Cioran, Routledge Encyclopaedia of Philosophy (London and New York: Routledge, 2003) 1 CIORAN, EMIL (1911-1995) C A T A L I N D. P A R T E N I E An Entry for Routledge Encyclopaedia of Philosophy General Editor E D W A R D C R A I G Online Edition (London and New York: Routledge, 2003) Emil Cioran published during his lifetime sixteen books, the first six in his native Romanian (1934-44), the other ten in French (1949-1987). He was awarded many literary prizes (including Rivarol, Saint-Beuve, Combat and Nimier); he only accepted one, the Rivarol Prize, for the first book he wrote in French, Précis de décomposition (1949). Self- proclaimed ‘the sceptic on duty in a world in decline’, he wrote mostly about his obsessions: despair, solitude, suicide, decay, death, history, utopia, God, music, the decline of the Western world, literature, boredom, freedom, exile, alienation, lucidity, the absurdity and futility of human existence. In most of his writings one can detect the same tragic vision of human being – a ‘heresy of nature’ whose history is devoid of any sense. Cioran’s French books were praised by many French critics and writers, and in 1986 L’Express magazine declared him ‘the greatest French prosateur of today’. 1 Life 2 Works 3 Reception 1 Life Cioran was born in 1911 in Rasinari, a small village in Transylvania (Romania), the second child of an orthodox priest. Between 1928-32 he studied philosophy at the University of Bucharest. In 1933 he was awarded a Humboldt Fellowship and spent two years in Berlin