Oopps...you've found me!
Tsunami
Akhir-akhir ini kita di Indonesia mengalami banyak bencana tsunami. Menyedihkan memang. Bahkan saat ini banyak penduduk - terutama yang tinggal di pinggir pantai - trauma, panik dan ketakutan setiap kali ada isu akan adanya gempa dan tsunami yang dilemparkan oleh orang-orang yang tidak bertanggung jawab. Mungkin sebaiknya kita sedikit banyak mempelajari tentang tsunami agar tidak termakan isu dan selalu siaga apabila terjadi gejala-gejala akan terjadinya tsunami di wilayah kita.
Ternyata tsunami sejak lama sudah berada di indonesia. Saya baca di artikel Tempo Online ini bahwa setidaknya laporan resmi tentang terjadinya tsunami di Indonesia dapat ditelusuri sejak tahun 1883 saat Krakatau meletus. Setidaknya 36 ribu jiwa melayang akibat tsunami setinggi bangunan 12 tingkat kala itu.
Bencana tsunami terbesar di Indonesia tentulah yang terjadi di Aceh NAD dan Nias bulan Desember tahun 2004. Bencana ini menelan korban lebih dari 104.000 orang di Indonesia saja. Tingkat eskalasi bencana kala itu bisa dilihat di website International Charter "Space and major Disasters" dan juga di Indonesia Tsunami Map 2004.
Bencana tsunami yang terakhir tentu saja yang melanda Pangandaran tanggal 17 Juli 2006. gelombang setinggi lebih dari 5 meter melanda pesisir pantai Jawa bagian selatan, merenggut nyawa hampir 500 orang. Kisah-kisah menarik tentang tsunami di Pangadaran ini, berikut komentar-komentar para ahli geologi dapat dibaca di situs blog milik Rovicky Dwi Putrohari, seorang ahli geologi yang tinggal di malaysia. Disana dibahas juga cara-cara menghadapi bencana gempa dan tsunami dan penjelasan tentang penyebab dari tsunami itu sendiri. Di situs itu juga dapat ditemukan link-link menarik seperti link resmi Direktorat Volkanologi dan situs ramalan cuaca Jakarta sehari-hari. Coba saja di klik salah satu link diatas.
Menurut pak Rovicky, ada beberapa tempat di Indonesia yang perlu diwaspadai akan terjadi gempa dan tsunami. Dengan menggunakan pemodelan Geostatistik, dibuat peta dari daerah rawan gempa di Indonesia. Waktunya kapan, tidak ada yang bisa memprediksi dengan tepat. Hanya kita yang tinggal di sekitar lokasi berpotensi gempa harus selalu waspada atas terjadinya gempa itu. Mungkin juga kita harus mendesain rumah kita sehingga tahan gempa seperti disarankan oleh Departemen PU di website ini atau rumah tahan gempa model jepang seperti yang dibuat di Aceh pasca tsunami.
Seharusnya kita lebih percaya dengan ahli geologi daripada paranormal. Walau banyak juga paranormal yang berkomentar dan meramalkan terjadinya bencana tsunami di Indonesia. Menurut Permadi, bencana alam terjadi akibat kemaksiatan dan ketidakadilan yang merajalela. Karena itu, Jakarta akan mengalami bencana besar karena pusat kemaksiatan dan ketidakadilan ya adanya di Jakarta. Wallahualam.
Oh ya, jangan lupa sering-sering lihat website Badan Meteorologi dan Geofisika. Ini situs resmi milik pemerintah Indonesia. Di dalamnya tersedia lengkap semua informasi cuaca, iklim, gempa bumi, kualitas udara, dan sebagainya. Ada juga nomor hotmail info dini gempa bumi (021-65866502, 021-4246321 ext 336, fax : 021-6546316). Rasanya kalau menyangkut masalah bencana alam kita harus percaya dengan instansi pemerintah ini.
Ternyata tsunami sejak lama sudah berada di indonesia. Saya baca di artikel Tempo Online ini bahwa setidaknya laporan resmi tentang terjadinya tsunami di Indonesia dapat ditelusuri sejak tahun 1883 saat Krakatau meletus. Setidaknya 36 ribu jiwa melayang akibat tsunami setinggi bangunan 12 tingkat kala itu.
Bencana tsunami terbesar di Indonesia tentulah yang terjadi di Aceh NAD dan Nias bulan Desember tahun 2004. Bencana ini menelan korban lebih dari 104.000 orang di Indonesia saja. Tingkat eskalasi bencana kala itu bisa dilihat di website International Charter "Space and major Disasters" dan juga di Indonesia Tsunami Map 2004.
