“As Cioran correctly points out, a principal danger of being overcivilized is that one all to easily relapses, out of sheer exhaustion and the unsatisfied need to be “stimulated,” into a vulgar and passive barbarism. Thus, “the man who unmasks his fictions” through an indiscriminate pursuit of the lucidity that is promoted by modern liberal culture “renounces his own resources and, in a sense, himself. Consequently, he will accept other fictions which will deny him, since they will not have cropped up from his own depth.” There, he concludes, “no man concerned with his own equilibrium may exceed a certain degree of lucidity and analysis.””

— Susan Sontag, book Styles of Radical Will

“‘Thinking against oneself’: reflections on Cioran,” p. 85
Styles of Radical Will (1966)

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Susan Sontag168

American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist 1933–2004

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Susan Sontag168

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