Hell, let's take something as simple as sleep. There are ten sleep-potentials. Eight of them are really good sleepers. They can sleep for 8-10 hours with no problems, in just about any condition. They are well-rested. They never have to figure out how they are going to overcome sleep problems, as it comes naturally to them. Two of them are really horrible sleepers. They have sleep apnea, general insomnia, and psychological problems that constantly keep them awake. They have to struggle to overcome all of these deficits. Either a) they have to deal with it and live a generally sleep-deprived life, or they have to "overcome the initial deficit" and spend much money and time going to experts to get each component of their sleep problem dealt with. The solutions took a lot of time and energy, and are a much higher effort to sustain than the eight good-sleepers. Much of two bad-sleepers life is trying to chase the sleep through much effort. The only way to know there are winners is to have losers who will have a less than ideal situation to overcome. Opportunities for capacities does not mean good outcomes will result. This seems then be not as moral... It is nice and dandy to list a bunch of values, but if in actuality they cannot be actualized, then what does it matter? Giving opportunity itself doesn't mean much then, and there is a flaw in the system or theory about the system. If the answer is, "Oh well, at least there will be some winners born, so fuck em", then you have lost footing of any moral theory.

So there is a fact 'the state of nature'- cooperation can do more (is better?) than competition. Which is why cats make poor architects. — unenlightened

There are ten architect-potentials. They all have the opportunities to allow their productive forces free. eight of them do well, achieve success. Their potential was to some extent actualized in the form of esteem, financial reward, and creative success. Two make mediocre designs, are eventually run out of the industry for poor performance, get jobs that were not their original ideal, start resenting it for not being their ideal, don't find much success, esteem, or financial reward, live a constantly struggling life, middling, sometimes dabbling in self-destruction. So opportunities for capacities doesn't really mean great outcomes. In this sense, purely probablistically speaking, if the only way for winners to reach the outcome is for losers to be born, as we cannot know beforehand who will win or lose, then perhaps we should put no one in this situation in the first place.

It's doing things with words. — Banno

Doing things with words, or getting things done with words? Those are two different things.

Cioran is one of my favorite philosophers, but if you want to understand his aphorisms it is more appropriate to understand them within 1) the context of the work in which it appears, since they are often thematic, and 2) within his overall anti-systemic philosophy, which only really goes through a major change from his very early work (viz. his Romanian works) and later works (French works). Quite of few of the aphorisms presented here, while seemingly incoherent or contradictory on their own are easily understandable within the context of his overall thought, which remained consistent from A Short History of Decay and beyond. — Maw

Yes, I agree that it should be sequential and in light of other essays but I do not have any access to his books online and I am not keen on hand-typing words from book form into electronic form. If you know of any repository that I can copy of books like The Fall into Time, The Temptation to Exist, or The Trouble, with Being Born, I'd be happy to go over each quote sequentially.

I think that he means to highlight the absurdity of suicide. The torment that a person has suffered has already subsided by the time that they decide to do so. You don't actually end any suffering as you have already been through whatever it is that drives a person to commit suicide in the first place. It seems to be a bleak and somewhat capricious dismissal of that a person should commit suicide from a pessimistic perspective. It's funny. He is coping with his worldview through a somewhat odd, but, ultimately positive black humor. — thewonder

Yes, there is an ironic twist that suicide is not even enough to do anything for you- the damage is done. This is definitely playing with dark humor. It takes away even the hope of hope :lol:.

I like this quote. Thanks for introducing me to this author. — thewonder

I'm glad you are learning more about this great aphorist and essayist on the tragedy of existence.