Bencana tsunami yang terakhir tentu saja yang melanda Pangandaran tanggal 17 Juli 2006. gelombang setinggi lebih dari 5 meter melanda pesisir pantai Jawa bagian selatan, merenggut nyawa hampir 500 orang. Kisah-kisah menarik tentang tsunami di Pangadaran ini, berikut komentar-komentar para ahli geologi dapat dibaca di situs blog milik Rovicky Dwi Putrohari, seorang ahli geologi yang tinggal di malaysia. Disana dibahas juga cara-cara menghadapi bencana gempa dan tsunami dan penjelasan tentang penyebab dari tsunami itu sendiri. Di situs itu juga dapat ditemukan link-link menarik seperti link resmi Direktorat Volkanologi dan situs ramalan cuaca Jakarta sehari-hari. Coba saja di klik salah satu link diatas.
Menurut pak Rovicky, ada beberapa tempat di Indonesia yang perlu diwaspadai akan terjadi gempa dan tsunami. Dengan menggunakan pemodelan Geostatistik, dibuat peta dari daerah rawan gempa di Indonesia. Waktunya kapan, tidak ada yang bisa memprediksi dengan tepat. Hanya kita yang tinggal di sekitar lokasi berpotensi gempa harus selalu waspada atas terjadinya gempa itu. Mungkin juga kita harus mendesain rumah kita sehingga tahan gempa seperti disarankan oleh Departemen PU di website ini atau rumah tahan gempa model jepang seperti yang dibuat di Aceh pasca tsunami.
Seharusnya kita lebih percaya dengan ahli geologi daripada paranormal. Walau banyak juga paranormal yang berkomentar dan meramalkan terjadinya bencana tsunami di Indonesia. Menurut Permadi, bencana alam terjadi akibat kemaksiatan dan ketidakadilan yang merajalela. Karena itu, Jakarta akan mengalami bencana besar karena pusat kemaksiatan dan ketidakadilan ya adanya di Jakarta. Wallahualam.
Oh ya, jangan lupa sering-sering lihat website Badan Meteorologi dan Geofisika. Ini situs resmi milik pemerintah Indonesia. Di dalamnya tersedia lengkap semua informasi cuaca, iklim, gempa bumi, kualitas udara, dan sebagainya. Ada juga nomor hotmail info dini gempa bumi (021-65866502, 021-4246321 ext 336, fax : 021-6546316). Rasanya kalau menyangkut masalah bencana alam kita harus percaya dengan instansi pemerintah ini.
Exotic DEBU
Soothing and Relieving . . . The feeling arise when we hear this group sings their song. DEBU poetical lyrics giving us a sense of tranquility. DEBU's music is a lively blend of strings and percussion, with accompanying lyrics in several languages. In terms of (a) music genre, DEBU's music would have to be called world music, simply because of its varied nature, lack of adherence to any one concept, and the use of ethnic instruments. DEBU's brilliant fusing of East and West, traditional and contemporary, acoustic and electric, yields a unique sound, laced with familiar yet exciting elements. DEBU is a breath of fresh air wafting through the world music scene. DEBU's style and sound are a rich and colorful tapestry of East and West, traditional and modern, with a hint of Latin and a touch of jazz.
Consist of 19 personnel, mostly was born in the United States of America, DEBU is a new phenomenon in Indonesian music. DEBU takes its name from Indonesian and Malay "Dust". The name gives meaning that "Man cannot escape the truth of his most humble origin that he was created from the dust of the earth. We are not worthy of traveling this path. We are simply dust upon the road."
Just as they said in their official website, most importantly for DEBU is that the music is a means for the transmission of this universal message with the hope it may awaken in the hearts of those who listen to it a love and a longing and remind them of their noble origin. Their long-awaited message of love and peace is not new; to them it is the essence of Islam, the Sufi way.
If you want to know more about them or simply just want to listen to their music, just visit their website Debu Official Website.
Consist of 19 personnel, mostly was born in the United States of America, DEBU is a new phenomenon in Indonesian music. DEBU takes its name from Indonesian and Malay "Dust". The name gives meaning that "Man cannot escape the truth of his most humble origin that he was created from the dust of the earth. We are not worthy of traveling this path. We are simply dust upon the road."
Just as they said in their official website, most importantly for DEBU is that the music is a means for the transmission of this universal message with the hope it may awaken in the hearts of those who listen to it a love and a longing and remind them of their noble origin. Their long-awaited message of love and peace is not new; to them it is the essence of Islam, the Sufi way.
If you want to know more about them or simply just want to listen to their music, just visit their website Debu Official Website.
