The Cioranian Philosophy

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An Introduction to Cioranian Way of Thinking

4                    Who is Emil Cioran

 

Emil Cioran was born on 8th of April 1911 in Rășinari, near Sibiu, Southern Transylvania, then part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. His father was a Romanian Orthodox priest. From 1920 to 1928 Cioran attended high school in Sibiu. Even as school boy he suffered from insomnia and from his insomnia related obsessions of death and the feelings of alienation. From 1929 to 1930 he studied philosophy at the University of Bucharest. He was interested in German philosophy, Russian spiritualists and oriental mystics. He wrote a thesis on Henri Bergson's intuitionism. In 1934 his first book, Pe culmile disperării (On the Heights of Despair), was published in Bucharest by the King Carol ll Foundation for Art and Literature. It was awarded the foundation's prestigious prize for young authors. In 1936 he earns his Teaching Certificate in philosophy. The book Cartea amăgirilor (The Book of Delusions) was published. He participated in Romania's cultural Renaissance during the 1930s belonging to Romania's Young Generation, her "angry young men", who represented "a generation whose creed was based on the primacy of youth over old age - youth being equated with spiritual fervor, authenticity, creativity, idealism, while old age symbolized routine, inertia, political corruption and petty materialism."[1] In 1937 his books Schimbarea la față a României (Romania's Transfiguration) and Lacrimi și Sfinți (Tears and Saints) were published. He won a fellowship from the French Institute in Bucharest and left for Paris, where he lived ever since, as stateless person, a status he calls "most appropriate for an intellectual." (Zarifopol-Johnston 1995, ix-x; 127; Anon. 2004, 143-144.)

From 1937 to 1949 he lived in Paris like a perennial student, applied for grants, lived in cheap hotel rooms and ate in university cafeterias. In 1947 he submitted to the Gallimard publishing house the manuscript of his first French book, Précis de décomposition, which was accepted but he retrieved it and rewrote it entirely four times, thinking that writing in French was the most difficult task of his life. In 1949 the work is published. In the 1950s he met his lifelong beloved, Simone Boue. From 1949 to 1990 he lived modestly in Paris, working part time as translator and manuscript reader, and continued his writing. (Zarifopol-Johnston 1995, 127-128.) He described his life: "I don't make a living. I eke one out. I don't wish to be well off." (Cioran, according to Zarifopol-Johnston 1995, 128.) His last book, Aveux et anathèmes, was published in 1987. After that he did not feel the urge to write. He died in Paris in 1995. Gallimard published Cioran's works as one book, Oeuvres. (Anon. 2004, 146-147.)

The main themes of Cioran's philosophy are: despair and decay, absurdity and alienation, futility and the irrationality of existence, the need for total lucidity and self-awareness and consciousness as agony (Zarifopol-Johnston 1995, xiii).

                             "Haven't people learned yet that the time of superficial intellectual games is over, that                  agony is infinitely more important than syllogism, that a cry of despair is more               revealing than the most subtle thought, and that tears always have deeper roots than     smiles?" (Cioran, according to Zarifopol-Johnston 1995, xix).

Writing and philosophizing are for Cioran organically related to suffering. Suffering means generating knowledge. His life and work are the metamorphosis of tears. (Zarifopol-Johnston 1995, xvii.): "They ask you for facts, proofs, works, and all you can show them are transformed tears" (Cioran, in Le mauvais demiurge, according to Zarifopol-Johnston 1995, xvii).

5                    Critique On Thinking

We are madly in love with our dear beliefs and conceptions (Drufva 2005, 13). The problem in this lies in the fact that we do not realize that they are beliefs but consider them to be knowledge. Some obscure power impels us to adopt a belief (Cioran 1998, 47). Cioran gives us an example of our acting as blind believers:

                            

                             "I don't know what is right and what is wrong, and yet I divide actions into good and                    bad. If anyone asked me why I do so, I couldn't give an answer. I use moral criteria         instinctively; later, when I reconsider, I do not find any justifications for having done    so." (Cioran 1995, 62.)

Beliefs and certitudes are like in our blood so that we cannot get rid of them even if we wanted to. "We bear within us - like an unchallengeable treasure - an amalgam of unworthy beliefs and certitudes" (Cioran 2010, 61; Cioran 2009, 85). Not even a skeptic is safe. He is a believer all the same, a believer in his own dear beliefs. A skeptic can even be in love with his doubts, and this makes also him a fanatic, kind of a "fanatic disbeliever", so, paradoxically - a believer anyhow.  "Even the sceptic, in love with his doubts, turns out to be a fanatic of scepticism" (Cioran 2010, 61; Cioran 2009, 85). He writes about the fanatic nature of his skepticism in The Trouble with being born:

                     

                       "I am for the most part so convinced that everything is lacking in basis,               consequence, justification, that if someone dared to contradict me, even the man I                       most admire, he would seem to me a charlatan or a fool" (Cioran 1998, 8).

                            

Characteristic for man is being dogmatic. We seem to be dogmatic automatically, without us noticing it. According to Cioran  "man is the dogmatic being par excellence" (Cioran 2010, 61; Cioran 2009, 85). Dogmas lie so deep in us that we are not conscious of them but still they influence greatly our thinking.  Our dogmas are all the deeper when we do not formulate them, when we are unaware of them, and when we still follow them. (Cioran 2010, 61; Cioran 2009, 85.)

We are not aware of all the things we believe in. We seem to believe "secretly" so that the amount of our beliefs is a secret even to ourselves. Also prejudices lie so deep in us that not all of them can be recognized. "We all believe in many more things than we think, we harbor intolerances, we cherish bloody prejudices" (Cioran  2010, 61; Cioran  2009, 85). Our prejudices seem to be omnipresent. We cannot think anything without them being present.[2] Cioran writes about his way of being dogmatic: "I may change my opinion on the same subject, the same event, ten, twenty, thirty times in the course of a single day. And to think each time, like the worst impostor, I dare utter the word 'truth'!" (Cioran 1998, 69.); "I breathe out of prejudice" (Cioran 2010, 108; Cioran 2009, 138). This being true, it is no wonder that Cioran comes to the conclusion that "intolerance constitutes the law of human affairs" and "the essence of social life is injustice" (Cioran 2010, 177; Cioran 2009, 211; Cioran 1995, 93-94.)

Men tend to be tyrants forcing people to share their points of view. It is not enough for one to decide about one's own things but one feels a constant urge to dictate to others what they should do.  All men are striving for being able to command others, it is not enough to concentrate on one's own business (Cioran 2009,  141). "The important fact is to command: almost all men aspire to this" (Cioran 2010, 110). Cioran criticizes this urge to lecture by giving "the formulas for happiness" to others (Cioran 2009, 24): "All expend their criminal generosity, all hand out formulas for happiness, all try to give directions"  (Cioran  2010, 6). We imagine to be like a supreme court or a god which is to be seen in that "each of us is a supreme dogma to himself" (Cioran  2010, 62; Cioran 2009, 85). Nobody likes a back seat driver, though.

                     

                      "We cannot reflect and be modest. Once the mind is set to work, it replaces God and                              anything else - -. (Cioran 1998, 112.)

                     

                      "Each of us believes, quite unconsciously of course, that he alone pursues the truth,                       which the rest are incapable of seeking out and unworthy of attaining. This madness    is so deep-rooted and so useful that it is impossible to realize what would become of        each of us if it were someday to disappear." (Cioran 1998, 37.)

                             "What other people do we always feel we could do better. Unfortunately we do not                        have the same feeling about what we ourselves do." (Cioran 1998, 49.)

Cioran points out that fanatism is the death of conversation (Cioran 1998, 115). It seems, however, that sometimes we can be free from our prejudices, although only for a short time. Then we can be more easily tolerated by others. Cioran writes about his own experience of the matter:

                     

                      "I get along quite well with someone only when he is at his lowest point and has                             neither the desire nor the strength to restore his habitual illusions" (Cioran 1998, 28).  

