SPINOZA by: John Cyril D.

Larena

Spinoza, a Jewish philosopher from Amsterdam, was excommunicated for heresy due to his criticism of
established religions. He believed that Christianity and Judaism were only maintained by rigid dogma
and outer rituals. Spinoza was the first to apply a historico-critical interpretation of the Bible, denying
that the Bible was inspired by God. He believed that Jesus, who could be considered God's mouthpiece,
represented a liberation from the orthodoxy of Judaism. Jesus preached a'religion of reason' that valued
love higher than all else, which Spinoza interpreted as meaning both love of God and love of humanity.

Spinoza's philosophy focused on the perspective of eternity, which he distanced himself from both
Descartes and Jewish and Christian doctrines. He believed that everything in nature is either thought or
extension, and that everyday phenomena, such as flowers and poems, are different modes of the
attribute of thought or extension. Spinoza's philosophy was so complex that everyday language could
not accommodate it.

Spinoza, a philosopher, believed that ethics is the art of living and moral conduct, and that human life is
subject to the universal laws of nature. He believed that we must free ourselves from our feelings and
passions to find contentment and happiness. Spinoza rejected the dualistic view of reality that Descartes
had, focusing on one single substance, Substance, or God or nature. He believed that everything exists
can be reduced to one single reality, which he called God or nature. Spinoza also recognized two of
God's qualities or manifestations, God's attributes, which are identical with Descartes's 'thought' and
'extension'. God manifests itself either as thought or as extension, and these are the only two attributes
known to man. Spinoza's philosophy is complex, but it ultimately leads to a clearer understanding of the
nature of all things.

LOCKE by: John Cyril D. Larena

Sophie arrives home at eight-thirty after an agreement with her mother, who had left a message for her.
She insists on meeting Alberto in the Old Town to make a breakthrough in a huge mystery. Her mother is
skeptical, but Sophie insists on meeting him because it may be worse with Hilde's father.

Sophie shows her mother a video of Alberto wandering on the Acropolis and talking to her from the
square. She teases her mother about Alberto's appearance and how strange he must be, having himself
filmed in Athens just to send it to a girl she hardly knows. Sophie also mentions that Alberto looks very
much like the major who lived in that little hut in the woods.
As they cross town, Sophie thinks about tomorrow's birthday, which is not celebrated until Midsummer
Eve. She is convinced something extraordinary will happen, at least there will be an end to all those
birthday cards from Lebanon. When they pass by a park with a playground, Hermes stops by and says
"Happy birthday, Hilde!" Sophie is speechless, but deep down, she is convinced that Hermes has spoken
in a deep resonant bass voice.

Alberto opens the door and Sophie is shocked to learn that the major taught Hermes to talk. She
wonders what happened to Alberto, who has been missing for over fifteen years. Her mother explains
that Alberto was a foreign-sounding name, possibly Knox or Knag.

Sofie receives another birthday card for Hilde but does not receive any herself. One afternoon, she
knocks on Alberto's door and finds a note wishing her a happy birthday. She tears the note off the door
and leaves Alberto's mailbox.

On June 14, Hermes comes romping around in the garden, and Sophie puts her arms around him as if he
could solve all the riddles.

Alberto and Sophie discuss the concept of rationalism, a philosophy that believed in reason as the
primary source of knowledge. They discuss the importance of empiricists, such as Locke, Berkeley, and
Hume, who were British philosophers. Empiricism is a view that states that we have nothing in the mind
that we have not experienced through the senses.

The most important empiricists in the seventeenth century were Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz.
Empiricism focuses on the idea that we have no innate ideas or conceptions about the world we are
brought into before we have seen it. This perspective was criticized by Plato, who believed that man
brought with him a set of innate 'ideas' from the world of ideas.

John Locke, an Englishman from 1632 to 1704, was the first philosopher to analyze human perceptions
and their basis in actual experience. He claimed that all our thoughts and ideas issue from what we have
taken in through the senses, and that the mind is a 'tabula rasa' or empty slate before we perceive
anything. Locke distinguished between'sensation' and'reflection', arguing that the mind classifies and
processes all sensations as they come streaming in.

Locke was also preoccupied with equality of the sexes and was a forerunner of many liberal ideas that
later came into full bloom during the French Enlightenment in the eighteenth century.

He advocated the principle of division of powers, which divided the power of the state between
different institutions: legislative, judicial, and executive.