My DNA
Well, I was killing time by filling out the personality test from the internet. Here's the report. They said I'm a CONCERNED INVENTOR. Hehehe . . . I wonder what the report would say if my answers were "on the other way around" (My Personal DNA Report)
They also gave me a "personal DNA map" :-D
My COLOR?
| Your Power Color Is Indigo |
 At Your Highest: You are on a fast track to success - and others believe in you. At Your Lowest: You require a lot of attention and praise. In Love: You see people as how you want them to be, not as how they are. How You're Attractive: You're dramatic flair makes others see you as mysterious and romantic. Your Eternal Question: "Does This Work Into My Future Plans?" |
About Kierkegaard
Søren Aabye Kierkegaard(1813-1855)
Born to a prosperous Danish family and educated at Copenhagen, Søren Kierkegaard deliberately fostered his public reputation as a frivolous, witty conversationalist while suffering privately from severe melancholy and depression. In a series of (mostly pseudonymous) books, Kierkegaard rebelled against the prevailing Hegelianism of his time and developed many themes that would later be associated with the philosophy of existentialism. Much of his work, including Frygt og Bæven: Dialectisk Lyrik (Fear and Trembling) (1843), Begrebet Angest (The Concept of Dread) (1844), (Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing) (1847), and Sygdomen Til Døden (The Sickness unto Death) (1849), expressed a profound interest in religious issues.
Kierkegaard also produced several more directly philosophical writings. Om Begrebet Ironi (The Concept of Irony) (1841) was his dissertation at the University of Copenhagen. Enten-Eller (Either-Or) (1843) provides an extended contrast between aesthetic and ethical ways of life, with emphasis on the ways in which radical human freedom inevitably leads to despair. The massive Afsluttende Uvidenskabelig Efterskrift (Concluding Unscientific Postscript) (1846) describes a third way of life, the possibility of living by faith in the modern world by emphasizing the importance of the individual and developing a conception of subjective truth.
Kierkegaard's influence on twentieth-century thought has been rich and varied. Most obviously, existentialist thinkers like Jaspers and Heidegger drew extensively on his analysis of despair and freedom. Although he directly addressed few of the social concerns that most interested his contemporary, Karl Marx, Kierkegaard has received ample attention from more recent Marxists, including Marcuse and Lukacs. Philosophers from Adorno to Wittgenstein have expressed great respect for the Danish master's thought.
Kierkegaard: The Passionate Individual
An entirely different kind of reaction against the severe rationalism of Hegel came from Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. Although he wrote extensively, Kierkegaard employed the rhetorical device of irony so successfully that it is difficult to be sure what views he would have defended seriously. Approaching the work through some of his self-conscious reflections upon the task may prove helpful.
At first, one might be inclined to accept Kierkegaard's straightforward declaration that his entire career as an author is nothing more than an earnest desire to achieve worldly fame. But even this appears in a work he published pseudonymously! Perhaps his claim to be preaching Christianity to the Christians is closer to the mark. Opposing the staid, traditional complacency in which many people live out their lives is a worthwhile goal that calls for an unusual approach.
Kierkegaard's life and work exemplify the paradox that he saw at the heart of modern life. Ever scornful of human pretensions, he deliberately chose the reverse deception of pretending to be less than he was. Since serious work should stand on its own, without deriving any arbitrary force from the presumed authority of its creator, Kierkegaard wrote privately and published under a variety of pseudonyms while frequently making flighty public appearances in his native Copenhagen. Perhaps this was a great project of personal ironic exhibitionism: how better to illustrate the uselessness of customary "social" life than by living it out to the fullest?
That Individual
But why would anyone take such great pains in a deliberate effort to be out-of-step with his own world? For Kierkegaard, this was the only way to be sure of the truth, by eliminating every possible ulterior motive for what one says. The pseudonymous writer is notably freed from any temptation to tailor his message to popular opinion, since it is impossible for him to achieve any fame. This is what mattered to Kierkegaard.
With regard to everything that counts in human life, including especially matters of ethical and religious concern, Kierkegaard held that the crowd is always wrong. Any appeal to the opinions of others is inherently false, since it involves an effort to avoid responsibility for the content and justification of my own convictions. Genuine action must always arise from the Individual, without any prospect of support or agreement from others. Thus, on Kierkegaard's view, both self-denial and the self-realization to which it may lead require absolute and uncompromising independence from the group. Social institutions—embodying "the system" of Hegelian idealism—are invariably bad; only the solitary perception of self can be worthwhile.
Freedom and Dread
Utter self-reliance, however, is a frightening prospect. Although we are strongly inclined to seek human freedom, Kierkegaard noted, contemplation of such a transcendence of all mental and bodily determinations tends only to produce grave anxiety in the individual person. Genuine innocence entails an inability to forsee all outcomes, which thereby renders one incapable of gaining control over one's own life.
Thus, in Begrebet Angest (The Concept of Dread) (1844), Kierkegaard examined the only appropriate emotional response to the condition of human freedom. Anxiety (Ger. Angst) is the dizziness produced in any reasonable being who stands at the brink of genuine freedom. Knowing that we can think and do as we will naturally inspires deep fear about what we shall think and do.
