Sam Munson says a dumb thing:
Given his fundamentally anti-philosophical positioning, and his hard,
ironic voice, as well as his unorthodox political views, Cioran has
come in for a great deal of comparison to Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, a
latter-day representative of corrosive, fearless scepticism. It’s hard
to dispute such claims, but they have the sad effect of dating Cioran.
In philosophy, the sceptical nihilists have lost. This is to say
nothing of that fact that his concern with artful writing by itself
places him well outside the scope of our professional philosophers, or
that right-thinkers consider Cioran anathema for the fascistic
undercurrents in his thought (although this seems both intellectually
useless and hypocritical in light of the large number of Stalinists who
have managed to pass unhindered into the European canon).
Nietzsche, a dated, skeptical nihilist? An exemplar of garden variety "professional philosophy"? Who knew?
(Via Arts & Letters Daily.)
