We are firmly in an era of accelerated progress. We are witness to advancements in science, the arts, technology, medicine and nearly all forms of human achievement at a rate never seen before. We know more about the workings of the human brain and of distant galaxies than our ancestors could imagine. The design of a superior kind of human being – healthier, stronger, smarter, more handsome, more enduring – seems to be in the works. Even immortality may now appear feasible, a possible outcome of better and better biological engineering.

Certainly the promise of continual human progress and improvement is alluring. But there is a danger there, too — that in this more perfect future, failure will become obsolete. And if it does, so too will the disciplines that depend upon it; philosophy, psychology, all of the ways of knowing that deal with the human person, essentially failing creatures that we are.

In this lecture I will consider the case of E. M. Cioran (1911-1995) from the vantage point of his relationship to failure. I will do so from two angles. There is, first, Cioran’s philosophizing on failure. He was obsessed with the topic throughout his work: from his first book, which he wrote in Romanian when he was 22, to his latest French texts, failure (be it cosmic, collective or personal) always played a central role. There is, then, Cioran’s record of personal failures: his involvement with a fascist movement in interwar Romania, his failure to keep a full-time job (and his bragging about it), his dream to live a parasite’s life in Paris (and the fulfilment of it), his social marginality, of which he was so proud. What complicates matters is that none of this prevented him from becoming one of the most successful thinkers of the 20th century.

For Cioran, failure permeates everything. Great ideas can be stained by failure, and so can books, philosophies, institutions, and political systems. The human condition itself is for him just another failed project. Our capacity to fail, then, is essential to our humanity. It lies at the root of our aspirations and makes us what we are. Failure, fear of it and learning how to avoid it in the future are all part of a process through which the shape and destiny of humanity are decided. That is why the capacity to fail is something that should be preserved, no matter what the professional optimists say. Such a thing is worth treasuring, even more so than artistic masterpieces, monuments or other accomplishments. For, in a sense, the capacity to fail is much more important than any individual human achievements: It is that which makes them possible.