ANNALES UNIVERSITATIS APULENSIS. SERIES PHILOLOGICA
Cioran – as a doctrinarian and idealist philosopher
Lect.univ.dr. MARA MAGDA MAFTEI
ASE Bucureşti
This very short article aims at establishing some common points between three important
philosophers Camus, Schopenhauer, Nietzsch, from which Cioran learnt to orientate himself in
the philosophical environment. The suicide, the will to live and the will to power represent the
key instruments by means of which Cioran built his own philosophical discourse. The philosophy
of losing and of inability, but also of winning which prevails in the end, all helped Cioran to
build his own vision over the way his obsessions may and can be thought.
Cioran read enormously. Almost at random, taking into account just his inner bound, that
chaotic inner self, which, at a certain point in time, in his Romanian period, he will turn it into a
kind of political philosophy, partially learnt from Nae Ionescu. I could say partially because
Cioran will rest till the end of his days a shaky aghast, unable to assume himself a more or less
historical mission as related to a point in time. After signaling some inabilities of the Romanian
environment, Cioran gives up. He will indulge himself into the nostalgia of the non-fulfillment.
Where is Cioran taking from the resources to furnish his metaphysical revolt? From his lectures,
but especially from life; knowledge comes from his contact with the losers, those people who
know suffering in a very disordered manner. The main line of Cioran’s political as well as
existential philosophy is the lost, his own lost to impose on an international scale, but also the
lost of his country. The accomplishment of his country would have meant his own
accomplishment; there still dominates the proud of the inability: “I reached than to understand
that my country does not resist to my pride that, anyway, confronted against my demands, the
country proved to be insignificant”1. Cioran remains wholly speaking the devoted student of Nae
Ionescu, but Cioran’s desire for his country to make a megalithic, imperialist destiny resides also
in the subjectivism of his philosophical lectures. The general manner approached by Cioran is
depressive, as Schopenhauer proved to be, tragic as in the case of Sestov, but always revolting as
Camus, perfectly aware of his inability to surpass some limits often designed by Nietzche. The
four important pillars in the subjective philosophy of Cioran. There remains the political
philosophy, where there dominates a different revolt against the system itself and its decadent
ideas accepted by taking over the thoughts of Spengler, Keyserling, philosophers of the
dissolution of the political system, very fashionable at the time. From my point of view, the
complete philosophy of Cioran may be traced back in three essential books: Pe culmile
disperării – the existentialist philosophy, Schimbarea la faţă a României – the political
philosophy, Lacrimi şi sfinţi – the religious philosophy. Generally speaking, Cioran is to be
considered a representative of the Romanian existentialism, known as experientialism or
trairism, with Christian and mystical traces, obviously taken over from Nae Ionescu. There
dominates in the case of the Romanian existentialism, the impact of the self experience and of
proper living and understanding of the reality, not vice versa, all that matters is “to be yourself”,
1
E. Cioran, Ţara mea, traducere din limba franceză de către Gabriel Liiceanu, cu un cuvânt înainte de Simone Boue,
Editura Humanitas, Bucureşti, 1996, p. 14
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LITERATURĂ ROMÂNĂ ŞI COMPARATĂ
and only after taking into account the surrounding reality. Surprisingly, the existentialism as
itself represents the perfect formula of liberalism, by the supremacy given to the individual and
to the individual freedom as it is. The assumption of these prerogatives forms the basis of
experientialism. The trairism represents the Romanian formula, and at Cioran we shall find the
irrationality, the anxiety, the presence of death, the suicide, the absurd of the life itself, the
loneliness and especially the failure. As different from the existentialists themselves, for trairism
and implicitly for Cioran, the being does not become, the being is kept into a define setting of
elements. It is this finitude of the being which exasperates Cioran. The trairism finds its own
resources in the domestic political philosophy, in the philosophy of the between the two wars
generation made up by the professor Nae Ionescu, but the trairism borrows some features also
from the subjective philosophy: Camus, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche.
