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Single Idea 23071

[filed under theme 20. Action / C. Motives for Action / 4. Responsibility for Actions ]

Full Idea

The problem of responsibility would have a meaning only if we had been consulted before our birth and had consented to be precisely who we are.

Gist of Idea

We could only be responsible if we had consented before birth to who we are

Source

E.M. Cioran (The Trouble with Being Born [1973], 06)

Book Ref

Cioran,E.M.: 'The Trouble with Being Born', ed/tr. Richard Howard [Penguin 2012], p.82

A Reaction

The question could still be asked retrospectively, like agreeing to be in an army into which you have been conscripted. People gripped by deeply anti-social desires would probably welcome the chance to become different.

The 64 ideas from E.M. Cioran

19627 Opportunists can save a nation, and heroes can ruin it [Cioran]
19622 The pointlessness of our motives and irrelevance of our gestures reveals our vacuity [Cioran]
19602 You are stuck in the past if you don't know boredom [Cioran]
19619 To live authentically, we must see that philosophy is totally useless [Cioran]
19618 I abandoned philosophy because it didn't acknowledge melancholy and human weakness [Cioran]
19621 Originality in philosophy is just the invention of terms [Cioran]
19620 Great systems of philosophy are just brilliant tautologies [Cioran]
19624 Intelligence only fully flourishes at the end of a historical period [Cioran]
19625 The ideal is to impose a religion by force, and then live in doubt about its beliefs [Cioran]
19614 Lovers are hateful, apart from their hovering awareness of death [Cioran]
19615 I want to suppress in myself the normal reasons people have for action [Cioran]
19599 Ideas are neutral, but people fill them with passion and weakness [Cioran]
19600 When man abandons religion, he then follows new fake gods and mythologies [Cioran]
19623 Circles of hell are ridiculous; all that matters is to be there [Cioran]
19616 As the perfect wisdom of detachment, philosophy offers no rivals to Taoism [Cioran]
19617 Evidence suggests that humans do not have a purpose [Cioran]
19610 Religions see suicide as insubordination [Cioran]
19611 No one has ever found a good argument against suicide [Cioran]
19626 Our instincts had to be blunted and diminished, to make way for consciousness! [Cioran]
19603 Why is God so boring, and why does God resemble humanity so little? [Cioran]
19605 Despite endless suggestions, no one has found a goal for history [Cioran]
19604 Unlike other creatures, mankind seems lost in nature [Cioran]
19606 We can only live because our imagination and memory are poor [Cioran]
19612 The universe is dirty and fragile, as if a scandal in nothingness had produced its matter [Cioran]
19613 It is pointless to refuse or accept the social order; we must endure it like the weather [Cioran]
19608 Wisdom is just the last gasp of a dying civilization [Cioran]
19601 Life is now more dreaded than death [Cioran]
19609 If you have not contemplated suicide, you are a miserable worm [Cioran]
19631 The history of ideas (and deeds) occurs in a meaningless environment [Cioran]
19632 An axiom has no more authority than a frenzy [Cioran]
19630 No great idea ever emerged from a dialogue [Cioran]
19633 We use concepts to master our fears; saying 'death' releases us from confronting it [Cioran]
19628 At a civilisation's peak values are all that matters, and people unconsciously live by them [Cioran]
19629 A nation gives expression to its sum of values, and is then exhausted [Cioran]
19634 Man is never himself; he always aims at less than life, or more than life [Cioran]
19637 History is wonderfully devoid of meaning [Cioran]
19636 Truth is just an error insufficiently experienced [Cioran]
19641 If you lack beliefs, boredom is your martyrdom [Cioran]
19640 No one is brave enough to say they don't want to do anything; we despise such a view [Cioran]
19645 Some thinkers would have been just as dynamic, no matter when they had lived [Cioran]
19638 Metaphysics is a universalisation of physical anguish [Cioran]
19642 Eventually every 'truth' is guaranteed by the police [Cioran]
19644 History is the bloody rejection of boredom [Cioran]
19643 A religion needs to motivate killings, and cannot tolerate rivals [Cioran]
19646 Values don't accumulate; they are ruthlessly replaced [Cioran]
19639 We all need sexual secrets! [Cioran]
19607 The mind is superficial, only concerned with the arrangement of events, not their significance [Cioran]
23064 So-called wisdom is just pondering things instead of acting [Cioran]
23062 It is better to watch the hours pass, than trying to fill them [Cioran]
23063 The first man obviously found paradise unendurable [Cioran]
23067 Suicide is pointless, because it always comes too late [Cioran]
23068 People who really believe anti-realism don't bother to prove it [Cioran]
23065 If only we could write like a reptile, of endless sensations and no concepts! [Cioran]
23066 Negation doesn't arise from reasoning, but from deep instincts [Cioran]
23069 Fear cures boredom, because it is stronger [Cioran]
23071 We could only be responsible if we had consented before birth to who we are [Cioran]
23070 We morally dissolve if we spend time with excessive beauty [Cioran]
23072 Systems are the worst despotism, in philosophy and in life [Cioran]
23073 Convictions are failures to study anything thoroughly [Cioran]
23076 If people always acted without words we would take them for robots [Cioran]
23075 A text explained ceases to be a text [Cioran]
23074 In anxiety people cling to what reinforces it, because it is a deep need [Cioran]
23077 The word 'being' is very tempting, but in fact means nothing at all [Cioran]
23078 Opinions are fine, but having convictions means something has gone wrong [Cioran]