In Praise of Failure: Four Lessons in Humility

by Costică Brădățan

A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice

“Charming and brilliant.” —Times Literary Supplement

“Provocative, stimulating, wise―the book that our success-obsessed age needs to read.”―Tom Holland

“Bradatan, a philosopher, writes with elegance and wit, his every thought and sentence slipping smoothly into the next…I was absorbed by Bradatan’s book even—or especially—when I felt uncomfortable with its implications.” —Jennifer Szalai, New York Times

“Bradatan wears his erudition lightly. He is a pleasure to read, and his prose conveys a happy resilience in the face of life’s inevitable contradictions. His lessons in humility remind us that the pursuit of success is often motivated by the dread of failure—and that our attempts to create things are often driven by an avoidance of our mortality.” —Michael S. Roth, Washington Post

“Bradatan writes with the same daring, the same interpretive anger that made his subjects notorious in their own day for choosing failure over what their respective worlds counted as success. A gripping read, start to finish.” ―Jack Miles, author of A Biography

Our obsession with success is hard to overlook. Everywhere we compete, rank, and measure. Yet this relentless drive to be the best blinds us to something vitally the need to be humble in the face of life’s challenges.

In Praise of Failure explores several arenas of failure, from the social and political to the spiritual and biological. Gleefully breaching the boundaries between argument and storytelling, scholarship and spiritual quest, Costica Bradatan mounts his case for failure through the stories of four historical figures who led lives of impact and meaning and assiduously courted failure. Their struggles show that engaging with our limitations can be not just therapeutic but positively transformative.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Psychology, Essays, Self Help, History, 21st Century

275 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 3, 2023

About the author

Costică Brădățan is a Professor of Humanities in the Honors College at Texas Tech University, USA, and an Honorary Research Professor of Philosophy at University of Queensland, Australia. He is the author or editor of several books, and his work has been translated into many languages, including Dutch, German, Italian, Chinese, Vietnamese, and Farsi. Bradatan writes regularly for such publications as the New York Times, Times Literary Supplement, Aeon, Dissent, and The New Statesman, and serves as the Religion/Comparative Studies Editor for the Los Angeles Review of Books.

Reviews

[Maria Mihăiță · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mi-a luat rușinos de mult (două săptămâni) să termin un volum care ar fi trebuit sorbit în două zile; vorbesc aci despre formidabila carte a profesorului Costică Brădățan: "Elogiu eșecului. Patru pilde de umilitate". Am citit-o încet - și am pierdut mult prin asta - fiindcă ocupațiile zilnice din timpul verii mi-au impus-o, iar cititul devine atunci un lux. Chiar admițând că n-am putut să-i acord întotdeauna timpul și atenția necesare, pot să vă spun că este o carte musai de citit.
Cartea în sine este alcătuită dintr-o sumă de povești, ideea fiind că poveștile și felul în care sunt spuse ne pot izbăvi viața. Aceste povești ne pot ajuta să ne lecuim de sindromul "ombilicus mundi" și să intuim în poveștile altora propria noastră cale către umilitate și modestie și către împăcarea cu sine.
Eșecul de care toți ne temem atât, fie el personal, politic, social sau eșecul suprem (moartea) merită astfel un elogiu, nu mai este ceva reprobabil, căci el este și "constructiv"; dependent de modul în care acceptăm eșecul, putem observa fisurile în alcătuirea existenței și în interiorul nostru. Fiindcă eșecul ne dezvăluie și cât de nerezonabile sunt, în general, ideile și așteptările noastre referitoare la lume, viață, politică, societate.
Poveștile despre care aminteam la început sunt exemplificate cu reflecții, întâmplări, idei, gânduri ale unor personalități: Simone Weil, Emil Cioran, Orwell, Mahatma Gandi, Seneca, Yukio Mishima, Dazai ș.a.
Limbajul cărții este unul accesibil pentru toată lumea, iar lectura textului este o încântare.
Aș mai aminti aici excelenta traducere a lui Vlad Russo și excelentele condiții grafice în care editura Spandugino a scos această carte în limba română.
Dar, vă îndemn să vă convingeți!

[Bogdan]

I tried to write a review about this book, believe me.

I tried

I tried

I tried

But I failed. And I didn't fail better. I failed worse, and worse, and worse—until I gave up.

[s.penkevich [hiatus-will return-miss you all]]

Aww well thank you for the praise

[Jenn Kurrie]

I failed at reading this book

[Alexandru Gogoașă · Rating 5 out of 5]

O carte minunata, pe care as propune-o lectura obligatorie la liceu, clasa a 12-a, la facultate, la locul de munca.
Necesară, utila, obligatorie.
Recomand! De recitit!

[Richard Cho · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simone Weil, Mahatma, Gandhi, Emil Cioran, Yukio Mishima...

Didn't care too much about sections on other three, but the one on Cioran was brilliant. Our "social" failure, the ultimate "social failure," is that we took part in this race to success, however that success is defined in this ultra capitalist world. Whether in career or others, we try to better ourselves above others. We succeed, only if there are others who fail. Cioran's recommendation: do nothing. Inaction is the best.

But the chapter brings up the idea of pre-destination by Calvin, and through Max Weber's interpretation, how Calvin's dichotomy of elected vs reprobate has wrought the capitalist system in which the new dichotomy, success or failure, became what defines a being, and this differentiation is what propels our desire for wealth nowadays. A society like ours, equality is not only rejected, but equality will bring the chaos that will undo all thing. We only feign when we act like we are FOR equality. The most fundamental engine of a capitalist society is differentiation. If you partake in the race to differentiate yourself from others (usually via wealth or social standing in capitalist nations), then you are ultimately a failure. Inaction. Indifference to the race to the top, leisurely relaxing in the shade on a foothill, merely looking up..

