The Trouble with Being Born

First things first - Cioran writes absolutely beautiful prose. I don't think any philosophical writer since Montaigne has really written this well (apart from the novelists who treat philosophical themes like Dostoevsky and Sartre). I really cannot adequately convey the beauty of some of the existential musings of Cioran properly. He's a great stylist. A cautionary note - Cioran is extremely well-educated in Western Philosophy, Christianity and Buddhism. Because of that, this is not really a book for someone who doesn't have strong grounding in philosophy (or at the least Nietzsche, Schopenhauer and Hegel) and some familiarity with religion. Additionally, the philosophy types should know that this book is not really philosophy in the Western Sense. It's written more like Eastern Philosophy. It's entirely aphorisms. That said, if you can bear with it, this is one of the best things I've ever read. The clarity of thought and sheer brilliance of the aphorisms are unmatched apart from Lao Tzu and McLuhan. Cioran is grimly pessimistic and has an extremely mordant sense of humor. He also explores the human condition and the recalcitrant nature of existence and art. If Nietzsche had a sense of humor and lived amidst French existentialism, he'd have written this book. Cioran is a bit more of an irrationalist (and a Buddhist .... and a Christian) than Nietzsche, though (and a bit less of an anti-egalitarian). Case in point: "Sometimes I wish I was a cannibal - less for the pleasure of eating someone than for the pleasure of vomiting him." For me, Cioran has always been like reading Final Exit, having sex in a graveyard, or reading Nietzsche. There's something oddly life-affirming (at least in his later books - after the turn away from Schopenhauer towards Nietzsche and Buddhist studies) in his gleefully pessimistic meditations on death, decay, nihilism, and Buddhism, unlike say Schopenhauer, who is consistenly dour about everything due to his extreme narcissism. To put it in other terms, Cioran has a sense of (self-consciously absurd) pessimistic humor that is roughly in line with the modern goth subculture. If you spent your formative years listening to the Sisters of Mercy, you'll know what I mean. By all means, not a book for everyone but highly recommended for recovering goths, literary types, artists, existentialists, and theology and philosophy types with a sense of humor, or students studying 20th century Pessimism.

Being a lifelong sufferer of mental illness, I am all too familiar with the troubles that come with being born. I have tried almost every method under the sun, dedicated myself to countless philosophies, in the hopes that I would find some reprieve. Although therapy has been a great saving force, it doesn't necessarily fill in the blanks of the problem of being. This is where Cioran comes in for me. Thinking positive thoughts, practicing gratitude, attempting to use the 'law of attraction' to manifest great and beautiful things may be the solution for some. And there are ample books on such topics. For the disturbed, long-time sufferer, however, this is clearly a farce. Cioran offers me a sense of comfort, safety and dare I say hope, which is fueled by pessimism and dreary, miserable and depressing prose. I am truly grateful that Cioran never did kill himself, as it would've been too late, but also because this work has been able to see the light of day. This is a must read, and one that I frequently revisit.

Amazon - can you fix your mobile app please make it more user friendly??? Anyway, it's a great book 👍

E.M. Cioran is one of the peripheral (non French [technically], non German, non Anglo-American) characters of philosophy but, as any of them are, he is an interesting aside to the major ideological fights. Part of the rich history of Existentialism, Cioran is certainly not a philosopher of hope and inspiration but rather the man who could make Schopenhauer feel absolutely dreadful. Meditations and lamentations on life and it's futility, he is a tangible example of the 'moody Existentialist' stereotype many people hold in their minds. Starting his career when his mother told him she considered an abortion for him, he took himself to new highs and lows of explaining why being born was the ultimate immoral act and how death is no better. Bleak, unintentionally funny, and comically Existential, I would recommend this to people interested in characters such as Schopenhauer, Ortega y Gasset, Unamuno, Sartre, Camus, and others from the rich canon of literature relating to existence. Also, a great book of aphorisms to liven up any party!

Being gay has forced me to look existence in the face and wrestle with the pain of unchosen, chronic suffering and being forced to live a life I never wanted. EM Cioran brings some much needed humor into this heavy discussion.

It's roughly a book full of aporephisms that you can rattle off when people have had too many drinks.