I feel like Schopenhauer does sort of imply that the commoners are incapable of actualizing upon their will and therefore incapable of thought in The World as Will and Representation, though. I liked the text, but, admittedly didn't necessarily give it my undivided attention. Perhaps I am just assuming too much. — thewonder

Schopenhauer does have a conception of character in his core philosophy. He thinks that people's characters are more-or-less fixed. Thus, only a very few characters are probably able to withstand their own will and become a lifelong ascetic. I don't think he talks of himself in this regard, but it can be assumed that he too did not have the strength of character, as he never became an ascetic himself, though that was his ideal. His idea of character comes from his odd infusion of Platonic Ideas into his philosophy. Not only do species have an Idea, but so do individual humans, which is manifested in their character. Thus some people have a better moral "sense" than others do- these people are the truly empathetic who can lessen their own will and truly feel for others in a non-self-interested way. They are often self-sacrificing, worrying less of their own desires than that of suffering humans. This, he feels is the basis of compassion, and compassion is the basis of true ethical worth in his view. The ascetic is even more enlightened to him, because even though the compassionate person has lessened his will for others, ascetics lessen their will to an even greater degree, and the less one is a willing being, the less one is suffering. I don't necessarily agree with his assessment, but I think it is important to know for the basis of understanding his idea of "elite" that you seem to pose here.

Schopenhauer was indeed an elitist. However, I often wave off much of Schop's views to grandiose prattle that is not his philosophy "proper" (his view of the human condition as laid out in The World as Will and Representation). At the core of his philosophy is the ascetic hero. This would be precisely against the warrior elite that he went on about in his ideas of aristocratic class ruling. Ironically, Nietzsche was probably more influenced by the neo-aristocratic prattle than Schopenhauer was with his own prattling when it came time to lay out his metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics.

Deprivation structurally in that post is potential loss. You've made a few examples of it. This is precisely what I was talking about; too much thought about dealing with potential harm intellectually, not enough about dealing with real harm practically. — fdrake

You just recognized that I gave concrete examples of it, as that post set out to do. In fact, the four examples were meant to showcase the variations of how harm plays out. It plays out in some of the most common variations in life- restless boredom, illness, survival/work, love. I've also created other posts meticulously going over how we are being forced to be challenged and overcome burdens, in various contexts, in the first place. Some would say I provide too many examples.

I also try in many of my posts to make the distinction between structural and contingent suffering which has two different avenues of proof that the PP has to set out to demonstrate. The structural suffering is "baked in" to human life. This is akin to the restlessness and constant deprivation of Buddhism or Schopenhauer's Will. It is the fact that we are never truly satisfied, otherwise we would be be metaphysically non-existent or everything-at-once. Instead, there is always an overcoming we must deal with, challenges to overcome. Baked into human existence is our desires and goals related to survival/comfort-seeking/entertainment-seeking ad nauseum. Challenges and adversities are foisted upon the new human from birth and can never be avoided altogether. Except for suicide, there is no other choices except to have to overcome burdens and adversities and our own restless will.

Contingent suffering, on the other hand, is situational and deals in probabilities. This is the "classic" view of harms seen in a utilitarian way of having "more or less" of it. So your various harms great and small like illness, accidents, tragedies, annoyances, dealings with other people, dealings with environment, discomforts, etc. are all based on a time, place, and contingent situations. Some people may have less, some more of it. But contingent harms, from the very fact that everyone deals with them in some way, is something we are forced to deal with and overcome. Even if trying to "lessen" the harms, the fact that we are forced into a stance where we have to find a path to "lessen" it, is itself a burden that was already in the equation and actually informs more of the structural suffering.

Step (1): Characterise life as loss.
Step (2): Characterise loss as nobly as possible.
Step (3): Forget nobility transmitted to life by transitive property. — fdrake

That is not what most Philosophical Pessismists are doing. Deprivation is the root of most ideas of structural suffering. Nobility seems to be a shifty adjective in this conception as well.

The best pains, and joys, take us by surprise. We suddenly find ourselves stricken or fulfilled, and we're never the same again. These transformative surprises are what inspire action, not the humdrum banality of suffering or the dull rises of fleeting happiness. — fdrake

This would be ignoring that PPs recognize there are inherent "goods" to life. The pursuits, hopes of attainment, and actual attainments of the goods themselves do not necessarily make life less negative. In fact, that could inform us of the fact that we are deprived already. Always overcoming or dealing with something.

