"You will suffer from everything, and to excess : the wind will seem gales; every touch a dagger; smiles, slaps; trifles,catclysms. Waking may come to an end, but its light survives within you; one does not see in the dark with impunity, one does not gather its lessons without danger; there are eyes which can no longer learn anything from the Sun , and souls afflicted by nights from which they will never recover." - Emil Cioran
Philosophy is like coffee or cigrette, nobody can understand the craving for it unless you are an addict yourself .Its something you can live without but once you are in it you simply don't want to. The door of addiction open from one side only...it is hard to find the door knob and turn it for exit.Everybody starts with one taste for curiosity's sake,just once and maybe once more before quitting, and one last time isn't oing to kill me and before you notice the addiction you are far too deep to get out. Then you will just find one more excuse for it, everytime.As these addiction breeds cancre and other diseases, philosophy breeds insomnia.
As Cioran says "Only humanity has insomnia"
Insomnia has been the most spicy dish for philosophers for centuries, no matter how much it hurts you just want it even more. Like these philosophers said
"When a man is asleep, he is no better than if he were dead; and he who loves life and wisdom will take no more sleep than is necessary for health." -Plato
"There is no use of a sleeping man, as there is no use of a dead man....But whoever of us is most solicitous for living the true life and for entertaining noble sentiments, will keep awake for as long as possible." -Clement of Alexandria
"Philosophy is a call to infinite reaponsibility, to an untiring wakefulness, to a total insomnia."
-Emmanuel Levinas
"In the night, insomnia is discussion, not the work of arguements bumping against other arguements, but the extreme shuddering of no thoughts, percussive stillness." - Maurice Blanchot
Lots have been written and discussed about insomnia over the centuries but it has always ended at the same point it had started.Cioran wrote
"The tyrant lies awake-that is what defines him."
The insomniac is bound to think about insomnia, and about what it does to thinking. In the wink of an eye, insomnia slips from thought to obsession, from earnest doubt topitiless masochism and misanthropy.Insomnia has moments of extraordinary lucidity, but it also has traps and delusions of grandeur.Lots of geniuses were insomiac, Nero, Hitler, Churchil, Edison, Kafka, Newton; all of them shared insomnia besides their brain.You enter into conflict with the whole world, with sleeping humanity. You no longer feel like one person among others, because others live unconciously.One develops a demented pride.One tells oneself, 'my destiny is diferent, I know the experience of the eninterrupted vigil'. Only pride, the pride of a catastrophe, gives you courage then.One cultivates the extaordinarily flattering feeling of no longer being part of ordinary humanity.It tears your body and inflates your ego.It magnifies and belittles. Insomnia flatters and so does philosophy.It is a commom dinominator nowadays.
"Of all the questions known to philosophy, that posed by Cioran is without doubt the most grave and most serious : Is an alliance between lucidity and joy possible?" -Clement Rosset
A philosophy in love with truth confronts cruel facts: lies abound, innocents suffer, everyone dies, and the universe doesn't care. There are thoughts that won't be denied, thoughts that won't let you sleep.As Cioran quoted
"To keep the mind vigilant, there is only coffee, disease, insomnia or the obsession of death!"
Chased by regrets , Cioran strove to put philosophy behind him,like a growing shadow.In his 'Short History of Decay', he inserted an invocation to insomnia which personifies and praises it-
"Isomnia, you....in a single night grant more knowledge than days spent in repose."
"We begin to live authentically only where philosophy ends, at its wreck, when we have understood its terrible nullity, when we have understood that it was futile to resort to it, that it is no help."
Helplessly Cioran vanished and died in 1995 but his words and thoughts are still giving lots of lives, very good dose of Insomnia, the thing he feared most dredfully. And I am afraid that I am starting to be one of them,so I am going to bed now...be careful ,and don't let the insomia bug bite you.
Philosophy is like coffee or cigrette, nobody can understand the craving for it unless you are an addict yourself .Its something you can live without but once you are in it you simply don't want to. The door of addiction open from one side only...it is hard to find the door knob and turn it for exit.Everybody starts with one taste for curiosity's sake,just once and maybe once more before quitting, and one last time isn't oing to kill me and before you notice the addiction you are far too deep to get out. Then you will just find one more excuse for it, everytime.As these addiction breeds cancre and other diseases, philosophy breeds insomnia.
As Cioran says "Only humanity has insomnia"
Insomnia has been the most spicy dish for philosophers for centuries, no matter how much it hurts you just want it even more. Like these philosophers said
"When a man is asleep, he is no better than if he were dead; and he who loves life and wisdom will take no more sleep than is necessary for health." -Plato
"There is no use of a sleeping man, as there is no use of a dead man....But whoever of us is most solicitous for living the true life and for entertaining noble sentiments, will keep awake for as long as possible." -Clement of Alexandria
"Philosophy is a call to infinite reaponsibility, to an untiring wakefulness, to a total insomnia."
-Emmanuel Levinas
"In the night, insomnia is discussion, not the work of arguements bumping against other arguements, but the extreme shuddering of no thoughts, percussive stillness." - Maurice Blanchot
Lots have been written and discussed about insomnia over the centuries but it has always ended at the same point it had started.Cioran wrote
"The tyrant lies awake-that is what defines him."
The insomniac is bound to think about insomnia, and about what it does to thinking. In the wink of an eye, insomnia slips from thought to obsession, from earnest doubt topitiless masochism and misanthropy.Insomnia has moments of extraordinary lucidity, but it also has traps and delusions of grandeur.Lots of geniuses were insomiac, Nero, Hitler, Churchil, Edison, Kafka, Newton; all of them shared insomnia besides their brain.You enter into conflict with the whole world, with sleeping humanity. You no longer feel like one person among others, because others live unconciously.One develops a demented pride.One tells oneself, 'my destiny is diferent, I know the experience of the eninterrupted vigil'. Only pride, the pride of a catastrophe, gives you courage then.One cultivates the extaordinarily flattering feeling of no longer being part of ordinary humanity.It tears your body and inflates your ego.It magnifies and belittles. Insomnia flatters and so does philosophy.It is a commom dinominator nowadays.
"Of all the questions known to philosophy, that posed by Cioran is without doubt the most grave and most serious : Is an alliance between lucidity and joy possible?" -Clement Rosset
A philosophy in love with truth confronts cruel facts: lies abound, innocents suffer, everyone dies, and the universe doesn't care. There are thoughts that won't be denied, thoughts that won't let you sleep.As Cioran quoted
"To keep the mind vigilant, there is only coffee, disease, insomnia or the obsession of death!"
Chased by regrets , Cioran strove to put philosophy behind him,like a growing shadow.In his 'Short History of Decay', he inserted an invocation to insomnia which personifies and praises it-
"Isomnia, you....in a single night grant more knowledge than days spent in repose."
"We begin to live authentically only where philosophy ends, at its wreck, when we have understood its terrible nullity, when we have understood that it was futile to resort to it, that it is no help."
Helplessly Cioran vanished and died in 1995 but his words and thoughts are still giving lots of lives, very good dose of Insomnia, the thing he feared most dredfully. And I am afraid that I am starting to be one of them,so I am going to bed now...be careful ,and don't let the insomia bug bite you.