Even religious verities, Kierkegaard supposed, offer no lasting relief from the predicament. Christianity (as Paul had pointed out) makes no sense; its genius lies not in any appeal to the dictates of reason but rather in its total reliance on faith. But from our point of view, the content of an authoritative command is entirely irrelevant; all that matters is the claim that the command places upon our lives. There can be no proof of the authority behind the command, since any such demonstration of its value would make it impossible for us to accept it as a matter of faith.
Subjective Truth
What is at stake here is Kierkegaard's theoretical distinction between objective and subjective truth, worked out in the Afsluttende Uvidenskabelig Efterskrift (Concluding Unscientific Postscript) (1846) to the Philosophical Fragments. Considered objectively, truth merely seeks attachment to the right object, correspondence with an independent reality. Considered subjectively, however, truth seeks achievement of the right attitude, an appropriate relation between object and knower. Thus, for example, although Christianity is objectively merely one of many available religions in the world, it subjectively demands our complete devotion.
For Kierkegaard, it is clearly subjective truth that counts in life. How we believe matters much more than what we believe, since the "passionate inwardness" of subjective adherence is the only way to deal with our anxiety. Passionate attachment to a palpable falsehood, Kierkegaard supposed, is preferable to detached conviction of the obvious truth. Mild acceptance of traditional, institutional religion is useless, since god's existence can only be appreciated on wholly subjective grounds.
At one level, this amounts to acceptance of something like the slogan, "It doesn't matter what you believe, so long as you're sincere." But of course the Kierkegaardian standards for sincerity are very high.
(I am being too serious . . .contemplation....:-)
(I am being too serious . . .contemplation....:-)
Hilbert's What?
Hilbert's problems
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Hilbert's problems are a list of twenty-three problems in mathematics put forth by German mathematician David Hilbert at the Paris conference of the International Congress of Mathematicians in 1900. The problems were all unsolved at the time, and several of them turned out to be very influential for 20th century mathematics. Hilbert presented ten of the problems (1, 2, 6, 7, 8, 13, 16, 19, 21 and 22) at the conference, speaking on 8 August in the Sorbonne; the full list was published later.
Nature and influence of the problems
While there have been subsequent attempts to repeat the success of Hilbert's list, no other broadly based set of problems or conjectures has had a comparable effect on the development of the subject or attained a fraction of its celebrity. For example, the Weil conjectures are famous but were rather casually announced. André Weil was perhaps temperamentally unlikely to put himself in the position of vying with Hilbert. John von Neumann produced a list, but not to universal acclaim.
At first sight, this success might be put down to the eminence of the problems' author. Hilbert was at the height of his powers and reputation at the time and would go on to lead the outstanding school of mathematics at the University of Göttingen. On closer examination, matters are not quite so simple.
The mathematics of the time was still discursive: The tendency to replace words by symbols and appeals to intuition and concepts by bare axiomatics was still subdued, though it would come in strongly over the next generation. In 1900 Hilbert could not appeal to axiomatic set theory, the Lebesgue integral, topological spaces or Church's thesis, each of which would permanently change its field. Functional analysis, in one sense founded by Hilbert himself as the central notion of Hilbert space witnesses, had not yet differentiated itself from the calculus of variations; there are two problems on the list about variational mathematics, but nothing, as a naïve assumption might have had it, about spectral theory (problem 19 does have a connection to hypoellipticity).
In that sense the list was not predictive: It failed to register or anticipate the coming swift rises of topology, group theory, and measure theory in the twentieth century, as it did not roll with the way mathematical logic would pan out. Therefore its value as a document is as an essay: a partial, personal view. It suggests some programmes of research and open-ended investigations.
In fact many of the questions posed belie the idea of a professional mathematician of the twenty-first century, or even of 1950, that the form of a solution to a good question would take the shape of a paper published in a mathematical learned journal. If that were the case for all twenty-three problems, commentary would be simplified down to the point where either a journal reference could be given, or the question could be considered still open. In some cases the language used by Hilbert is still considered somewhat negotiable, as far as what the problem formulation actually means (in the absence, to repeat, of the axiomatic foundations, installed in pure mathematics starting with work of Hilbert himself on Euclidean geometry, through Principia Mathematica, and ending with the Bourbaki group and "intellectual terrorism" to finish the job). The First and Fifth problems are, perhaps surprisingly, in an unsettled status because of less-than-full clarity in formulation (see notes). In cases such as the Twelfth, the problem can reasonably be taken as an "inner", fairly accessible version in which it is quite plausible that the reader can know what Hilbert was driving at, and an "outer", speculative penumbra.
With all qualifications, then, the major point is the swift acceptance of the Hilbert list by the mathematical community of the time (less of a conventional form of words than now, in that there were few research leaders and they generally were in a small number of European countries, and personally acquainted). The problems were closely studied; solving one made a reputation.