When the need is urgent, pessimism falls silent, real loss arrests us, we contemplate in its wake, not apprehending it in advance as intellectual pop art. — fdrake

Then this you fail to grasp Philosophical Pessimism other than the strawman you have created in this post. I would suggest starting at something like what I describe in this thread below, rather than the strawman.

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/5981/schopenhauers-deprivationalism

Consciousness is much more than the thorn, it is the dagger in the flesh.
— E.M. Cioran, Trouble with being born

What do you think that is conveying @Bitter Crank?

This sounds similar to viewing consciousness and existence much like the Buddhist concept of dukkha, the clinging of impermanent states of happiness being ultimately unsatisfactory and something one should strive to release themselves from. — THX1138

It does.

I guess true Pessimists view sadness as a sort of ever present gravity, while happiness in contrast is the work against being weighed down by this gravity.

Pessimism more seems like an attitude to me. Not everyone is able to be happy, but are all certainly eligible to have tragedy hurl them in the rabbit hole of perpetual unhappiness, or to in effect take away the full potency of the happiness once derived from fulfilment. — THX1138

This is precisely the definition of pessimism which is misconstrued with Philosophical Pessimism. As I see it, PP is more about a metaphysical characterization of daily normative-functioning human life. It focuses on two aspects of suffering- the contingent AND the structural. It is the PP's job then to argue HOW the human life is structurally suffering. The Buddhist notion of deprivation correlates with this structural aspect. But in the West there is of course Schopenhauer's Will, Kierkegaard's angst, etc. They are all roughly correlating the same principle- the deprived nature of humans at any given time. I have further broken down what I see to be three basic categories of how this angst manifests in daily human life- survival/comfort-seeking/entertainment-seeking. Our goals are a combination of these three categories punctuated with the desires for the various inherent "goods" I mentioned before. All of this, however (whether goods are in the equation or not), is still very much a deprivational world of want, need, desire, goals.

Now, add to this the CONTINGENT forms of suffering. This is not "necessarily" built into the system, but probabilistically occur nonetheless and is situational. In other words, you falling and breaking your knee is probable, but may not happen at all to you. It is also situational in that it depended on the circumstances of that time and place. It was not guaranteed to happen to all humans. However, there is much contingent suffering in life. Many situational things small and large effect/affect us. In fact, we even have psychological mechanisms like the Pollyanna principle which allow us to project better outcomes in the future, and look at past harmful events with rose-tinted glasses.

Well, sure (I read all the other points you point out btw). I still don't think Pessimism (nor existentialism) is universal enough to be applicable this way. People overcome sadness all the time, unless it's just a sham and their refusal to express their unhappiness is assuaged by distractions in which there are lapses of not unhappiness, but that are otherwise a fabrication of hollow happiness. I also never believe a sense of purpose necessarily (not even often) entails happiness, only meaningfulness that might happen to bring either happiness or sadness. — THX1138

Philosophical Pessimism is not the common word "pessimism" (the glass is always half empty). You can be "happy" or "contented" at any particular time, and still understand the world as a Philosophical Pessimism.

You do not have to be aware of your own state of suffering. There is the primary lived experience, and the self-awareness of it. The deprivation is part of the structural suffering. That is to say, if we were completely content we would be completely full or completely nothing. The fact that we have any needs, wants, goals, aspirations, restlessness, angst, means there is a deprivation in the equation in the first place. This angst underlies all human endeavors. I usually formulate the three basic categories of this deprivation: Survival, Comfort-Seeking/Maintenance, and Entertainment-Seeking. All three are manifested via a cultural context. They may have different contents, but all of the same basic form of these three categories.

Do you see it that way too, that Pessimism isn't so much applicable to everyone but that it is a dynamic that is pertinant and significant? — THX1138

I don't see it as a disposition or a mood but what is the case. In other words, metaphysically, life is structurally and contingently suffering. A little while back, I had a thread no one responded to which pretty much laid out some examples of Philosophical Pessimism. See here: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/5981/schopenhauers-deprivationalism

Speaking of consciousness..

