Emil M. Cioran - Philosophical Works (4 books)

EMIL M. CIORAN (1911-1995) was a Romanian philosopher and essayist, who published works in both Romanian and French. His first French book, A SHORT HISTORY OF DECAY (1949), was awarded the Rivarol Prize in 1950. Soon after, he began to refuse every literary prize he was offered. The Latin Quarter of Paris became his permanent residence and he lived much of his life in isolation.

His work is characterized by pessimism, which many critics trace back to events of his childhood (in 1935 his mother is reputed to have told him that if she had known he was going to be so unhappy she would have aborted him). However, Cioran's pessimism -- even nihilism -- remains both inexhaustible and, in its own particular manner, joyful; it is not the sort of pessimism which can be traced back to simple origins, single origins themselves being questionable. Preoccupied with the problems of death and suffering, he was attracted to the idea of suicide, believing it to be an idea that could help one go on living, an idea which he fully explored in ON THE HEIGHTS OF DESPAIR (1934).

William H. Gass called Cioran's work "a philosophical romance on the modern themes of alienation, absurdity, boredom, futility, decay, the tyranny of history, the vulgarities of change, awareness as agony, reason as disease".


The following books are a mix of PDF and ePUB formats as noted:

* ANATHEMAS AND ADMIRATIONS (Arcade, 2012). Translated by Richard Howard. -- ePUB

* ON THE HEIGHTS OF DESPAIR (University of Chicago Press, 1992). Translated with an Introduction by Ilinca Zarifopol-Johnston. -- ePUB + PDF

* A SHORT HISTORY OF DECAY (Arcade, 2012). Translated by Richard Howard. -- ePUB

* THE TROUBLE WITH BEING BORN (Arcade, 1998). Translated by Richard Howard. -- Reprocessed scan of a PDF originally uploaded by AreciboMessage, to whom many thanks.