The Trouble With Being Born
Another title for the book would have been The Trouble With Being. I read this book alongside The Unbearable Lightness of Being to compare the two books’ different perspectives of “being”.
I say this book could be The Trouble With Being because Cioran has a problem with existence, not birth. The question of “Being”, of existing as a human subject, and similar questions have shown up throughout history. Buddhism’s “illusory self”, “existentialism”, “the absurd”, “metaphysics”, Heidegger’s project, and famous literature all grapple with existence.
“To be or not to be, that is the question.”
Shakespeare
People, regardless of race, culture, or whatever social boundary, come face-to-face with the question of what they have been put here to do. Religion provides some insight, time does as well, but it never ends up being a universal answer everyone can agree with1.
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There might be no answer, which is problematic for a society to grapple with. It’s the same fear Rawls seems to have when writing “A Theory of Justice”. ↩