"It's admirable yet perfectly naive to hope that, as society evolves, we will manage to get rid of differentiation. Every known human society has generated its own forms of differentiation: social hierarchies, power structures, prestige systems, economic stratification. Historical progress (whatever that means) does not remove differentiation; it only makes the markers more insidious. A modern society like ours, which at the rhetorical level never stops praising equality, will do anything to increase actual social differentiations.
--- That's why not apokatastasis, but praedestinatio became historically victorious.........."

-------------------------------------------------------

And how, you may ask, are we to tell real failure from fake failure, of the kind peddled by self-help gurus? It is simple: failure always humbles. If it doesn't, it's not real failure, it's just "a stepping-stone to success"--self-deception by another name. And that does not lead to healing but to even more sickness.

In the U.S., we are particularly good at constructing losers--it's a national industry.

You don't want to be in the proximity of the loser, and yet your success does not have much meaning in the absence of the loser's concomitant failure.

To be a failure is not a matter of practice, of intelligence or morality, but of being.
= The same assumption of ontological damnation defines both cases: it's who you are, and not what you do or say or think, that seals your fate.

On Calvin:
If he was mad, as many of his critics liked to think, there was rigor and discipline to his madness.

As you read through Calvin's test, you cannot help but think that human reason, pushed to its breaking point, turns against itself.

Calvin's thinking about damnation is important not necessarily because the spirit of capitalism was born out of Calvinist ethics, but because Calvin, like few others, pushed the logic of predestination to its most extreme consequences, and in so doing revealed quite a bit about ourselves. Had he shown some compassion, it would have muddled things. Instead, thanks to his radicalism, we've been given full access to the mechanism's inner workings.

Socially, we are never what we think we are, but whatever others make us out to be.

Cioran remained faithful to the only church to which he ever belonged: that of the unbelonging.

To lead a good life is not to avoid failure, but to know how to make the most of your failing.

From Cioran's History and Utopia:
Whenever I happen to be in a city of any size, I marvel that riots do not break out every day: massacres, unspeakable carnage, a doomsday chaos. How can so many human beings coexist in a space so confined without destroying each other, without hating each other to death? As a matter of fact, they do hate each other, but they are not equal to their hatred. And it is this mediocrity, this impotence, that saves society, that assures its continuance, its stability.

The Principle of Differenciation.

... we in today's liberal West have to adopt the pretense of an egalitarian ethos...

What has fueled every capitalist success has been not joy, but dread--the dread of failure.
--- The only real failure: It consists, quite simply, of having fallen for the (capitalist race) game in the first place, and then persisting in playing it.

Every spiritual tradition worth its name recommends inaction, in some form or another, for shorter or longer periods, as a path to enlightenment.

Failure also reveals human history to be nothing but a continual struggle for conquest and dominance and annihilation of others, and our political institutions (even the best of them) to be precarious and imperfect.

This is how we recognize the man who has tendencies toward an inner quest: he will set failure above any success. How so? Because failure, always essential, reveals us to ourselves, permits us to see ourselves as God sees us, whereas success distances us from what is most inward in ourselves and indeed in everything. Show me how you deal with failure, and I will know who you are. For only in failure, in the greatness of a catastrophe, can you now someone.

[Mihaela · Rating 5 out of 5]

O încântare.

[Lisa Keuss · Rating 2 out of 5]

Yes, alright, I get it: "We need failure to keep us humble." The author uses countless anecdotes that all point toward this same message. I gave up hoping for something new halfway through.

[Ryan Boissonneault · Rating 4 out of 5]

For all the uncertainty in the world, we know one thing for sure: we will all, at some point, pass away. Or, as the philosopher Costica Bradatan put it, “Human existence is something that happens, briefly, between two instantiations of nothingness. Nothing first—deep, impenetrable nothingness. Then a flickering. Then nothing again, endlessly.”

Vladimir Nabokov put it more succinctly: human life is “a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.” These are the facts of human existence; the rest is, essentially, embellishment.

How we deal with these facts of life largely defines our philosophical outlook. Some prefer to think that we will actually never die—and variously believe in either reincarnation, an eternal afterlife, or immortality in some form or another. This is more or less the denial of death, and is captured in all the world’s religions.

Others, alternatively, will embrace the fact of mortality head on, unembellished. This can lead to one of two outcomes: optimists will show an appreciation for their brief moments in the sun, counting themselves lucky and relishing life’s greatest pleasures and relationships. Pessimists, on the other hand, will adopt a more nihilistic viewpoint, viewing life as more or less a pointless mistake (like the Gnostics). Bradatan seems to straddle this pessimist/optimist border throughout the book.

But what both the optimists and pessimists have in common is what Bradatan considers the highest form of human knowledge: understanding what is happening—”to see things as they are, as opposed to how we would like them to be.”

There’s a sense of liberation, even catharsis, in this orientation to the world. Rather than constantly grasping at delusions, we can see things for how they truly are. And this inevitably leads to a recognition of imperfection and failure at many levels, which ultimately leads to humility, which “gives us the chance to be healed of hubris and egocentrism, of self-illusion and self-deception, and of our poor adjustment to reality.”

The book, then, is meant to cure our maladjustment to reality through the recognition of failure and imperfection at the physical, political, social, and personal levels. The point is not to celebrate failure for its own sake, or even as some stepping stone to “success,” but to cultivate a sense of humility that can cure us of our deepest, most harmful flaws—egocentrism and delusion. The question is, does the cure work?

