Diana Hinds talks to Jostein Gaarder about his best-selling novel that introduces teenagers to the fundamental questions of philosophy When Jostein Gaarder travels abroad on planes it is not unusual for him to be accosted by teenage girls who thank him for getting them out of the rabbit’s fur. Such is the international success of his philosophical novel,Sophie’s World, that its strange, central image, of a white rabbit pulled from the universe’s top hat, has become common currency among many thousands of would-be philosophers.

While all of us, according to Gaarder, are born at the tip of the rabbit’s fine hairs, lazy mortals work themselves ever deeper into the fur and only the philosophically-minded, who are prepared to think and question, risk crawling back up those fragile hairs.

Gaarder’s conviction that we must keep alive the child’s sense of wonder and curiosity about the world is hardly new. But in Sophie’s World, he has hit on an original formula for getting his message across: a book that is neither a novel nor a philosophical textbook, but which presents the history of western philosophy in easily-digestible chunks, attractively packaged as the story of 14-year-old Sophie Amundsen’s adventures with her eccentric philosophy tutor, Alberto Knox. Widely read by teenagers (to judge from Gaarder’s mailbag), Sophie’s World has also proved irresistible to adult readers right across Europe, and has already sold more than half a million hardback copies in Germany alone.

In London last week for the book’s UK publication, its 42-year-old author,dapper and bright-eyed, speaking English well but not quite fluently, expressed his amazement at the book’s success. His Norwegian publishers, he says, were initially slightly reluctant to publish Sophie’s World because it was so hard to categorise: “I was convinced it would most likely fall between two stools. But instead it has fallen on top of all the stools - and been read as a textbook and a novel, as a book for young people and for adults, in school and during free time.”

Its enormous popularity, Gaarder believes, has exposed a “vacuum”, a hunger for books which help people “come close to real and important questions” - like the questions Sophie Amundsen receives in two mysterious letters, “Who are you?” and “Where does the world come from?”, which set her off on her philosophical quest.

“Up to now, many people have felt philosophy sounds interesting and important, but they have thought it would be too difficult for them”, says Gaarder.

Sophie’s World began, in fact, as a school textbook. “I can remember the first sentence: ‘Human beings have throughout the ages asked existential questions. ’ But after 30 or 40 pages, it was so boring I gave it up.”

Sophie Amundsen and the plot came later, providing a framework for the philosophical instruction: the story of a girl and her philosophy tutor who, in the course of their lessons, discover that they are nothing more than the fictitious creations of a Major Knag, who is writing a book for his daughter, Hilde - thus placing them in a philosophical dilemma of their own, along the lines of Berkeley’s idealist theory that the world only exists as we perceive it.

But Gaarder, who had already published a prize-winning novel in Norway, The Patience Mystery, disclaims any artistic ambitions for Sophie’s World: “The novel is only a device - my ambitions were strictly pedagogical.”

The philosophical material in the book - lucid expositions of the great philosophers, from the Greeks through to Kant and Hegel, Marx and Freud - derives from Gaarder’s 11 years as a philosophy teacher in Bergen.

“I wrote Sophie’s World very quickly because all the things in it were very ripe, very mature,” he says.

Norwegian children are not taught philosophy in secondary school, although they study religion and ethics. But on arriving at university, all of them take a six-month course in philosophy, whatever their main subject is. Norway also has about 90 “Volk” high schools, boarding schools where 19-year-olds, particularly those not going on to university, can spend a year specialising in less academic subjects, such as theatre or sports; and it was at one of these high schools that Gaarder introduced his philosophy course.

“In the first lesson I would say, ‘We’re only going to ask questions, not find answers.’ In the second lesson, I would ask them questions like, ‘How long have we had agriculture? How old is the radio?’ It was very astonishing that they couldn’t answer. They had a great lack in what I would call historical consciousness.”

This lack of historical awareness in young people was one of Gaarder’s chief targets in writing Sophie’s World. It is also the reason he believes very strongly that philosophy should be taught in school - although not necessarily as a separate subject, he says.

