Emil CIORAN develops the concept of the undeceived man.

Emil CIORAN (1911.1995)

Autograph manuscript.

One and a half pages, large quarto. No place or date

"Everything has not meaning, but a semblance of meaning."

First draft manuscript by the Romanian philosopher developing the concept of the disillusioned man, which he would later take up again in On the Inconvenience of Being Born.

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On German radio this morning, the priest said, "Im leben alles hat einen sinn": in life, everything has meaning. But one can just as easily think that not everything does. Up close, everything does indeed seem imbued with a certain significance; from afar, this significance evaporates —far away in space and time. This is why every past event seems necessary to us, because it happened, and gratuitous, because we no longer perceive its urgency. It could just as easily have never occurred. The necessity that brought it about appears to us, with distance, as arbitrary and even illusory.

From the perspective of higher knowledge, everything has not meaning but a semblance of meaning , for ignorance is attributing intrinsic significance to anything. And one can still live with these semblances. But the truly liberated person would be the one who could do without them , who would succeed in living while denying that meaning is inherent in anything. We glimpse the possibility of such an existence, which, to a certain extent, is that of every disillusioned mind. But there is an interval between the disillusioned and the liberated: the former is the product of disillusionment, the latter of spiritual deepening. Both are superior to things, but they exist at different spiritual levels: they do not ascend the same steps and do not experience the same heights. The liberated is the remorse of the disillusioned, who will always reproach themselves for having chosen the easy path .

 The disillusioned one is the one who has understood everything. Without drawing the spiritual consequences. The liberated one is the one who, having also understood everything, has gone to the very end of this revelation that empties time of its illusory content. The disillusioned one is, if you will, a dilettante Buddha, an aesthete. A Buddha who would find a certain pleasure in belittling himself, in slandering himself; a Buddha who remained in the world, an enlightened one haunting crossroads .