In summary, Alberto and Sophie discuss the concept of rationalism, empiricists, and the role of the mind
in understanding reality. They discuss the influence of Locke, John Stuart Mill, and other philosophers in
shaping their ideas and the struggle for equality.
HUME by:John Cyril D. Larena

Sophie is discussing the importance of David Hume, a British empiricist who lived from 1711 to 1776.
Hume was a significant figure in the Age of Enlightenment, and he was a philosopher who focused on
the everyday world and the experiences of children. He proposed the return to our spontaneous
experience of the world and believed that no philosopher could provide rules of conduct that were
different from those we get through reflections on everyday life.

Sophie is more interested in the real world, where there are flowers, animals, and children that grow up.
Hume took it upon himself to clean up all the woolly concepts and thought constructions that male
philosophers had invented, proposing the return to our spontaneous experience of the world. He argued
that an 'angel' is a complex idea, consisting of two different experiences associated in man's
imagination.

Sophie is interested in the idea of a new philosophy that would be different from what has been heard
so far. She believes that philosophers should be able to take us behind the daily experiences and give us
rules of conduct that are different from those we get through reflections on everyday life.

Hume's theory of thought posits that humans have two types of perceptions: impressions and ideas.
Impressions refer to the immediate sensation of external reality, while ideas are the recollection of such
impressions. An impression is stronger and livelier than a reflection, and both can be simple or complex.
Hume's point is that we sometimes form complex ideas without a corresponding object in the physical
world, such as angels or crocophants. He also argued that our idea of God, which consists of intelligence,
wisdom, and goodness, is a complex idea that can be associated with how we experienced our own
father when we were little. Critics of religion argue that these ideas of God can be associated with how
we experienced our own father when we were little. Hume opposed all thoughts and ideas that could
not be traced back to corresponding sense perceptions, arguing that even in everyday life, we use
complex ideas and perceptions.

It discusses the concept of an 'unalterable ego' and its false perception. The speaker admits to feeling
complex and volatile, and admits to having a complex impression of their own ego. Hume argues that
the ego is a collection of simple impressions that change rapidly and are in a perpetual flux. He
compares the mind to a movie screen, where images change rapidly and are not connected. Hume's
analysis of the human mind and his rejection of the unalterable ego was put forward almost 2,500 years
earlier by Buddha, who saw life as an unbroken succession of mental and physical processes. He also
rejected the idea of an eternal soul and the existence of God. Hume was an agnostic, believing that the
existence of God could neither be proved nor disproved. He held all other possibilities open and rejected
faith in Christianity or miracles, but both were matters of faith rather than knowledge or reason. Hume's
philosophy broke the final link between faith and knowledge.

Hume, a philosopher, believed that people had a strong need for supernatural happenings, but only
rejected them because he had never experienced any. He believed that miracles were against the laws
of nature, and that people experienced the same thing every time they let go of a stone. This concept of
the unbreakable laws of nature arises from the expectation of the same thing happening every time
something happens.

The philosopher asked Sophie why she believed the stone would always fall to the ground every time
she let go, but Hume pointed out that he had not experienced why it happens. He also asked if a one-
year-old child would be more surprised if the stone floated above the ground for an hour or two, as he
would know better than the child. Hume wanted to understand why people would be more surprised if
they experienced the same thing.

BERKELEY by:John Cyril D. Larena

Alberto and Sophie discuss the topic of George Berkeley, an Irish bishop who believed that current
philosophies and science threatened the Christian way of life. Berkeley was the most consistent
empiricist, believing that we cannot know more of the world than we can perceive through the senses.
He claimed that worldly things are indeed as we perceive them, but they are not 'things.'

Berkeley believed that the only things that exist are those we perceive, but we do not perceive'material'
or'matter.' We do not perceive things as tangible objects. To assume that what we perceive has its own
underlying'substance' is jumping to conclusions.Sophie feels something hard on the table, but she
doesn't feel the actual matter in the table. She also feels something hard in her hand, which is a
sensation of something hard. She believes that Berkeley's spirit is the cause of all our ideas beyond our
consciousness, but this spirit is not of a material nature.

Berkeley believed that everything we see and feel is an effect of God's power, and that the whole world
around us and our whole life exist in God. He is the one cause of everything that exists. The question is
not just whether we exist, but also who we are. Alberto questions whether 'time' and'space' had any
absolute or independent existence, and whether our perception of time and space can be merely
figments of the mind. For us, this spirit could be Hilde's father.

