Cioran and the Paradox of Faith

Cioran and the P= aradox of Faith

Jon K. Loessin

= Wharton County Junior College

For faith is this paradox, tha= t the particular is higher than the universal. Yet in such a way, be it observed, that the movement repeats itself, and that consequently the individual, aft= er having been in the universal, now as the particular isolates himself as hig= her than the universal. If this be not faith, then Abraham is lost, then faith = has never existed in the world because it has always existed. – S&Osla= sh;ren Kierkegaard, = Fear and Trembling<= ![if !supportFootnotes]>[1]<= ![endif]>

        &= nbsp;   Emile Cioran (1911-1995) once wrote in admiration of the Russian-Jewish philosoph= er of despair Lev Shestov (1866-1938) that, “He was the philosopher of my generation, which didn't succeed in realizing itself spiritually, but remained nostalgic about such a reality..= . He played an important role in my l= ife. [...] He thought rightly that the true problems escape the philosophers. Wh= at do they do but obscure the real torments of life?"[2] It was in fact Shestov himself who studied Dostoevsky and Nietzsche, developed friendships and associations wi= th Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, became a student and disciple of Kierkegaard, and was himself admired by D. H. Lawrence and Albert Camus.   Shestov’s relative obsc= urity today is surprising, for seldom does one of his scholarship, admiration, and influence come to rest on the scrap heap of philosophical history. He was, after all, one of the last philosophers to analyze Kierkegaard thoroughly and present a convincing argument that reason, idealism (a hopeful and optimistic vision), and progr= ess was to be rejected in lieu of a doctrine of despair and faith—that as terrible as things may be, when despair has reached its greatest heights, w= hen no hope whatsoever remains, all things are still possible.[3] He writes:

Kierkegaard says that "the opposite of sin is not virtue but freedom" and also "the opposite of sin is faith." Faith and faith alone liberates m= an from sin; faith and faith alone can tear man away from the power of the necessary truths that have controlled his consciousness since the time when= he tasted the fruit of the forbidden tree. And faith alone gives man the coura= ge and the strength to look death and madness in the eye and not bow helplessly before them. "Picture a man," writes Kierkegaard, "who by straining his frightened imagination has thought up some unprecedented horror, something completely unbearable. And then suddenly he finds this horror before him; it becomes a reality for him. To the human mind it seems that his destruction is certain. But for God all things are possible. This constitutes the struggle of fa= ith: a mad struggle for possibility. For only possibility reveals the way to salvation. In the last analysis one thing remains: for God all things are possible. And only then is the way to faith made open. Man believes only when he cannot find any other possibility. God signifies that everything is possible, and that everything is possible signifies God. And only that man whose being has been so shaken that he becomes spirit and grasps that everything is possible, only he has drawn near to God.

The opposite of sin," he writes "is not virtue, but faith. Tha= t is why it is said in Romans 14:23: all that is not of faith is sin. And this belongs to the most explicit of Christianity's definitions: that the opposi= te of sin is not virtue, but faith." He repeats this many times througho= ut all his works, just as he repeats countless times that, in order to attain fait= h, one must renounce reason. In his last writings he even formulated in this w= ay: "Faith is against reason—faith dwells beyond death." But wh= at sort of faith is spoken of in Holy Scripture? Kierkegaard's answer is: "Faith means precisely this: to lose reason in order to find God."= ; Kierkegaard had written earlier, wi= th regard to Abraham and his sacrifice: "What an incredible paradox is faith! The paradox can transform murder into something that is holy and pleasing to Go= d. The paradox returns Abraham's Isaac to him. Thinking cannot master the para= dox, for faith begins at the exact point where thinking ends.<= /p>
...Philosophy begins in despair. Even the questions he sets before us are dictated to him= by despair... He wrestles with despair in his heart over the right to despair = and (if I may use the expression) find thus peace in despair. And so, by human standards, salvation is a complete impossibility for him. But for God all things are possible. Faith consists of this: a mad struggle for possibility. For only possibility opens the way to salvation....When a person falls into= despair... only possibility will save him. Possibility appears, and the one who was in despair revives... Without possibility, just as without air, man suffocates= . At times it seems that his inventive imagination is itself the creator of possibility. But in the last analysis one thing remains: for God all things= are possible.[4]