The first issue the reader may consider is whether physical reality and natural events can properly be labeled “imperfect” at all. Take the example of an earthquake. If humans (or any life) didn’t exist, the earth would hardly care about the “disruption” associated with natural “disasters.” What Bradatan really wants to say is that the physical world is imperfect with respect to the survival and well-being of humans. This may be a minor distinction, but one worth mentioning. It’s also the case that, while we could focus on the imperfections of the physical world, we could alternatively look at things another way: e.g., that the physical world is “perfect” in the sense that it is the only possible world that could have produced human beings—including you—who can then reflect on its imperfections in the first place. This more properly cultivates a sense of gratitude rather than a fixation on all the world’s “failures.” So maybe this is the wrong orientation after all.

Bradatan likewise doesn’t consider in any depth the dangers of excessive humility, and the people he decides to focus his narratives on are not exactly people you would necessarily want to emulate. Humility is an essential intellectual virtue, of course, but it’s probably not necessary to adopt such a dim view of things to achieve that state. In fact, leaning towards such a nihilistic view might make people apathetic and unwilling to do or risk anything at all.

Bradatan might respond that, if humility is, as Iris Murdoch defines it, a “selfless respect for reality,” or, alternatively, as “loving truth more than oneself,” then perhaps a fixation on failure is the only true path to recognizing that you are, in the grand scheme of things, not that important, and certainly not the center of the universe. Humility requires “seeing things as they are,” and things are—from the physical world to our political and social arrangements—largely imperfect. This holds its own valuable lesson. As Bradatan puts it:

“Such failures, humbling us profoundly as they do, reinforce an important and simple lesson: we are closer to nothing than to anything else. By trying to be perfect and be everything, we miss the chance to achieve what might actually be within our reach.”

Intellectual humility, then, might just be the key to solving many of our problems. The reader may wonder, however, whether there’s a more pleasant path towards achieving humility than the one conveyed in the book.

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Praise of Failure is an intriguing work of popular philosophy, using four figures of great historical interest to trace a journey to humility via failure, in the broadest sense of that term.

Author Costică Brădățan devotes one chapter to each of four central players (Simone Weil, Mahatma Gandhi, Emil Cioran, and Yukio Mishima), examining the life choices that his subjects made that drove them to failure, and how that experience of failure transformed them in some meaningful way.

This paragraph from "The Ruins of Political Failure" (focused on Gandhi) gets to the heart of what Brădățan is driving at:

Less suffering, humble though it may sound, is in fact a rather difficult goal. If we managed just that, we would accomplish a great deal. For less is so much more. Some of the most ambitious moral reformers, from the Buddha to Saint Francis of Assisi, asked nothing more of us: just show less greed, less self-assertion, less ego. Instead of talking endlessly about "making the world a better place" -- usually an excuse either to do nothing or to wield power over others -- we should perhaps try a little harder and make the world a less horrific place. A tall task, no doubt, but one worth trying.

This is not to say that all of Brădățan's subjects were specifically interested in "less suffering": Mishima in particular was after something completely different.

What makes this book really interesting is the author's inclusion of other relevant figures (such as Charlie Chaplin, Osamu Dazai, and Seneca the Younger) to pair his main subjects with related thinkers who provide reflection. This works most effectively in the discussion of Cioran, where the author introduces John Calvin and George Orwell as fellow explorers of the highs and (especially) the lows of the human experience. By interweaving how these diverse thinkers examined the relationship between human existence in the material realm and human aspirations in the spiritual realm, Brădățan asks some profound questions about how we can live in ways that are informed by our mortality without being overwhelmed by it.

As with any creative work which is worth engaging with, In Praise of Failure provides no specific answers, but the very examination of the relationship between failure and humility, as experienced by a group of highly original thinkers, is profound and challenging. I might quibble with the fact that the author's strategy for examining his topic is not always foolproof, but what work of philosophy ever is?

[Jana Rađa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Costică Brădățan’s In Praise of Failure: Four Lessons in Humility was published in 2023 and translated into Croatian soon afterwards. In 2024, the author attended a book fair in Croatia’s Istria, a visit accompanied by several newspaper articles about his most recent book. It was through these that I learned of both the author and his work. Given my intimate acquaintance with societal failure in many of its forms—some of which, at a certain level, are the unfortunate by-products of one or two personal successes (such as putting my child first)—I immediately made a mental note to read the book when the opportunity arose. I came across it on Everand about a month ago and finished it in English last week.

We live in a society that celebrates and glorifies success, while failure is treated as an inexcusable defect. Failure, though as natural as success, appears to have been expelled from the public sphere, particularly in today’s socially networked digital world. People prefer to talk about their supposed successes, often in the spirit of ‘fake it till you make it’, while any candid discussion of marital breakdown, difficulties with children or parents, career setbacks, or the end of friendships is met with an internal eye-roll and dismissed as complaining.

The ‘failure-based therapy’ proposed by the Romanian–American philosopher Costică Brădățan in In Praise of Failure rests on the claim that failure is essential to what it means to be human. It is not concerned with failure for its own sake, but with the ‘humility that failure engenders and the healing process it triggers’. For Brădățan, failure is fundamental to living well, humbling us by exposing and correcting our arrogance and self-deception.

Brădățan examines failure through a series of concentric circles, with the self at the centre. The outermost circle addresses physical failure, followed by political, social, and biological failure, each explored through historical figures chosen to exemplify them (including Simone Weil, Mahatma Gandhi, E. M. Cioran, and Yukio Mishima, among others).

Drawing on ideas associated with Richard Dawkins’s The Selfish Gene, Costică Brădățan treats human cooperation as rarely altruistic, functioning instead as a means of domination and survival. Beneath the thin veneer of civilisation lies the same Homo rapiens governed by animal instinct. Consequently, those deemed unfit for the tribe are marginalised or ridiculed as failures.