The experientialism of Camus is to be found in the trairism of Cioran. For Camus any
effort is absurd as it ends up in death, therefore in the human temporal limits or in the limits
imposed by the society. The human being revolts him/herself against the two boundaries, but
s/he revolts for nothing. The fight against the finitude, against God is lost from the beginning and
the fight against the society does not obey itself to God’s laws. Consequently, the world cannot
be found a meaning. Is suicide a solution as to face this absurd? But: “in the attachment of a
human being as towards its own life, there is something much stronger than all the miseries to be
found in the world”2. A too small number of people commit suicide for the problems the
humankind is confronted itself with, but the own life reaches tragic connotations because it
belongs to you and it is unique. There remains the philosophical suicide, or “the existentialist
attitude” as named by Camus when facing life; it is not the path which matters but the will to
reach to the end of it. There is no science which may teach the human being how to cross the
path in a more rational way, maybe just the intuition which enlightens the own vision over the
truth, as truth is the way each individual manages to understand the reality; each individual has
his/her own truth which matters and each individual may prove a certain level of understanding
which cannot surpass the limits of the human condition. There is therefore about an absurd
freedom, as from your own limits or the limits of the state you live in you cannot go out, and the
freedom each of us is assuming depends on the sum of the experiences we are forced to face
during life or we provoke to ourselves. Than what way is the human being able to search out of
the chaos of uncertainties? The creation, which in its turn, is absurd, as it tries to explain the
unexplainable. Therefore, the artist lives in the middle of a big “intellectual drama” as s/he tries
to feel and live with the absurd. The work of art cannot be the perfect mirror of a loser, for
example, as it is artificial, “it means the death of an experience (….) it is as a monotonous and
full of passion experience of the themes orchestrated in this world: the body, the inexhaustive
image on the frontispiece of temples, the forms and colors, the number and the sufferance”3.
Everything is absurd not because the ending is established first of all, but because the human
being aware of this endeavor insists, suffers and s/he goes back again: “There is no sun without
shadow and we must also know the night. The absurd human being says yes and his/her effort
will never stop”4. Even if the human being knows his/her limits, s/he cannot accept them as they
are. S/he revolts him/herself, as starting from that moment, s/he gets out of the anonymity and
from the loneliness of his destiny and thus s/he proves his own existence: “In our day to day
experience, the revolt plays the same role as the cogito in the order of thinking: it is the first
proof. But this proof takes the individual out of loneliness. It is a common place, which is based
2
A. Camus, Absurdul şi sinuciderea în Mitul lui Sisif, inclus în volumul Faţa şi reversul, Nunta, Mitul lui Sisif,
Omul revoltat, Vara, traducere realizată de către Irina Mavrodin, Mihaela Simion, Modest Morariu, introducere de
Irina Mavrodin, Editura Rao, Bucureşti, 2006, p. 116
3
A. Camus, Creaţia absurdă în Mitul lui Sisif, apud Ibidem, p. 192
4
A. Camus, Mitul lui Sisif apud Ibidem, p. 216
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ANNALES UNIVERSITATIS APULENSIS. SERIES PHILOLOGICA
on all the individuals of main value. I revolt myself, it means that we exist”5. Therefore,
admitting the absurdity of life ends up in revolt, in the trial to give up a sense to his/her own
existence.
Cioran will start up from the same prerequisites, of the inutility, of the existential
absurd, as he admits at the age of 22 that “there are no arguments to live” 6, but all his discourse,
even if similar to the Camusian one is more based on the his own experiences, the non-sense of
his own existence becomes an universal dilemma. It is exactly this non-sense and this inability
which he will use in order to mention the larval destiny of his own country. He is a man who
suffers, but he suffers because nothing has a meaning, including his own life: “The fact that I
exist proves that the world has no sense. Because what sense can I find to the searches of a man
infinitely dramatic and miserable, for which everything is in the end reduced to nothing and for
whom the law of this world is the sufferance?”. Cioran does not exclude, as Camus does, the
suicide, his own, at that time, reaching the idea of collective death when he supported the Iron
Guard. We all wondered in time why “an expert in both the problem of death” at the age of 22
and the problem of suicide, he waited to die after all of natural causes? Cioran is tempted only by
the idea of the suicide out of too much sufferance and inner tension, out of the inability to see the
end of the path to be followed, he lacks the assumed will to run through the path. Camus writes
that the only existence which really matters is the one of the individual, for Cioran the only one
which matters is his own existence: “each human being remains with his own sufferance, which
s/he believes to be absolute and unlimited (….) I cannot understand the sufferance of a different
individual in order to thus diminish mine”7. We may conclude that, out of the way of
argumentation, the discourse of Camus seems more objective than the discourse Cioran has,
because Camus simply refers to the human being in general. For Cioran, all the philosophy does
not make sense but if it is filtered through the own being, to the irrationality of life, the cult of
the irrationality Cioran will praise all the time and from any philosophical aspect, be it political
or just trairist. Cioran has the same philosophy of the absurd as Camus, as long as any trial of
being simply a human being with all its minor actions is absurd, as it ends up in death “why do
the individuals want desperately to make something in life?”8, but any way out of the human
limits is accepted as it means the crediting of sufferance as part of the human life. Cioran accepts
sufferance and denies the revolt; the human being does not have reasons to revolt himself, as any
way out ends up in a new entrance. Freedom is an absurd concept: “out of the so called freedom,
the human being suffers more than after the biggest possible imprisonment in the natural
existence”9.
