Ernst Jünger's "ON PAIN" and progressive hysteria in liberal democracies

Some excellent insights in this video on certain dangerously seductive illusions of liberal democracies - presented as and clearly stimulated by reflections on Ernst Jünger's long essay "ON PAIN".

Video review of "ON PAIN" (Über den Schmerz) by Ernst Jünger

A light and amusing but insightful and accurate review of On Pain, the English translation by Telos Press of Ernst Jünger's Über den Schmerz.

Kriegstagebuch 1914 - 1918 - Deutschlandfunk book review

I am generally not very interested in the early Jünger works - whatever others may say, I find the mature works infinitely more useful for my own enlightenment. I also find they can be studied sufficiently well without much background in the early life and thought of Jünger. Life is short, too short to focus on the unessential, which is what these early works are in comparison with the mature masterpieces like Eumeswil and Co.

Nevertheless, when there is time, these immature works do add some interesting depth to the author. I still have to read the recently published Kriegstagerbuch from the trenches of WWI. This review on Deutschlandfunk is a good one, that just might make me buy the book.

If you find some extra time, listen....(auf Deutsch natürlich).

http://www.esnips.com/doc/728fd8b1-13ea-4a19-a1fc-08e7bfd3ddf1/Deutschlandradio-Juenger-Kriegstagebuch-review

ZEIT interview with Ernst Jünger in 1989

The following is my unofficial translation of an interview with Ernst Jünger which appeared in the ZEIT magazine in 1989. The interviewer is André Müller.

I leave it to the reader without comment - in any case, even the most objective translation contains something of the translator.

A friendship developed from my original working contact with Ernst Jünger, who I interviewed for ZEIT on November 8, 1989. We corresponded and he called me at regular intervals, initially to let me know about favorable critiques or newspaper articles, but later also to ask my opinions or share something personal. I visited him five times, twice at his house in Wilflingen and three times at his nephew´s,* where he stayed when he came to Munich for the annual meeting of recipients of the Bavarian Order of Maximilian. According to Jünger, I owed this interview to the second wife of Friedrich Dürrenmatt, the journalist Charlotte Kerr, who had requested a television interview with him. He said she had warned him about me. I was a dangerous chap with whom he should be on guard. He responded to her that he understood that as a compliment and decided to accept my request. After some hesitation, he even agreed to a recording.

Apoliteia

Through much of my last rereading of Julius Evola’s “Ride the Tiger” I have not been able to overlook spiritual and practical parallels of Evola’s ‘differentiated’ type of man to Jünger’s anarch. These become so obvious in the chapter “States and Parties: Apoliteia”, that I must comment.

Both Evola’s differentiated man and the anarch have recognised the unworthiness of the ideas, motives and goals given by life and politics today. This makes them apoliteia....

From Evola:

“After taking stock of the situation, this type can only feel disinterested and detached from everything that is “politics” today. His principle will become apoliteia, as it was in ancient times”.

“Apoliteia” refers essentially to the inner attitude…. The man in question recognizes, as I have said before, that ideas, motives, and goals worthy of the pledge of one’s true being do not exist today….”

And from Jünger:

"As a historian, I am convinced of the imperfection – nay, the vanity – of any effort. I admit that the surfeit of a late era is involved here. The catalogue of possibilities seems exhausted. The great ideas have been eroded by repetition; you won’t catch any fish with that bait.”

Inner detachment, apoliteia, brings freedom to their life-involvements, such as employment or even politics itself. They are equally free to be, as not to be, involved with any particular activity or role....

From Evola:

“As conceived here, apoliteia creates no special presuppositions in the exterior field, not necessarily having a corollary in practical abstention. The truly detached man is not a professional and polemic outsider, nor conscientious objector, nor anarchist. Once it is established that life with its interactions does not constrain his being, he could even show the qualities of a soldier who, in order to act and accomplish a task, does not request in advance a transcendent justification and and a quasi-theological assurance of the goodness of the cause. We can speak in these cases of a voluntary obligation that concerns the “persona”, not the being, by which – even while one is involved – one remains isolated”.

“Apoliteia” is the inner distance unassailable by society and its “values”; it does not accept being bound by anything spiritual or moral. Once this is firm, the activities that in others would presuppose such bounds can be exercised in a different spirit.”