In Praise of Failure reads well, but it is not really aligned with my own thinking. I agree that failure is important and that it teaches us a great deal. Without the courage to try new things, and to risk failure in the process, we would remain stuck in the same place forever. Failure also reveals much about the people around us, acting as a masterful demasker of fair-weather friends, frenemies, and human nature more broadly.

Failure teaches us a lot about ourselves, and how we respond to adversity, physical difficulty, or penury. Often, we would prefer not to confront the reactions we observe in ourselves in the face of failure; at other times, we recognise them as entirely normal. For long-term well-being, it is essential to be gentle with oneself when confronted with prolonged existential stress. As Joan Didion reminds us in Slouching Towards Bethlehem: ‘I think we are well-advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not.’

The section on death, presented as the ultimate failure that all of us must face sooner or later—and which we agonisingly try to ignore for most of our lives—was rather too much for my taste. I remember reading Anthony de Mello’s Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality—was it ten years ago?—in which the Catholic priest speaks about death and urges us to imagine ourselves dying and decomposing in the ground as a mental exercise to prepare us for it. I recall thinking how morbid such an exercise would seem coming from anyone other than a priest: a kind of mid-life farewell to one’s own flesh, intended to help one embrace the eternal soul. Yukio Mishima, one of the protagonists of this chapter, was similar in this respect, except that he cared far more about the aesthetics of the male body during ritual suicide than about the fate of his soul.

In Praise of Failure is engaging and carefully argued, and the biographical details add a bit of vivacity to a difficult topic. Nevertheless, I finished it with the sense that its insights, however sound, were largely familiar and not immediately translatable into practice. In Praise of Failure succeeds as a philosophical meditation, but for me it failed to offer anything that felt genuinely transformative.

[Jemma · Rating 5 out of 5]

So grateful I got to delve into this with Costica himself. I'm all for more accessible philosophy!

[m0naica]

a quilt of stories beautifully interwoven. interesting case studies that all complement the theme and support the thesis. i liked the authors voice. an important lesson. stare into the abyss!

[Peter Burns · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bradatan believes that failure is a good thing. We can learn humility from our failures. We can only fail when we want to succeed. As Homer Simpson said, “Trying is the first step toward failure.” This book got me thinking about the major failures of my life. It also made me think more about the complexity of failure. For example, my marriage ended in divorce but I don’t think of that as a failure on my part. Because of my wife’s untreated mental illness I don’t think the marriage ever had a real chance of lasting beyond a certain point.

Zen
When I was 13 I decided that as soon as I turned 18 I would go to Japan, enter a Zen Monastery and achieve enlightenment. It kept me going through high school and helped me feel important even though I was failing most of my classes. When I was 18 I briefly investigated going to Japan. My father thought it was a good idea but I soon realized how lost I would be in Japan. I could barely survive in this country. Over the years I have tried to establish a meditation practice. I went a to The Providence Zen Center and a Zen Center in London, England. I meditated with a group at the Unitarian Church in Burlington. Most recently I went to the Shambala Center in Burlington. Seven years ago I started a regular meditation practice. I meditated almost every morning for twenty minutes. I never noticed any results and I always thought of myself as a bad meditator. I didn’t enjoy it. Last year I stopped meditating except when I am in the sauna at the YMCA. I haven’t found enlightenment but I take comfort from an old Zen anecdote. A monk says “I have spent 30 years on the spiritual path and finally I have achieved enlightenment but I am just as miserable as ever!”

Performance Art
I was an ambitious performance artist and wanted to make money and be well known. Knowing about Zen made me feel special and so did telling people that I was a performance artist. Very few people have ever made a living as performance artists and the infrastructure for performance is non-existent in Vermont. I had to find venues, create the work, publicize the piece, and then perform it. I finally quit when I worked hard on a new performance and only five people showed up. I felt as if my friends were staying away on purpose. My ideas were drying up and I didn’t feel as if I was coming up with anything new. Performance Art has faded as an art form. Very few artists call themselves performance artists any more. In the popular mind performance art is seen as something that is both pretentious and silly. I felt disappointed when I gave up on performance art. I invested a lot of time and energy into my career and giving it up felt like a major failure.

I was a professional storyteller for about 30 years. I told a combination of traditional and original stories. Traditional storytelling has largely disappeared in Vermont. Tim Jennings continues to perform but I don’t know of anyone else. About five years ago I started doing autobiographical storytelling. Before the pandemic I took part in a monthly autobiographical storytelling event, but that stopped during the pandemic. I don’t like doing The Moth because it is a long evening, it is possible to prepare a story and not get picked and I don’t like to have a score attached to my work. I don’t think of myself as a failure in either kind of storytelling and if the opportunity presented itself I would do storytelling again. The need to perform is filled by a weekly story hour I do at the Family Room. I sing songs, recite nursery rhymes and read a picture book.

I have been fired from two jobs. In the early eighties I was the Assistant Aquatic Director at the Burlington YMCA. I am not sure exactly why I was fired but I definitely felt that I had failed. I was also fired from my job as the Director of the Essex Junction Teen Center. I did a bad job and deserved to be fired. It helped me understand that I was not a good administrator. I have been working at a group home for 42 years. If I had wanted to I could have applied for various management positions but I knew from my Teen Center experience that I did not want to supervise anyone.

My family was filled with artists. My father, my grandfather, my grandmother, my sister, and my aunt and uncle were all artists. I have always thought that being an artist was something special and I still think that being a creative person is wonderful. I wanted to be an artist, someone who created new things in the world. I believed in what John Cage said, “All you need to do is find a way to do your art every day.” I write everyday but I don’t consider myself a writer. I have never published a book and I don’t think I ever will.

