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The Partially Examined Life

Ep. 377: Emil Cioran's Pessimism (Part Two)

45 min episode · 2 min read

Episode

45 min

Read time

2 min

Topics

Crypto & Web3, Philosophy & Wisdom

AI-Generated Summary

Key Takeaways

  • Genealogy of Fanaticism: Cioran argues absolutes and ideals drive humans to murder each other, making skepticism and idleness nobler than action. Idle people don't launch crusades or kill for beliefs, while active idealists become potential murderers through their convictions.
  • Ennui as Revelation: Ennui reveals absolutes as banal rather than transcendent, showing they're not worth embracing. This state doesn't fill the void left by rejecting ideals but exposes their emptiness, leaving humans in authentic recognition of existence's fundamental meaninglessness.
  • Rejection of Collective Speech: Cioran insists on speaking only for oneself, rejecting Sartre and Kant's view that individual actions create universal values. Using "we" or claiming to interpret others represents inauthentic philosophy that should be considered hostile to genuine individual experience.
  • Violation of Time: Life gains content only through violating time—humans exist perpetually in regret about the past or hope for the future, never truly present. Nostalgia attempts the impossible task of retroactively changing what's irreversible, defining human consciousness.

What It Covers

The Partially Examined Life examines Emil Cioran's 1949 work on pessimism, exploring his views on absolutes, ennui, solitude, the ineffable nature of existence, and why human ideals inevitably lead to violence and self-deception.

Key Questions Answered

  • Genealogy of Fanaticism: Cioran argues absolutes and ideals drive humans to murder each other, making skepticism and idleness nobler than action. Idle people don't launch crusades or kill for beliefs, while active idealists become potential murderers through their convictions.
  • Ennui as Revelation: Ennui reveals absolutes as banal rather than transcendent, showing they're not worth embracing. This state doesn't fill the void left by rejecting ideals but exposes their emptiness, leaving humans in authentic recognition of existence's fundamental meaninglessness.
  • Rejection of Collective Speech: Cioran insists on speaking only for oneself, rejecting Sartre and Kant's view that individual actions create universal values. Using "we" or claiming to interpret others represents inauthentic philosophy that should be considered hostile to genuine individual experience.
  • Violation of Time: Life gains content only through violating time—humans exist perpetually in regret about the past or hope for the future, never truly present. Nostalgia attempts the impossible task of retroactively changing what's irreversible, defining human consciousness.

Notable Moment

The hosts debate whether Cioran advocates complete inaction as response to World War atrocities, suggesting his pessimism stems from wanting people to stop doing terrible things rather than offering genuine philosophy about human flourishing or meaning.

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Episode Transcript

Picture this. You're on a date, and then bad breath happens. Confidence gone. Here's the truth. Most gums and mints are just bad breath band aids, but not Zelleman's minty mouth. The functional breath freshener you swallow, tiny dual action capsules with mint on the outside, parsley seed oil inside, clinically tested to fight the toughest offenders, even garlic and onions. It's only available online. Go to zellman's.com, zelmins, zellman's.com, code fresh for 15% off. Okay. Only 10 more presents to wrap. You're almost at the finish line. But first there. The last one. Enjoy a Coca Cola for a pause that refreshes. You're listening to the Partially Examined Life episode 377 part two. We've been discussing Emile Turan's 1949 book, A Short History of Decay. We were sort of getting down to brass tacks of what is this awfulness that is the thing that we keep trying to escape from, the thing that we keep throwing ourselves in Kierkegaardian fashion in various strategies, into work, into ideals, into pretend salvation. Yeah. Wes, did you wanna recap what you were just saying when we stopped there? Well, I was emphasizing this idea that we that there's something ineffable inside us, something mysterious that can't be communicated to others. So that inevitably we are in solitude. And I think he might say, although I don't know that he explicitly says it, but a lot of what we're doing with these absolutes or these flying into religion or science or philosophy, anything like that in a way. We're trying to, deny this essential solitude and essential in communicability. Ability. Right? So he he's not a fan of words, for instance. Except maybe in poetry. But, yeah. Yeah. And this notion of nothingness or there being sort of an ineffable source that we're naming, but there's always the source that is closer to the real world. Right? I immediately think of Hegel. Right? And Hegel, I guess in the end, it's this iterative process that you're trying to ultimately get to comprehend it. Right? But there's still always a source. And I guess we could pick any number of other philosophers in which there is this fundamental nothingness because it hasn't been named yet that ends up being the source. Is the concrete. Right? That it is reminiscent of Hegel. So the in the graveyard of definitions on page seven. It's very reminiscent of the Hegel in the sense, the the inadequacy of definitions to concrete things. They always. So he'll say, the idle empty mind, which joins the world only by the grace of sleep, can practice only by extending the name of things, by emptying them and substituting formulas for them. Then it maneuvers over their debris. No more sensations. Nothing but memories. So we get away from the real, from this world of, you know, immediate sensation by using words and by using concepts that this idea that we can we join the world only in sleep is really interesting. …

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  • by Emil Cioran

    The Partially Examined Life examines Emil Cioran's 1949 work on pessimism, exploring his views on absolutes, ennui, solitude, the ineffable nature of existence, and why human ideals inevitably lead to violence and self-deception.

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