        &= nbsp;   Cioran was deeply influenced by these passages in constructing his own system of thought. No philosopher was e= ver more tormented about life and existence or more supportive of tyrants and disillusionment.[5] To the lay philosopher, CioranR= 17;s perspectives may seem as if they dwell on the brink of madness. To Cioran, life has to be meaningl= ess for it to be meaningful. Oppr= ession has to occur for freedom to thrive. All that seems evil, wrong, or unjust, is precisely what renders fai= th, and without faith, life has no meaning.&nb= sp; One version of Cioran’s paradox of faith might be simply state= d as follows: Because we die, life= means nothing... Because we die, life means everything.[6]         &= nbsp;           &nbs= p;            &= nbsp;           &nbs= p;            &= nbsp;     The depth of Cioran’s paradoxical stance on faith is worth contemplating.= Given his seeming lack of faith and distrust of humanity and because of his proli= fic yearnings for extinction and his hatred of life, his actual life-state and actions af= firm life courageously and in fact, happily. He takes pleasure in misery and despair. Schädenfreude o= ccurs to Cioran only on a deeply personal level, and like those who take pleasure= in the misery of others, Cioran takes great pleasure and finds contentment in = the misery of himself. Even his propensity toward the belief in nothingness coupled with his hatred of life becomes a potent stimulant to life, belief, and faith. An observer of Cioran’s writ= ings once wrote that no one should read or interpret his philosophy literally, or else “you will blow your brains out.”[7] Still, another keen observer noted= that while Ernest Hemmingway, who lived life to its fullest at every waking moment, did “blow his brains out,” Cioran never did.[8] As Cioran concludes, faith through despair yields a zest for life. “The deepest and most organic death is death in solitude...in such moments you will be severed from life, from lov= e, smiles, friends, and even from death.”[9]

Is there anything on earth which cannot be doubted except death, the only cert= ainty in this world? To doubt and y= et to live—this is a paradox... Despair...is only possible with great effor= t... [while]...doubt is anxiety about problems and things, and has its origins in the unsolvable nature of all big questions. Despair is the state in which anxi= ety and restlessness are immanent to existence. Nobody in despair suffers from “problems,” but from his own inner torment and fire. It’s a pity that nothing can= be solved in this world. Yet the= re never was and there never will be anyone who would commit suicide for this reason... That is why I prefer the dramatic life, consumed by inner fires a= nd tortured by destiny, to the intellectual, caught up in abstractions... I despise the absence of risks, madness, and passion in abstract thinking. How fertile live, passionate think= ing is!...One must descend all the circles of an inner hell to turn one’s destiny into a subjective but universal problem...to finally come to achiev= e a superior form of personal existence. And this will be so not because you have any special value or excellence, but because nothing interests you beyond your own personal agon= y.[10]

And what is the meaning of life? Nothing—and everything—all at once. As Cioran states,

"Everything is possible, and yet nothing is. All is permitted, and yet again, nothing. No matter which way we go, it is = no better than any other. It is all the same whether you achieve something or = not, have faith or not, just as it is all the same whether you cry or remain sil= ent. There is an explanation for everything, and yet there is none. Everything is both real and unreal, normal and abnormal, splendid and insipid. There is nothing worth more than anything else, nor any idea better than any other."[11]