At least as influential as the problem content was the style. Hilbert asked for clarification. He asked for solutions in principle to algorithmic questions, not practical algorithms. He asked for foundational strength in parts of mathematics that were still guided by intuitions opaque to non-practitioners (Schubert calculus and enumerative geometry).
These attitudes carried over to many followers, though they were also contested, and continue to be. Thirty years later, Hilbert had only sharpened his position.
The problems as Hilbert's manifesto
It is quite clear that the problem list, and its manner of discussion, were meant to be influential. Hilbert in no way fell short of the expectations of German academia on empire-building, programmatic verve, and the explicit setting of a direction and claiming of ground for a school. No one now talks of the 'Hilbert school' in quite those terms; nor did the Hilbert problems just have their moment as Felix Klein's Erlangen programme did. Klein was a colleague of Hilbert's, and in comparison the Hilbert list is far less prescriptive. Michael Atiyah has characterised the Erlangen programme as premature. The Hilbert problems, by contrast, showed the good timing of an expert. In pharmaceutical terms they operated both within 20 minutes and by slow release.
If the 'school of Hilbert' means much, it probably refers to operator theory and the style of mathematical physics taking the Hilbert-Courant volumes as canonical. As was noted above, Hilbert did not use the list to pose problems directly about spectral theory. That, one could say, would have been in Klein's style. He also did not give any undue prominence to commutative algebra — ideal theory, as it would then have been known), his major algebraic contribution and preoccupation from his invariant theory days; nor, at least on the surface, did he preach against Leopold Kronecker, Georg Cantor's opponent, from whom he learned much but whose attitudes he almost detested (as is documented in Constance Reid's biography). The reader could draw ample conclusions from the presence of set theory at the head of the list.
The theory of functions of a complex variable, the branch of classical analysis that every pure mathematician would know, is though quite neglected: no Bieberbach conjecture or other neat question, short of the Riemann hypothesis. One of Hilbert's strategic aims was to have commutative algebra and complex function theory on the same level; this would, however, take 50 years (and still has not resulted in a changing of places).
Hilbert had a small peer group: Adolf Hurwitz and Hermann Minkowski were both close friends and intellectual equals. There is a nod to Minkowski's geometry of numbers in problem 18, and to his work on quadratic forms in problem 11. Hurwitz was the great developer of Riemann surface theory. Hilbert used the function field analogy, a guide in algebraic number theory by the use of geometric analogues, in developing class field theory within his own research, and this is reflected in problem 9, to some extent in problem 12, and in problems 21 and 22. Otherwise Hilbert's only rival in 1900 was Henri Poincaré, and the second part of problem 16 is a dynamical systems question in Poincaré's style.
A round two dozen
Hilbert originally included 24 problems on his list, but decided against including one of them in the published list. The "24th problem" (in proof theory, on a criterion for simplicity and general methods) was rediscovered in Hilbert's original manuscript notes by German historian Rüdiger Thiele in 2000.
Summary
Of the cleanly-formulated Hilbert problems, problems 3, 7, 10, 11, 13, 14, 17, 19 and 20 have a resolution that is accepted by consensus. On the other hand, problems 1, 2, 5, 9, 15, 18+, 21, and 22 have solutions that have partial acceptance, but where there exists some controversy as to whether it resolves the problem.
The + on 18 denotes that the Kepler problem solution is a computer-assisted proof, a notion anachronistic for a Hilbert problem and also to some extent controversial because of its lack of verifiability by a human reader in a reasonable time.
That leaves 8 (the Riemann hypothesis) and 12 unresolved, both being in number theory. On this classification 4, 6, 16, and 23 are too loose to be ever described as solved. The withdrawn 24 would also fall in this class.
(I wonder if somebody out there is still trying to resolve these problems.... For me, I have my own real life problems to resolve :-D)
Existentialism
"The world of explanations and reasons is not the world of existence.".
Existentialism :
Educated in his native Paris and at German universities, Jean-Paul Sartre taught philosophy during the 1930s at La Havre and Paris. Captured by the Nazis while serving as an Army meteorologist, Sartre was a prisoner of war for one year before returning to his teaching position, where he participated actively in the French resistance to German occupation until the liberation. Recognizing a connection between the principles of existentialism and the more practical concerns of social and political struggle, Sartre wrote not only philosophical treatises but also novels, stories, plays, and political pamphlets. Sartre's personal and professional life was greatly enriched by his long-term collaboration with Simone de Beauvoir. Although he declined the Nobel Prize for literature in 1964, Sartre was one of the most respected leaders of post-war French culture, and his funeral in Paris drew an enormous crowd.