Man is doomed to his unique dogmatic sleep. Everyone is dogmatic in an unique way. There is no cure for this disease.  "No critique of any kind of reason will wake man from his 'dogmatic sleep' " (Cioran 2010, 62; Cioran  2009, 86). To be able to act, we have to be somewhat fanatic because we have to believe in what we do. And only after we stop believing, we may suddenly understand but, sadly enough, then we usually lose our enthusiasm:

                            

                             "To manifest oneself, to produce in any realm is the characteristic of a more or less                              camouflaged fanatic. If we do not regard ourselves as entrusted with a mission, existence is difficult; action, impossible." (Cioran 1998, 195.)

                             "When you no longer believe in yourself, you stop producing or struggling, you even                     stop raising questions or answering them - - being free of all bonds, you are likely to                              grasp the truth, discern what is real and what is not. But once your belief in your own    role, or your own lot, has dried up, you become incurious about everything else, even                   the 'truth', though you are closer to it than ever before." (Cioran 1998, 204.)[3] 

Man is a lying being to the core - he lies not only to others but also to himself.  "To live signifies to believe and to hope - to lie and to lie to oneself"  (Cioran  2010, 88; Cioran  2009, 115). Jaan Kaplinski treats this subject frequently. He says that man does not turn away from the reality to the worlds of beliefs and oblivion out of bad will but because he simply cannot stand the reality as it is (Kaplinski 2002, 168-169). Cioran writes about this phenomenon in The Trouble with Being Born:

                     

                      "Without the faculty of forgetting, our past would weigh so heavily on our present that                 we should not have the strength to confront another moment, still less to live through                          it. - - " (Cioran 1998, 39).

Truth without make up is too much for a human being to handle. So we just have to camouflage it to bear it. Also Emerson writes about this phenomenon. He says that if we saw all the things that surround us, that would chain us so that we could not move (Emerson, according to Kovalainen 2007, 147). To be able to live forward we have to put a part of the reality in parenthesis so that we will not get stuck in our miserable state paralyzed not being able to do a thing. Kaplinski warns us, though, about what could happen, if we too much forget the true characteristics of the reality:

   

                                          TRUTH IS THE OTHER. Truth – the other, unavoidable partner in our unavoidable                                     dialogue with our environment’. Truth is what we cannot change according to our                                                      will, our fantasy. Truth always asserts itself. We can spend some time outside Truth as                                         flying fish outside water. But when this truthless period becomes too long we are lost.                                     We perish both physically and spiritually. The clash with the Truth we had forgotten                               or neglected is too violent for us to survive. If we do not stay on the mother rock of                                                     Truth, we can easily crashland on it.” (Kaplinski 2014.)

6                    Skepticism

Cioran considered himself mostly as skeptic (Määttä 2013, 147). He describes his attitude in The Trouble with Being Born: "No one has lived so close to his skeleton as I have lived to mine: from which results an endless dialogue and certain truths which I manage neither to accept nor to reject" (Cioran 1998, 25); "Skepticism is the rapture of impasse" (Cioran 1998, 112); "Once I formulate a doubt, or more exactly, once I feel the need to formulate a doubt, I experience a curious, disturbing well-being - - " (Cioran 1998, 90). We do not have answers to life's ultimate concerns and nothing is certain. It is the lack of answers that makes life so fascinating. (Määttä 2013, 147.) He compares his omniskeptical attitude to a disease or faith:

                            

                             "As soon as one returns to Doubt (if it could be said that one has ever left it),      undertaking anything at all seems not so much useless as extravagant. No joyful            companion, Doubt works deep within you like a disease or, even more effectively, like     a faith." (Cioran  2012b, 106.)

He seems to be very cautious in his believing in things and tries to keep conscious of his state of believing: "On my desk for months now, a huge hammer: a symbol of what? I don't know, but its presence is beneficial to me and at moments gives me that assurance which must be familiar to all who take shelter behind some certainty or other." (Cioran  2012b, 108.)

He is even skeptical about his being a skeptic: "Am I a skeptic? Am I a flagellant? - I shall never know, and so much the better." (Cioran 2012b, 173.) He is afraid of being secretly some kind of believer, still.

7                    Critique On Philosophy; Cioranian Philosophy

7.1                 Critique On Philosophy  

Cioran's attitude towards philosophers was openly hostile. His anti-favorites were Kant and Hegel with their systems. (Määttä 2013, 144.) His favorites were - not surprisingly - Schopenhauer and Nietzsche to whom it was important that philosophy is close-to-life. To both of them human was in the centre of everything and also the importance of the feelings was recognized. (Drufva 2005, 15). To Cioran philosophy was "a glamorous hocus-pocus" - but he added to this modestly, as always, without forgetting his own vulnerability as a thinker: "but ultimately, everything is hocus-pocus"  (Cioran  2012b, 153). Academic philosophy was in Cioran's opinion somewhat poisonous to a pure mind. Success with the activities it required and the academic life were according to him even dangerous to one's spiritual development. (Määttä 2013, 144-145.) "Any success, in any realm, involves an inner impoverishment. It makes us forget what we are, it deprives us of the torment of our limits." (Cioran 1998, 175-176.) No wonder that he refused all but one of the prizes he was given one after another. He did not want to engage himself to anything but the truth and true being. "Firsthand thinkers meditate upon things; the others upon problems. We must live face to face with being, and not with the mind. (Cioran 1998, 43.) He did not want to fake anything but to be his own person, be true to himself till the end.  Cioran thought that only those who are timid and tired escaping from the overwhelm of life practice (academic) philosophy (Drufva 2005, 13). Philosophy needs life to be alive. "I have never been able to find out what being means, except sometimes in eminently nonphilosophical moments" (Cioran 2012b, 171).

Cioran was of the opinion that academic philosophy was unable to express humanity deeply[4] enough because its systematicality and calculated sterility bring about only formally excellent texts which lack true élan. In academic philosophy they bury contradictions and personalities of the writers. (Määttä 2013, 152.)

                      Compared to music, mysticism, and poetry, philosophical activity proceeds from a                              diminished impulse and suspicious depth (Cioran 2010, 49; Cioran 2009, 71).[5]

Cioran holds academic philosophers for "automats of thinking" (Määttä 2013, 153). Jaan Kaplinski speaks about the same thing by referring to beings he calls as Homo automaticus. They seem to act like humans but actually they are robots. (Kaplinski 2004a, 287-288.) Cioran thinks that the thinking of academic philosophers lacks personal experience (feelings included), and that is the reason why it is so lifeless. Cioran considers the deepest subjective experiences being also the most universal, because through them one reaches the original source of life. According to Cioran feelings are something that should not be forgotten in serious philosophy. Illness is something that succeeds in bringing about the deepening of the personality. This lyrical state is a state beyond forms and systems. Resources of conceptual thinking are too poor to express one's inner infinity. (Cioran 1995, 4-5.) Academic philosophy lacks melancholy being the art of masking inner torments and this is one of the main reasons for it being so far from true human life and experience (Cioran 1995, 27):

                      "Philosophy offers an antidote to melancholy. And many still believe in the depth of                      philosophy!" (Cioran 2012a, 27; Cioran 2004, 32.)

Academic philosophy was totally alien to Cioran who thought that academic philosophers lived in some never-never land that exists only in their dreams : "Whoever speaks the language of utopia is more alien to me than a reptile from another geological era" (Cioran 2012b, 87).

Life is something that can be found outside (academic) philosophy. It could be said that Cioran is not a philosopher  but in the ruins of philosophy, after philosophy. He writes: "We begin to live authentically only where philosophy ends, at its wreck, when we have understood its terrible nullity, when we have understood that it was futile to resort to it, that it is no help" (Cioran 2010, 50; Cioran 2009, 73). He talks about profound seriousness which cannot be achieved by confronting purely formal problems because they are generated by our intelligence, not by the total organic structure of our being. According to Cioran, only the organic and existential thinker is capable of seriousness, because truth for such a person is alive, born from inner agony and organic disorder rather than useless speculation. This kind of organic man thinks because of a vital imbalance, being beyond science and art. This kind of thinking succeeds in preserving a whiff of flesh and blood. Agony is more important than syllogism, a cry of despair is more revealing than even the most subtle thought, and tears have always deeper roots than smiles. Only those who suffer are capable of genuine content and infinite seriousness. (Cioran 1995, 22; 25.)

