Episode 156 - Emil Cioran - Failure and Suicide

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  • čas pƙidĂĄn 29. 06. 2024
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Komentáƙe • 107

  • @robertpietraru1939
    @robertpietraru1939 Pƙed 2 lety +42

    16:54 "when he left Romania to go to school in Bucharest"
    Bucharest is the capital of Romania

  • @yt8co
    @yt8co Pƙed rokem +41

    it's hilarious that all Cioran wanted was to be a failure and he couldn't even succeed at that

    • @LilBafta
      @LilBafta Pƙed rokem +1

      And yet he was driven to it which brought him peace. Funny old world

    • @florinbora755
      @florinbora755 Pƙed 29 dny

      Read Nostalgia by Mircea Cărtărescu, another Romanian writer....

  • @Sahil_Shukla98
    @Sahil_Shukla98 Pƙed 2 lety +49

    This podcast was especially beautiful

  • @x2mars
    @x2mars Pƙed 2 lety +82

    My wife died two years ago, I see suicide the exact same way. I can always do it tomorrow or sometime in the future if needed

    • @blazejbialek7416
      @blazejbialek7416 Pƙed 2 lety +13

      Please don't bro. This is just one philosopher with his own silly ideas. What about Karol WojtyƂa (Personalism), who said that the world is always worse off after the death of every single individual person, the world would always be poorer if any of us did not exist. Stay strong brother.

    • @operationblackout1095
      @operationblackout1095 Pƙed 2 lety +1

      suicide is probably the dumbest thing a human can do

    • @Prikar1234
      @Prikar1234 Pƙed 2 lety +2

      please consider seeking help. the world is a brighter and better place because each one of us exists and that includes you. Things may be very hard but you don't have to suffer alone. please talk to someone about it. take care

    • @WilliamsWrestlin
      @WilliamsWrestlin Pƙed 2 lety +11

      Don't listen to these cucks. Suicide is a fundamental human right. We didn't choose to be born but we, as a conscious being, have the choice to die

    • @ksan1648
      @ksan1648 Pƙed 2 lety +15

      @@blazejbialek7416 "poorer," i.e., one less wage slave to be bled dry.

  • @robinbeckford
    @robinbeckford Pƙed 2 lety +42

    Thank you for bringing Cioran to my attention. I like his ideas, and will read more of, and about, him.

  • @TennesseeJed
    @TennesseeJed Pƙed 2 lety +10

    I thought Camus and Diogenes were the right path for my dark brightness, but I have a new idol now! Thanks from a new subscriber!

  • @LilBafta
    @LilBafta Pƙed rokem +7

    I used to suffer and know nothing but the pain. Now I suffer aware of the wise words of those who can enlighten my darkness.

  • @nicholasschroeder3678
    @nicholasschroeder3678 Pƙed rokem +2

    Funny how entertaining and uplifting a discourse on failure and suicide is.

  • @abstract3213
    @abstract3213 Pƙed rokem +7

    This is the only video that actually got me out of depressive mood. Thanks.

  • @Barushia
    @Barushia Pƙed 2 lety +4

    I have a new favourite philosopher now. Thank you Stephen. He is a kind of a little bit more wild Albert Camus.

  • @skiddersactual3639
    @skiddersactual3639 Pƙed rokem +2

    I've been looking to disappear into my dreams but now I just want to disappear into the surreal absurdity of reality thank you

  • @transcend1078
    @transcend1078 Pƙed 2 lety +21

    Cioran + Nietzsche + Schopenhauer = ❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀
    Thank you so much for the Cioran podast! This CZcams channel is so great. I love this channel!

  • @ivanaznar6495
    @ivanaznar6495 Pƙed 10 měsĂ­ci +1

    Hey Stephen, Hi!
    I'm an usual listener of the podcast via spotify, but i wanted to leave a comment on this episode, so i came to youtube to leave some words here, i hope this reaches to you.
    Your work on this podcast had an impact on me and my way to view the world, thanks to philosophy. I believe, i will look up and read some of Emil's work as iÂŽve done previously with Kierkegaard, Shopenhauer and Plato; all of this thanks to you. This podcast gives people the chance to reach ideas that make an impact on their life, thatÂŽs an amazing acomplishment you can be proud of.