Sartre's philosophical influences clearly include Descartes, Kant, Marx, Husserl, and Heidegger. Employing the methods of descriptive phenomenology to new effect, his l'Être et le néant (Being and Nothingness) (1943) offers an account of existence in general, including both the being-in-itself of objects that simply are and the being-for-itself by which humans engage in independent action. Sartre devotes particular concern to emotion as a spontaneous activity of consciousness projected onto reality. Empasizing the radical freedom of all human action, Sartre warns of the dangers of mauvaise foi (bad faith), acting on the self-deceptive motives by which people often try to elude responsibility for what they do.
In the lecture l'Existentialisme est un humanisme ("Existentialism is a Humanism") (1946), Sartre described the human condition in summary form: freedom entails total responsibility, in the face of which we experience anguish, forlornness, and despair; genuine human dignity can be achieved only in our active acceptance of these emotions.
Sartre's complex and ambivalent intellectual relationship with traditional Marxism is more evident in Critique de la raison dialectique (Dialectical Reason) (1960), an extended sociological and philosophical essay.
Existentialism :
Existentialism is a diverse current of philosophers, who share a distinction between the categories of Being (Sein) and Existence (Existenz), holding that Being cannot be grasped through rational thought and perception, but only through personal existence.
Existentialism has its roots in the 19th century reaction against the “impersonal” Rationalism of the Enlightenment, Hegelianism and Positivism, especially Nietzsche and Kierkegaard. It also includes the Phenomenology of Edmund Husserl. Its founders are Martin Heidegger, Karl Jaspers, Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre.
Sartre
Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980)
Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980)
Educated in his native Paris and at German universities, Jean-Paul Sartre taught philosophy during the 1930s at La Havre and Paris. Captured by the Nazis while serving as an Army meteorologist, Sartre was a prisoner of war for one year before returning to his teaching position, where he participated actively in the French resistance to German occupation until the liberation. Recognizing a connection between the principles of existentialism and the more practical concerns of social and political struggle, Sartre wrote not only philosophical treatises but also novels, stories, plays, and political pamphlets. Sartre's personal and professional life was greatly enriched by his long-term collaboration with Simone de Beauvoir. Although he declined the Nobel Prize for literature in 1964, Sartre was one of the most respected leaders of post-war French culture, and his funeral in Paris drew an enormous crowd.
Sartre's philosophical influences clearly include Descartes, Kant, Marx, Husserl, and Heidegger. Employing the methods of descriptive phenomenology to new effect, his l'Être et le néant (Being and Nothingness) (1943) offers an account of existence in general, including both the being-in-itself of objects that simply are and the being-for-itself by which humans engage in independent action. Sartre devotes particular concern to emotion as a spontaneous activity of consciousness projected onto reality. Empasizing the radical freedom of all human action, Sartre warns of the dangers of mauvaise foi (bad faith), acting on the self-deceptive motives by which people often try to elude responsibility for what they do.
In the lecture l'Existentialisme est un humanisme ("Existentialism is a Humanism") (1946), Sartre described the human condition in summary form: freedom entails total responsibility, in the face of which we experience anguish, forlornness, and despair; genuine human dignity can be achieved only in our active acceptance of these emotions.
Sartre's complex and ambivalent intellectual relationship with traditional Marxism is more evident in Critique de la raison dialectique (Dialectical Reason) (1960), an extended sociological and philosophical essay.
(.....I've been thinking. OMG)
Fairy Tales
I always love The Alchemist. Got one copy translated in Bahasa. Never really understand it thou. Here's a review I found in the internet. Hopefully can give some light over what Paulo Coelho really talking about. Anyway, perhaps it's just only a tale. Very nice fairy tale.
And then, there's Sophie's World, a really realistic yet provoking way of historytelling by Jostein Gaarder. This book makes me feel dizzy. History about philosophy? Hmmm never knew somebody can explain philosophy with such clarity. I even have to read it again and again just to understand one sentence. Hehehe. But still, this book is one of my favourite.
Dreams, symbols, signs, and adventure follow the reader like echoes of ancient wise voices in "The Alchemist", a novel that combines an atmosphere of Medieval mysticism with the song of the desert. With this symbolic masterpiece Coelho states that we should not avoid our destinies, and urges people to follow their dreams, because to find our "Personal Myth" and our mission on Earth is the way to find "God", meaning happiness, fulfillment, and the ultimate purpose of creation.
The novel tells the tale of Santiago, a boy who has a dream and the courage to follow it. After listening to "the signs" the boy ventures in his personal, Ulysses-like journey of exploration and self-discovery, symbolically searching for a hidden treasure located near the pyramids in Egypt.
When he decides to go, his father's only advice is "Travel the world until you see that our castle is the greatest, and our women the most beautiful". In his journey, Santiago sees the greatness of the world, and meets all kinds of exciting people like kings and alchemists. However, by the end of the novel, he discovers that "treasure lies where your heart belongs", and that the treasure was the journey itself, the discoveries he made, and the wisdom he acquired.
