Dunia Sophie

Author: Jostein Gaarder
Translator:  Rahmani Astuti
Publisher: Penerbit Mizan
Publication Date: Second Print, November 2010 (Gold Edition)
Pages: 798

Life is both sad and solemn, we are led into a wonderful world, we meet one another here, greet each other --and wander together for a brief moment. Then we lose each other and disappear as suddenly and unreasonably as we arrived.


I have never learned any philosophy lesson until I studied at Faculty of Law. As a law student, I must learn the Philosophy of Law. It's a mandatory subject. If I remember the moment back then I was a bit shaking and intimidated on the first day of the lesson. Especially when I saw the lecturer, a famous professor of law philosophy and found out that so many senior students failed on that subject and had to join the lesson for...I was not so sure, perhaps the third time, the fourth time...Whew..it's going to be a tough subject.

Now when I finish reading Dunia Sophie, I salute Jostein Gaarder. I appreciate his hard work to resume the history of philosophy  from pre-Socratic Greeks and ends with Jean Paul Sartre and mix it with a fictional plot. This book is Gaarder's best known work. It has been translated into fifty-three languages.

It's all started when Sophie, a 14-year-old girl receives two anonymous messages in her mailbox. The first message asking "Who are you?" and the second asking "Where does the world come from?". With these mysterious communications, Sophie becomes the student of a 50-year-old philosopher, Alberto Knox. Alberto teaches Sophie the History of Philosophy. Mixed with the philosophy is a plot to a normal teenage novel, in which Sophie interacts with her mother and her friend, Joanna. 

This book is one of the good ways in introducing people to the basics of philosophy. At least to change the point of view that 'philosophy is complicated'. Wish I got the opportunity  to read Dunia Sophie back then before I took the subject Philosophy of Law, perhaps I could absorb the material far better.  
 
The only thing we require to be good philosophers is the faculty of wonder...

2 comments:

ferina July 3, 2012 at 12:39 PM  

aku belum berhasil menamatkan buku ini.

riana July 4, 2012 at 12:49 PM  

@ferina: aku juga butuh berbulan-bulan untuk menyelesaikan buku yang ber'bobot' ini (berat fisik bukunya & juga isinya) :D