    =         It is the retreat into one’s own existence, relishing in inner torment, locking out the irreconcilable problems of humanity that is the path to hop= e, faith, and life. Cioran criti= cizes as dangerous, becoming, in his terms, “overcivilized.” With modernity, there is a tendenc= y for individuals to “relapse” into the need to be stimulated by outs= ide forces that displace solitude and thus, the only genuine mode of human freedom—liberation from action.[12] Modernity, to Cioran is like a drug—a rendition of Marx’s “opiate”—that keeps humanity in chains, not realizing such bondage also causes the loss of faith and the true meaning of life. While despair may seem an existence most never aspire to achieve, who is to say t= hat one mode of existence is any more superior to another since all have their positive and negative sides? = For Cioran, inner torment may seem undesirable, but it results in life. Materialism and modernity may be seemingly grand, but can result in the death of spirit (and thus faith). In an interview, Cioran was once confronted with the statement, “You have been against everything since 1920,” to which he replied, “No, since Adam.”[13] “We were happy only in the a= ges when, greedy for obliteration, we enthusiastically accepted our nothingness.”[14] “In the Middle Ages, a man m= ade a regimen of salvation, he believed e= nergetically: the corpse was in fashion. Fa= ith was vigorous then, invincible... it knew the profits to be derived from corruption and gruesomeness. Today...religion adheres only to ‘nice’ hallucinations, = to Evolution, and Progress.”[15] Anyone seeking true freedom must be willing to take one final step—“to be free of liberty itself...[o]nly then will we begin to learn how to act without desire.̶= 1;[16] This step is the key to faith.         &= nbsp;           &nbs= p;            &= nbsp;           &nbs= p;            &= nbsp;           &nbs= p;            &= nbsp;          It is important that Cioran’s quest for relishing despair and inner torm= ent not be confused with self-pity. Self-pity is a material concept of the modern world as it allows its victim to compare one’s life with the lives of others. In actuality, Cioran would have ev= eryone engage in self-denial of self-pity (and self-denial of everything else as w= ell).

Cioran tells us not to worry about those who are excessively self-pitying because = an excess of self-pity preserves reason. “This is not a paradox ... for such brooding over o= ur miseries proceeds from an alarm in our vitality, from our reaction of energ= y, at the same time that it expresses an elegiac disguise of our instinct of self-preservation. ... Sickness can increase self-pity, there= by reason, thereby self-preservation. To cross the abyss that is life, if that= is our purpose, we must use both sickness and health, self-pity and detachment, the desert and the oasis. To deny either is either fatal or contemptible.&#= 8221; Cioran shows by example, how various the tension between opposites is manifested. His examples have one thing in common it seems: the admittance = of lucidity, that which lies behind all stories, all systems, all action, all = help.[17]

            Perhaps the final word on Cioran should come from an essay by Dylan Trigg who best summed up Cioran as follows:

Consumed with the formless, he nevertheless = took it upon himself to craft a landscape littered with familiarities composed f= rom an apocalyptic canvas. The lure towards eschatology as a comfort, a means of orientation, serves well in Cioran. Indeed, not only is the affirmation of = the void a means of rebellion against the void (cf. Nietzsche’s amor fati) but it also acts as the Archimedean point upon which Cioran is able to attest his bile... To Cioran’s credit, the vile unattainably of a plausible reconciliation = and the vacuous consolation of the demiurge of logic and abstraction, only confirmed his opulent misery: “I turned away from philosophy when it became impossible to discover in Kant any human weakness, any authentic acc= ent of melancholy.”

... Let us assume he is in the right. Let us assume that the rise of progress is synonymous with the rise of reason and = that without the former then there can only be decline and epistemological ruin.= .. Let us assume then, that to rid ourselves of reason is to rid ourselves of prog= ress: “We begin to live authentically only where philosophy ends, at its wr= eck, when we have understood its terrible nullity, when we have understood that = it was futile to resort to it, that it is no help...” [18]

        &= nbsp;   But still, to Cioran, by finding true faith, all things are possible. Just as Jesus directs his follower= s to give up their worldly possessions, as a monk takes a vow of silence, as an anchoress seals herself in a room for decades in isolation with only a Bibl= e, as the mystics have practiced their holy forms of flagellation, as Nietzsche proclaims that what does not kill him makes him stronger, or as Christ acce= pts his sacrificial crucifixion willfully, Cioran turns inward to revel in the = doom of existence—to turn it into a type of religious art—to leave behind the minor miseries and false pleasures of the external world, and in their place discover genuine faith and purpose, and in so doing, achieves something most will never do—meeting his Creator face to face to see = the joys of paradise, all accomplished while lying alone in his earthly bed, bemoaning his despair.