"The Alchemist", is an exciting novel that bursts with optimism; it is the kind of novel that tells you that everything is possible as long as you really want it to happen. That may sound like an oversimplified version of new-age philosophy and mysticism, but as Coelho states "simple things are the most valuable and only wise people appreciate them".
As the alchemist himself says, when he appears to Santiago in the form of an old king "when you really want something to happen, the whole universe conspires so that your wish comes true". This is the core of the novel's philosophy and a motif that echoes behind Coelho's writing all through "The Alchemist". And isn't it true that the whole of humankind desperately wants to believe the old king when he says that the greatest lie in the world is that at some point we lose the ability to control our lives, and become the pawns of fate. Perhaps this is the secret of Coelho's success: that he tells people what they want to hear, or rather that he tells them that what they wish for but never thought possible could even be probable.
Coelho also suggests that those who do not have the courage to follow their " Personal Myth", are doomed to a life of emptiness, misery, and unfulfillment. Fear of failure seems to be the greatest obstacle to happiness. As the old crystal-seller tragically confesses: " I am afraid that great disappointment awaits me, and so I prefer to dream". This is where Coelho really captures the drama of man, who sacrifices fulfillment to conformity, who knows he can achieve greatness but denies to do so, and ends up living a life of void.
It is interesting to see that Coelho presents the person who denies to follow his dream as the person who denies to see God, and that "every happy person carries God within him". However, only few people choose to follow the road that has been made for them, and find God while searching for their destiny, and their mission on earth.
Consequently, is Coelho suggesting that the alchemists found God while searching for the elixir of life and the philosopher's stone? What is certain is that the symbolism of the text is a parallel to the symbolism and the symbolic language of alchemism, and similarly the symbolism of dreams is presented as " God's language".
It is also symbolic that Santiago finds his soul-mate, and the secrets of wisdom in the wilderness of the desert. The "wilderness" is a symbol that has been used by many great writers e.g.. Austen in "Mansfield Park", and Shakespeare in "King Lear". In the desert, Santiago meets his "twin-soul" and discovers that love is the core of existence and creation. As Coelho explains, when we love, we always try to improve ourselves, and that's when everything is possible. The subject of love inspires a beautiful lyricism in Coelho's writing: " I love you because the whole universe conspired for me to come close to you."
"The Alchemist" is a novel that may appeal to everybody, because we can all identify with Santiago: all of us have dreams, and are dying for somebody to tell us that they may come true. The novel skillfully combines words of wisdom, philosophy, and simplicity of meaning and language, which makes it particularly readable and accounts for its bestselling status.
And then, there's Sophie's World, a really realistic yet provoking way of historytelling by Jostein Gaarder. This book makes me feel dizzy. History about philosophy? Hmmm never knew somebody can explain philosophy with such clarity. I even have to read it again and again just to understand one sentence. Hehehe. But still, this book is one of my favourite.
The Alchemist
Dreams, symbols, signs, and adventure follow the reader like echoes of ancient wise voices in "The Alchemist", a novel that combines an atmosphere of Medieval mysticism with the song of the desert. With this symbolic masterpiece Coelho states that we should not avoid our destinies, and urges people to follow their dreams, because to find our "Personal Myth" and our mission on Earth is the way to find "God", meaning happiness, fulfillment, and the ultimate purpose of creation.
The novel tells the tale of Santiago, a boy who has a dream and the courage to follow it. After listening to "the signs" the boy ventures in his personal, Ulysses-like journey of exploration and self-discovery, symbolically searching for a hidden treasure located near the pyramids in Egypt.
When he decides to go, his father's only advice is "Travel the world until you see that our castle is the greatest, and our women the most beautiful". In his journey, Santiago sees the greatness of the world, and meets all kinds of exciting people like kings and alchemists. However, by the end of the novel, he discovers that "treasure lies where your heart belongs", and that the treasure was the journey itself, the discoveries he made, and the wisdom he acquired.
"The Alchemist", is an exciting novel that bursts with optimism; it is the kind of novel that tells you that everything is possible as long as you really want it to happen. That may sound like an oversimplified version of new-age philosophy and mysticism, but as Coelho states "simple things are the most valuable and only wise people appreciate them".
As the alchemist himself says, when he appears to Santiago in the form of an old king "when you really want something to happen, the whole universe conspires so that your wish comes true". This is the core of the novel's philosophy and a motif that echoes behind Coelho's writing all through "The Alchemist". And isn't it true that the whole of humankind desperately wants to believe the old king when he says that the greatest lie in the world is that at some point we lose the ability to control our lives, and become the pawns of fate. Perhaps this is the secret of Coelho's success: that he tells people what they want to hear, or rather that he tells them that what they wish for but never thought possible could even be probable.