                     

                      "I have more respect for the man with thwarted desires, unhappy and desperate in                          love, than for the cold and proud philosopher. - - I hate the wisdom of these men          unmoved by truths, who do not suffer with their nerves, their flesh, and their blood. I   like only vital, organic truths, the offspring of our anxiety. Those whose thoughts are      alive are always right; there are no argument against them - -. " (Cioran 1995, 87.)

Thus, Cioranian thinking is thinking in the ruins of all academic or academic-like philosophy. "Philosophy is taught only in the agora, in a garden, or at home. The lecture chair is the grave of philosophy, the death of any living thought, the dais is the mind in mourning." (Cioran 1998, 188.) Music and literature are above philosophy being able to express truths that matter to us as humans. Only those dull moments that are idle, leftovers of time spent with Bach and Shakespeare, are to be filled with philosophy (Drufva 2005, 14). But Bach and Shakespeare should always come first, before any philosophy. Systematicality is the thing that brings philosophy so far from reality. Truth lies in Shakespeare and the like:

                      "Aristotle, Aquinas, Hegel - three enslavers of the mind. The worst form of despotism                      is the system[6], in philosophy and in everything." (Cioran 1998, 117.)

                      The Truth? It is in the Shakespeare - a philosopher cannot  appropriate it without                              exploding with his system. (Cioran 2012a, 142; Cioran 2004, 118.)

7.2                 Cioranian way of  philosophizing

The philosophical starting point for Cioran is his awareness of the death. One day he became conscious of his death and this was an important turning point in his thinking. "Right in the middle of serious studies, I discovered that one day I would die...; my modesty was shaken. Convinced that I had nothing left to learn, I abandoned my studies to inform the world of such a remarkable discovery." (Cioran 2012a, 76; Cioran 2004, 71.) He was bound and determined to dedicate his life to the puzzling over the problem of death.

Cioran's students have called him "a philosopher of the riddles of life and death" (Ihanus 2004, 135). And death is something omnipresent in his thinking. He writes: "Death reaches so far, requires so much room, that I no longer know where to die" (Cioran 2012a, 26; Cioran 2004, 31); "Each time I fail to think about death, I have the impression of cheating, of deceiving someone in me" (Cioran 1998, 31). Dedicating to life and death can be very rewarding, because it gives one free hands to treat any subject one considers as important: "The advantage of meditating upon life and death is being able to say anything at all about them" (Cioran 2012a, 28; Cioran 2004, 33).

                                            It makes no sense to say that death is the goal of life. But what else                                                                                   is there to say? (Cioran 2012b, 160.)

Certainly a question like 'What is truth?' is fundamental but there are more important questions to seek for an answer. A question of truth is nothing compared to the question 'How to endure life?' And even this one pales beside the next: 'How to endure oneself?' Even though no-one can answer to that question, it is still a crucial question which we cannot escape from, and it is crucial to every single one of us - universally. (Cioran  2012b, 142.) Actually, what we really do is enduring ourselves from one moment to another, every single second in our lives: " 'What do you do from morning to night?' 'I endure myself.' " (Cioran 1998, 36.) One is not only totally alone with oneself but also literally – full of oneself (This term doesn’t include its usual negative connotation to self-love in this context.). One is radically alone inside of oneself, like captivated by one’s inward thoughts.[7] We kind of "have to spend our time in our own company", as Schopenhauer aptly describes: One's personality follows one all the time and everywhere coloring all one's experiences. In everything and in addition to everything one enjoys mostly one's self, this is true what comes to mental and physical joys - (or torments, would Cioran add to this). Schopenhauer refers to an English idiom 'to enjoy one's self' characterizing it most apt. For example, we say 'he enjoys himself at Paris', not 'he enjoys Paris' but 'he enjoys himself at Paris'. (Schopenhauer 1944, 167.) We are all the time present to ourselves, and also our past and future are present at the same time in their own way (in our memory), not only present time. Human existence means total feeling of perpetual presence in one's self, ultimately always in solitude. Even in someone's company, we are ultimately alone, we are only seemingly in company. One cannot know what it feels like to be in someone else's shoes nor can others know what it is like to be in one's shoes. There is an invisible fence between us that we cannot pull down. Being forever together with ourselves makes us often very irritable:

                     

                      DET GNAVER                                                                                          WHAT IS EATING US

                             Enkel sandhed                                                                                             Simple Truth

                             Dette at bestandig                                                                                       To constantly

                             være sammen med sig sel’                                                                          be together with oneself

                             er dét som hele livet                                                                                     is the thing that all life long

                             irriterer folk ihjel.                                                           irritates man to death.

                             (Piet Hein)                                                                                                   (KS)

Cioran dreaded systematic, consistent thinking. He preferred fragments and aphorisms because he thought that by using these forms of expression it is possible to describe all the dimensions of personal experience.  (Määttä 2013, 152; 154.) He writes about the nature of fragments: "Works die: fragments, not having lived, cannot die either" (Cioran 1998, 168).

In my opinion Cioran can be characterized above all as "a philosopher of somber feelings" or "a philosopher of true being" - if we want to call him a philosopher. Maybe thinker would do him more justice. Perhaps even more accurate way of calling him would be naming him philosopher-milosopher which means that one is something more than a philosopher but still in search for wisdom, and the area from which this kind of a person searches for it, is very wide, maybe even totally without limits (Kaplinski 2004c, 215; Kaplinski 2009, 72):

                            

                             "What makes bad poets worse is that they read only poets (just as bad philosophers                       read only philosophers), whereas they would benefit much more from a book of           botany or geology. We are enriched only by frequenting disciplines remote from our                              own. This is true, of course, only for realms where the ego is rampant." (Cioran 1998, 74.)

Cioran forces us to crash into reality, time and time again. His writings are like rude awakenings. Melancholy is his main theme even though he knows awfully well that it is something we usually want to escape from. "The Anatomy of Melancholy. - The best title ever invented. Unimportant if the book to which it is detached is more or less indigestible." (Cioran  2012b, 65.) Because of his constant wish of making us crash into reality his books can be - or maybe even should be - characterized as truth-literature. "A book should open old wounds, even inflict new ones. A book should be a danger" (Cioran  2012b, 67); "Write books only if you are going to say in them the things you would never dare confide to anyone" (Cioran 1998, 27). He often describes the ugly sides of true being: "To be is to be cornered" (Cioran 2012b, 93);  Not to think about anything except what you would like to ponder in grave (Cioran 2012b, 95).

Literature and music succeed in describing humanity and melancholy more truly than philosophy. Ultimately the world can be only expressed, not explained. (Määttä 2013, 153.) Jaan Kaplinski is of the same opinion. Poets have a special capability to express melancholy (Määttä 2013, 153). Kaplinski speaks about truth-author and truth literature especially when referring to poets. Poets and other truth-authors have the courage to meet the reality exactly as it is (as  phenomenon, 'für uns´' -  nobody can reach it 'an sich' - also in this matter Cioran and Kaplinski agree with each other) without seeking belief or oblivion (Kaplinski 1982, 63; 65-68).

7.3                 Inhorealismi[8]; zolaism

Solitude is an important state that reveals us the nature of reality. Cioran says about his writing: "What I have written I have written in the moment of solitude to others who live in the moment of solitude" (Ihanus & Schubert 2004, 9).

Cioran's writings reveal the nature of humanity in all its cruelty so that anyone can find one's own misanthropy, failure, humanity - one's whole human nature there (Määttä 2013, 162). What comes to the general nature of the world, we can crystallize Cioran's general view on the nature of the world roughly in two short sentences:  "The Real gives me asthma" (Cioran  2012a, 33; Cioran  2004, 37); Events - tumors of Time (Cioran 2012a, 122; Cioran 2004, 103).