  • @yaongingyfmm1571
    @yaongingyfmm1571 Pƙed 2 lety +33

    Hey Stephen I wrote you some emails, you must not've got'em
    I even signed my name in them, right down at the bottom
    Anyway, the last one was about this great guy, Emil Cioran
    And even if his work is not that well known I am still his fan
    Thanks again man, for being an invaluable source of knowledge and wisdom...

  • @saityavuz76
    @saityavuz76 Pƙed 2 lety +4

    Thank you for introducing me to him.

  • @aaronsmyth7943
    @aaronsmyth7943 Pƙed 2 lety +3

    Thanks for taking the time to do these.

  • @micahlelugas5139
    @micahlelugas5139 Pƙed 2 lety +2

    I don't know why exactly but this has been my favorite of your series. Thank you.

  • @Roman_93
    @Roman_93 Pƙed 16 dny +1

    0:16 ...clocked out for the day when his feet hurt, his back hurt...
    17:45 He once said, "The big success of my life is that I’ve managed to live without having a job."
    How could he clock out not having a job?
    And why did his feet and back hurt?

  • @fabiocardoso7194
    @fabiocardoso7194 Pƙed 2 lety +2

    Thank you Stephen, these are a treasure!

  • @davidalbares5950
    @davidalbares5950 Pƙed 2 lety +1

    Just wanted to say thank your for Part 1 and Part 2, you made my morning better. Nice quality of audio as well

  • @elijaguy
    @elijaguy Pƙed 2 lety +2

    So refreshing! Thanks again!

  • @scottobyrne
    @scottobyrne Pƙed 2 lety +1

    Thanks for doing Cioran! Favorite of all time

  • @craigwillms61
    @craigwillms61 Pƙed 4 měsĂ­ci +1

    I've failed enough. I know who I am and my limitations. I've been low, unhappy even depressed etc etc, but suicide is a cop out. We should not put it up on a pedestal. Failure is necessary, you learn by failure - it breeds success. Get up off the ground, pick up your bike and start riding again, you stop being a loser right then and there.

  • @benjueabba9480
    @benjueabba9480 Pƙed rokem

    Beautiful episode, thanks Mr.west

  • @jaye5872
    @jaye5872 Pƙed 11 měsĂ­ci

    This was absolutely brilliant! I learned so much, thanks!

  • @Larcey
    @Larcey Pƙed rokem

    Amazing! Thank you!

  • @Woody-cc2hs
    @Woody-cc2hs Pƙed rokem

    Thank you for this podcast

  • @samm1883
    @samm1883 Pƙed 2 lety +1

    Thank you good sir

  • @tos100returns
    @tos100returns Pƙed rokem +6

    Suicide is VERY appealing to me. I am not afraid of death; however, I do have concerns about HOW I get there. I have no interest in burning in a fire, drowning, cancer, dementia, starving to death while homeless, or other issues. I can bail when I want, in a one-and-only act of control, and I get to decide when the bullshit ends.

  • @ash91_
    @ash91_ Pƙed 2 lety

    Thank you.

  • @wastehazey6468
    @wastehazey6468 Pƙed 9 měsĂ­ci

    Absolutely fantastic video. I have been a fan of Emil for quite some time, but I've never owned any of his works, because they (and most books I'm interested in) aren't sold in the few bookshops here in the Faroes, so we have to either order them from Denmark or somewhere else.
    Money has always been an issue for me and my family, but tonight I finally managed to order On the Heights of Despair and I can't help but feel a sense of pride.

  • @hyacinth1320
    @hyacinth1320 Pƙed 2 lety

    Love learning about someone I hadn't heard before! I was thinking a great companion to him for a future episode could be Judith Halberstam's The Queer Art of Failure. I would also love a Gloria Anzaldua series!! She is criminally underrated.