Even though I am not an artist or a writer or enlightened I am satisfied with the work I do. I enjoy it, I think it is worthwhile and I continue to do my best. I work at the group home, teach swimming, do a story hour and occasionally teach bike commuting workshops. These are very modest contributions to the world but that is fine with me. Fame and fortune come with strings attached. I am happy to be unknown.

[Ana-Maria · Rating 5 out of 5]

”Elogiu eșecului. Patru pilde despre umilitate” de Costică Brădățan (Prose Award 2024)

Această carte a apărut inițial în limba engleză, pentru că autorul este profesor de studii umaniste la Texas Tech University. Editura Spandugino a publicat volumul într-o formă foarte îngrijită, fapt ce m-a făcut să ezit să măzgălesc pe margini diverse notițe sau să subliniez prea mult, de mila paginilor subțiri și delicate. Un fel de umilitate m-a cuprins și pe mine, așa că am rămas doar la nivelul unui creion delicat pentru adnotări. Din fericire, cartea are la final câteva pagini dedicate însemnărilor, pentru că pur și simplu nu poți să treci prin ea fără să îți notezi câteva gânduri sau teme cu ce ai mai avea de explorat mai departe.

Erudiția și inteligența lui Brădățan sunt cele ce garantează faptul că scriitorul reușește să ia un subiect filosofic și să ni-l prezinte teoretic, dar și practic, prin studii de caz ale unor personaje istorice reale. Astfel, tema eșecului, ca parte de neevitat a existenței ( căci moartea este eșecul garantat) devine nu doar un subiect inconfortabil, dar și fascinant pentru cititor: ” În genere, nu reușim să luăm în serios eșecul. Ne tulbură chiar și ideea de a-l privi mai îndeaproape; nu vrem să-l abordăm, de frică să nu ne molipsim. Lucru înduioșător, dacă stăm să ne gândim că am venit pe lume gata infectați cu el.”

”Ultimul cutremur, inundațiile de primăvară, epidemiile, cancerul- toate sunt manifestări ale eșecului cosmic. De care nu putem scăpa, fiindcă eșecul este înscris în trupul lumii, ca un soi de ADN” – scrie Brădățan, care argumentează în continuare că atunci când ne confruntăm cu eșecul și ne lăsăm transformați de el ”devenim smeriți”, adică suntem transformați de umilitate. Spre deosebire de umilință, care apare din cauza unei forțe externe, brute care înjosește, umilitatea apare din interior și este o formă de cunoaștere. Prin ea, ne vedem limpede ca ființe ” venind din nimic și întorcându-se în nimic” și ajungem să experimentăm ”respectul dezinteresat pentru realitate”, lăsând la o parte ficțiuni, proiecții, ambiții, ego și alte forme de auto-manipulare. Mai simplu spus, umilitatea ne vindecă de sindromul buricul-pământului și ne pune înapoi în realitate.

Cele patru pilde despre umilitate sunt ilustrate prin poveștile unor oameni pe care în alte condiții i-am fi considerat de succes: Simone Weil (eșecul fizic), Mahatma Gandhi (eșecul politic), Emil Cioran (eșecul social) și Yukio Mishima (eșecul suprem sau biologic, faptul că suntem muritori).
Citind multiplele legături între idei pe care le face Brădățan în fiecare capitol, am descoperit unele piste care îmi erau familiare, dar și multe exemple și conexiuni care simt că m-au îmbogățit până la final. Scriitura alunecă, te poartă, te provoacă, citești ușor, ai impresia că ai asimilat tot, și apoi revii la cuvintele acelea aparent simple, și vezi că mai era o nuanță de surprins, dar într-un fel care nu te frustrează. Aceasta arată o mare pricepere cu cuvintele a scriitorului, și- desigur- și a traducătorului Vlad Russo, care face limba română să curgă plăcut.

În concluzie, aceste eseuri sunt o extraordinară experiență intelectuală și emoțională, lucru pe care, sper eu, îl căutăm cu toții atunci când deschidem o carte de filosofie.

[James Conigliaro · Rating 1 out of 5]

Disappointing. I picked up this book after listing to an interview with the author. Listing to the interview, Mr. Bradatan struck me as insightful and interesting. Someone I’d like to hear more from. Sadly, the book falls into the trap of relying on endless anecdotes of the lives of others, real or fictional, that we should learn from. The connections made feel forced and I’m left feeling as though the authors didn’t write the book because he had something to share so much as he wrote it to feel intelligent. The entire time I read it, I could hear it in the voice of Diane Chambers (Cheers) - injecting phrases in foreign languages, trying to sound smart without anything of value to say. I know the author has wonderful things to share, sadly, he didn’t do so in this book.

[James S. · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is misleading on several fronts. Its whimsical cover doesn't match its dour contents. Nor does the chipper title work: this book is less in praise of failure than an attack on the possibility of success. Ultimately, Bradatan's approach is some mixture of existentialism and Stoicism: a recognition that nothing we do matters, and that any attempt at succeeding is not only doomed to failure but also to complete oblivion. This is quite a gloomy book, fixated on death, and so if you're prone to depression already, this book might not be the best approach for you. In any case, the Stoics covered much the same ground in a much more palatable manner. One wonders what the straw-chewing students at Texas Tech, where the author teaches, make of their strange and morbid Romanian professor.

[Amie · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF at 45%. This books premise held such promise but failed to captivate. I may pick it up again in future just in case.

[George Jacobs · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn’t enjoy reading this book, although reviews in prestigious publications were enthusiastic. The author spends a lot of time talking about philosophy and telling about the lives and ideas of people who espoused failure, humility, and even idleness. In contrast, I would have preferred more conciseness and more practical tips for the life of the average person.