Cioranian thinking can be said to be zolaistic in spirit. As mentioned in the part one, 'zolaism' derives originally from the name of Émile Zola who had the habit of describing the dark sides of human life.                 Cioranian philosophy seems to be "the most pessimistic pessimism there is", even more pessimistic than Schopenhauerian philosophy! Zolaism is thought to be excessive in its realism because it depicts the worst sides of human life and society overemphasizing the coarser sides of life. But: I strongly believe that Cioran would not agree on the opinion of zolaistic realism being 'excessive' or too far divorced from reality, and nor would I! I would rather seriously claim that it must be 'the most realistic realism' there is. How could realism - to be "Real" Realism - be excessive anyway? If realism was considered excessive that would mean that it would be somewhat imaginary, and if it was considered imaginary, it simply could not be considered realism at all, but something else. I think that only those who are against zolaistic way of seeing things claiming it does not succeed in describing the nature of reality adequately tend to call its realism excessive. I strongly believe that the depictions of the world made in zolaistic spirit by Cioran have to be adequate, or at least more adequate than the depictions made by (overly) optimistic people.

Thinkers who are zolaistic in spirit: Emil Cioran (maybe he is the most zolaistic  thinker there is!), Arthur Schopenhauer, Voltaire, Piet Hein (only partly, he always sees the bright side of things too, not only the somber: Remember 'grook', originally 'gruk,' originate from the words grin (smile) and suk (sigh)), Daniil Harms, Stanislaw Jerzy Lec, Franz Kafka, Mika Waltari (Sinuhe): they can be said to be philosophical relatives, between them there is a Familienähnlichkeit (term of Wittgenstein).

8                    Philosophy and Feelings; Feelings As Revealers of The Reality

Feelings - mostly somber ones -  are in the center of Cioranian thinking. I think it would be apt to say that whole Cioranian philosophy can be characterized as "General Theory of Tears", 'theory' meaning in this context a way of describing the nature of things, not a theory as system because systems are something that Cioran despises. He happens to have an amusing anecdote about his attempt to write a thesis about A General Theory of Tears.

                     

                      At the age when, for lack of experience, one takes to philosophy, I determined to write                   a thesis like everyone else. What subject to choose? I wanted one that would be both       familiar and unwonted. The moment I imagined I had found it, I hastened to announce                             my discovery to my professor. "What would you think of A General Theory of Tears?       I feel ready to start work on that."

                             "Possibly," he said, "but you'll have your work cut out, finding a bibliography."

                             "That doesn't matter so much. All History will afford me its authority," I replied in a                      tone of triumphant impertinence.

                             But when, in his impatience, he shot me a glance of disdain, I resolved then and                              there to murder the disciple in myself. (Cioran 2012a, 38; Cioran 2004, 41-42.)

                                           

8.1                 Feelings as structure of mind; depressive realism

Stanley Cavell considers feelings as one of the structures of the mind, through which we grasp the world.   We always know what we know "in feeling(s)", 'through feelings'. Stanley Cavell thinks that feelings should be included in the Kantian forms of thought as one form of our thinking. Stanley Cavell speaks about epistemology of moods when examining and interpreting Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay Experience. In this view the focus is in the cognitive function of feelings and moods: what they have got to do with knowing the reality and what is their place in epistemology. In the background there is a ethical-metaphysical idea, according to which we always know the world through some mood. It is a question of widening the Kantian transcendental idealism and in that way a wider understanding of the relation between human and the world. The idea is that if we focus on the Kantian apriori categories that analyze the world, those twelve categories are not enough but must be filled with human moods. Experience is not possible without human mind analyzing it in relation with time and space but it is not possible either without experiencing the world with certain mood, for example as dull or interesting. Moods are seen as possibility conditions: The reality cannot be experienced at all without experiencing it in some atmosphere. Moods are seen in relation to the world in the same way as sensual experience in relation to objects: moods are something that mediate the world to us "as whole", feelings are like a color, like glasses through which we see the world. For instance love can have an epistemological function. When we fall in love we are able to see such things in the world which we would not see being in another mood. (Cavell, according to Kovalainen 2007, 142; Kovalainen 2009, 31-32.) The world that one experiences changes together with the change of one's mood. According to Wittgenstein's Tractatus ”the world of a happy person is different from the world of an unhappy person” (Wittgenstein, according to Kovalainen 2007, 142). Also Schopenhauer comes to examine the influence of feelings on experiencing the world when he takes note of how a melancholic sees something tragic in something, in which a sanguine sees only an interesting contradiction and a phlegmatic something irrelevant[9] (Schopenhauer 1944, 160). Cioran concentrates on examining how an unhappy, melancholic person sees the world.  

                             "For the victim of anxiety, there is no difference between success and fiasco. His                              reaction to the one is the same as to the other: both trouble him equally." (Cioran                           1998, 115.)

This kind of a way to examine the world can be described as depressive realism, because Cioran believes that suffering is something that shows to the one who experiences it the nature of the world at its purest, as pure as it can be shown to a human being. As skeptic, he believes that we cannot see "to the core of the reality", we only can reach the surface of it, if even that. In philosophy they tend to forget melancholy, miseries of the ego, and that is why philosophy and life cannot reach each other:  "Philosophy ignores the miseries of the ego" (Apo); Philosophy and life cannot be fitted together (Apo).

I think that people in general do not have the courage to see the dark sides of life. Instead, they try to concentrate on the bright sides of life turning a blind eye to “real life”. In my view, these people have caught a disease which can be called as “a syndrome of overwhelming optimism”[10]. Yet, it is an established fact that society usually labels the one who concentrates on seeing the darkest sides of life as mentally ill or at least as person who has too vivid an imagination. It is commonly believed that this kind of a person does not see the world “correctly”. Cioran calls this view in question. According to Cioran suffering[11] is a necessary experience for one to be able to understand humanity. (Määttä 2013, 149). Through suffering we see things as whole, not only those bright sides of the reality but also those ugly sides we tend to forget.

                      " 'I am like a broken puppet whose eyes have fallen inside.' This remark of a mental                        patient weighs more heavily than a whole stack of works of introspection."  (Cioran        2012a, 44; Cioran 2004, 46.)

                             "In this "great dormitory" as one Taoist text calls the universe, nightmare is the sole                      mode of lucidity" (Cioran 2012a, 19; Cioran 2004, 26).

                             "There is an innate anxiety which supplants in us both knowledge and intuition"                            (Cioran 2012a, 25; Cioran 2004, 31).

The view of the world based on concepts is no more justified than the view of the world based on tears. They are as valuable as revealers of the truth. (Cioran  2009,  184.) "All means and methods of knowing are valid: reasoning, intuition, disgust, enthusiasm, lamentation. A vision of the world propped on concepts is no more legitimate than another which proceeds from tears, arguments, or sighs - modalities equally probing and equally vain."  (Cioran 2010, 150-151.) Cioran considers feelings as equally important in grasping the world as reason. Reason alone is not enough when we want to achieve true understanding of the world. As skeptic he naturally thinks that world as such cannot be achieved no matter what medium or method we use. The world as such, 'an sich', is ultimately an eternal mystery to us. 

Cioran is in my opinion a philosopher of somber feelings and a philosopher acknowledging feelings. He did not see any reason why he should write when he was happy nor why he should write about happiness (Määttä  2013, 155). Instead, he formulates depression (Apo). He says to have merely been as writer "the secretary of his sensations" (Cioran  2012b, 148). Actually, what else is a person but a bundle of his sensations? "Where are my sensations? They have melted into...me, and what is this me, this self, but the sum of these evaporated sensations?" (Cioran 1998, 12.)  For Cioran, writing is therapy. By writing he can diminish the pain. When one formulates the pain, it loses a part of its power. Everything that is formulated becomes more tolerable (Apo); "A book is a postponed suicide" (Cioran 1998, 99). He says that he has never read a page of Schopenhauer without his world turning into pink. Writing takes off the edge of the pain. "I wrote all my books for therapeutic reason, I truly wrote from necessity" (Apo). Cioran's attitude of acknowledging feelings is to be seen in his attitude towards swearing. We should be allowed to put our bad feelings into words to get rid of the bad. It is like catharsis to us being allowed to swear when we feel the urge. If we have to keep everything inside, our balance is in danger, our mental disorders are getting worse or we may simply go mad: 

                            

                             "To propagate disequilibrium, to aggravate mental disturbance, to construct      sanatoriums on every street corner - forbid swearing.