Another great philosopher, which came out of an important culture and who offered a
solution to all universal problems is Schopenhauer. To the lack of courage and affirmation of the
Romanians, Cioran will counteract the problem of death and the will to live. Cioran will come
through this path of getting out of the area of the metaphysical utility till the entrance to the
utility engaged in the historical mission. The two issues will persist. In Cioran’s case, the will to
live is connected to the indispensable problem of death: “nobody is honest in his love towards
life, as nobody is honest in his love towards death”10. The same issue is recurrent in the
philosophy of Schopenhauer, we pay a tribute to death, but not before facing the sufferance and
the joys of life. Life is connected to death: “the life of an individual, with its infinite hard
moments, needs and sufferance, can be considered as the explanation and the paraphrase of the
generating act, meaning of the decided statement to live: to this statement the duty to die is also
5
A. Camus, Omul revoltat apud Ibidem, p. 254
6
E. Cioran, Pe culmile disperării, Editura Humanitas, Bucureşti, 2006, p. 11
7
Ibidem, p. 13
8
Ibidem, p. 137
9
Ibidem, p. 77
10
E. Cioran, Cartea amăgirilor, Editura Humanitas, Bucureşti, 1991, p. 123
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LITERATURĂ ROMÂNĂ ŞI COMPARATĂ
connected, the duty to nature even if the human being things at this duty with regrets” 11. Also,
Cioran explains even the inutility of this revolt against such a sure temporal determinate: “as
death cannot be overcome, the revolt against is nonsense and sterile. More we revolt against
death, more we prove how inutile is in us the feeling of death”12. Cioran even finds the unique
source of all the failures, of all the fears, namely the fear of death, the awareness of living in a
limited space, when, above all, you have to prove a lot. This is the generation of sufferance, the
inability to avoid death and consequently to master the various forms of fear: “there is, actually,
just the fear of death. All we think to be the diversity of fears, there is nothing but a
manifestation in various aspects when facing the same fundamental realities. The individual fears
are all connected, by hidden correspondences, by the essential fear in front of death”13. The fear
of death is translated for Schopenhauer by the strong presence of the will to live: “this strong
attachment to life is a blind and irrational action; this attachment can be explained by the fact
that our own being is already the simple wish to live, that according to this life has to be
considered the supreme asset no matter how sour, short, insecure it could be….”14. As Cioran,
who loves so much sufferance as it results from experiences, from feelings, Schopenhauer writes
about the necessity to suffer: “if life would resort only to joy, who would suffer even the mere
thought of death!”15. In Cartea amăgirilor, published in 1936, therefore in the same year as
Schimbarea la faţă a României, Cioran insists on the necessity of sufferance which modifies the
individual, but implicitly the collectivises; sufferance is a necessary mobile in the process of
mass manipulation: “only sufferance modifies the human being (….) The human beings did not
understand that against the mediocrity we cannot fight by means of sufferance. We do not
change big deal by means of culture or spirit; but sufferance has an unimaginable power to
modify (….) A whole people can be modified by means of sufferance, by a continuous
trembling, tormenting and persistent (….) Out of an indolent and sceptic people I would obtain
fire by means of fear, by a tormenting lack of tranquillity and a vibrant torment”16. We find when
reading here the revolutionary program of the Iron Guard! The trairism of Cioran previews his
political philosophy; there are the same elements, such as sufferance, pain, the tragic of the
existence, the anxiety, the loneliness, the cult of the irrationality, which are defined in its
Balcanic existentialist philosophy and which announces his own philosophy lately politically
engaged.