The easy point to understand from the book is that failure isn’t necessarily a steppingstone to success. Failure is not “Success in-progress.” Instead, failure is best seen as a steppingstone to humility. The book opens with the author emphasizing the brevity and insignificance of each person’s time on Earth: “human existence is something that happens, briefly, between two instantiations of nothingness. Nothing first—dense, impenetrable nothingness. Then a flickering. Then nothing again, endlessly. ‘A brief crack of light between two enormities of darkness,’ as Vladimir Nabakov would have it. … we [humans] are not much to talk about. We are next to nothing. … And much of what we do in life, whether we know it or not, is an effort to address the sickness that comes from the realization of this next to nothingness (pp. 1-2).

“In Praise of Failure is not about failure for its own sake, then, but about the humility that failure engenders, and the healing process that it triggers. … When we achieve humility, we will know that we are on the way to recovery, for we will have started extricating ourselves from the entanglements of existence” (p. 5).

Humility, which Bradatan supports, is very different from humiliation, which Bradatan abhors. “There is nothing demeaning or inglorious about humility; on the contrary, it is rejuvenating, enriching, emboldening. Humiliation relies on the exercise of raw, external power; humility is all inner strength. Humiliation involves coarseness of mind (a truly intelligent person doesn’t humiliate others), while humility is itself a form of intelligence. … Properly digested, then, failure offers us a medicine against arrogance and hubris. Against the umbilicus mundi syndrome—our debilitating tendency to imagine ourselves at the center of the world. It can heal us, should we care for a cure (pp. 47-48).

Bradatan seems to be saying that we need to have low expectations about ourselves and our fellow humans. I somewhat disagree. Yes, we’re only here for a short time, and yes, even the best of us fail in the short and long-term. For instance, the book devotes many pages to discussing Gandhi, including how he saw his own life as a failure, especially when people in India emphatically rejected nonviolence and a million or more died during the partition of India into two countries – Pakistan and India in the late 1940s.

In my view, we should spend our brief existences trying to do good for other humans and other species, as well as personally enjoying some of the many potential pleasures of life. Humility can help here, especially humility as a species. On pages 42-43, Bradatan discusses what ecolinguists would call anthropocentrism:

“Most of us, whether we know it or not, suffer from a peculiar condition: the “umbilicus mundi” syndrome, a pathological inclination to place ourselves at the center of everything, and to fancy ourselves far more important than we are. … Most of the time we behave as though the world exists only for our sake; we think of everything in terms of our own needs, concerns, and interests. Not only do we appropriate other species—we devour them. We don’t just use the planet, we abuse it, voiding it of life and filling it with trash. Out of greed or stupidity or both, we have subjected the natural work to such savagery that we may well have damaged it beyond repair. We are as a rule indifferent to the suffering of others, and incapable of relating meaningfully to them. … What makes our situation particularly ludicrous is that, within the bigger picture, we are utterly insignificant creatures. Lilliputian tyrants. ... We are no grander than the rest of the world; in fact, we are less than most things.”

In conclusion, while I’m not a fan of this book, I do believe that its main message needs to be heard more and integrated much more into most people’s lives. That point is that the chief benefit of failure is to teach us, individually and as a species, to be much more humble. While I agree, I believe humility is no excuse for inaction and lethargy, based on paralyzing pessimism.

I’m fond of the following saying (of disputed origin): “Nobody makes a greater mistake than those who do nothing because they can do only do a little.“ I would expand the saying to ,“Nobody makes a greater mistake than those who do nothing because they can do only a little and those who do nothing because they are likely or even doomed to fail.“ I am someone who spends a lot of time trying to do good (and in their own ways, most humans are probably in the same category) with, at best, minimal success, trying to do good is so much fun, I plan to continue humbly on the path of trying to do good, until it is my turn to return to nothingness.

[Marcin Łopienski · Rating 4 out of 5]

W jaki sposób odbieracie porażkę? Dla większości współczesnych ludzi jest ona czymś negatywnym. Bradatan pisze nawet, że „nie cieszy się ona u nas dobrą reputacją. Wywołuje w nas dyskomfort, pozbawia złudzeń i rozczarowuje”.

W tym kontekście ta książka jest interesującą propozycją, bo pokazuje nam inny wymiar porażki. Autor prowadzi nas przez wiele przykładów największych życiowych upadków, które ostatecznie zostały przekute w odczucie pokory. Idea autora jest bowiem bardzo prosta. Tylko porażka może wywołać w człowieku odczucie pokory, a to ostatecznie może doprowadzić nas do zajrzenia w głąb siebie.

„Pochwała porażki” to zatem podróż rozłożona na cztery rozdziały, gdzie każdy przedstawia inny typ porażki. Najmocniejszą częścią tej książki jest sposób w jaki Bradatan prowadzi swoją opowieść, bo autor przywołuje mnóstwo historii z życia pisarzy, filozofów, polityków. Jak można się domyślać, oparli oni swoje życie właśnie na porażce prowadzącej ostatecznie do pokory. Autor na sam koniec tłumaczy się, dlaczego aż tyle historii wyciągnął i ma racje w tym, że tylko opowieści z życia realnych postaci są ciekawe i potrafią poruszyć czytelnika. Dzięki temu lektura zyskuje na atrakcyjności. W tym wszystkim jednak Bradatan zachował pewną spójność, bo każdemu rozdziałowi przyświecała jedna wiodąca osoba. Nie będę zdradzał nazwisk, ale fani dobrej literatury będą wniebowzięci!

„Pochwała porażki” to pozycja niezwykła nie tylko z uwagi na to, jak dużo poświęcono tu miejsca pokorze. Czym ona jest? Jak czerpać z niej siłę? Jak jest ważna w wyciąganiu wniosków z porażek? Czym różni się od upokorzenia? Jakie są oblicza porażki? Jak radzenie sobie z nią świadczy o człowieku? Odpowiedzi na te pytania tutaj znajdziecie.