If we could sleep twenty-four hours a day, we would soon return to the primordial slime, the beatitude of that perfect torpor before Genesis-the dream of every consciousness sick of itself. — E.M. Cioran, Trouble with being born

Consciousness is much more than the thorn, it is the dagger in the flesh. — E.M. Cioran, Trouble with being born

Anyone want to unpack those?

I've felt this way before, like having a macabre romance with pessimism. I've tried to turn from it, but I find nothing is candid and sincere than the intricacy of my own melancholy. Trying to futilly think otherwise has caused me pain and disappointment. There's a seemingly contradictory contentment in submerging oneself into their unhappiness. — THX1138

Yes, this might be my theme all along with pessimism. There is actually an odd therapeutic joy in knowing it and sharing it with others. To be deny the pessimism, or to be "optimistic" one has to be in habits and routines that will keep the darkness out...until some event forces its way in. Rather, it is better to incorporate the dark, so as to understand it, and allow us to properly align ourselves with the situation. I think Cioran is closer to Schopenhauer and the metaphysical pessimists than @Baden might give credit. Our very consciousness is like a dagger- that is the metaphysical statement. The "knowing" of this truth is the epistemic one. So what Cioran is doing is saying "Hey, this is metaphysically negative, but the fact that I know that this is metaphysically negative, brings a joy of its own". It is the knowing of our own situation that enthralls Cioran, and who is perhaps showing the way of living with pessimism on a daily basis, by simply understanding the very ironic ways it instantiates itself.

I don't much like this Cioran quote. I think it really is amplified apathy; it seems to reify that and approve of it, and I see it differently. — Chisholm

Apathy yes, but more like inertia. There is no use killing yourself, it seems to convey, so in an odd way anti-suicide.

Nope, it's always better to have less of something bad. This looks like black and white thinking to me. — Chisholm

It's actually the opposite of black and white thinking. The compulsion to end your life is very black and white, but the reality is that it is the wrong target. We are already born in the first place.. this is a target we can never do anything about.

Plus there is no "you" at all. The idea of a self is an illusion — Chisholm

I didn't say this so you may want to address that person. Do you know how to quote? You drag and highlight the passage and a "quote" button will display next to the highlighted text. You can click that button and it will automatically quote the passage in the text editor field below.

I find this to be profound, a in plain sight kind of truth. Language dictates what we talk about and how we talk about it. If I were to learn an old tribal language, I might find that 40% of the terminology is related to weather, war or Gods. A language is very telling of it's natives -- it's speakers. — THX1138

Yes, this quote also makes me think of what the feeling is when someone is speaking a language you do not understand. Our mind's architecture is built very much on our primary language, and thus when there are other humans speaking a language we do not understand, we are alienated. We know there is sense being communicated, but we cannot make it out. We inhabit our own language's sphere of sense, and are cut off from others we do not know. It's like two trains passing in the night. We are right next to them, but we are not aware of their cognitive world.

In my case, I think having died of my appendicitis at seven would have been a beautiful, fitting end to my life. Sure, I would've just been a random child who died, but my life ending now means I would be a great resource sapping, tumor of a failure who finally died.

The former would have been more dignified and kind. — THX1138

Wow, powerful and sad anecdote to exemplify the point. I think his main idea here is that every point you are to kill yourself was always too late. One cannot take back the very thing causing the anguish, and extinguishing the self would take away the very thing that would get the relief. It is a paralysis of action, the resignation that once one is here, one is stuck with existence, that it is futile to try any action. Any action, even suicide is a positive one, as one is acting at all. The only thing then is to reflect on all the contradictions and see the irony in it. This brought a subversive sense of joy to Cioran.

(And by extension my attitude (now) that it's much more productive to focus on the function than argue over the content.) — Baden

Can you elaborate on that?