  • @richardruth9048
    @richardruth9048 Pƙed 2 lety +2

    Jesus christ these are so good.

  • @seanpatrickrichards5593
    @seanpatrickrichards5593 Pƙed 2 lety +8

    What a great podcast :D

  • @sandeshdhungana4924
    @sandeshdhungana4924 Pƙed 2 lety

    Best of the best

  • @natureswhisper1397
    @natureswhisper1397 Pƙed 2 lety +3

    Thanks, now I have to go deeper into Cioran's works! I've just bought ''A Short History Of Decay'' so I can't wait to read it.

    • @scottobyrne
      @scottobyrne Pƙed 2 lety +2

      Brutal book for me, at first. Now I love it and all his works. I had to leave philosophy altogether after it, but I always come back to his works.

    • @natureswhisper1397
      @natureswhisper1397 Pƙed 2 lety

      @@scottobyrne what do you mean you have to leave philosophy?
      Good for you if it helps, it affected my mood so much that I just threw the book away haha!

    • @scottobyrne
      @scottobyrne Pƙed 2 lety +2

      @@natureswhisper1397 I should of said for a while, like a month lol. It orginally depressed me so I just quit reading philosophy and other stuff. How real his books are was like a slap in the face! But I came back better than ever afterwards. His book Tears and Saints is really good.

    • @natureswhisper1397
      @natureswhisper1397 Pƙed 2 lety

      @@scottobyrne oh I see. Not sure it's the best way to see life though. We can't really know for sure why he thought what he was writting but things can be seen in a more positive light. Anyway, I'm glad you came back to philosophy!

  • @somethingyousaid5059
    @somethingyousaid5059 Pƙed 2 lety +1

    Existence itself is the ultimate liability. Without it there can be no other liability.

  • @noahbrown4388
    @noahbrown4388 Pƙed měsĂ­cem

    đŸ–€ Cioran!

  • @tudogeo7061
    @tudogeo7061 Pƙed 2 lety +19

    16:57 So... He left Romania to go to school in Bucharest?

    • @dinaraurazova3094
      @dinaraurazova3094 Pƙed 2 lety +7

      hahaha I also noticed that. Bucharest is the capital of Romania

    • @tudogeo7061
      @tudogeo7061 Pƙed 2 lety +3

      @@dinaraurazova3094 Yup. Nicely done otherwise.

    • @ricardatorner3576
      @ricardatorner3576 Pƙed 2 lety +5

      I realized that one too :) but then, it's an episode about failure, so seems like a good time to make a mistake ;) Love these podcast, I listened to them all the time during the first lockdown

    • @tudogeo7061
      @tudogeo7061 Pƙed 2 lety +1

      @@ricardatorner3576 Yup. I may have been too quick to point that out; I myself am subscribed.

    • @dinaraurazova3094
      @dinaraurazova3094 Pƙed 2 lety +5

      @@ricardatorner3576 It's an excellent video and great channel overall! It was an ironic mistake, which made the whole message even more relatable!

  • @matt8151
    @matt8151 Pƙed rokem +1

    Hard to believe Cioran would object that my ambition is to fail (hikikomori’s the dream)

  • @infinitelyconciousness
    @infinitelyconciousness Pƙed rokem

    This podcast gives me positive vibes. Specially because I’m someone who failed several times. But every failure was a lesson. About suicide I think allways the same: the possibility of being reincarnated with the same problems to solve. We call it destine... maybe you live several life’s with the same problem to solve. Imagine it’s your seventh life with the same problem to solve. We call it hell. Hell and heaven is on earth...

  • @scottharrison812
    @scottharrison812 Pƙed 5 měsĂ­ci

    Ah
 the enigmatic EM Cioran - for whom suicide never came for it always came too late! After such exquisite agony- to be undone (or somehow redeemed) in the simple life-affirming desire for a mortal woman - if his correspondence with Friedgard Thoma is to be believed!

