• schopenhauer1
    10.8k
    I'd like to start a thread analyzing various aphorisms and quotes from E.M. Cioran, the semi-famous Romanian pessimistic philosopher. His aphorisms can have various interpretations. Here is a little of his background to get some idea where he is coming from when analyzing his quotes. This first post will be about Cioran, and then I will start providing quotes to analyze and comment on.

    E.M. Cioran (from Wikipedia): (8 April 1911 – 20 June 1995) was a Romanian philosopher and essayist, who published works in both Romanian and French. His work has been noted for its pervasive philosophical pessimism, and frequently engages with issues of suffering, decay, and nihilism. Among his best-known works are On the Heights of Despair (1934) and The Trouble with Being Born (1973). Cioran's first French book, A Short History of Decay, was awarded the prestigious Rivarol Prize in 1950. The Latin Quarter of Paris was his permanent residence and he lived much of his life in isolation with his partner Simone Boué.

    Professing a lack of interest in conventional philosophy in his early youth, Cioran dismissed abstract speculation in favor of personal reflection and passionate lyricism. "I’ve invented nothing; I’ve simply been the secretary of my sensations",[citation needed] he later said.

    Pessimism characterizes all of his works, which many critics trace back to events of his childhood (in 1935 his mother is reputed to have told him that if she had known he was going to be so unhappy she would have aborted him). However, Cioran's pessimism (in fact, his skepticism, even nihilism) remains both inexhaustible and, in its own particular manner, joyful; it is not the sort of pessimism which can be traced back to simple origins, single origins themselves being questionable. When Cioran's mother spoke to him of abortion, he confessed that it did not disturb him, but made an extraordinary impression which led to an insight about the nature of existence ("I'm simply an accident. Why take it all so seriously?" is what he later said in reference to the incident).[17]

    His works often depict an atmosphere of torment, a state that Cioran himself experienced, and came to be dominated by lyricism and, often, the expression of intense and even violent feeling. The books he wrote in Romanian especially display this latter characteristic. Preoccupied with the problems of death and suffering, he was attracted to the idea of suicide, believing it to be an idea that could help one go on living, an idea which he fully explored in On the Heights of Despair. He revisits suicide in depth in The New Gods, which contains a section of aphorisms devoted to the subject. The theme of human alienation, the most prominent existentialist theme, presented by Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, is thus formulated, in 1932, by young Cioran: "Is it possible that existence is our exile and nothingness our home?" in On the Heights of Despair.

    Cioran’s works encompass many other themes as well: original sin, the tragic sense of history, the end of civilization, the refusal of consolation through faith, the obsession with the absolute, life as an expression of man's metaphysical exile, etc. He was a thinker passionate about history; widely reading the writers that were associated with the period of "decadent". One of these writers was Oswald Spengler who influenced Cioran's political philosophy in that he offered Gnostic reflections on the destiny of man and civilization. According to Cioran, as long as man has kept in touch with his origins and hasn't cut himself off from himself, he has resisted decadence. Today, he is on his way to his own destruction through self-objectification, impeccable production and reproduction, excess of self-analysis and transparency, and artificial triumph.

    Regarding God, Cioran has noted that "without Bach, God would be a complete second rate figure" and that "Bach's music is the only argument proving the creation of the Universe cannot be regarded as a complete failure".[18] In an interview he stated that Bach had been a "kind of religion" for him. He mentioned that Bach and Dostoyevsky were the two great obsessions of his life, but that while his passion for Dostoyevsky ended up diminishing somewhat, his obsession with Bach "remained intact".

    William H. Gass called Cioran's work "a philosophical romance on the modern themes of alienation, absurdity, boredom, futility, decay, the tyranny of history, the vulgarities of change, awareness as agony, reason as disease".

    Cioran became most famous while writing not in Romanian but French, a language with which he had struggled since his youth. During Cioran's lifetime, Saint-John Perse called him "the greatest French writer to honor our language since the death of Paul Valéry."[19] Cioran's tone and usage in his adopted language were seldom as harsh as in Romanian (though his use of Romanian is said to be more original).[citation needed]

    More here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emil_Cioran
  • schopenhauer1
    10.8k
    One of his most famous quotes- enigmatic yet meaningful. Any thoughts what he is trying to convey?

