/lit/ - Literature

HERVIER: Can you still recall the period when you wrote The Worker, and your view of the world during that phase of your life?

JÜNGER: It must have been around the year 1930 when I began dealing with these issues. I see The Worker as a mythical figure making his entrance into our world; the issues of the nineteenth century, which essentially involve economy, have only a secondary interest for me. That is to say: the person who holds the power in his quality of a Titan, naturally also possesses the money - I was also interested in those questions of power in a short narrative, Aladdin's Problem.

The important thing in The Worker is vision. The gist is a grandeur that is neither economic nor political, but quasi-mythological: the age of the gods is over, and we are entering the age of the titans. This is obvious everywhere. People behave exactly as I analyzed the situation, but they're annoyed if you point it out to them. They want to be seen as lovers of mankind or as Marxists, but in reality, they are mere holders of power: which, incidentally, I prefer-a question of upbringing, no doubt! What irks me is that they claim they're playing a certain role, whereas they've been cast in an entirely different role. Furthermore, in one sense, they play it very well.

HERVIER: Did you consciously see a link between The Worker and the situation ·of the Soviet Union in 1934?

JÜNGER: In 1934, certainly; but it went back to 1917. For example, I was very interested in the plan, the idea of the plan. I told myself: granted, they have no constitution, but they do have a plan. This may be an excellent thing. The influence exerted on me was purely pragmatic. I have always had a certain sense of political phenomena, of states, societies, religious communities, to the extent that I am touched by the factor of order. For instance, I read all twenty-two volumes of Saint-Simon very thoroughly. I am not particularly drawn to a figure like Louis x::rv, but I am to his court, the disposition of that court -it's like watching a puppet show. I could say the same thing about the Prussian army, the Jesuit order, the British navy, and certain caesars. At times, history seems to crystallize in highly instructive examples. So it's a good thing that this or that took place. In many ways, history was not as people wished it to be; but there was this crystal, these right angles, this gold standard, which have always fascinated me. For instance, as a Protestant, as a Prussian, as a German, I do not always feel in agreement with history. Yet one can accept one's complete opposite - for example, a figure like Leon Bloy, who is quite frankly my opposite. And I have always been impressed by the things that happen up there, at the top of the tower.

>>17138753
HERVIER: During the period when you were writing The Worker, you were very close to Ernst Niekisch, a major representative of "national Bolshevism," who paid dearly for his resistance to Hitler.

JÜNGER: I did know him very well, but it was actually my brother who was friends with him. Niekisch was somewhat in the same situation as the Greens today. He was completely on the right path, and if I may put it this way, he would have been capable of pushing the evolution towards the left: and that would have gained him a far stronger consensus, particularly in the East. Compared with him, Hider did cheap work, and that was what brought him that monstrous popularity. During that period, I realized that Niekisch was in great danger. He had already published his book, Hitler: A Misfortune for Germany, with illustrations by Paul Weber: in it, you see enormous crowds bogged down in a swamp. In this sense, he was very ill-fated, greatly threatened, and I told him: "Why don't you seek refuge in Switzerland. It makes no sense staying here and playing the martyr. It won't help you at all, and no one will be grateful to you; you're in an awful predicament. On the other hand, if you bide your time, things will work out for you." When I was in Paris during the war, the counterespionage services had a whole bunch of people who came from Niekisch's camp. And we would say: "Yes, if Niekisch gets out of prison, he may be able to make statements towards working out a peace." But when Niekisch was finally released, he had become thoroughly incapable of any sustained efforts. He was once again in -a terrible predicament. I attended his funeral. There was no major personality there, from either the West or the East. You saw old militants who seemed to come straight out of a Joseph Conrad novel, The Secret Agent, basket cases, and a few old friends like Drexel. It was a dismal funeral.

There has been some interest in discussing The Worker, I'm trying to bump my rereading of it so that we may begin having discussion threads in the new year. This is a bit of a preliminary to see where this might go.

If you have any questions about The Worker it would be good to read them beforehand, just in case I come across anything in my reading that will help to answer.

Otherwise, if you are interested in this, you can also help by sharing your own insights, books I may not be aware of, and pieces of artwork related to the Worker, a real economy, technology, etc..

I think there are some selections from The Details of Time which serve as an excellent introduction, along with Letters on The Worker. I've started with these later works since we have the benefit of hindsight.

Die Schlesischen Weber
Heinrich Heine

Im düstern Auge keine Träne,
Sie sitzen am Webstuhl und fletschen die Zähne:
»Deutschland, wir weben dein Leichentuch,
Wir weben hinein den dreifachen Fluch -
Wir weben, wir weben!

Ein Fluch dem Gotte, zu dem wir gebeten
In Winterskälte und Hungersnöten
Wir haben vergebens gehofft und geharrt,
Er hat uns geäfft und gefoppt und genarrt -
Wir weben, wir weben!

Ein Fluch dem König, dem König der Reichen,
Den unser Elend nicht konnte erweichen,
Der den letzten Groschen von uns erpreßt,
Und uns wie Hunde erschießen läßt!
Wir weben, wir weben!

Ein Fluch dem falschen Vaterlande,
Wo nur gedeihen Schmach und Schande,
Wo jede Blume früh geknickt,
Wo Fäulnis und Moder den Wurm erquickt -
Wir weben, wir weben!

Das Schiffchen fliegt, der Webstuhl kracht,
Wir weben emsig Tag und Nacht -
Altdeutschland, wir weben dein Leichentuch,
Wir weben hinein den dreifachen Fluch,
Wir weben, wir weben!«

-----

The Silesian Weavers by H. Heine
Translated by Sasha Foreman

Their gloom-enveloped eyes are tearless,
They sit at the spinning wheel, snarling cheerless:
"Germany, we weave your funeral shroud,
A threefold curse be within it endowed-
We're weaving, we're weaving!