Coelho also suggests that those who do not have the courage to follow their " Personal Myth", are doomed to a life of emptiness, misery, and unfulfillment. Fear of failure seems to be the greatest obstacle to happiness. As the old crystal-seller tragically confesses: " I am afraid that great disappointment awaits me, and so I prefer to dream". This is where Coelho really captures the drama of man, who sacrifices fulfillment to conformity, who knows he can achieve greatness but denies to do so, and ends up living a life of void.
It is interesting to see that Coelho presents the person who denies to follow his dream as the person who denies to see God, and that "every happy person carries God within him". However, only few people choose to follow the road that has been made for them, and find God while searching for their destiny, and their mission on earth.
Consequently, is Coelho suggesting that the alchemists found God while searching for the elixir of life and the philosopher's stone? What is certain is that the symbolism of the text is a parallel to the symbolism and the symbolic language of alchemism, and similarly the symbolism of dreams is presented as " God's language".
It is also symbolic that Santiago finds his soul-mate, and the secrets of wisdom in the wilderness of the desert. The "wilderness" is a symbol that has been used by many great writers e.g.. Austen in "Mansfield Park", and Shakespeare in "King Lear". In the desert, Santiago meets his "twin-soul" and discovers that love is the core of existence and creation. As Coelho explains, when we love, we always try to improve ourselves, and that's when everything is possible. The subject of love inspires a beautiful lyricism in Coelho's writing: " I love you because the whole universe conspired for me to come close to you."
"The Alchemist" is a novel that may appeal to everybody, because we can all identify with Santiago: all of us have dreams, and are dying for somebody to tell us that they may come true. The novel skillfully combines words of wisdom, philosophy, and simplicity of meaning and language, which makes it particularly readable and accounts for its bestselling status.
Book review by Anna Hassapi
Sophie's World
Who are you? Where does the world come from? These are two questions Sophie, a fifteen year-old Norwegian girl, receives in her mailbox one day from an unknown stranger. Thus begins a mysterious adventure for Sophie, and an adventure for any person of any age who reads her story.
For Sophie becomes the student of a fifty year old philosopher, Alberto, who proceeds to teach her the history of philosophy. She gets a very creditable and understandable review of the ideas of major philosophers from the Pre-Socratic Greeks to Jean-Paul Sartre.
Mixed in with the philosophy lessons is a wonderful story complete with a mysterious cabin in the woods, a magic brass mirror, a marvelous messenger dog named Hermes, and even brief appearances by Little-Red-Riding-Hood and Winnie-the-Pooh. And it is something of a shock to find out who Sophie and Alberto really are - although it should have been completely obvious to anyone from the very first page of the book.
The philosophy is wonderful and wonderfully presented. Sophie learns about Medieval philosophy while being lectured by a monk in an ancient church, and she learns about Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir in a French café. It all begins with a quotation from Goethe: "He who cannot draw on three thousand years is living from hand to mouth." Could the world have come from nothing? It all seemed so illogical until Democritus invented the most ingenious toy in the world. Next we see Socrates standing in front of a market stall packed with various goods. "What a wonderful number of things I have no use for." We learn about Plato and his theories about the existence of an ideal world of which we see only the dim reflection. But many mathematicians and scientists think they can catch a glimpse of that ideal world.
Alberto then takes Sophie through Hellenism to the rise of Christianity and its interaction with Greek thought and on into the Middle Ages. We even learn about Hildegard of Bingen, a 12th century Catholic Nun who was a preacher, physician, botanist, biologist, and composer. (You can even buy compact disks of her music.) He covers the Renaissance, Baroque, Enlightenment and Romantic periods. Other important figures presented are Descartes ("he wanted to clear all the rubble off the site"), Spinoza ("God is not a puppeteer"), Locke, Hume, Berkeley ("we exist only in the mind of God"), Bjerkely (How did that get in here?), Kant ("the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me"), Hegel, Kierkegaard ("it’s one thing to collect Barbie dolls, but worse to be one"), Marx, Darwin and Freud.
The book approaches its conclusion at a philosophical garden party which Sophie throws to celebrate her birthday. But alas, it turns into a rather sordid affair where Alberto finally speaks the plain truth and then he and Sophie use the confusion to escape to their true identities. The book has other wonderful features, but to mention them would give away too much in advance.
So, if you have anything of the fifteen year old girl in you, or of an elderly philosopher, or love ideas, then read this book, and if you have anyone close to you, read it aloud and argue out the ideas - that’s the way it used to be done. After all Socrates engaged in dialogues not because he claimed to be a teacher but because he believed it takes two to philosophize. The principal alternative is to watch the Medusa-TV sets and run the risk of having your heart turned to stone.
Reviewed by David Park
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