This one might have something to do with the idea that by acting one is legitimizing the very grounds of being. But we cannot help but act. @Baden This might have something to do similar to the repose and not to get immersed in the emotions.

Here's one:

I react like everyone else, even like those I most despise; but I make up for it by deploring every action I commit, good or bad. — E.M. Cioran, Trouble with Being BornE.M. Cioran, Trouble with Being Born

A sort of ironic distance from the self and its emotional proclivities then, as achieved by daring them to do their worst while maintaining as open as possible an intellectual stance, is likely a better bet for the more infatigably sensitive souls among us than the contrary faithful overidentification. So, the obscene joys of nightmares win out over the sterile plateaus of dreams or each becomes the other when looked at obtusely, the crux being that we shouldn't cling to a central stable point of identity which then has to be positively grounded in order to justify its continued existence but instead embrace a kind of permanent free-fall without any hope of flying (while we're effectively doing just that). — Baden

I think I see what you're saying. Joy in the absurd gets us through. Cioran's ironic musings is a kind of intertia of grounding. Best to keep a distance so as to look at it from the outside than to be thrown about by its emotional waves. More to the point, suicide would be taking the optimism too seriously, as it is a failed optimism. Really there is nowhere to go and nothing to do. There is a sort of existential paralysis with being born, that suicide does not undo.

Its not possible to suicide prior to coming into existence, but now that you exist, it is too late. Having coming into existence as a being afflicted by welfare states, the harm has already been done. It now makes no sense to suicide as a way to improve your state of welfare, as you will destroy that which could be worse or better off by the act of lethally harming yourself. — Inyenzi

Yes, good point. This is what Schopenhauer meant I believe, when he said:

"Suicide may also be regarded as an experiment — a question which man puts to Nature, trying to force her to an answer. The question is this: What change will death produce in a man’s existence and in his insight into the nature of things? It is a clumsy experiment to make; for it involves the destruction of the very consciousness which puts the question and awaits the answer"
-Schopenhuaer- On Suicide

Like insisting on incinerating the skin of a piece of fruit that's already been eaten. It's too late to do any damage worthwhile. If life is what you despise, your life such as it had any substance has been drained from you by the time you wish to end it. — Baden

Excellent point! I like the fruit analogy too. There is nothing to even give to death at that point.

I think Cioran points to his game here, which is the same game played by most extreme pessimists, and that is to productively externalise their negativity as a process of catharsis in order precisely to make life worth living, or feel so, so long as said orientation is always presented as its obverse. Cioran's pessimism is itself the cloak of identity which refutes its central premise. He lived a long, productive and creative life not despite, but because of, his professed disgust for existence, which professed disgust he milked for every psychic drop of energy it could provide. And this secret life-affirming joy of pessimism is something we should all share in with a wry backward smile. It's the optimists who will kill you with their obvious lies, or you yourself if you cleave yourself to/with their words. Better to be at the bottom of the sea and realize you have gills than on a cruise ship heading for an ice-berg. — Baden

More great stuff. I think you nailed it with the ironic life affirming joy of pessimism as well as catharsis. In other words, we must recognize the what is the case of the world first before anything else. The case is that it was better never to have been, but that we are here nonetheless. Now we are stuck with the inertia of nothing to do about it but mine and opine. The catharsis is in recognition of all aspects of the tragedy both in the everyday and extraordinary varieties, overturning the rocks of optimism which incompetently try to hide "what is the case". The rebellion is in the very understanding of the absurdity and the ever futile attempts to try to share this information, perhaps most effectively in glimpses of aphoristic poems and phrases.

Someone had me and I am not committing suicide so survival, maintenance/comfort-seeking, and entertainment-seeking mediated through cultural institutions, and linguistically generalized learning brain capacity is essentially what I and most of humanity is doing.