  • @dksdmusic
    @dksdmusic Pƙed 2 lety +1

    Cioran is the president of the club “You’re failing them by idolising them”

  • @lucapopica8414
    @lucapopica8414 Pƙed rokem +1

    16:55 "So when he left Romania to go to school in Bucharest" (Bucharest being in Romania)

  • @christinemartin63
    @christinemartin63 Pƙed rokem +2

    Agreed that failure is a great teacher and makes us face reality and discover truths about ourselves. But ... many people repeat the exact same failures with no insight or subsequent change. What is that, then? Laziness? Stupidity? Lack of will? Arrogance? Yes to all ... and it will lead to self-loathing soon enough, if not self-destruction and misery for innocent third parties.

  • @alfinkemal9133
    @alfinkemal9133 Pƙed 2 lety +6

    yo yo what up boi

    • @Nouveau0
      @Nouveau0 Pƙed 2 lety +1

      Where are you from Alfin?

  • @thayermanns4286
    @thayermanns4286 Pƙed rokem

    So good here i am again 31 hours later at 349 am.

  • @furkancaglar6189
    @furkancaglar6189 Pƙed 2 lety

    I remember that some of these podcasts has transcript right? how can i find them if they are exist. thanks a lot.

  • @bensden50
    @bensden50 Pƙed 2 lety +1

    From a human perspective reality and life is mostly a a failure. If life was created maybe from the creators perspective and reality and laws. Then the thing it created, existence may be highly successful among there circles. Or existence may be just a average piece of homework from a young creator. A being as the word we used who simply used the tools in there reality and some gizmos pressed a button and bang there's a reality there's some rules great. I can't think deep enough. Life ain't smashing it ain't shit. Depends on your situation.

  • @krinkle909
    @krinkle909 Pƙed 8 měsĂ­ci

    My countryman is such a genius! I agree wholeheartedly... it must be something we inherited from Dracula

  • @hasanalharaz7454
    @hasanalharaz7454 Pƙed 2 lety +3

    17:10 isn’t this a contradiction of his earlier point though? He said failures are more interesting because they actually get stuff done in their lives but in this example these failures are the worst kind of failures. Not only do they not do anything in life and as a result they lead very boring lives. And not only that they’re not honest (or at least not all of them) seeing as they constantly talk about about what they will do but never do it and they probably have a view of themselves that’s very different from reality. Also isn’t cioran himself living as a “failure” inherently dishonest seeing as he isn’t actually a failure and doesn’t have to live through the cons of being one? Seems like a larper that glorfies every aspect of failure while ignoring why people look down on it in the first place. Especially the examples I said earlier. Most failures do have boring lives and some have interesting ones. It depends on which one you talk to

    • @AnnaPrzebudzona
      @AnnaPrzebudzona Pƙed rokem +1

      I also noticed that but, as Stephen emphasized at the beginning, Cioran wasn't trying to create any consistent narrative or philosophy. His writing was an act of therapeutic self expression.
      However, the concept of failure is actually really interesting. Apart from very clear situations in which a person engages in some endeavour or competition, it's hard to define failure. I mean, most often we judge ourselves or others as failures simply because we fail to reach a goal or a standard that we might never have truly wanted to reach. There may never be a definitive answer to a question, am I a failure? From what perspective? According to what measure? I wonder whether it's possible that deep in my heart I despised the success that I thought I desired and by failing I succeeded at avoiding the fate that I wanted to avoid? I don't know. Maybe it's a convenient rationalization. The thing is that I can't imagine myself conventionally successful but for most of my adult life I was convinced that I failed by not achieving success which I know was not defined by me but merely appropriated as an object of desire. I didn't fail because I'm not good enough at holding a job and homemaking; I'm fairly intelligent, educated, skillful... there seems to be no objective reason for my failure so maybe... maybe I succeeded, if not at creating a life of my dreams (simply because I never managed to create a compelling vision of such a life, perhaps because I didn't see the point), then at least at avoiding being trapped in a life designed or prescribed by someone else?

