Thomas Pavel

Thomas Pavel teaches literature at the University of Chicago. He is the author of Fictional Worlds, The Spell of Language and La Pensée du roman.

Save us from saviours: E.M. Cioran

Thomas Pavel, 27 May 2010

What rules the behaviour of human beings? Our needs, as materialist and utilitarian thinkers believe? Our intellect and the dictates of reason, as Platonists and Hegelians hope? Or do we obey our proud, irritable vital spirit, sometimes generous but quite often vicious? Few people nowadays would give the third answer, but a century ago, the disciples of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche defended it...

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