Centenary of his birth is dedicated.

Note on Emile Cioran

Emile Michel Cioran Romanian-French essayist, philosopher was born in Rasinari, Romania in 8 of April in 1911. He studied philosophy at Bucharest University. In 1936 Cioran has changed his place of living, language of speaking, but never a way of taking the things around him. Cioran moved to Paris and never returned to the motherland. The major themes of God, solitude, despair, meaning of the life, sense of history and national destiny once having appeared in Romanian works: Pe culmile disperarii (On the Heights of Despair), Cartea amagirilor, (The Book of Delusions),Schimbarea la fata a României (The Transfiguration of Romania), Lacrimi si Sfinti (Tears and Saints), Îndreptar patimas (The Passionate Handbook) had never ceased to be crucial for Cioran and reappeared yet in French written works. As majority of the critics suggest that despite pessimism is the main tone of Cioran's philosophical reflections, he was viewed as a philosophers sympathizing skepticism and nihilism.

Gadamer[1] sees the hermeneutical task of understanding the written text as a general problem for the humanitarian sciences; especially it is a matter of fact in philosophy.  What is crucial in the process of reading in Gadamer's view is a search for the right meaning of the written text. Text born from the oral primary plot of the author is an alienation from the meaning the words or ideas of author carried out. The real hermeneutic task therefore is to return its alienated meaning[2]. The mechanism is similar in every discipline; however texts and supporting those means of expression the thought are different.

Hermeneutical task of the right reading (and therefore understanding) is not taken from the agenda in the case of Romanian – French philosopher Emile Cioran; it reappears again and again reading Cioran. The explanation might be the following: the particular features of his philosophy hindrances the process of understanding; moreover, the various labels are friendly co-existed. The multi-sided philosophical personality of Cioran provokes the number of interpretations formed in the appropriate labels: existential nihilist[3], skeptic[4], existential pessimist[5]. The point is that each researcher focused on one particular side of the personality, he sliced the part of the whole and put it as a dominant feature. However it is hard to reject the characteristics, the point is that it not enough to focus on only one part. The total perception requires probably another approach.

For instance, Crosby[6]ranges Cioran as the nihilist, more precisely as the representative of nihilistic existentialism. In article on nihilism Crosby underlines that the spirit of denial dominates in the philosophical arguments of Cioran. Rightly the denial is a hallmark of the major statements of Cioran, but in my interpretation the denial character for him is a package the statements are dressed, the last and non-discussed evaluation of the things as the worst ones. In Cioran's words the skepticism always served him as a tool to arrive at the conclusions[7]. Interestingly, Cioran is defined by Crosby as a representative of existential nihilism, when Dienstag[8] prefers to operate with the term existential pessimism.

[1]. Gadamer, H-G. (1993). Truth and Method. Continuum: New York.

[2]."All writing is a kind of alienated speech, and its signs need to be transformed back into speech and meaning. Because the meaning has undergone a kind of self-alienation through being written  down, this transformation back is the real hermeneutical task " (Ibid., p.393).

[3]. In article on nihilism in[3] Crosby, D. A. (2009). Nihilism In Proudfoot, M., lacey A. R. (Eds.).TheRoutledge Dictionary of Philosophy. Taylor & Francis LTD: United Kingdom

[4]. Author of the work Cioran: portray of a radical skeptic.

[5]. Dienstag, J. F. (2006).  Pessimism. Princeton University Press: Princeton.

[6]. Crosby, D. A. (2009). Nihilism In Proudfoot, M., lacey A. R. (Eds.).TheRoutledge Dictionary of Philosophy. Taylor & Francis LTD: United Kingdom

[7]. TE,p.78.

[8]. Dienstag ranges Cioran together with Camus and Unamuno as existential pessimist. His main thesis is that for these philosophers pessimism has more general source (then culture or society) and consists in the human existence. The problems marked as pessimistic thus are not modern but ancient by its essence.

The problem of right reading the given texts overlaps with the general hermeneutical problem of understanding.  The issue of right reading is more than necessary in the case of aphorism. Rose Elizabeth Cleveland formulated the approach of proper reading in introduction to Soliloquies by St. Augustine:"The merciless formula, It takes two halves to make a whole one, is never more exactingthan in the conjunction of book andreader. He who brings away from a bookall which the author puts in it, and allwhich gets in of itself, is he who takes somethingto it"[9] Reading any type of text first and foremost implies the applying to its author. Personality of author is hidden under text such position hold Ilinca Romanian translator of OHD and TS. Reading implies double work for reader. The first-hand task is to understand the text, more concretely – what the author has hidden in the text. The second task supplements the read text with the personal attitudes. However it is not a spare thing or moreover it is probably the core of the matter of understanding when reader puts something from his side in order to approach to author's meaning.

Free interpretation is a guarantee for the diversity

Careful reading provides careful interpretation however, this simple rule does not go smoothly when one reads aphorisms. In AGD Cioran defines aphorism: "the aphorism is cultivated only by those who have known fear in the midst of words, that fear of collapsing with all the words" [10].  Aphorism is a preference of those writers who known the fear words hide, the fear to be exhausted with the masses of the words. Cioran's aphorism is what is characteristically to point out the frank manner to exhibit personal worrying and preoccupations: "his aphorisms are unlike the smug, bourgeois exponents of the Nineteenth century. They open wounds"[11].The aphorism is a overcoming of the "fear of collapsing with all the words", the right reading of that demands the similar absence of the fear to be confused with the words. The various interpretations of Cioran sketched above is an evidence of the absence of the fear – or to put differently an evidence of the freedom in dealing with the meanings of the words, i.e. the freedom of interpretation.

[9]. Augustine. Soliloquies,p.43.

[10]. AGD,p.7.

Note on prime sources

All Gall is Divided (1999). Arcade Publishing: New York. Abbreviated as AGD

Drawn and Quartered. (1983).Trans. Richard Howard. New York: The

Arcade Cioran. Arcade Publishing. Abbreviated as DQ

On the Heights of Despair (1992) The University of Chicago Press: Chicago. Abbreviated henceforth as OHD

Tears and Saints(1995). The University of Chicago Press: Chicago. Abbreviated as TS.

Temptation to Exist (1992). The University of Chicago Press: Chicago. Abbreviated as TE