But the deconstructive philosopher Cioran learnt the most is Nietzsche. He is the
philosopher to dominate the whole philosophical discourse of Cioran. If Spengler or Keyserling
represent the Romanian moment of Cioran’s political involvement, Nietzsche obsessed Cioran
during his whole existence. Cioran cites and criticizes Nietzsche. Such a sick man, even
schizophrenic, abusing himself of drugs, tormented by so many contradictory human
resentments, “a dynamite man” which was able to think out such a revolutionary system,
accepted as an excuse by even Hitler. It is after all normal that Hitler found his excuse in
Nietzsche as long as the philosopher was writing: „the war and the courage were more
productive that the love for the human beings. Not your pity, but your courage made people to be
saved from misery”17, even if a philosopher is never able to put into practice his own words, he
11
A. Schopenhauer, Lumea ca voinţă şi reprezentare, traducere de Emilia Dolcu, Viorel Dumitraşcu, Gheorghe
Puiu, Editura Moldova, Iaşi, 1995, p. 376
12
Ibidem, p. 55
13
E. Cioran, Pe culmile disperării, ed. cit., p. 31
14
A. Schopenhauer, op. cit., p. 271
15
Ibidem, p. 386
16
E. Cioran, Cartea amăgirilor, ed. cit., p. 28
17
Fr. Nietzsche, Aşa grăit-a Zarathustra, introducere, cronologie şi traducere de Ştefan Aug. Doinaş, receptarea lui
Nietzsche în cultura germană, selecţie şi traducere de texte de Horia Stanca, Editura Humanitas, Bucureşti, 1994, p.
103
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is in love with their assonance, he cannot imagine their reforming impact over society.
“Individuals are not all equal”18, wrote Nietzsche; society is made up of the crowd which insists,
because of the lack of any sense of value, the concept of equality. The crowd must be controlled
and only the Superman can do it. This Superman can assume itself the attributes of the new Lord
of the world itself, as long as “God is dead”. Hitler praised this logic, as he found in Nietzsche
the excuse for his actions: a man who reforms the society lacking a God to fight for justice.
Nietzsche writes about the superior race so dear to the Hitlerism: “Come on! Be courageous!
Superior humans! The mountain of the future is to be born. Knowing that God is dead – we want
the Superman to live”19. This race can freely develop itself as the oppressive and interventionist
force of God does no longer exist. Fear does no longer exist: “superior men, the greatest danger
for you was this God”20. Cioran does not prove to have this concept of the superior human
beings, but from his point of view the Iron Guard was to put the bases of a society suffering from
the moral point of view because of the so called democratic political environment. Cioran trusted
into a different face of Romania: “When I would be sure that the possibility of a face change of
Romania is just an illusion, from that moment Romania would not constitute a problem to me”21
and he gives, as we all know, all his credit to Hitlerism dreaming to organize the Romanian
youth according to the model of the hitlerist youth organizations and to recommend “the fecund
terror in the totalitarian state”22, the only remedy in order to get Romania from collapse.
The will to power transmitted by the supermen of Nietzsche is the essence of the being,
of a new social order, the will which heals, which set free, but which is also “an agent of the
evil”, “that is why full of anger and anxiety, she rolls over rocks and revenges against those who
do not feel the same anger and misery”23. The will to power indulges anger and revolt against a
pre established order, against a solid order; this kind of will brings with it the essence of joy, the
joy to take the courage to destroy something which is pre established: “the will – here is the
name of the one which sets freedom and joy…”24. The will to power is not an existential point to
be taken into account in Cioran’s writings. He assimilates more the schopenhaurian will to live:
“Nietzsche was wrong when, caught in the revelation of life, he discovered the will to power as a
central issue and the essential way to be. The man confronted with life wants to know if he gives
him the last support. The will to power is not an essential issue to man; he can be strong by
having nothing. The will to power appears so often in the case of people who do not love life.
Who knows whether the will to power is not a necessity towards life!25”. Therefore, an essential
step, not a revolutionary one, as Cioran writes, being different from Nietzsche.
What Hitler did not want to notice, is that Nietzsche insisted on these characteristics
necessary in a society made mainly by philosophers, accusing the rational scholars or the
miseries of the politicians, democrats at the date when Nietzsche was writing his masterpiece.