    “It is not worth the bother of killing yourself, since you always kill yourself too late.”
    ― Emil Cioran, The Trouble with Being Born
  • Shawn
    13.2k


    If I remember correctly, that quote intended to convey the absurdity of existence. In the same manner as to how one ought to approach his philosophy.
  • schopenhauer1
    10.8k

    True, has absurd elements, but what is he saying about suicide?
  • Shawn
    13.2k
    True, has absurd elements, but what is he saying about suicide?schopenhauer1

    I can't recall where I'm getting this; but, this quote brings out the prominence of the Will with respect to the world. In that, the Will is futile and ever-changing with respect to the world, which is absolute and domineering in imposing situations/circumstances that lead one to want to commit suicide.
  • Shawn
    13.2k
    There's also the fact that the quote pretty much addresses the metaphysics of Cioran's philosophical system, which is fatalistic and deterministic. Again, it's been a while since I read my Cioran...
  • schopenhauer1
    10.8k
    I can't recall where I'm getting this; but, this quote brings out the prominence of the Will with respect to the world. In that, the Will is futile and ever-changing with respect to the world, which is absolute and domineering in imposing situations/circumstances that lead one to want to commit suicide.Wallows

    As far as I know, he wasn't so much a philosopher of Will like Schopenhauer, so this might not quite have to do with that. Certainly, that can be a characterization of Schopenhauer and his idea of suicide as a paradox..That being that you use the very Will that you are trying to extinguish to will your own death. Then he goes on to answer the paradox by becoming an ascetic who denies the will through slow extinction of self.

    I'd like to focus on the idea of always killing yourself "too late".
  • Shawn
    13.2k
    I'd like to focus on the idea of always killing yourself "too late".schopenhauer1

    I think it's most akin to learning that the free will is an illusion, according to Cioran, and, the only response to such a realization is the absurdity of one's fatalistic existence.
  • schopenhauer1
    10.8k
    I think it's most akin to learning that the free will is an illusion, according to Cioran, and, the only response to such a realization is the absurdity of one's fatalistic existence.Wallows

    Okay.. maybe keep going with that. I wasn't thinking along those lines but it could raise some interesting points.
  • Matias
    85
    Alors.. here's an aphorism:
    "Il est impossible d'être jugé par quelqu'un qui a moins souffert que nous. Et comme chacun se croît un Job méconnu..." (De l'inconvénient d'être né"]
    "It is impossible to be judged by someone who has suffered less than we have. And as each one believes himself to be an unrecognized Job..."
  • schopenhauer1
    10.8k
    "It is impossible to be judged by someone who has suffered less than we have. And as each one believes himself to be an unrecognized Job..."Matias

    Excellent quote.. but we are jumping ahead.. What do you think this first one means about always killing yourself too late?
  • schopenhauer1
    10.8k

    Here's my take. I think he is saying that suicide doesn't take away the fact that we have existed in the first place. By the very fact we have gotten to the point where we want to end our existence, we have already endured that very existence that has lead us here. Ending our experience after our birth is not the same as wanting to never have experienced experience in the first place. It is a longing for a nothingness that never was. In another quote he says:

    “Better to be an animal than a man, an insect than an animal, a plant than an insect, and so on.

    Salvation? Whatever diminishes the kingdom of consciousness and compromises its supremacy.”

    ― Emil Cioran, The Trouble with Being Born

    Further, to bring in Schopenhauer.. To commit suicide is really to ask the universe a question that can never be answered.
  • Le Vautre
    15
    Je n'ai jamais lu un sermon de Bouddha ou une page de Schopenhauer sans broyer du rose. — Cioran

    :lol:
  • schopenhauer1
    10.8k
    Is that translated:
    I have never read a Buddha sermon or a page of Schopenhauer without grinding rose?

    Oh I think it's something like grinding pink or growing pink??
  • Le Vautre
    15
    Yes, "grinding rose" meaning "to be optimistic".

    I read/listen (interviews) a fair bit of Cioran, and I gave up analysis of his thoughts few years ago: he said that there was nothing more funny than a man who tries to do some analysis... of his thoughts!

    If you can read some French, here is the thesis of Nicolas Cavaillès, a specialist of Cioran's works, in which he compiles in the beginning all the "kind words" that Cioran had against his analyzers. ...

    For example, etc.:

    Toute exégèse est profanation. — Cioran
  • schopenhauer1
    10.8k

    Oh, I have no doubt that Cioran himself would hate what I'm doing. His aphorisms are meant to be their own analysis and probably should be read in the context of his essays. However, I'm gonna do it anyways :D. I'll mine the absurd, absurdly and corrupt the words into concrete reifications. But I am using him as a start to a series of pessimist philosophers and analyzing their thoughts. His quotes happen to be short enough and accessible enough that it is a good starting place.
  • schopenhauer1
    10.8k
    Yes, "grinding rose" meaning "to be optimistic".Le Vautre

    As for that quote, I think it is perfect. I don't know what it is, but some of the most glee comes from the pessimistic turn of phrases from these authors. That someone can have such perceptive insight into what is the case, is fun to read.
  • Le Vautre
    15
    In the long run it's not amusing at all. It's even a little bit toxic. Lacan said about the saint: "we don't know where he takes us"... It can be true for Cioran sometimes!
  • schopenhauer1
    10.8k
    In the long run it's not amusing at all. It's even a little bit toxic. Lacan said about the saint: "we don't know where he takes us"... It can be true for Cioran sometimes!Le Vautre

