Poverty of Existence: Suffering,
Asceticism and Irrationality
There's so much I find intriguing
and consonant with in E. M. Cioran, (8 April 1911 – 20 June 1995) a Romanian
philosopher, who struggles for years with insomnia and spends long nights walking
around his quiet city thinking about his despair.
His lyrical essays revolve around
themes of suffering, failures, decay and nihilism.
Even as a young man, he thought of
suicide.
What prevented him was this lucid
insight that “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?”
“The fact that life has no meaning
is a reason to live --moreover, the only one.”
And writing was his way to tame his
ferocious despair.
“A book is a suicide postponed,” he
says.
He sees futility everywhere and so
distances himself from society and keeps only a few friends.
“I don’t understand why we must do
things in this world, why we must have friends and aspirations, hopes and
dreams. Wouldn’t it be better to retreat to
a faraway corner of the world, where all its noise and complications would be
heard no more?"
He continues, "Then we could
renounce culture and ambitions; we would lose everything and gain nothing; for
what is there to be gained from this world?”
“As far as I am concerned, I resign
from humanity. I no longer want to be, nor can still be, a man."
His response to meaninglessness is
to clearly accept that all of life is pointless.
"What should I do?
Work for a social and political
system, make a girl miserable?
Hunt for weaknesses in philosophical
systems, fight for moral and esthetic ideals?
It’s all too little.
I renounce my humanity even though I
may find myself alone.
But am I not already alone in this
world from which I no longer expect anything?” (On the Heights of Despair)
What is the source of man's despair?
Man is cursed with his ability to
think deep.
"True thinking resembles a
demon who muddies the spring of life or a sickness which corrupts its roots. To think all the time, to raise
questions, to doubt your own destiny, to feel the weariness of living, to be
worn out to the point of exhaustion by thoughts and life,.. all this means you
are so unhappy that reflection and thinking appear as a curse causing a violent
revulsion in you.”
Cioran believes thinking lucidly is
incompatible with life.
He says, "That kind of
thinking, that understanding that pushes too far, is dangerous....life is only
bearable because one does not go to the end (of thinking); doing something is
only possible when one has particular illusions...for everything."
To be happy, don't think!
Just vegetate with illusions.
Eat, drink, be merry.
Contra Socrates, the unexamined life
is a happy life.
“Only those are happy who never
think or, rather, who only think about life's bare necessities, and to think
about such things means not to think at all," observes Cioran.
In an interview, he insightfully
remarks in conclusion and with total resignation,
"I am ... fed up with cursing
at the world, at God;
the whole thing is simply not worth
it."
Notes
His best-known works are "On
the Heights of Despair" (1934) and "The Trouble with Being Born"
(1973).
His first French book, "A Short
History of Decay", was awarded the prestigious Rivarol Prize in 1950.
