Between Order and Disorder: Ernst Jünger on the Marble Cliffs - by Francisco Carmo Garcia

(From VoegelinView, 16 Feb 2021)

There are several examples that help us grasping that particular zeitgeist lived in the first half of the 20th century. A book such as Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain gives us a description of the moral and spiritual decomposition of the then bourgeois society. At this time, in the bashed and defeated post-war Germany, nihilism had turned to be a dominant moral disposition. Oswald Spengler announced the decline of the West amidst the hubris of the Great War; Nietzsche’s will to power was convincing posthumously a younger generation of German intellectuals; and Heidegger was caught exasperating at the end of philosophy. This aura of decadence marked the period, and to that faith in the inevitable progress of humanity so specific and characteristic of the 19^th century there followed an intellectual and existential despair. Ever since the moment when the idea of progress was contested by the destruction caused by the war, that a sense of moral disorientation had necessarily to follow.

It is this crisis of the idea of progress that we can feel all over Ernst Jünger’s oeuvre, from his famous diaries of his experience in the Great War (In Stahlgewittern), to his “prophetic” work Der Arbeiter and his late novels. But one book of his in particular allows us to penetrate in the nihilistic zeitgeist of the inter-war period: his Auf den Marmorklippen, published at the zenith of Hitler’s power, in 1939. This little book – On the Marble Cliffs, in English –, forgotten in the same way which its author is neglected by the intelligentsia, tells us more about our own times – which are also times of crisis – than several of the “scientific” works that are widespread today, and which denounce a supposedly evident return of fascism. In this jüngerian tale, the despotic figure of the tyrant appears in its most violent essence, as the result of a cosmological disorder that hits society in all of its foundations. On the Marble Cliffs is a book that needs to be remembered, the meaning of which seems today almost as intelligible – and appropriate – as when it was first published.

FG Jünger's "The Failure of Technology: as ebook!

A fantastic recent find, which I trust readers will appreciate and help spread the word - an ebook of this classic and essential critique of modern "scientism" and technology, which has been out-of-print and virtually unfindable in English since the 1960's! It was translated in 1950 from the German original: "Die Perfektion der Technik" - which, btw, in German does not have the positive connotation of perfection in English, but simply implies the bringing to completion, to full development.

If you don't know the book, I cannot recommend it too highly! It as insightful as anything his brother Ernst wrote. It contains one of the original environmentalist visions, and its insights into the fundamental shortcomings and illusions of our science and technology have never been surpassed. FGJ gets down to the very heart of the matter, as more recent critiques have not been able to - the superior insight of the author also have been due to his position at a less developed stage of technology, which allowed a more detached, objective perspective.

A must read - spread the word and disseminate the book!

• epub
• mobi
• pdf
• kindle
• zip

A new color! "Global grey"

I'm going to stray from direct reference to Ernst Jünger here, though it will be in the train of his thinking regarding global "levelization" or flattening of culture.

I was in the United Nations building here last week, since I can do duty-free shopping there. Indeed, I have no other reason to go, since the place basically depresses me everytime I visit.

Why? Because it becomes apparent there in microcosm how globalization ultimately leads not to a fascinating colorful tapestry of cultures but to a uniform "global grey".

If one imagines taking all the world´s flags and composing a mosaic of them, on a sphere like this unknown graphic artist has done, a cheerful and stimulating impression results. According to color theory, if one spun this globe very fast, assuming all the colors of the rainbow were present in the various flags, a pure white would result. This is additive color mixing - the frequencies of the colors are added to each to produce full-spectrum visible light, which is white.