21 ideas
| 23064 | So-called wisdom is just pondering things instead of acting [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: What is known as 'wisdom' is ultimately only a perpetual 'thinking it over', i.e. non-action as first impulse. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (The Trouble with Being Born [1973], 01) | |
| A reaction: This may be how most people view wisdom. Wisdom is for the spectators, not the actors (perhaps). Wisdom needs a lot of thought, and I don't associate it with extremely active people. |
| 23072 | Systems are the worst despotism, in philosophy and in life [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle, Aquinas, Hegel - three enslavers of the mind. The worst form of despotism is the system, in philosophy and in everything. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (The Trouble with Being Born [1973], 07) | |
| A reaction: I'm not quite clear why intellectual 'despotism' is a dreadful crime. I revere Aristotle, partly because he is systematic, but I reject about 30% of what he says. Still, many people agree with this idea. |
| 23075 | A text explained ceases to be a text [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: Why embroider upon what excludes commentary? A text explained is not longer a text. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (The Trouble with Being Born [1973], 09) | |
| A reaction: I like that. I'm not a great fan of explicating texts, especially if they are literary, where the whole point is the primary experience, of a novel, poem or play. Philosophy is different, because that is a dialogue between writer and reader. |
| 23066 | Negation doesn't arise from reasoning, but from deep instincts [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: Negation never proceeds from reasoning but from something much more obscure and old. Arguments come afterward, to justify and sustain it. Every no rises out of the blood. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (The Trouble with Being Born [1973], 02) | |
| A reaction: Music to my ears. In the Fregean era no one is allowed to talk about the origins of logical relations in the universal facts of physical existence. You can watch dogs saying no. |
| 23077 | The word 'being' is very tempting, but in fact means nothing at all [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: Whether it is spoken by a grocer or a philosopher, the word 'being', apparently so rich, so tempting, so charged with significance, in fact means nothing at all; incredible that a man in his right mind can use it on any occasion whatever. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (The Trouble with Being Born [1973], 12) | |
| A reaction: I entirely agree. It resembles the redundancy view of 'true' (with which I do not agree). |
| 23068 | People who really believe anti-realism don't bother to prove it [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: When you know quite absolutely that everything is unreal, you then cannot see why you should take the trouble to prove it. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (The Trouble with Being Born [1973], 02) | |
| A reaction: Does the same apply to realists? There are at least genuine arguments in both directions. Presumably the thought is that realists have something they care about, but true anti-realists don't. |
| 15201 | That Queen Anne is dead is a 'general fact', not a fact about Queen Anne [Prior,AN] |
| Full Idea: The fact that Queen Anne has been dead for some years is not, in the strict sense of 'about', a fact about Queen Anne; it is not a fact about anyone or anything - it is a general fact. | |
| From: Arthur N. Prior (Changes in Events and Changes in Things [1968], p.13), quoted by Robin Le Poidevin - Past, Present and Future of Debate about Tense 1 b | |
| A reaction: He distinguishes 'general facts' (states of affairs, I think) from 'individual facts', involving some specific object. General facts seem to be what are expressed by negative existential truths, such as 'there is no Loch Ness Monster'. Useful. |
| 23073 | Convictions are failures to study anything thoroughly [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: We have convictions only if we have studied nothing thoroughly. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (The Trouble with Being Born [1973], 08) | |
| A reaction: Excellent! I cannot imagine studying anything at all in great depth without it resulting in a dwindling expectation of full understanding. Philosophy in spades, but also probably any topic in history. |
| 23078 | Opinions are fine, but having convictions means something has gone wrong [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: To have opinions is inevitable, is natural; to have convictions is less so. Each time I meet someone who has convictions, I wonder what intellectual vice, what flaw has caused him to acquire such a thing. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (The Trouble with Being Born [1973], 12) | |
| A reaction: 'The best lack all conviction/ While the worst are full of passionate intensity' (Yeats). I agree with this. Convictions are so often accompanied by anger. |
| 23076 | If people always acted without words we would take them for robots [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: It is because of speech that men give the illusion of being free. If they did - without a word - what they do, we would take them for robots. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (The Trouble with Being Born [1973], 09) | |
| A reaction: Love this one. Though it might be said that the power of speech does add an extra dimension of freedom to an action, beyond what any animal could attain. I take the absolute idea of 'being free' to be nonsense. |
| 23065 | If only we could write like a reptile, of endless sensations and no concepts! [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: If only we could reach back before the concept, could 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! | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (The Trouble with Being Born [1973], 02) | |
| A reaction: A lovely thought. It is a huge effort for us to try to imagine a mental life without concepts. And then to express that mental life in words…..! |
| 23071 | We could only be responsible if we had consented before birth to who we are [Cioran] |
| 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. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (The Trouble with Being Born [1973], 06) | |
| 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. |
| 23070 | We morally dissolve if we spend time with excessive beauty [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: Moral disintegration when we spend time in a place that is too beautiful: the self dissolves upon contact with paradise. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (The Trouble with Being Born [1973], 06) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure whether that is true, but it is worth thinking about the value of experiences which are overwhelming. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 23067 | Suicide is pointless, because it always comes too late [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: It's not worth the bother of killing yourself, since you always kill yourself too late. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (The Trouble with Being Born [1973], 02) | |
| A reaction: A neat thought, but unlikely to be true for those who commit suicide, which presumably results from a sustained and apparently incurable situation. |
| 22899 | 'Thank goodness that's over' is not like 'thank goodness that happened on Friday' [Prior,AN] |
| Full Idea: One says 'thank goodness that is over', ..and it says something which it is impossible which any use of any tenseless copula with a date should convey. It certainly doesn't mean the same as 'thank goodness that occured on Friday June 15th 1954'. | |
| From: Arthur N. Prior (Changes in Events and Changes in Things [1968]), quoted by Adrian Bardon - Brief History of the Philosophy of Time 4 'Pervasive' | |
| A reaction: [Ref uncertain] This seems to be appealing to ordinary usage, in which tenses have huge significance. If we take time (with its past, present and future) as primitive, then tenses can have full weight. Did tenses mean anything at all to Einstein? |
| 7829 | God no more has human perfections than we have animal perfections [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: To ascribe to God those attributes which make a man perfect would be as wrong as to ascribe to a man the attributes that make perfect an elephant or an ass. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (Letters to Blijenburgh [1665], 1665), quoted by Matthew Stewart - The Courtier and the Heretic Ch.10 | |
| A reaction: This would be a difficulty for Aquinas's Fourth Way (Idea 1432), and one which I think Aquinas might acknowledge, given his desire that we should be humble when trying to comprehend God (Idea 1410). It leaves us struggling to grasp the concept of God. |
| 7830 | A talking triangle would say God is triangular [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: If a triangle could speak it would say that God is eminently triangular. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (Letters to Blijenburgh [1665], 1665), quoted by Matthew Stewart - The Courtier and the Heretic Ch.10 | |
| A reaction: Spinoza had a rather appealing waspish wit. This nicely dramatises an ancient idea (Idea 407). You can, of course, if you believe in God, infer some of His characteristics from His creation. But then see Hume: Ideas 1439, 6960, 6967, 1440. |
| 23063 | The first man obviously found paradise unendurable [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: Paradise was unendurable, otherwise the first man would have adapted to it. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (The Trouble with Being Born [1973], 01) | |
| A reaction: Seems a bit harsh. There was evidently one aspect that was missing (knowledge), and he was surprised to find himself ejected for wanting it. Like a holiday in a Mediterranean hotel, with good food. |