                             Then you will comprehend its liberating virtues, its therapeutic function, the       superiority of its method over that of psychoanalysis, of Eastern gymnastics or     Catholic ones; you will understand, above all, that it is thanks to the wonders of              swearing, to its constant aid at every moment that most of us managed not to be                              criminals or lunatics." (Cioran 2012a, 71-72; Cioran 2004, 67.)

In Denmark people tend to be happy all the time. According to some research the Danes are the happiest people in the world. My former Danish teacher, Kim Sandvad West, gave us an explanation to that. He says that the main cause to this happiness is that they swear a lot. They let the evil out, and then it is easier to smile again. I always say that the evil should be let out so that it won't burst inside and cause us any health issues. Also, sometimes the world is so horrible, that only swear-words are enough to describe it. If the world is bad, we should use bad language to describe it. The nature of the world and the nature of the language should meet each other, should be commensurable with each other.

There is something mystical in our feelings. A part of them is concealed from us. They seem to arise from deep, from somewhere where our consciousness has no entrance. Also feelings may lie. Cioran gives us an advice according to which we should always check the feelings we feel, check if they are real or not.  "Everything must be revised, even sobs.."  (Cioran 2012a, 136; Cioran 2004, 114).

                            

                             "Imaginary pains are by far the most real we suffer, since we feel a constant need for                     them and invent them because there is no way of doing without them" (Cioran 1998,   52).

Our suffering is somewhat bottomless.  We cannot recognize it as a whole but only a part of it. We have our frontiers outside of which we cannot reach. "On the frontiers of the self: 'What I have suffered, what I am suffering, no one will ever know, not even I.'" (Cioran 2012a, 103; Cioran 2004, 92.)

When listening to music every moment is rooted to the feelings with which we are forced to struggle (Drufva 2005, 15). The music nourishes us more immediately than our daily bread because it touches every one's unique feelings (Drufva 2005, 15): "Music is the refuge of souls wounded by happiness"  (Cioran 2012a, 117; Cioran 2004,  100).                         

A poet cannot get rid of himself nor can he escape from the center of his anxiety (Cioran  2009, 132). "Unlike the mystic or the sage, he cannot escape himself, nor leave the stage of his own obsession" (Cioran 2010, 103). The loyalty to one's feelings is what distinguishes poets from other people. That is why one can learn courage of intelligence and audacity to be one's true self from poets. (Cioran 2009, 133.) "Much more than in the school of the philosophers, it is in the academy of poets that we learn the courage of intelligence and the audacity to be ourselves" (Cioran 2010, 103-104).[12]

True knowledge from life one can get only in solitude[13] and through failure because via failure one can see oneself as one really is. That is the moment when all becomes clear, via failure and disappointment. (Määttä 2013, 146.) In the state of doubt, contradiction and failure, humanity is at its most absolute (Määttä 2013, 150). "Only one thing matters: learning to be the loser" (Cioran 1998, 121).

8.2                 We are always in some emotion

Feelings make us aware of ourselves, in a very special way. We feel ourselves only when we are in some emotion. "I am myself only above or beneath myself, in rage or prostration; on my habitual level, I am unaware that I exist"  (Cioran 2012a, 46; Cioran 2004, 47). At any given moment we are at the mercy of some bundle of emotions that affects us. Our feelings color our attitude towards the world.[14] We cannot help but feel something. Sometimes powerful feelings may hide the truth from us. The problem is that we cannot always know how much our feelings may distort our perceptions or interpretations of the world. We do not know when the feeling is strong enough to cause a distortion to our thinking and evaluating. Cioran seems to think that the truth 'an sich' is beyond our reach because of us being always so emotional. " 'Truth remains hidden to the man filled with desire and hatred' (Buddha) . . . Which is to say , to every man alive. " (Cioran 1998, 79.) However, somber feelings are to Cioran something that can reveal us something about the nature of the world. So, feelings may reveal us something but at the same time they have a tendency to hide something too. Epistemically, feelings separate us from the world. Feelings are omnipresent - they cannot be escaped from, not by anyone. In one of his grooks, Piet Hein describes quite aptly our difficulty to obtain the state of not-feeling-anything-at-all:

KUNSTEN AT LADE                                                ART/ TRICK TO BE AS IF

Gruk om kunstens natur.                                          Grook about the nature of an art/ trick.

”Man kan lade somom                                              One can be as if one were

man er drabeligt vred                                                awfully angry

eller stødt eller glad                                                  or hurt or hilarious

eller helt slået ned                                                     or completely beaten

eller helt livet op                                                        or completely lively

eller pinligt beklemt…                                              or awkwardly anxious…

det er altsammen billigt                                            all this is of no importance

og inderligt nemt.                                                       and very easy.

Nej, kunsten er dèn                                                    No, the art/ trick lies in that

at gå stille omkring                                                    one calmly wanders about

og lade som absolut                                                   and acts as if  

sletingenting”[15].                                                         one were not in the toils of any emotion whatsoever.  

 (Hein 1996c, 30.)                                                       (KS)

Suffering is an essential part of our existence. Suffering is something through which we see and feel (in our bones and in our very core) the world. Feelings are something that let the world inside of us. Feelings let the world move us. We are literally touched by the world through our feelings. Feelings make us participate in the events, if not physically, then at least emotionally. Even in joy there is always a drop of suffering and sorrow. It could be said with reason that man is always “in hilaritas tristis, in tristitia hilaris”. It could be also said even more with reason that our existence is spoiled with eternal suffering. There are different kinds of sufferings - each for one's own. It seems to me that every suffering is somewhat unique (although I cannot verify it: one is able to feel one's own feelings only, not the feelings of others). I believe that we only feel every feeling once. Feelings may have similarities with each other but exactly same feeling one cannot experience twice, something in the new feeling is always a bit different than before. I cannot explain it, I can only plead to intuition in this complex matter.  

"Between Ennui and Ecstasy unwinds our whole experience of time (Cioran 2012a, 50; Cioran 2004, 51). To exist is to suffer. Sufferings fill our every moment, in one way or another. This means that practically, if we are honest, we are forced to admit that every day is ultimately a black day for us. So it is okay to have "that Monday morning feeling" every single morning because in reality, in the world examined from Cioran's point of view, every day can only be a new Monday for a human being. No matter what we do, we always have to suffer. One too often feels that one has more than one's share of bad luck. In life there is one principle which is always, in every circumstance, valid, and that is: "damned if you do and damned if you don't"[16]:

                      "To get up in the morning, wash and then wait for some unforeseen variety of dread                       or depression[17]. I would give the whole universe and all of Shakespeare for a grain of                        ataraxy."[18] (Cioran 1998, 22.)

So, suffering is one kind of an intrinsic factor in our painful existence. Actually, we do not feel ourselves totally healthy, ever, but always take notice that in some degree we are always more or less sick. There is always something wrong with us. "Acute consciousness of having a body - that is the absence of health. Which is as much as to say that I have never been well." (Cioran 1998, 189.) There is always something a bit wrong in our state. 100 % healthy we cannot ever be. Suffering is our fundamental way of being.[19] "The state of health is a state of nonsensation, even of nonreality. As soon as we cease to suffer, we cease to exist." (Cioran 2012b, 114.)

There is so great a difference between the world depictions of optimists and those of pessimists that it is very hard to believe that they depict the same reality![20] Their depictions of the world seem to be each other’s polar opposites.  Much as I would like to believe in the adequacy of the overly optimistic depictions of the world, I just cannot. I admit that it is possible that thinkers who are zolaistic in spirit may make little of the positive sides of human life when seeing zolaistically the world but it is also possible that the optimists, in turn, make little of the negative sides of our life. All I know is that suffering is real: it just cannot be faked. The problem in suffering is that it is personal. It cannot be verified by anyone else but the one who actually feels it.[21] That is perhaps one of the reasons why we have difficulties in giving it its due. It is very easy to belittle the agonies of the other:

                      "At this very moment, I am suffering - as we say in French, j'ai mal. This event,    crucial for me, is nonexistent, even inconceivable for anyone else. Except for God, if                        that word can have a meaning." (Cioran 1998, 11.)

