Antihumanism in the Works of E.M. Cioran and Thomas Bernhard

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Ştefan BOLEA
Antihumanism in the Works of E.M. Cioran and Thomas Bernhard
DOI: 
https://doi.org/10.26424/philobib.2019.24.1.04
Institution: 
Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca
Author's email: 
stefan.bolea@gmail.com
Keywords: 
not-man
Übermensch
alterity
suicide
antinatalism
nihilism
psychosis
Abstract: 

The versions of Nietzschean and Cioranian Antihumanism start from different presuppositions than Foucault’s Antihumanism, adding misanthropy to their nihilistic project. The Cioranian term of the not-man, a darker counterpart to Nietzsche’s Übermensch, can be “tested” through forays into the Romantic and Post-romantic literature, considering for instance Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), Maupassant’s “Horla” (1887), Lorrain’s “The Possessed” (1895) or the poems of Lautréamont. In this paper we compare Cioran’s Antihumanism with the nihilism of Thomas Bernhard’s first novel, Frost (1963).

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