Reviews

Del inconveniente de haber nacido by E.M. Cioran

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insecam's review against another edition

challenging dark funny reflective slow-paced

3.5

the best (and worst) crisis book - brutally funny and agonizingly true. i really adore Cioran's prose, truly the most alienated man to ever live? everything he experiences contradicts himself in the most mind-numbingly painful way possible. consciously being locked out of understanding anything about the Absolute, while still feeling a heavy call to Buddhism (but still convinced of the futility of both.) torn between the chasm of accepting withdrawal or accepting a love of life. convinced to condemning man as a plague or passively coming to terms with mankind's existence in a defeated and dramatic way (as he tends to do). Cioran truly never could find peace. but weaved in between agonizing aphorisms about the unbearable yearning to return to pre-birth/non-existence, is the occasional and completely sublime, BEYOND poignant aphorism that shatters reality. this is a crisis book, rummage through his ramblings and pull what you need

& the aphorism about the alienated gorilla is unparalleled

"i've merely taken a leap outside my fate, and now i don't know where to turn, what to run for ..."

"...'the feeling of being everything and the evidence of being nothing.' I happened across this phrase in my youth, and was overwhelmed by it. Everything I felt in those days, and everything I would feel from then on, was summed in this extraordinary banal formula ..."

aem's review against another edition

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challenging dark tense slow-paced

2.75

rascalnikov's review against another edition

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challenging dark reflective tense medium-paced

3.75

Some excellent passages scattered amidst what feels like convoluted nonsense. Reading it was like listening to a well read cynic babbling on his death bed and occasionally saying something strikingly incisive.

Content Warnings

jbradley98's review against another edition

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dark inspiring reflective

4.0

richardwiggins's review against another edition

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1.0

It’s strange reading a series of short, often self-aggrandising, suppositions. Cioran talks from a very personal, bordering on self-obsessed, perspective. His “in the moment” inner monologue fails to draw broader, robust conclusions on wider society. Some of his observations are simply immature. He truly seems to believe that he “feels” things more than others do. I could see why Cioran’s philosophy would be attractive to teenagers but I cannot understand how he has built up a credible following.

It did encourage me to get back into reading philosophy though. So that’s something.

sreymey's review against another edition

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2.0

His style of writing is great but the point of his views are bad, like an example:
"Aristotle, Aquinas, Hegel—three enslavers of the mind. The worst form of despotism is the system, in philosophy and in everything."