                             "Existence = Torment. The equation seems obvious to me, but not to one of my    friends. How to                              convince him? I cannot lend him my sensations; yet only they would                      have the power to persuade him, to give him that additional dose of ill-being he has                           so insistently asked for all this time." (Cioran 1998, 116.)

                      "Each person remains with his own suffering, which he believes absolute and     unlimited. - - Each subjective existence is absolute to itself. For this reason each man                          lives as if he were the center of the universe. - -" (Cioran 1995, 11.)

Surprisingly enough, Cioran sees a great advantage in the fact that we suffer in loneliness. He wonders what would happen if one's face could adequately express one's suffering and if one's entire inner agony were objectified in one's facial expression. It is possible that in such case we could not communicate. Maybe we would cover our faces with our hands while talking. Cioran estimates that life would be impossible if all our feelings were fully expressed in the lines of our faces. (Cioran 1995, 11-12.) But I say: then people would meet each other as their true selves, without treacherous camouflages, and then it would easier to feel empathy towards the fellow-sufferers! Then we would be able to see the other as truly human, not as robot who tries to mask or bottle up his emotions imitating human with only moderate feelings. I do not think that we should always put a brave face on when we meet our fellow-sufferers.

Depressive realism tends to concentrate on seeing uglier or even the ugliest sides of life. According to depressive realism, people with depression have a more accurate view of reality than those not depressed. In my opinion, this “–ism” is to some extent a relative to zolaism but it differs from zolaism in the sense that it looks a little closer at the very core of the evil sides and ills of life  (emphasizing the personal, emotional way of approaching reality) than zolaism does and in depressive realism it is feeling which is decisive when we solve who is able to see the world most accurately. Of course, the belief in the power of feelings as indicator of the "real" reality may be implicitly present in some form of zolaism as well, even though it is not articulated out loud. Surprisingly enough, after giving it a thought, I think it can be possible to combine - even seamlessly! - the views of optimists and pessimists. Roughly speaking, I think it is a question of which facts we choose to form a whole picture. It is also a matter of distance. Optimists seem to examine the world with telescope and pessimists with a magnifying glass. Possibly, both are a bit inclined to exaggerate in their depictions. If we take this inclination into consideration, there might be a chance that they may both be right at the same time in their depictions of the world. We just have to locate their whereabouts from where they are examining the world/ the situation. Also their background knowledge may be different causing differences in interpretations of things. If we saw their background knowledge, I think it would be possible that we would all of a sudden understand the causes of the differences between their seemingly incommensurable (they are only seemingly like oil and water) views of reality. I think we should examine this matter further. I would say that Cioranian philosophy of life can be characterized in its spirit as something of a mixture of zolaism and depressive realism. 

9                    Insomnia and Knowing of The Reality; Crash Into Reality

We hate crashing into reality and do anything to avoid that. Sleeping is often a welcome method to get to the world of oblivion in no time - if we are lucky... When we cannot get sleep, we are forced to be with ourselves, conscious[22] against our will. It may be sheer torture. Alone in the still of the night, tired but cannot sleep, total solitude and darkness. I have compared that state to a state of being dead but still alive, like a corpse but still breathing. Odd thoughts start to emerge. "Sleepless nights devour the last vestiges of our common sense - - " (Cioran 1998, 60).  We do anything in our power to avoid that living hell.

                      "To torment oneself in the middle of the night, to perform every known sort of     exercise, to swallow pills, tablets, capsules - why? In hopes of eclipsing that                phenomenon, that deadly apparition known as consciousness. Only a conscious being,                only a weakling, could have invented such an expression as to be engulfed  in sleep, a                      gulf indeed but a rare, inaccessible one, a forbidden, sealed gulf, into which we would                              so like to vanish!" (Cioran 2012b, 154.)

                             "We fall asleep with a contentment which is indescribable, we slide into oblivion and                   are happy to lose ourselves there. If we waken reluctantly, it is because we do not     leave unconsciousness, the one true paradise, without pain. Which is to say that man                            is fulfilled only when he ceases to be man." (Cioran 2012b, 164.)

What we most afraid is not an uninterrupted sleep but an eternal awakening (which Cioran compares to immortality. If it were conceivable, eternal awakening would be just that). Cioran characterizes unconsciousness as a country, a fatherland and consciousness as an exile. (Cioran 1998, 120.)

Cioran distinguishes two kinds of mind, which differ from another drastically: daylight mind and nocturnal mind. They have different method and different morality. In broad daylight, one watches oneself; in the dark, one speaks out. After midnight begins, in Cioran's words, "the intoxication of pernicious truths". (Cioran 1998, 17.) Strictly speaking, nights are not true nights if we sleep. In sleep there is no night - there is paradise[23]; sleep is forgetfulness.[24] (Cioran 1995, 85.) There is a saying in English which takes into consideration this dimension of forgetfulness what comes to sleeping. They can say when they go to sleep: "it is time for me to go to bye-byes". The one going to bed is literally saying goodbye to the world. :) Also, in English one may say about the state of being in deep sleep that one is "dead to the world". For Cioran a true night is only the night when we do not or cannot sleep: "Nights when we have slept are as if they had never been. The only ones that remain in our memory are the ones when we couldn't close our eyes: night means sleepless night." (Cioran 1998, 85.) The ones awake in the still of the night suffering from insomnia are sick. It is characteristic of sickness to stay awake when everything sleeps, when everything is at rest, even the sick man. (Cioran 1998, 35.) Only sickness gives birth to serious and deep feelings. To be ill means to live, willingly or not, on the heights of despair which means living near the abyss. Hence, one must fall in order to reach the heights. (Cioran 1995, 60.)  Sickness is the lot of a serious person, and this sickness is beyond remedy.

At night when we are alone we experience time at its purest. Then we are forced to fill it with our own thoughts. We cannot escape from ourselves to any action or task. Then we feel our existence: "In the hours without sleep, each moment is so full and so vacant that it suggests itself as a rival of Time" (Cioran 2012b, 131); "Pure time, time decanted, freed of events, beings, and things, appears only at certain moments of the night, when you feel it coming on, with the one intention of sweeping you off toward an exemplary catastrophe" (Cioran 1998, 40).

According to Cioran's own words, insomnia and anxiety healed him from "the superstition of philosophy". Ever since he was not interested in concepts but in humanity. He could not find any "human weakness" nor "true melancholy" in the writings of (academic) philosophers. (Määttä 2013, 144-145.) That is why he abandoned academic philosophy. He wanted to concentrate on human tragedy of life and death. He was only twenty-two years old when he thought to be already a specialist in the question of death (Cioran 1995, 15).

                             "My symbol is the death of light and the flame of death. Sparks die in me only to be                        reborn as thunder and lightning. Darkness itself glows in me." (Cioran 1995, 56.)

Cioran examines the human consciousness at its purest - one's nighttime consciousness which has special, unique features compared to a daytime consciousness. Nighttime consciousness has a feature of lucidity which daytime consciousness lacks. Characteristic for a human being is to avoid being alone with oneself. "Each of us will do anything in order not to be doomed to himself"  (Cioran 2010, 17; Cioran 2009, 36). Our consciousness is giving us a hard time - literally. Cioran describes consciousness being much more than the thorn - it is the dagger in the flesh  but insomnia forces one to experience one's consciousness, which means feeling of "lucidity without interruption" (Cioran 1998, 48; Apo). Cioran characterizes lucidity being the only vice which makes us free - free in a desert" (Cioran 1998, 12). Lucidity does not extirpate the desire to live but merely makes us unsuited to life (Cioran 1998, 175). The one spending night with oneself (or more accurately: one's self) in a totally conscious state cannot consider oneself as human being anymore because all the others live in unconsciousness. The insomniac feels oneself flattered for not belonging to humanity, one feels being flattered and punished at the same time. (Apo.) After a sleepless night, the people in the street seem automatons to the one having been insomniac. It seems to him that no one seems to breathe, to walk. Every single one of the people one meets looks as if he is worked by clockwork: nothing spontaneous, mechanical smiles, spectral gesticulations. (Cioran 1998, 54-55.) The insomniac feels that he is only a specter compared to the people he meets. "Yourself a specter, how would you see others as alive?" (Cioran 1998, 55).

