display all the ideas for this combination of philosophers
17 ideas
9241 | Loving oneself is not a failing, but is essential to a successful life [Frankfurt] |
Full Idea: Far from demonstrating a flaw in character or being a sign of weakness, coming to love oneself is the deepest and most essential - and by no means the most readily attainable - achievement of a serious and successful life. | |
From: Harry G. Frankfurt (The Reasons of Love [2005], 2.14) | |
A reaction: Obviously it will be necessary to dilineate the healthy form of self-love, which Frankfurt attempts to do. Ruthless vanity and self-seeking certainly look like the worst possible weaknesses of character. With that proviso, he is right. |
19634 | Man is never himself; he always aims at less than life, or more than life [Cioran] |
Full Idea: Able to live only beyond and short of life, man is a prey to two temptation: imbecility and sanctity: sub-man and superman, never himself. | |
From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 4 'Threat') | |
A reaction: To me, Taoism embodies imbecility, and spiritual religions embody the superman idea. [This is not Nietzsche's übermensch]. |
19619 | To live authentically, we must see that philosophy is totally useless [Cioran] |
Full Idea: 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. | |
From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 1 'Farewell') | |
A reaction: The existentialist dream of trying to find an 'authentic' way of life. That idea means nothing to me. You would need to be utterly immersed in the life of a community with which you identified to live authentically, and that life has almost vanished. |
19622 | The pointlessness of our motives and irrelevance of our gestures reveals our vacuity [Cioran] |
Full Idea: When we realise that no human motive is compatible with infinity, and that no gesture is worth the trouble of making it, our heart, by its very beating, can no longer conceal its vacuity. | |
From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 1 'Disintoxication') | |
A reaction: An interesting choice of reasons. Nihilism in comparison with infinity, and in comparison with the vastness of society? If you were immortal, and there were only fifty other humans, would that help? |
19617 | Evidence suggests that humans do not have a purpose [Cioran] |
Full Idea: By all evidence, we are in the world to do nothing. | |
From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 1 'Militant') | |
A reaction: I'm not clear what evidence there could be. Other animals are all enmeshed in a particular environment. As soon as homo sapiens left Africa, it became a baffling phenonomen. I'm not sure what an alligator is in the world for, either. |
19612 | The universe is dirty and fragile, as if a scandal in nothingness had produced its matter [Cioran] |
Full Idea: Everything which is done and undone in the universe bears the stamp of a filthy fragility, as if matter were the fruit of a scandal at the core of nothingness. | |
From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 1 'The Reactionary') | |
A reaction: A gloriously imagined idea, worthy of Shakespeare. By 'scandal' I suppose he implies that the universe is the bastard child of a horrible relationship. A prize exhibit for my 'Nihilism' collection. True nihilists, of course, don't write books. |
19604 | Unlike other creatures, mankind seems lost in nature [Cioran] |
Full Idea: Whereas all beings have their place in nature, man remains a metaphysically straying creature, lost in Life, a stranger to the Creation. | |
From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 1 'The Indirect5') | |
A reaction: Nice challenge to the Aristotelian idea that we can identify the nature and function of man, and derive an ethics from it. This idea seems to state the essence of existentialism, perhaps better than anything in Sartre. We should have stayed in Africa? |
19606 | We can only live because our imagination and memory are poor [Cioran] |
Full Idea: Life is possible only by the deficiencies of our imagination and our memory | |
From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 1 'The Key') | |
A reaction: Does this mean that we should actually aspire to limit our imaginations and memories? Or are we mercifully intrinsically limited, so that massive intellectual ambition will do no harm? We should be told these things, Cioran! |
19601 | Life is now more dreaded than death [Cioran] |
Full Idea: By dint of accumulating non-mysteries and monopolizing non-meanings, life inspires more dread than death; it is life which is the Great Unknown. | |
From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 1 'Variations') | |
A reaction: This is the sort of remark we pay continental philosophers to make. |
23074 | In anxiety people cling to what reinforces it, because it is a deep need [Cioran] |
Full Idea: In anxiety, a man clings to whatever can reinforce, can stimulate his providential discomfort: to try to cure him of it is to destroy his equilibrium, anxiety being the basis of his existence and his prosperity. | |
From: E.M. Cioran (The Trouble with Being Born [1973], 09) | |
A reaction: A report from the front line of the age of anxiety, on which I am not qualified to comment. I assume that some anxiety can be a good thing, like nerves before a public performance. |
19640 | No one is brave enough to say they don't want to do anything; we despise such a view [Cioran] |
Full Idea: No one has the audacity to exclaim: 'I don't want to do anything!' - we are more indulgent with a murderer than with a mind emancipated from actions. | |
From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 6 'The Architect') | |
A reaction: Perhaps this should be the anti-epigraph for this website. I've slogged away at this project for nineteen years, probably for no other reason than that inactivity appears to be wicked. If I abandoned it, I would invent another project. Sad. |
9300 | Boredom is serious, not just uncomfortable; it threatens our psychic survival [Frankfurt] |
Full Idea: Boredom is a serious matter. It is not a condition that we seek to avoid just because we do not find it enjoyable. ..It threatens the very continuation of conscious mental life. ..Avoiding bored is a primitive urge for psychic survival. | |
From: Harry G. Frankfurt (The Reasons of Love [2005], 2.8) | |
A reaction: Presumably nihilism will flood into the emptiness created by boredom. Frankfurt will see it as a lack of love for anything in your life, and hence an absence of value. Frankfurt is very good. |
19602 | You are stuck in the past if you don't know boredom [Cioran] |
Full Idea: The man who knows nothing of ennui is still in the world's childhood. | |
From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 1 'Dislocation') | |
A reaction: Boredom well may be the central experience of existentialism, rather than angst, or nihilism, or the temptations of suicide. |
23069 | Fear cures boredom, because it is stronger [Cioran] |
Full Idea: Fear is the antidote to boredom: the remedy must be stronger than the disease. | |
From: E.M. Cioran (The Trouble with Being Born [1973], 05) | |
A reaction: I suspect that this is the motivation of people who indulge in dangerous sports. Maybe all that is need is something daunting, rather than frightening. |
19644 | History is the bloody rejection of boredom [Cioran] |
Full Idea: History is the bloody product of the rejection of boredom. | |
From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 6 'Views') | |
A reaction: How many absurd and horrible things have been done by people who could not stand being bored? But also, almost everything wonderful has the same source. How did Bach and Shakespeare and Rembrandt feel about boredom? |
19641 | If you lack beliefs, boredom is your martyrdom [Cioran] |
Full Idea: Ennui is the martyrdom of those who live and die for no belief. | |
From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 6 'Obsequies') |
23062 | It is better to watch the hours pass, than trying to fill them [Cioran] |
Full Idea: I do nothing, granted. But I see the hours pass - which is better than trying to fill them. | |
From: E.M. Cioran (The Trouble with Being Born [1973], 01) | |
A reaction: As Nietzsche would have pointed out, this came from a man who regularly wrote books. It is, though, certainly worth asking whether the way we fill our time is better than doing nothing. |