Moim zdaniem bardzo dobrze wyszło też, że „Pochwała porażki. Cztery lekcje pokory” jest książką tak bogatą w historie z życia innych ludzi, bo wychodzi poza główny temat. Czytelnik przeczyta w niej chociażby o tym, co odróżnia inteligentnych od głupich, o największych pragnieniach ludzi, o diagnozie, która pokazuje, jak odwrócenie się ludzi od Boga doprowadziło do największych tragedii w Europie. Ponadto Bradatan bardzo ciekawie analizuje kapitalizm, który według niego zbudowany jest na porażce, wokół niej ciągle się kręci i to ona finalnie niszczy człowieka zapatrzonego w sukces materialny. Podobnie jest ze współczesnymi mediami, które gonią właśnie za negatywnym contentem, bo on zdecydowanie najbardziej przyciąga czytelnika. „Pochwała porażki” nie jest lekturą łatwą z uwagi na sam fakt filozoficznego podejścia do zagadnienia, co ciekawe już na początku znajdziecie tu przestrogę, kto może odbić się od tej pozycji, oraz drugą część lektury, gdzie sama porażka i dochodzenie do pokory jest opisana bardziej enigmatycznie. Jednak historie osób przywołanych na kartach książki oraz nadanie całości kilku wymiarów sprawiają, że jest ona nie tylko ciekawa pod kątem zajrzenia w głąb siebie, ale też wartościowa światopoglądowo i historycznie.

[Silvia · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Sto lavorando duro per preparare il mio prossimo errore" (B. Brecht...ma io condivido in pieno 😊)

Costica Bradatan, filosofo romeno operante presso la Texas Tech University, riflette attorno allo stigma di cui è oggetto il fallimento nella società contemporanea, cercando di ribaltarne la cattiva fama per permettere di cogliervi le indubbie potenzialità che cela.
Opera tale analisi attraverso l'esempio biografico di quattro personalità che hanno abbracciato il fallimento, l'inazione in taluni casi, in talaltri l'estremo atto di abdicazione rispetto alla vita: il suicidio.
Simone Weil, innanzitutto: diafana, sempre fuori posto, che portava incisa la caduta nel corpo scheletrico, scoordinato, dimentico di sé.
Il Mahatma Gandhi, poi: l'uomo politico- la cui esistenza politica, per l'appunto, viene ad un certo momento accostata a quella di Robespierre, in un volo pindarico i cui contorni mi sfuggono- che sentiva su di sé i fallimenti di tutto il mondo e che fu lui stesso, almeno nella sfera degli affetti familiari, molto carente.
Emil Cioran, di seguito: colui che inanellò una sfilza infinita di errori, finché non optò per l'inazione, unica risposta possibile all'insensatezza dell'esistere e che morì dimentico di ogni cosa, consumato da una malattia neurodegenerativa.
Mishima, infine, suicida anche lui- come Simone- ma più egoista, meno ideologicamente connotato.
Le sezioni biografiche sono molto interessanti- io non sapevo quasi nulla di nessuno di questi grandi nomi, dunque ho trovato ogni aneddoto felice e piacevole da leggere; spesso, però, mi è sembrato fossero sezioni slegate, autonome anche rispetto al tema centrale, la fertilità del fallimento, che mi sembra anziché sostanziare e sorreggere tutta l'argomentazione, sia collaterale, defilato e tenda addirittura a scomparire dietro le quinte.
Rimane una lettura piacevole, agevole, con qualche spunto da conservare.

[Marks54 · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a wonderful book arguing how serious reflections on different sorts of failure can spur greater self-knowledge, wisdom, and even some humility. It is a philosophy book of sorts but it most fascinating in its accounts of how different philosophers (and other actors) have come to think of their lives and eventually their deaths. The idea it seems is that a life worth living is one about which an honest engaging story can be told by the liver of the life as its end approaches. The overwhelming point of these accounts is the best stories come from people who have engaged with life and as a result have largely progressed and succeeded by engaging with the failures and frustrations that dot their paths along the way.

One would think this a likely depressing approach but not at all. Whatever “selves” people present to others, I suspect that the people I want to read about are honest to themselves - to the extent to which that is possible. The more history one reads, the more obvious the need for accommodating life projects built on eventual failure and buoyed by illusions of meaning at best. As everyone comes to deal with the human condition, Professor Bradatan argues for the benefits of viewing living and story-telling as related tasks and how this we will live better by keeping track of the story and its eventual and unavoidable trajectory.

I have to further process this thoughtful and intriguing book. Virtually every page is stimulating and filled with experiences of exemplars I had never really considered.

[Jerry Wall]

Fulton County Public Library copy Libby
Book starts telling of "two instantiations of nothingness" in our personal world before birth and
the world after death, both being nothingness -- more precise in rebirth thoughts,
and the more enlivened life after death furnished mostly by religion but under support from
each us having imagination that there must be something more for us after we die, though
no clear idea of what life after death may be like though Jews, mythology, Christians, Islams,
Shinto, and sundry other faith groups can furnish their dreams of Heaven and the afterlife.
Per author we are all born to fail, most dramatically in life as we die a literal failing of life. Life brings failures, Physical, social. and biological. Shame on those who don' acknowledge failures.
Seneca sanguine view that our fear of death could bring a better life.
Coming out of nothing and ending in nothing highlights clearly the exception of life.
Chapter two brings nice produced quote that faith has its reason the mere reason will never understand.
Grand book, much depth, much to think about