Maybe just of this democratic element was Hitler prevailing himself when he assumed the
practicing of the nietzschian system.
The wise people are treated with indifference also by Cioran: “I hate the wise people as
they are cozy, fearful and reserved”26.
18
Ibidem, p. 159
19
Ibidem, p. 352
20
Ibidem
21
E. Cioran, România în faţa străinătăţii în Vremea, an VII, nr. 335, 29 aprilie 1934, p. 3 apud E. Cioran,
Singurătate şi destin, Publicistică 1931-1944, Editura Humanitas, Bucureşti, 1991, p. 260
22
E. Cioran, Spre o altă Românie în Vremea, 17 februarie 1935
23
Fr. Nietzsche, Aşa grăit-a Zarathustra, op. cit., p. 201
24
Ibidem
25
E. Cioran, Cartea amăgirilor, op. cit., p. 123
26
E. Cioran, Pe culmile disperării, op. cit., p. 103
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LITERATURĂ ROMÂNĂ ŞI COMPARATĂ
Nietzsche mocks at the schopenhauerian “will to live”, writing: “this will – simply does
not exist!27”.
He counteracts to this “the will to power”: “only where there is life there is also will: but
not the will to live but, - learn from me – the will to power!”28. It sounds almost ridiculous the
force of this concept born by the brain of a man who was so fragile from the psychical point of
view!
Cioran found in Nietzsche “the pleasure of destruction”, the tragic philosophy, but
especially contradictory, which gives birth to pessimism. Nietzsche thought of himself to be:
“the first tragic philosopher – meaning the most contradictory and the opposite of a pessimist
philosopher”29.
It is very curious the metamorphosis of Cioran as concerning the acceptance of God. He
runs the distance from atheism, from “God is dead”, towards faith and vice versa, but he accepts
that the human being remains the owner of the idea of God; that is why, the human being
compares itself to God in different moments on his existence, he accepts or he approaches God,
but in crucial moments “you found yourself in front of God. None immortal sequence cannot
escape you from such a fall”30.
Bibliografie:
1. Camus, A., Absurdul şi sinuciderea în Mitul lui Sisif, inclus în volumul Faţa şi reversul,
Nunta, Mitul lui Sisif, Omul revoltat, Vara, traducere realizată de către Irina Mavrodin,
Mihaela Simion, Modest Morariu, introducere de Irina Mavrodin, Editura Rao, Bucureşti,
2006
2. Cioran, E., Spre o altă Românie în Vremea, 17 februarie 1935
3. Cioran, E., Cartea amăgirilor, Editura Humanitas, Bucureşti, 1991
4. Cioran, E., Singurătate şi destin, Publicistică 1931-1944, Ed. Humanitas, Bucureşti, 1991
5. Cioran, E., Ţara mea, traducere din limba franceză de către Gabriel Liiceanu, cu un
cuvânt înainte de Simone Boue, Editura Humanitas, Bucureşti, 1996
6. Cioran, E., Amurgul gândurilor, Editura Humanitas, Bucureşti, 1996
7. Cioran, E., Pe culmile disperării, Editura Humanitas, Bucureşti, 2006
8. Nietzsche, Fr., Aşa grăit-a Zarathustra, introducere, cronologie şi traducere de Ştefan
Aug.Doinaş, receptarea lui Nietzsche în cultura germană, selecţie şi traducere de texte de
Horia Stanca, Editura Humanitas, Bucureşti, 1994
9. Nietzsche, Fr., Ecce homo, traducere de Mircea Ivănescu, Editura Dacia, Cluj-Napoca,
1994
10. Schopenhauer, A., Lumea ca voinţă şi reprezentare, traducere de Emilia Dolcu, Viorel
Dumitraşcu, Gheorghe Puiu, Editura Moldova, Iaşi, 1995
27
Fr. Nietzsche, Aşa grăit-a Zarathustra, op. cit., p. 175 Fr. Nietzsche, Aşa grăit-a Zarathustra, op. cit., p. 175
28
Ibidem
29
Fr. Nietzsche, Ecce homo, traducere de Mircea Ivănescu, Editura Dacia, Cluj-Napoca, 1994, p. 65
30
E. Cioran, Amurgul gândurilor, Editura Humanitas, Bucureşti, 1996, p. 55
70