The thinking of the writer and philosopher Cioran is characterized by extreme radicalism. Syllogisms are conclusions. They adhere to the deductive method. From the general, they infer the particular. From the bitter experience of the world, one derives the 'atrophy of the word', the 'circus of solitude', the 'dizziness of history', and the 'sources of emptiness'. These are some of the ten titles to which Cioran subjects his syllogisms. These syllogisms themselves are statements of aphoristic brevity, predominantly limited to a single sentence, rarely exceeding three sentences. They differ from the usual kind of aphorism through their consistently grim seriousness and lack of contradiction; they do not contradict each other, they are unanimous in their opposition to the world as it was, is, and will be, fragments of a system.