                     

It is our discomforts which provoke and create consciousness. When their task is accomplished, they weaken and disappear one after the other. (Cioran 1998, 21.) Suffering opens our eyes, helps us to see what we would not have seen otherwise (Cioran 1998, 176). Suffering reveals the true nature of the reality in front of our eyes, as pure as it can be shown itself to a human being. According to Cioran, insomnia is necessary as trigger of true understanding (Määttä 2013, 142). Cioran characterizes the experience of insomnia as the capital experience. He speaks about "excess of consciousness" which is fatal to a human, because vigilance takes mankind to its limit. (Apo.) True knowledge can be attained only spending time alone insomniac in the darkness. In darkness we spend time in dialogue with what is most hidden within us. It is an extreme exercise, in which one unites with the intimacy of one's own being. It is self-interview, inward transition (Cioran 1998, 150.) Insomnia makes a thinker so unique that it distinguishes him from other living beings. "True knowledge comes down to vigils in the darkness: the sum of our insomnias alone distinguishes us from the animals and from our kind" (Cioran 2010,151; Cioran 2009, 185). Insomnia kind of wakes us up to see the limits of the daytime certainties: Through nightly analysis we come to break the certainties attained in the daytime.  "The analyses made during insomnia undo all certainties"  (Cioran 2009, 208).

                             "Daylight is hostile to thoughts, the sun blocks them out; they flourish only in the                           middle of the night" (Cioran 2010, 152; Cioran 2009, 185).

                             "There are nights that the most ingenious torturers could not have invented. We                              emerge from them in pieces, stupid, dazed, with neither memories nor anticipations,        and without even knowing who we are. And it is then that the day seems useless, light     pernicious, even more oppressive than the darkness." (Cioran 1998, 31.)

Cioran describes his own nightly experiences when he has been in excessively conscious state, in an amusing way as always, although the theme is most somber: "If there is ever a moment when you must burst out laughing, it comes on those nights of intolerable discomfort, when you get up without knowing if you will write your last will or confine yourself to some wretched aphorism" (Cioran 2012b, 74); "What strangely enchanted tunes gush forth during those sleepless nights! - - Death itself, although still hideous, acquires in the night a sort of impalpable transparency, an illusory and musical character." (Cioran 1995, 83.)

10                  Critique On Language; Critique On Definitions

Cioran teaches us to keep ourselves constantly conscious of the treacherous nature of words. Language is not the best medium to express our deepest feelings (Määttä 2013, 156). Also Kaplinski is of the same opinion saying our language suffers from trombose which is to be seen in the way the language petrifies the reality (Kaplinski 1992b, 14). Cioran thinks that everything that can be said, lacks reality. He is of the opinion that only what fails to make its way into words exists and counts. (Cioran  2012b, 158). To be able to describe reality accurately, we should reach beyond the concept, we should be able to "write on a level with the senses, record the infinitesimal variations of what we touch, do what a reptile would do if it were to set about writing" (Cioran 1998, 29). Cioran describes one of his somber moments when he truly had lacked words: "All morning, I did nothing but repeat: 'Man is an abyss, man is an abyss.' - I could not, alas, find anything better." (Cioran 2012b, 166.)

Certainly, we need language but it is one thing to admit we need it and a totally another thing to agree on being at its mercy. It cannot be abandoned but we can keep ourselves aware of its nature and try to refresh it all the time so that it would suit better to our purposes. Language needs constant checking. Cioran wonders: "Why would each generation not learn a new idiom, if only to give a new vigor to objects?" (Cioran 2010, 166; Cioran 2009, 198). For Cioran, loyalty to the real nature of reality and one's true experience about it are essentially important.  We should admit not only the good sides of reality but also the bad, horrible and nasty sides, and talk about them as they deserve. He warns us about euphemisms: "Beware of euphemisms! They aggravate the horror they are supposed to disguise. To use, as the French do, "the disappeared" instead of the deceased or the dead man, seems to me preposterous, even insane." (Cioran 1998, 165.) We should learn to call spade a spade which means that we should speak frankly and directly about the nature of reality avoiding being too careful about what we say. Experiences changes one in such an enormous degree that we are not same anymore after some kind of "fatal" experiences. That suggests that we should change our name after each important experience we have, then it would meet the reality: "After suffering a serious illness, in certain Asian countries - in Laos, for example - one traditionally changes one's name. What a vision lies at the origin of such a custom! Actually we should change our name after each important experience." (Cioran 2012b, 101.)

Language has its boundaries which we must admit. There are situations when silence is a better option than resorting to any language. In silence we feel other's existence and the way of one's being at its purest. (That is why in public places, we always have background music. In that way we suffocate the feeling of sensing the true, naked presence of others. Then others seem to be less present for us. We change into some kind of robots. We see people without feeling their true presence in the space. I have to admit: there is only one person with whom I am able to enjoy being in silence, (with others there is always something awkward present) - one psychopath whom I love from the bottom of heart. Then the time seems to vanish, there are only me and him in total harmony, in an eternal now-moment. I cannot imagine being able to feel happier than in those rare moments..):

                      "When we see someone again after many years, we should sit down facing each other                    and say nothing for hours, so that by means of silence our consternation can relish          itself" (Cioran 1998, 10).

We need silence to refresh our language. Silence is in the beginning, before words, words take shape in silence. "To refresh language, humanity would have to stop talking: it would resort profitably to signs, or more effectively, to silence" (Cioran 2010,166; Cioran 2009, 198). We cannot reach the contact to others via words but in silence. Silence is the medium that leads humans to each other whereas words are like an insurmountable fence between us. "True contact between beings is established only by mute presence, by apparent non-communication, by that mysterious and wordless exchange which resembles inward prayer" (Cioran 1998, 7).

                      "A young man and a young woman, both mutes, speaking to one another by gestures.                     How happy they both looked!

                             All the evidence suggests that speech is not, and cannot be, the vehicle of happiness. "                  (Cioran 2012b, 114.)

To Cioran it seems amazing that we try to say anything at all - knowing what words are worth, and even more amazing is that we manage to say anything at all. This kind of attitude towards the possibilities of the language requires in Cioran's opinion "a supernatural nerve". (Cioran 2012b, 117.)

                      "One must be mad or drunk," The Abbé Sieyès said, to speak well in the known    languages. One must be drunk or mad, I should add, to dare, still, to use words, any          word... (Cioran 1998, 36.)

Definitions are something that destroys their object. Strictly speaking, objects cannot be defined by language exhaustively. To Cioran, defining things means annihilating them: "To embrace a thing by a definition is to reject that thing, to render it insipid and superfluous, to annihilate it" (Cioran 2010, 7). Kaplinski's opinion about definitions is of the same kind. He speaks about 'everything is miracle' -attitude (in Estonian 'kõik on ime', this term derives originally from Albert Schweitzer's ethical term "das Ehrfurcht vor dem Leben", which is the highest ethical principle. It requires that we must respect all life meaning both creatures and thoughts. Only warlike intolerance (in Estonian: sõjakas sallimatus (Kaplinski 1997, 813-814)) is something that we should not tolerate. That would be a "false" kind of tolerance.), which gives things to their due. This means adopting an attitude which admits that we can never define anything exhaustively but there is always something in things that our definitions about them cannot reach, no matter how much we try. Cioran writes in The Trouble with Being Born:

                     

                      "Each opinion, each view is necessarily partial, truncated, inadequate. In philosophy                   and in anything, originality comes down to incomplete definitions." (Cioran 1998,         33.)