“The most important word in the English language is the word ‘why’. We must give young people the courage to use the word - to think critically, to ask questions. Young people need philosophy to give them some sort of historical identity. Erasmus of Rotterdam said that horses are born, but human beings are raised. We need to know our roots and our history.”

Although he insists that there is much good teaching in Norwegian schools,he is clearly critical of the education system for concentrating too much on “knowledge” and not enough on what he terms “insight”. His own sons, aged 11 and 19, have both complained of being bored at school - “and I can understand them”, he says. Sophie’s World itself is peppered with acerbic asides on schools: Hilde, for instance, reading her father’s book, “liked getting this bird’s eye view of history. She had never learned anything like it at school. They only gave you details.” And Sophie moans: “The difference between schoolteachers and philosophers is that schoolteachers think they know a lot of stuff that they try to force down our throats. Philosophers try to figure things out together with their pupils.”

In the 1960s, an American professor of philosophy, Matthew Lipman, devised a philosophical method for children, which has recently been taken up in this country by SAPERE (Society for the Advancement of Philosophical Enquiry and Reflection in Education) and introduced to British schools. Lipman’s approach is quite different from Gaarder’s: instead of beginning with the often daunting works of famous philosophers, Lipman wrote his own stories, designed to stimulate philosophical debate among young people and foster their powers of critical reasoning.

Gaarder acknowledges that both approaches are important, but agrees that Sophie’s World is more didactic - “because I wanted to share what I have learned, what has enriched me. Yes, I am a didactic man, and I wanted my pupils to really understand” - here he becomes very animated, excitedly twisting his hands - “what Plato’s philosophy was, I wanted them to figure it out.

“I think both as a writer and as a teacher I am an entertainer. I can monologue a bit, and maybe for my own sake I could have listened more to my pupils. Instead of telling all the stories myself, I could have asked them to tell stories.”

Story-telling is a key part of his philosophy teaching: stories about Socrates drinking hemlock, or Giordano Bruno burnt at the stake for saying the universe was infinite, bring philosophy to life and make it easier to remember, he maintains. But he admits that Sophie’s World becomes harder to understand after the first 150 pages, “as a reflection of more and more complex human thought. ” Not a few 14-year-olds, he says, have confessed to him that they skipped the section on Hegel.

The philosophy lessons in the book end, rather abruptly, with Sartre - partly because Norwegian philosophy teaching stops in the 1920s, Gaarder says, and also because he himself is not an expert on the 20th century.

But as well as detailing the works of individual philosophers, Sophie’s World also outlines broader streams in western thought, such as the spread of Christianity, the Romantic movement, and, more recently, the rise of environmental concern. The New Age, and its “alternative” philosophies, provoke snorts of derision from Sophie’s tutor: “Some proclaim that we are entering a new age. But everything new is not necessarily good, and not all the old should be thrown out . . . I think you will find that much of what marches under the New Age banner is humbug.”

Gaarder is adamant that this is another reason why people should understand philosophy. “They need philosophy as an instrument, to give them the ability to criticise, so that they can find out what is rubbish and what is not rubbish. Too much alternative philosophy is about quick answers to things - like astrology, or tarot cards: it’s not asking questions. I would call it philosophical pornography.”

But he is hopeful that people are “getting a little tired of quick philosophy”. The fact that thousands of teenagers are reading his book is, he says, a healthy sign - a sign that philosophy, the Real Thing, may be about to enjoy a renaissance in Europe.

As for philosophy in schools, Gaarder says it is not for him to suggest how best it might be introduced. But in respect of Sophie’s World, he sounds a note of caution: “Although I am happy to hear if children are reading my book in school, I wrote it as the opposite to school. I am a little afraid of it becoming part of the curriculum. I would dislike it very much if children were having tests on my book.”

Sophie’s World By Jostein Gaarder, Phoenix House Pounds 16.99. 1 897580 42 8.