BERKELEY by:John Cyril D. Larena

Hilde Moller Knag wakes up in the attic room of her old captain's house outside Lillesand, feeling a sense
of excitement and anticipation. She remembers her 15th birthday, which was the first day of her adult
life, and the last day of school before the summer vacation. She looks out over the garden, which is not
luxuriant or well-maintained but is Hilde's. The garden is large and has weather-beaten apple trees,
barren fruit bushes, and an old glider. The house, renamed Bjerkely over a hundred years ago, was built
by her great-grandfather, who had been a captain on one of the last tall sailing ships. The garden still
shows signs of heavy rain, but the fresh air and the newfound happiness make it seem as if her
childhood had been washed away with the storm. Hilde's great-grandfather built the house before the
turn of the century, and many people still call it the captain's house.

Hilde, a 15-year-old girl, admires her long, fair hair and deep green eyes, which she believes are neither
girl nor young woman. The mirror, an old magic mirror her grandmother bought, reminds her of her
father, Albert, who had always wanted to write something significant. Hilde is pensive and preoccupied
with herself. One day, she finds a large package on her bedside table, which she believes is a birthday
present from her father. Her father had dropped cryptic hints in his cards from Lebanon, but imposed a
severe censorship on himself. The present was something that grew bigger and bigger, and he had sent
copies of all his cards to her. Hilde is unsure what he meant by this, but the oddest hint was that the
present could be shared with others. Hilde hopes that the UN could unite the whole of the world and
unite the world.

Hilde, a young girl, finds herself in a ring binder filled with typewritten pages from her father's
typewriter, which he had taken with him to Lebanon. The book, titled "Sophie's World," is about a white
rabbit pulled out of a top hat, taking billions of years to complete. Hilde is intrigued by the idea that true
happiness is like sunlight to the soil.

As she reads, she notices Sophie Amundsen receiving a postcard from Lebanon, expressing her interest
in philosophy. Her father had written an article in the newspaper proposing that philosophy should be a
regular school subject, which Hilde found embarrassing. She reads about the chapter on Democritus,
where Sophie learns that everything is built up of tiny invisible blocks called atoms.

Hilde is indignant when she finds a red silk scarf under her bed, wondering how it could disappear into a
story. The chapter on Socrates begins with Sophie reading about the Norwegian UN battalion in
Lebanon, and Hilde is surprised when her father sends a birthday card to Sophie's address instead of
tying it on the package.

The second chapter, "The Top Hat," introduces a mysterious letter to Sophie, explaining that being
interested in why we are here is not a casual interest like collecting stamps. Hilde and Sophie are
exhausted, as their father has written a strange and wonderful book for her fifteenth birthday. The book
tells the story of a white rabbit pulling out of a top hat, a concept that has been debated for centuries.

ENLIGHTENMENT by:John Cyril D. Larena

Hilde, a young girl, finds herself in a ring binder filled with typewritten pages from her father's
typewriter, which he had taken with him to Lebanon. The book, "Sophie's World," tells the story of a
white rabbit pulled out of a top hat, taking billions of years to complete. Hilde is intrigued by the idea
that true happiness is like sunlight to the soil. Her father's article in the newspaper suggests philosophy
should be a regular school subject, which Hilde finds embarrassing. She reads about the chapter on
Democritus and the letter to Sophie. Hilde and Sophie are exhausted as their father writes a book for
her fifteenth birthday.

Sophie follows Hermes through town and finds a card from Lebanon dated June 15. She is just beginning
to understand the system of dates, but the cards with today's date are reaching her for the first time.
Alberto tells Sophie about the Renaissance, new science, rationalists, and British empiricism. They must
finish the philosophy course before Alberto boards a plane in the Middle East

Alberto teaches Sophie about the French Enlightenment, Kant's philosophy, Romanticism, Hegel,
Kierkegaard's clash with Hegelian philosophy, Marx, Darwin, Freud, and Sartre and Existentialism. They
must begin at once, so Sophie must go to school before they meet. Alberto gets her to meet at the
major's cabin, and she jumps at every new card and birthday greeting her father has stuck into the story.

When Alberto gets to Berkeley, Hilde is enthralled by the hints that something special is going to
happen. The chapter begins with Alberto and Sophie standing at the window, seeing the plane with the
long Happy Birthday streamer waving behind it. As dark clouds gather over the town, Sophie questions
whether we are truly human beings of flesh and blood or encircled by the mind.

Sofia starts biting her nails, feeling unsatisfied with herself. Then, it is all out in the open: "For us, for you
and me, this 'will or spirit' that is the 'cause of our existence'."