We are forced to seal our nothingness, to give ourselves names, and after that we are like in eternal imprisonment. We take for granted that everybody and everything should be defined. As long as someone is not defined, we tend to consider such a person as a little "odd". (Cioran 2009, 196.) "You are forgiven everything, provided you have a trade, e subtitle to your name, a seal on your nothingness" (Cioran 2010, 164; Cioran 2009, 196). As long as we are surrounded by others, we will be prisoners of the definitions made about us. Only after the amount of people around us diminishes, we can be free from definitions. "As the years pass, the number of those we can communicate with diminishes. When there is no longer anyone to talk to, at last we will be as we were before stooping to a name." (Cioran 1998, 12.)[25] Cioran refused all but one of the prizes offered to him. One reason must have been the will to refuse being defined in any way.[26] He wanted to be totally free and 100% loyal to himself - to himself alone. From the philosophical point of view his attitude suggests that he should not be defined as 'philosopher' but in a Kaplinskian way: as philosopher-milosopher (this can be understood as fuzzy concept, the boundaries of which are misty (Kaplinski 2005, 263; Kaplinski, according to Kádár 2010, 77).) because this Kaplinskian concept succeeds in preserving life - it breathes. It still has a spirit (hing/ hõng). Philosopher-milosopher is a person who is more than a philosopher. He is merely one who searches for wisdom, any kind of wisdom, without constant need of defining everything. This kind of a person may also be a metaphilosopher, examining things from even a wider point of view than a mere philosopher. (Kaplinski 2005, 299.) And this is exactly what Cioran does. His point of view is nothing less than a life and death -point of view.

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[1] Matei Calinescu, according to Zarifopol-Johnston 1995, ix-x.

[2] Hans Georg Gadamer is of the same opinion.

[3] Compare with Kaplinski, when he speaks about one's emptying oneself to create space to a miracle to appear (Kaplinski 1992b, 19-20; Kaplinski 1992a, 110).

[4] Compare to Piet Hein's similar point of view:

FILOSOFISMEN                                                         PHILOSOPHISM

Lille selvfølgelighed.                                                   Tiny truism.

Den filosofistiske                                                        The philosophical 

filosofi                                                                          philosophy

bedårer de fuldkomne dårer,                                   appeals to completely morons

fordi                                                                              because

så fuldkommen bundløs                                            in so totally bottomless

en idioti                                                                        idiotism it is especially

kan  d e   netop se                                                       t h e m  who are able to see

det dybsindige i                                                                                       depth.

(Hein 1996c, 207).                                                     (KS)

[5] Young Cioran could not philosophize abstractly and systematically, and so he became a poet, and then, as a poet, he continued to philosophize poetically (Zarifopol-Johnston 1995, xx-xxi). A feeling of not being able to differentiate, clarify, understand or appreciate makes any philosopher a poet. If a philosopher experiences this feeling, he will not be no longer able to philosophize abstractly and rigidly. A philosopher becoming a poet is like a drama. Then he falls from the world of abstractions into a whirlwind of feelings. A philosopher who ends up in absolute confusion can from then on philosophize only poetically. In the state of absolute confusion, only the delights and torments of madness still matter to him. (Cioran 1995, 57-58.)

[6] "All that is form, system, category, frame, or plan tends to make things absolute and springs from a lack of inner energy, from a sterile spiritual life. - - There is value only in that which bursts forth from inspiration, which springs up from the irrational depths of our being, from the secret center of our subjectivity." (Cioran 1995, 39.)

[7] "We are so lonely in life that we must ask ourselves if the loneliness of dying is not a symbol of our human existence" (Cioran 1995, 6). Cioran points out that one can experience loneliness in two ways: by feeling lonely in the world (individual loneliness) or by feeling the loneliness of the world (cosmic loneliness) (Cioran 1995, 50).

[8] 'Inhorealismi' is hard to translate into any language. It seems that the word has no equivalent in English, nor possibly in any other language either.

[9] Compare to Cioran: "Under similar adverse circumstances, some are indifferent, some are moved, some are driven to suicide" (Cioran 1995, 55).

[10] Cioran speaks about "magical optimism", "the illusions of magic" and "sweet, un-self-conscious naiveté"  which reject the negative, demonic essence of life (Cioran 1995, 70; 77). Kaplinski speaks about conspiracy of illusionists (illusionistide vandenõu).

[11] We see the world ultimately through our misery. So, I think it can be said with reason that we are ultimately ill, at least we feel that we are ill. We kind of get sick of the world, in its literal meaning. Cioran describes aptly this feeling: "The real gives me asthma!" (Cioran  2012a, 33; Cioran  2004, 37). We can be nothing but sick of the world. We all see life through the eyes of a sick person. So, strictly speaking, we are all a bit out of order because of our inner anxiety - we are sick of existence and sick in existence.

[12] Also Schopenhauer and Kaplinski believe in poet's ability to get closer to reality and truth than philosophers usually do (Kaplinski 1982, 69-70; Kaplinski 1968, 1105).

[13] When we are with someone, we think less about ourselves, in company everything weakens and wilts, beginning with our own confusion (Cioran 1998, 35).

"Only what has been conceived in solitude, face to face with God, endures - whether one is a believer or not" (Cioran 1998, 56).

[14] In Heraklit's opinion emotions looked like thick, colored fog (Emerson 1958, 199).

[15] lade som absolut sletingenting = literally: ”act as if nothing-at-all ; Compare with Cioran: "I am myself only above or beneath myself, in rage or prostration; on my habitual level, I am unaware that I exist" (Cioran 2012a, 46; Cioran 2004, 47).

[16] We can also talk about Hobson's choice. We can talk about Hobson's choice when we refer to a situation of making a decision being forced to choose between two things which are both unsatisfactory, and so one cannot possibly be happy.

[17] DER ER ALTID NOGET           THERE IS ALWAYS SOMETHING

Filosofém.                                       Philosopheme.

Det forsyn, som sørger                  The Providence that takes care of                         

for duer og ravne,                         pigeons and ravens,

ser til, at selv mennesket              sees to that not even a man

intet skal savne:                                                          lacks anything:

de da'e da de store                        in those days, when big worries

bekymringer sover,                        are in sleep,

da finder vi småting                      we find little things

at ærgre os over.                            to be annoyed at.

(Hein 1999, 254.)                          (KS)

[18] Piet Hein has treated the same theme:

FERIE FRA MIG SELV                                              HOLIDAY FROM MYSELF

Imorges kørte jeg min Vej                                         This morning I drove away

paa Ferie fra mit eget Jeg.                                       to have a vacation from myself.

O, skønne Selvudslettelse!                                        Oh, this wonderful fading of myself!

Jeg kunde, Læser, unde dig                                      If only I could, my reader, I would let you be me

blot for idag at være mig                                          even if only this one day so that you could

og føle denne Lettelse.*                                            feel this relief.

(Hein 2007.)                                                                (KS)

Cioran speaks about "un-self-consciousness" (Cioran 1995, 69).

[19] For Cioran, suffering is something active: A suferi e modul de a fi activ fără să faci ceva.

[20] It seems to me that they pick different things from reality, the pay attention to different facts, that is one reason why their descriptions differ so much from each other.

[21] Compare to Piet Hein's point of view:

EGNE SMERTER                                                        AGONIES OF OUR OWN

Det er forbandelsen                                                   There is a curse in the

                             ved egne smerter:                          agonies of one's own:

dem kan man ikke                                                       They cannot be lied

                             lyve bort, - de er der.                     away , - they exist.

For andres kan man                                                   One can pretend that one does not see

                             skåne sine blikke:                          the agonies of others:

luk dine øjne -                                                             just close your eyes -

                             og de er der ikke.                           and they do not exist.

(Hein 1995, 24.)                                                          (KS)

[22] "Knowledge is the plague of life, and consciousness, an open wound in its heart" (Cioran 1995, 43).

[23] "Isn't deprivation of sleep one of the most cruel tortures practiced in prisons?" (Cioran 1995, 85). If my memory serves me right, this has been used as means of torturing, and it is universally forbidden to use this method in questioning. There is a universal agreement about this.

[24] Piet Hein is of a different opinion:

SÅDAN ER MAN                                                         THIS IS HOW WE A LIKE

Huskevers.                                                                    To remember.

Sådan er mennesket:                                                  Man is like this:

selv når man sover                                                     even when asleep

husker man dét                                                            he remembers,

som man ærgrer sig over.                                          what pisses him off.

(Hein 1996a, 186).                                                     (KS)

[25] Compare to Kaplinski, who speaks about fastening signs (in Estonian: siltide külgekleepimine) to people deciding who they are without asking them first  (Kaplinski 2004b, 351).

[26] "I long to be free - desperately free. Free as the stillborn are free." (Cioran 1998, 9.)