    Little bit toxic? Ha, I think their point is that life is more than a little bit toxic :p. Cioran's charm is his sense of irony in the glee he gets from constantly discovering this in various aspects of history, identity, consciousness.
  • schopenhauer1
    10.8k
    Next aphorism:

    “Only optimists commit suicide, optimists who no longer succeed at being optimists. The others, having no reason to live, why would they have any to die?”
    ― Emil Cioran

    I think this quote explains the first one.
  • Le Vautre
    15
    ... ... Don't forget to be not to not be, but to para-be, that is to say to be the one who don't go away! :joke:
  • schopenhauer1
    10.8k

    Not sure I understood this one. Can you explain that?
  • matt
    154


    “It is not worth the bother of killing yourself, since you always kill yourself too late.”

    I think he's trying to be humorous meaning that you should have done it yesterday. Its a pessimistic expression. He says life isn't worth living/beginning/starting but we can only ever experience already having existed. You always kill yourself too late because you should have never been born.
  • schopenhauer1
    10.8k

    Yes, I agree with this assessment. Being born has already been inflicted. If Schopenhauer is correct, suicide thwarts the very feeling of relief that was trying to be satisfied. You're stuck because you were and are.
  • schopenhauer1
    10.8k
    Here is another aphorism:

    “A zoologist who observed gorillas in their native habitat was amazed by the uniformity of their life and their vast idleness. Hours and hours without doing anything. Was boredom unknown to them? This is indeed a question raised by a human, a busy ape. Far from fleeing monotony, animals crave it, and what they most dread is to see it end. For it ends, only to be replaced by fear, the cause of all activity. Inaction is divine; yet it is against inaction that man has rebelled. Man alone, in nature, is incapable of enduring monotony, man alone wants something to happen at all costs — something, anything.... Thereby he shows himself unworthy of his ancestor: the need for novelty is the characteristic of an alienated gorilla.”
    ― E. M. Cioran, The Trouble with Being Born
  • schopenhauer1
    10.8k
    Once again, existentialcomics has the appropriate comic this week:

    http://existentialcomics.com/comic/295
  • Le Vautre
    15
    Besides, the "M" (for Michel or Mihai) in "E. M. Cioran" is incorrect. (I don't know where it comes from; it's a recurrent mistake in both French and English websites. Maybe it's a nom d'auteur, but for the moment I can't find something that can prove it.)
  • Baden
    16.3k
    "It is not worth the bother of killing yourself, since you always kill yourself too late.”schopenhauer1

    “Only optimists commit suicide, optimists who no longer succeed at being optimists. The others, having no reason to live, why would they have any to die?”
    ― Emil Cioran
    schopenhauer1

    You always kill yourself too late because you are so alienated from your own identify by the time you want to destroy it that there is nothing left to destroy. Like insisting on incinerating the skin of a piece of fruit that's already been eaten. It's too late to do any damage worthwhile. If life is what you despise, your life such as it had any substance has been drained from you by the time you wish to end it. I think Cioran points to his game here, which is the same game played by most extreme pessimists, and that is to productively externalise their negativity as a process of catharsis in order precisely to make life worth living, or feel so, so long as said orientation is always presented as its obverse. Cioran's pessimism is itself the cloak of identity which refutes its central premise. He lived a long, productive and creative life not despite, but because of, his professed disgust for existence, which professed disgust he milked for every psychic drop of energy it could provide. And this secret life-affirming joy of pessimism is something we should all share in with a wry backward smile. It's the optimists who will kill you with their obvious lies, or you yourself if you cleave yourself to/with their words. Better to be at the bottom of the sea and realize you have gills than on a cruise ship heading for an ice-berg.
  • Inyenzi
    81
    “It is not worth the bother of killing yourself, since you always kill yourself too late.” — Cioran

    Suicide destroys that which could be better or worse off by the act. You are already living, and therefore any improvement to your welfare, or the conditions of your existence, can only occur whilst you continue to live. Why bother killing yourself, if you can't benefit from the act?

    Its not possible to suicide prior to coming into existence, but now that you exist, it is too late. Having coming into existence as a being afflicted by welfare states, the harm has already been done. It now makes no sense to suicide as a way to improve your state of welfare, as you will destroy that which could be worse or better off by the act of lethally harming yourself.
bold
italic
underline
strike
code
quote
ulist
image
url
mention
reveal
youtube
tweet
Add a Comment

Welcome to The Philosophy Forum!

Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.