Art of Darkness Emil Cioran’s Short History of Decay with Caleb Caudell
Dec 4, 2022
Novelist Caleb Caudell joins the hosts to discuss Emil Cioran, a Romanian philosopher known for his pessimistic philosophy. Topics include Cioran's controversial writing, exploring suffering and nihilism, and the history of empires. They also touch on Cioran's insomnia and obsession with suicide, as well as his unconventional lifestyle and contradictions as a writer and philosopher.
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Philosophy Through Fierce, Lyrical Violence
- Emil Cioran marries lyrical prose to brutal, animalistic instincts in his philosophy, forcing readers to confront suppressed violence and resentment.
- His writing treats abstract philosophical concepts through vivid, often grotesque embodied imagery to reveal uncomfortable human truths.
Five‑Year‑Old's Mystical 'Birth'
- At five years old Cioran experienced a mystical rupture where time felt to stop, which he later called his 'real birth.'
- That childhood revelation shaped his lifelong obsession with time, insomnia, and existential rupture.
Insomnia As Philosophical Method
- Cioran transformed chronic insomnia into a philosophical instrument that blurred day and night and altered his sense of future and agency.
- Prolonged sleeplessness, he argued, dissolves the future and produces a continuous trial that reshapes consciousness.