  • @valsan1323
    @valsan1323 Pƙed 2 lety

    16:00

  • @GustavoRey-oo6zi
    @GustavoRey-oo6zi Pƙed 8 měsĂ­ci

    People with PTSD would have a different opinion regarding suicide. Like my brother did.

  • @personpersonpeoplepeople

    8:48

  • @FemboyEconomics1
    @FemboyEconomics1 Pƙed 2 lety +1

    I would love to see you talk about Objectivism!

  • @davidmcclain7481
    @davidmcclain7481 Pƙed 2 lety +2

    Sounds like a grumpy Camus 😂

  • @christinemartin63
    @christinemartin63 Pƙed rokem

    Whoa, there ... Bucharest IS in Romania. He may have gone to France, do you mean??

  • @markkeogh2190
    @markkeogh2190 Pƙed rokem

    Declaring that the universe is absurd and meaningless is also ascribing meaning to the universe. Basing a philosophy on the idea that it’s meaningless one needs to accept that basic principal. The universe isn’t meaningless. But I have no idea if it means anything at all. It’s above my pay grade. How can we know that ?

    • @Tore_Lund
      @Tore_Lund Pƙed rokem

      An universe with meaning always implies a purpose to it, which means a creator in the religious sense. If a meaningless universe was intentional, our suffering is intentional as well. I think meaninglessness as a result of unconscious randomness sounds slightly better.

    • @markkeogh2190
      @markkeogh2190 Pƙed rokem

      @@Tore_Lund but one could also ask where does the unconscious randomness come from. And keep going back. Humans create meaning. We can’t avoid it. Even saying it’s meaningless is us giving it a meaning. It’s thought based. We just can’t get out of that pattern. Which is fine but we might also acknowledge we just haven’t got a fucking clue 😀

    • @Tore_Lund
      @Tore_Lund Pƙed rokem

      @@markkeogh2190 I agree on that, humans can not avoid seeking meaning, regardless of how often we remind ourselves that there is none. We also still take the next breath, even if it is not a permanent solution. I think that the urge to find meaning in religion, or in our own lives is an evolutionary survival instinct to get some kind of illusion of a predictable future, but as an instinct only, it can not be defended scientifically as anything but a feeling, like love and anger. It is not meaning in the objective sense. When you ask where randomness comes from, you're asking a hard scientific question? Randomness in thoughts ( original ideas) have not been determined. The jury is still out about if we have free will at all (randomness) or we are simply state-machines only acting on external impulses. If we do, that randomness can very well be Quantum Mechanical and random in nature. Are you saying that such property of the Universe is intentional? Is that an argument for a created universe with some purpose, (not necessarily including a purpose to humanity and planet Earth)? If randomness is intentional is it true randomness if it is intented to create life? Is it a creation argument you are making?

  • @polarisjustdothework2258

    Define failure
;

    • @polarisjustdothework2258
      @polarisjustdothework2258 Pƙed rokem

      Suicide is most definitely only one possible outcome
suicide is the most tragic health outcome 💔

  • @MV-vv7sg
    @MV-vv7sg Pƙed rokem +2

    Little bit disappointed you reduced the enormity of his ability to write to ‘one liner quotability’ good delivery and talk overall however.

  • @bernardliu8526
    @bernardliu8526 Pƙed 8 měsĂ­ci

    I think even your good self prefer your podcast episodes to enjoy a large audience. No ?

  • @elenaivanova624
    @elenaivanova624 Pƙed 2 lety

    Đ«Ń‹

  • @MagnumInnominandum
    @MagnumInnominandum Pƙed rokem

    Ironically I think you have ruined Cioran for me. To be fair I have only cruised His work through audio material. I find the glad handing of failure disgusting.
    I am still interested just given pause. If someone only writes for themselves why would they publish? I suppose He gravitated towards failure while not traveling far from his successes.

    • @Geambasu169
      @Geambasu169 Pƙed rokem

      He dont want to publish. Who discover his manuscripts want it. He never live on his succes. Google it.