Once again, existentialcomics has the appropriate comic this week:

http://existentialcomics.com/comic/295

Here is another aphorism:

“A zoologist who observed gorillas in their native habitat was amazed by the uniformity of their life and their vast idleness. Hours and hours without doing anything. Was boredom unknown to them? This is indeed a question raised by a human, a busy ape. Far from fleeing monotony, animals crave it, and what they most dread is to see it end. For it ends, only to be replaced by fear, the cause of all activity. Inaction is divine; yet it is against inaction that man has rebelled. Man alone, in nature, is incapable of enduring monotony, man alone wants something to happen at all costs — something, anything.... Thereby he shows himself unworthy of his ancestor: the need for novelty is the characteristic of an alienated gorilla.”
― E. M. Cioran, The Trouble with Being Born

Yes, I agree with this assessment. Being born has already been inflicted. If Schopenhauer is correct, suicide thwarts the very feeling of relief that was trying to be satisfied. You're stuck because you were and are.

Not sure I understood this one. Can you explain that?

Next aphorism:

“Only optimists commit suicide, optimists who no longer succeed at being optimists. The others, having no reason to live, why would they have any to die?”
― Emil Cioran

I think this quote explains the first one.

In the long run it's not amusing at all. It's even a little bit toxic. Lacan said about the saint: "we don't know where he takes us"... It can be true for Cioran sometimes! — Le Vautre

Little bit toxic? Ha, I think their point is that life is more than a little bit toxic :p. Cioran's charm is his sense of irony in the glee he gets from constantly discovering this in various aspects of history, identity, consciousness.

Yes, "grinding rose" meaning "to be optimistic". — Le Vautre

As for that quote, I think it is perfect. I don't know what it is, but some of the most glee comes from the pessimistic turn of phrases from these authors. That someone can have such perceptive insight into what is the case, is fun to read.

Oh, I have no doubt that Cioran himself would hate what I'm doing. His aphorisms are meant to be their own analysis and probably should be read in the context of his essays. However, I'm gonna do it anyways :D. I'll mine the absurd, absurdly and corrupt the words into concrete reifications. But I am using him as a start to a series of pessimist philosophers and analyzing their thoughts. His quotes happen to be short enough and accessible enough that it is a good starting place.

Is that translated:
I have never read a Buddha sermon or a page of Schopenhauer without grinding rose?

Oh I think it's something like grinding pink or growing pink??

Here's my take. I think he is saying that suicide doesn't take away the fact that we have existed in the first place. By the very fact we have gotten to the point where we want to end our existence, we have already endured that very existence that has lead us here. Ending our experience after our birth is not the same as wanting to never have experienced experience in the first place. It is a longing for a nothingness that never was. In another quote he says:

“Better to be an animal than a man, an insect than an animal, a plant than an insect, and so on.

Salvation? Whatever diminishes the kingdom of consciousness and compromises its supremacy.”

― Emil Cioran, The Trouble with Being Born

Further, to bring in Schopenhauer.. To commit suicide is really to ask the universe a question that can never be answered.

"It is impossible to be judged by someone who has suffered less than we have. And as each one believes himself to be an unrecognized Job..." — Matias

Excellent quote.. but we are jumping ahead.. What do you think this first one means about always killing yourself too late?

I think it's most akin to learning that the free will is an illusion, according to Cioran, and, the only response to such a realization is the absurdity of one's fatalistic existence. — Wallows

Okay.. maybe keep going with that. I wasn't thinking along those lines but it could raise some interesting points.

I can't recall where I'm getting this; but, this quote brings out the prominence of the Will with respect to the world. In that, the Will is futile and ever-changing with respect to the world, which is absolute and domineering in imposing situations/circumstances that lead one to want to commit suicide. — Wallows

As far as I know, he wasn't so much a philosopher of Will like Schopenhauer, so this might not quite have to do with that. Certainly, that can be a characterization of Schopenhauer and his idea of suicide as a paradox..That being that you use the very Will that you are trying to extinguish to will your own death. Then he goes on to answer the paradox by becoming an ascetic who denies the will through slow extinction of self.

I'd like to focus on the idea of always killing yourself "too late".

True, has absurd elements, but what is he saying about suicide?