ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This article presents an introduction to the Romanian author Emil Cioran’s life and work. Cioran lived most of his life in self-imposed exile in Paris, where he kept himself out of the public gaze. From his small attic on the left bank of the river Seine, he published numerous collections of aphorisms and essays dealing with his own miserabilism and permanent existential despair. Further, in his books he is reflecting on the human condition in a world where humans have no possibility of receiving nor acquiring salvation or redemption. This presentation of Cioran leads to an investigation of his influence on the work and thought of the German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk. I show that Cioran in fact plays an important and long-lasting role throughout Sloterdijk’s authorship by analysing texts from three different periods of his oeuvre. Thus, I seek to construct a picture of Sloterdijk’s Cioran and understand why he is important to him.