At times, this book is brilliantly written. Cioran is a fantastic writer. There are some golden aphorisms sprinkled throughout this book. I picked this up because it was recommended as a philosophy of pessimism; but it wasn't philosophy book (at least, I wouldn't call it philosophy). But that doesn't take away from what this book is. It's more of a literary piece -- an invitation into the thoughts of someone who dwells in melancholy and pessimism, and for that, it's pretty interesting and impressive. There are some real great aphorisms in here that are a joy to read, where you can't help but put a smirk on your face after reading it. It's also great when in one aphorism, he'll say something that's ingenious, followed by something completely contradictory to it 3 or 4 aphorisms later. He knows what he's doing, and it's great to see these contrasts. An example would be when he talks about how he doesn't trust people who are so sure of their convictions, followed by him talking about his own convictions later on within the same chapter. Fantastic. Overall though, I struggled to finish this book at a certain point. I wasn't interested after about 100 pages or so, and I was just kind of pushing myself to finish it. By roughly the half way point, I felt as if I'd been reading the same chapter over and over. Trying to be as generous as I could to Cioran, I read it engaging with him and questioning him, but this book is just so repetitive and relentless with this overly dramatic attitude where he takes himself so seriously that it just became boring to read. Maybe that was his goal with the book. It's also boring because there's no development in his thought. He just keeps beating this point of view into the ground. Perhaps that's just the personification of melancholy, but it just feels so stagnant, especially after 200 pages. This sort of goes along with his view on philosophy, which he briefly describes in this book and says he became disillusioned by. He came to see that philosophy doesn't make any progress. This reminds me of an aphorism that he writes: "What I know at sixty, I knew as well at twenty. Forty years of a long, a superfluous, labor of verification." That's just a self fulfilling prophecy to me. A stubborn, limiting world view, where one thinks they understand the world through a frame of reference and they just beat it into themselves. I'm not even necessarily saying that his pessimism or world view is unjustified: it's just a small way to look at the world and think you understand it entirely. To limit one's self to that is to miss out on so many view points and perspectives. His repetition then, in his own words, is just prove to himself that his own world view is right. ("For to repeat yourself is to prove that you still believe in yourself, and in what you have said." p. 133) But hey, who isn't doing that? Myself included. I really wanted to love this book after it was so highly praised. It's funny, witty, depressive, and brilliant. At the same time it's melodramatic, repetitive, boring, and short sighted. There are some truly dazzling gems of insight in this book, as well as a lot of monotonous writing that bears repeating.

One of my favorite books of all time. He makes sense of the world through a very sullen lens, a lens some people relate to very well. It's depressing, but helped me more than any motivational poster ever could. He talks about life, death, birth (and the tragedy of it), art, and people. If you're one to annotate books for fun, you'll be highlighting and scribbling in the margins the whole time.

タイトルは人をひきつけるものです。そして全編、短いaphorismの集積です。これは一見したところかなりdeceivingなものです。あるものは直接訴えかけますが、あるものはかなりの知識と論理的な整理を理解に必要とします。でも少なからぬ多くの部分は感覚にも論理にも働きかけないものです。かなりの部分は読み手の予備知識の不足に起因するものでしょう。しかし、この居心地の悪さはもっと深い部分に起因するものかもしれません。そしてこの種のaphorismの集積は必然的に矛盾を含むものです。この矛盾を並存させるモティーフの発見は初心者の読解力を超えています。「生誕」の逆説をキーワードとする世界の再構成はかなりの毒をはらむものですが、ここには個人的な経験がかなり強く関わっているのかもしれません。時間と意識への鋭敏な感覚は、やはり同じような鋭敏な読み手を選ぶようです。今後も読み続けるかどうかは疑問です。それくらい難しい作品です。それともこの作品からcioranを読み始めたのが間違っていたのか？他のレヴュアーの方のお考えを伺えれば幸です。

Maravilloso. Un autor maravilloso, como por ejemplo su "Historia y Utopía". Hay autores que explican "mejor" el tremendo acto egoísta que es tener hijos, como Cabrera o el maravilloso Benatar que explica maravillosamente el porqué reproducirse es el mayor crimen que se puede cometer. Hay otros muchos más divertidos como el sublime Fernando Vallejo y su ley del Horror Exponencial, pero desde luego, esta obra es un "debe" para quien quiera entender los argumentos antinatalistas.

Cioran goes where few dare to go, has thoughts so many of us prefer to suppress. It is a beautiful, honest, raw and — yes — uplifting nihilism simply because it feels like truth, if there is such a thing. If not, then at least honesty. I love this book and read it over and over. It liberates from the everyday.

It's okay. The font is a little blurry tho. But perfectly redeable.

Emil Cioran’s *The Trouble with Being Born* is a stark, aphoristic exploration of despair, existence, and the unbearable burden of consciousness. Originally published in 1973, this work is less a narrative than a constellation of piercing reflections, each sentence bristling with existential pessimism and dark lyricism. Cioran writes like a philosopher and poet, crafting aphorisms that are nihilistic and strangely beautiful at once. He does not offer solutions—he dismantles illusions. Life, in Cioran’s vision, is not a journey toward meaning but an ongoing confrontation with absurdity. The title alone captures the essence of his worldview: to be born is to be thrust into suffering, and consciousness only amplifies the tragedy. Rather than building a systematic argument, Cioran meanders through thoughts on death, time, boredom, religion, insomnia, and the self. The lack of structure might frustrate readers looking for cohesion, but for others, it reflects the very chaos and futility that he seeks to expose. There is an undeniable literary artistry in his bitterness, a beauty in the clarity with which he articulates alienation. This is not a book for the faint-hearted. Its unrelenting negativity can feel oppressive, yet it is precisely this emotional honesty that gives it power. Readers who have grappled with existential anxiety may find in Cioran a kindred spirit—someone who doesn’t flinch from the abyss but studies it with grim fascination.