Daria Lebedeva

Cioran's Clinamen: a Case Analysis of a Philosophical Influence Daria Lebedeva

A philosophical influence is an inquiry on the inner mechanism of the new -born philosophical teaching with the guiding aim to figure out the influential personalities and ideas. In this respect the philosophical prose by Emile Cioran, a Romanian-French philosopher, moralist, essayist, is a bright example to refer to primarily for the reason of its multi-sided feature - inclination to nihilism, pessimism, skepticism - that in turn is a direct outcome of the diverse influence has taken place. However, being under influence for a philosopher it not a copying or paraphrasing the adopted baggage of ideas and thoughts, exactly the usage of the term clinamen from the Harold Bloom's theory of influence in poetry proposes another idea. Harold Bloom, an American cultural and literary critic, adopts Lucretius' term clinamen meaning swerving or deviation from the original sources in order to accentuate the momentum of taking an independent step by a new comer in the tradition. The influence inevitably occurs since nothing comes from nihilo in the process of creation, the point is to select the results of influence and to learn lessons from influence.