Education
University of Bucharest (thesis on Bergson, 1932). Moved to France 1937.
University of Bucharest (thesis on Bergson, 1932). Moved to France 1937.
Main publications:
(1934) Pe culmile disperarii [On the Summits of Despair],
U937) Lacrimi si sfmti [Tears of the Saints],
(1949) Précis de décomposition, Paris: Éditions Gallimard.
(1952) Syllogismes de l'Amertume, Paris: Éditions Gallimard.
(1956) La Tentation d'exister, Paris: Éditions Gallimard (English translation. The Temptation to Exist, trans. R. Howard, London: Quartet, 1987).
( 1957) Joseph de Maistre, Paris: Éditions Gallimard.
(1964) La chute dans le temps, Paris: Gallimard.
(1969) Le mauvais demiurge, Paris: Gallimard.
(1973) De i inconvenient d'être né, Paris: Gallimard. (1979) Ecartèlement, Paris: Gallimard.
(1991) Le crépuscule des pensées, Paris: Gallimard. (1993) Brévaire des vaincus, Paris: Gallimard.
Secondary literature:
Jaudeau, F. (1990) Cioran, ou, te dernier homme, Paris: Corti.
Savater, F. (1992) Ensayo sobre Cioran, Madrid: Espasa Calpe.
Sontag, S. (1968) 'Thinking against oneself: reflections on Cioran'
reprinted in Cioran, The Temptation to Exist, trans. R. Howard. London: Quartet, 1987.
Tanner, M. (1990) 'Introduction' to A Short History °f Decay, trans. R. Howard, London: Quartet. Tiffreau, P. (1991) Cioran. ou, La dissection du gouffre, Paris: Veyrier.
Cioran was a self-styled ‘analyst of decadence’, whose style of writing Tanner describes as that of aphorism and rant’. Having never been a ‘professional’ philosopher, Cioran's first recognised Work, Précis de décomposition ( 1949), is a curious of the existential and the Nietzschean barbaric, a tirade, in the ideal moralist tradition. against living life and in favour of describing it. He describes existence as a temptation, a theme he later returns to in greater depth, but one which he chooses not to fall victim to until he has seen what it is like not to live. Dedicating many pages to the necessity of suicide, the cross-currential influence of Camus is seen most clearly. This ‘decadence’, in La Tentation d'exister (1956), turns its attention to Western Thought Consolidated. The temptation to exist is seen as no more than the temporary attainment of relevance in a temporal flux, but a relevance carrying within it its own obsolescence, Western thought being a species of monad, relentlessly developing 'ought' from 'is' in an ahistorical, abstracted narrative which, come Hegel, who presented philosophy as the history of philosophy, had usurped 'nature' as the prime framework of human experience. Cioran’s own writing mirrors the only available recourse, what Sontag describes as ‘mutilated, incomplete discourse’. But The Temptation to Exist is more a ‘mutilated discourse’ on thought, and on discourse, itself. Abstraction in extremis, he holds that, in order to escape from the mortal ennui created by thought, we have to push that thought to its limit-points, to make ourselves sick with thought in order to find the cure. This cure is to be found in liberation from action, the only authentic mode of human freedom. Cioran’s writings, described by himself as ‘abstract biography-, have found greater resonance in literature than in philosophy—Beckett’s later novels and Sontag’s essays are just two examples—although Spanish philosophers have ‘championed’ his work as contributing to the debate over the health of the national intellectual, the moral philosopher Fernando Savater helping to ‘publicize’ his work, and the style of Eugenio Trias benefiting much from a reading of Cioran.