Banca de DEFESA: RUI BENEVIDES PRATES

Uma banca de DEFESA de DOUTORADO foi cadastrada pelo programa.
STUDENT : RUI BENEVIDES PRATES
DATE: 24/11/2025
TIME: 09:00
LOCAL: ppgf/FFCH/UFBA
TITLE:

Continuities and Discontinuities Between Emil Cioran’s Romanian and French Works

KEY WORDS:

Cioran; transfiguration; fall; skepticism; pessimism

PAGES: 231
BIG AREA: Ciências Humanas
AREA: Filosofia
SUMMARY:

This thesis seeks to defend, through a proposed periodization, the hypothesis of a
substantial inflection (or Kehre) in Emil Cioran's philosophy. Scholarship on Cioran's
philosophy frequently relies on dividing his work into phases, justified primarily by the
shift in the languages the author employed throughout his life—his first five works were
written in his native Romanian, while the subsequent ten were expressed in French.
Additionally, biographical or, at best, stylistic reasons are often cited, yet from a
philosophical standpoint, these fail to provide a solid basis for concluding that there is a
discontinuity in his thought. At the core of this fragile periodization lies, therefore, a
significant hermeneutic insufficiency, evidenced by the difficulty specialists face in
discerning within his philosophy either its core theoretical elements or its overarching,
most prominent tendencies. Despite the challenge posed by Cioran himself—who, even
while engaging with metaphysics, ethics, and epistemology, attacked the "formalism" and
impersonality of philosophy (especially academic philosophy)—we argue that his ideas,
at different times, formed distinct philosophical projects, structured in a manner
consciously divergent from doctrine and system, termed here "philosophical programs."
Building on this framework, we explore the recurring conceptual structures throughout
Cioran's oeuvre and identify, for the first time, his early and mature projects, guided
respectively by the ideas of "transfiguration" and "the fall." It is therefore through
identifying this fundamental discontinuity, represented by two irreducible (and mutually
opposing) programs, that we support the hypothesis of a Kehre in Cioran's philosophy
and, consequently, the existence of two distinct philosophical periods in his work. Our
study thus offers both a general overview of Cioran's thought in its key expressions and
establishes an interpretive paradigm intended to aid future research.

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
Interno - ***.643.505-** - ANDRÉ LUÍS MOTA ITAPARICA - USP
Interno - 2367419 - JARLEE OLIVEIRA SILVA SALVIANO
Interno - 279388 - KLEVERTON BACELAR SANTANA
Externo à Instituição - FRANÇOIS ARNAUD - UP
Externo à Instituição - Bruno Martins Machado - UFS