“Apoliteia, detachment does not necessarily involve specific consequences in the field of pure and simple activity. I have already discussed the capacity to apply oneself to a given task for love of the action in itself and in terms of an impersonal perfection.”

And from Jünger:

“I have to succeed in treating my work as a game that I both watch and play…. It presumes that one can scrutinize oneself as from a certain distance like a chess figure – in a word, that one sees historical classification as more important than personal classification. This may sound exacting; but it used to be required of any soldier. The special trait making me an anarch is that I live in a world which I ‘ultimately’ do not take seriously. This increases my freedom; I serve as a temporary volunteer.”

“I serve the Condor, who is a tyrant – that is his function, just as mine is to be his steward; both of us can retreat to substance: to human nature in its nameless condition.”

“Working somewhere is unavoidable; in this respect, I behave like a condottiere, who makes his energy available at a given moment, but, in his heart of hearts, remains uncommitted. Furthermore, as here in the night bar, work is a part of my studies – the practical part."

Liberated from aspirations or beliefs in no-longer existent higher causes within life, both Evola’s type and Jünger’s anarch are free to take on life involvements, such as employment or even political associations - either because they simply appeal to them or because they are useful to their practical self-perfection. Any such commitment is temporary, conditional and ultimately superficial, that is, it remains outside their true inner being.

Psychologically speaking, neither figure identifies themselves with their life-roles and associations; these have useful functions, but are not substantial, do not regard their true inner being. The resulting detachment allows them life involvements which for others would require or presume inner identification with the external cause, be it the tyrant’s, the democracy’s or the religion’s. Neither driven nor limited by such moral or spiritual beliefs, their involvement in life is of a freer, less compulsive nature.

A job is a function of life, which engages only the persona, to use Evola’s term, the historical classification in Jünger’s. The soldier or the condottiere also sees their involvement with the cause in this context, as the involvement of the external persona with the external historical situation. But beyond or above the persona, inner substance or being protects the anarch as it does Evola’s differentiated man, provides them with an inviolable inner fortress - as a base for excursions into life and as a sanctuary to retreat to from life.

Reality and ideals

"Playing the gentleman here would be possible only for actors; nor would anyone consider doing it anymore. Rather, people, such as my genitor and my brother, feel like martyrs. Half of Eumeswil is inhabited by types who have suffered for an idea or at least claim to have done so. They stood true to the flag, offered heroic resistance – in short, the worn-out military claptrap has reawakened. Upon taking a closer look, one sees that, with rare exceptions, they tried to save their hides just like anybody else. But one turns a blind eye to all that, as long as they do not over-do it.

The anarch sticks to facts, not ideas. He suffers not for facts but because of them, and usually through his own fault, as in a traffic accident. Certainly, there are unforeseeable things – maltreatments. However, I believe I have attained a certain degree of self-distancing that allows me to regard this as an accident.” Eumeswil, Page 113

COMMENTARY

The anarch, as Ernst Jünger envisions him, is not an idealist but a realist, a student of the world and not a world improver. He does not bemoan reality but attempts to deal with it “as a man”. Thus he concerns himself not with what should be, not with“it would be nice if”, but simply with what is and how to best move within those given constraints. The anarch has definitively renounced social progress and thus does not martyr himself attempting to “create better facts”, which according to his view is pure vanity on the social level - rather he suffers because of the unchangeable reality of what is.

Naturally, he prefers not to suffer because of these facts – there is no virtue in unproductive mechanical suffering - but he accepts that it may happen from his own inadequacy, through his own mistakes. From this he tries to learn.

Finally, he accepts that certain things are not predictable and thus not avoidable – injustice, pure chance exists, like it or not. When the anarch is unjustly treated, when something happens to him that he simply could never have anticipated under any circumstances, he regards and accepts it as an accident. He is able to see himself from a distance, as a character of history, and thus does not take it personally.

(In the first paragraph of the quote, Jünger describes others who, in contrast to the anarch, do see themselves as martyrs, even when this stance is not self-sincere. He equates this to a revival of the “old military claptrap”, which derogatory phrase should indicate to any lingering admirers or critics of the militaristic, war-glorifying Jünger before WWII how superficial their outdated conceptions of him are.)