[Iulia Vucmanovici · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pe cât de palpitantă este cartea și pe cât de paradoxal subiectul ("Elogiul eșecului"), pe atât de încet am citit-o. Am făcut-o astfel, pentru a o savura și pentru a reflecta. Ultimul capitol, dedicat morții (tocmai punctului culminant), m-a cam plictisit, poate și pentru că, între timp, intensificasem ritmul lecturii, dornică să trec de Mishima (doar de el, dintre toate cazurile). O carte scrisă într-un stil limpede și curgător (precum stilul epistolar al lui Seneca), cu multe puncte corect puse, pe mulți de "i", dar fără meritul unei mari profunzimi proprii, în afara celui narativ (fascinant) și compilator. Este, totuși, doar o colecție de anecdote, oricât de bine alese și de cuceritor povestite. Intenția autorului este blândă, mângâietoare. Felul în care anticipează autorul că va fi sfârșitul vieții m-a adus cu gândul și imaginația mai aproape de momentul cu pricina. Parcă mă și vedeam, în punctul acela, închizând ușa, în deplină singurătate și, cu puțin noroc, liniște. Pare un moment solemn, dar de o detașare liniștitoare. Am toate motivele să îl creditez pe autor. Este o carte asupra căreia voi tot reveni.

[Gail Jeidy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don’t know where to begin with this review. I am not a student of philosophy so I found almost everything about this book and the thinkers’ stories (through the ages) that are shared within the book new. New to me. Fascinating. Compelling to read. But not to embrace. The most interesting page of the book for me was page 79. To paraphrase, people need meaning in their lives and if they don’t have it through something like religion, they will devour even the strangest conspiracies and find them true, which explains how the biggest liars in politics can persuade people if they are good storytellers. Promises don’t need to be kept. Nothing has to be true. People want stories to make sense of things. For me, this was interesting to understand motivations behind some who I view as gullible voters. However, the book for me, also spent a great deal of time on radical ideologies from purported great minds, including viewpoints I find unstable and extremely unsettling. All in all, thought- provoking read.

[Mihail Romanescu · Rating 3 out of 5]

Amplu eseu pe tema eșecului, care cel mai adesea are un impact copleșitor asupra omului, atrăgându-i atenția asupra anumitor aspecte ale vieții sale. Autorul începe prin a aminti că înaintea și înapoia existenței noaste se află neantul, nimicul, pentru că venim din abis și sfârșim tot acolo. „Să ne amintim datele fundamentale ale condiției noastre: nimic în fața noastră, nimic înapoia noastră.” -p.11
„A eșua este un lucru esențial pentru noi, ca ființe umane. Felul în care ne raportăm la eșec ne definește, în vreme ce succesul este auxiliar și efemer, și nu prea revelator.” -p.12.
Subtitlul atrage atenția asupra ideii de "umilitate", care apare ca o stare indusă de cel care ratează cu sau în ceva și care e diferită de umilință, pentru că presupune „un fel anume de integrare în lume și un mod anume de a trăi condiția umană.” -p.63, „mai mult decât o formă de comportament, umilitatea trebuie privită ca o formă de cunoaștere.” -p.64

[Pat · Rating 4 out of 5]

My favourite philosophical books are books I argue with, and I argued with this all the way through.

Some things aren't really central to Bradatan's argument, for example the way he mischaracterizes revolutionary violence in the chapter on Gandhi. (See Mayer's The Furies for an interrogation the idea that revolutionary violence is purely a result of revolution as such. And remember that to contextualize is not to excuse.)

One thing is, though. It seems to me that a more accurate title for this book is "There's No Such Thing as Success," which is a very different thing. Not as catchy perhaps. Still, the point remains: if there is no success, there is no failure. And if that's true, our yearning for what does not exist can teach us much of what we need to know about our lives.

[Chris]

Thought-provoking. In Praise of Failure looks at the lives of some personal heroes, Simone Weil, Gandhi, and introduces to me, Emil Cioran, who I found an affinity with, and Mishima, who sounds like a whackjob. I have read one story of his, about a sappuku which—I knew this about him—he performed himself.
Brădătan does an in-depth philosophical study of suicide which is enlightening, though he almost seems to be advocating it. Of course, in the epilogue, he presents his material more even-handedly.
The author presents the philosophical ideas of his subjects in understandable language, though Brădătan has a thesis he’s trying to prove so, at times, I thought he might be eliding over inconvenient details of each person. Anyway, I really enjoyed this.

[Erica · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bradatan includes many compelling quotes and wisdom from others, and chooses interesting aspects of his subjects’ lives. He fails to add anything new. I didn’t find depth or theory. Living in the brief moment of time that is each human’s life is a state of exception— I get it but I found myself asking ‘so what?’ That said, it’s a great bit of storytelling and summary if that’s what you come to it for (pop philosophy). I can see how it speaks to folks at particular moments in their life and is good for learning a few new stories of failure. I also wish the structure were a bit less disjointed. I didn’t enjoy switching back and forth between the primary subject of the chapter and the secondary folks or themes as much as was required.

[Vlad_Mixich · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cea mai bună recomandare pe care un cititor o poate face despre un autor: nu îl citisem până acum, dar după această primă carte citită sigur voi mai citi ce scrie Costică Brădățan. Elogiu eșecului e o serie de eseuri filozofice scrise pe înțelesul orișicui -așa cum ar trebui să fie toată filozofia- care croiește în jurul narațiunilor despre 4 personaje principale (Cioran, Gandhi, Simone Weil și Yuko Mishima) o meditație îndelungată despre eșec și impactul său asupra vieților noastre. Cartea e o antiteză a puzderiei de cărți de dezvoltare personală sau popularizare psiho-comportamentală. Adică e pe bune filozofie, combinată cu istorie, dar o încântare. Excepțională!