postcard from an anonymous sender: “Who are you?” And the messages keep coming as the sender assures her: “It’s not complicated. To become a philosopher, we must begin by asking ourselves questions.”

If only the average philosopher of the last century wrote as clearly as Vincent Zabus and Jostein Gaarder, philosophy might actually have a greater purchase on contemporary culture. They begin with Thor and Ra, exemplary of the stories once told to explain natural phenomena and the traces left by ancient mythology in our language (Pandora’s box et.al.). Then, on to Greece for the pre-Socratics and the fluorescence of thought in Athens. Hello Democritus—you were right, the physical universe is composed of tiny, invisible blocks (atoms).

Half of Sophie’s World is devoted to the ancient Greeks, who often disagreed with each other (but intelligently arguing your point is integral to philosophy). The authors then make sense of how Indo-European culture (stretching from India through Europe) and Semitic cultures (the Near East) converged in Christianity. The history lesson is sweeping but accurate and culminates with Galileo’s insistence on understanding the natural universe through observation, not preconception. Sophie’s World is a head-spinning journey worth taking.