A curse on God to whom we knelt
When hunger and winter's cold we felt,
To whom we flocked in vain and cried,
Who mocked us and poxed us and cast us aside,
We're weaving, we're weaving!

A curse on the king, the wealthy men's chief
Who was not moved even by our grief
Who wrenched the last coin from our hand of need,
And shot us, screaming like dogs in the street!
We're weaving, we're weaving!

A curse on this lying father-nation
Where thrive only shame and degradation,
Where every flower's plucked ere it's bloom
And worms thrive in the dank rot and gloom-
We're weaving, we're weaving!

O shuttle fly! Loom crank away!
We weave unfailing, night and day-
Old Germany, we weave your funeral shroud,
A threefold curse be within it endowed-
We're weaving, we're weaving!

Jünger was such a fascinating and complex author. He’s easily one of my favorites and I personally really like how his wheelhouse was fiction but he didn’t avoid diving into the political and philosophical. I only wish that he was a better author of fiction lol. His stories are good but they’re not that well written imo.

Anyway, this is interesting so here’s a bump. Thanks for posting, OP.

Veit

Veit vår sola ahllten skin
fauglan kvitter
inger grin
veit vår stårsan e bra fin?

Veit vår gräse ahllten e
brano grönt
å grönar tre
veit vår all får vae I fre?

Veit vår ingenting e svårst
å e öft
e huskut kort
om nättran er e lagom mårt?

De e västa
nola vaerln
å åsta
sönna hagan
nola västa sjön
å sönna
åsta dagom

Man,
kjårdda ge se, de vål vårn
snön, han smähllt bort
baer vål gårn
sjön å himlen, bå vål blå

Vaerla vaken, lauve grönt
sommarn artu
som mae drömt
Vaermen! som mae trodd mae glömt
Ongan näckjen! Uttan krim!
Hör på fauglan!
Melodin!
A momma glöm bort krämpan sin!
De e som västa
nola värln c

-----

Where d'you think the skies are bright
Girls are pretty
Hearts are light
Birds are singing day and night?

Where d'you find a life of ease
Green grass
And greener trees,
Gently waving in the breeze?

Where d'you think the bugs don't bite
And the work
Is quick and light?
Where's it hardly dark at night?

It's to the east of the waning moon
And to the west of the wide horizon,
North of where the sun goes down
And south of where it's rising.

But the winter's frost will come and go
Spring will follow
And melt the snow,
Frozen streams will start to flow.

Fields and trees no longer bare,
Forgotten warmth
Fills the air.
Life leaps from its winter lair.

Running round with nothing on,
The kids are playing
Their colds are gone.
Grandma's laughing in the sun.

It's to the east of the waning moon
And to the north of the wide horizon,
North of where the sun goes down
And south of where it's rising.

https://youtu.be/1Oc2BNvBhic

>>17139824
Thanks for the bump.
He's a bit of an anachronism, which is interesting given that his work may also be the most revealing of the 20th century. Reading Details of Time alongside Badiou's book on the 20th century would make for an interesting comparative reading I think.
If I remember correctly, Jünger said that The Worker, On the Marble Cliffs, and Visit to Godenholm were his most important works, at least in terms of becoming. So what you say is partly true, his thinking acts as a wheelhouse, although to some extent the philosophical unfolds into the fictional works.
I would say his writings are excellent, although I am more on the side of ideas and can overlook certain aesthetic mistakes if the overall image is good. Eumeswil is an incredible work of art, if not appealing to a wide audience. At the same time this may give it a lasting quality, as we see people become exhausted with the current works of ultra-philistinism there will be a desire to return to the aesthetic and even philosophical works of fiction.

The Forest Passage filtered me

>>17140042
How so?

I always wanted to finish Der Untergang des Abendlandes before starting Der Arbeiter properly as Jünger said his understanding of history as cyclical as outlined by Spengler was very important to his own writing during that time, but never really got there. In Stahlgewittern, Auf den Marmorklippen and Der Waldgang were most enjoyable reads though, as was Das Abenteuerliche Herz.

>>17140042
Anything in particular? What else did you read by him?
I think one of the difficulties in understanding Jünger is that much of his work extends from The Worker, which is itself widely misunderstood. The form of thought is also pre-Kantian, so most other modern works will only lead to further misunderstanding - one is taught to no longer look for the essence, when that is almost entirely Jünger's concern. Rather than building by association, working up to a whole image, his thinking is synoptic, elegant in that it leaves so much unsaid, and allows figures and images to unfold naturally. This asks the reader to see the images and figures for themselves, and may even act as a test of character.
In the introduction to The Worker he even mentions returning to the ideas as in military drills, so there is certainly a quality of becoming written into the very form. This may be likened to rituals or mystery cults, although a direct analogy would miss the point. In another sense, he was building a great work of aphorisms - or in the sense of the sylva which is a much more natural becoming of the work of art. Much as we experience memory, walking thoughts, and the work of art where great works are no longer possible, must hold the vital quality within the invisible and simple form, where it would be unexpected (a similarity to the Anarch's methods can be seen here).

>>17140078
>Jünger said his understanding of history as cyclical as outlined by Spengler was very important to his own writing during that time
Any idea where he said this?
I think this is very much true and how Jünger has to be read, rather than the idea of distinct periods, linear progress or decline (as most tend to read him). This is also partly why I want to begin discussing things from the end, rather than just for practical considerations. His very theory of time speaks to seasonality, or something beyond it, a sense of time in which there is no wall, where it continues to flow beyond the constructs of eras or even history.

>>17140258
In Siebzig Verweht V, the reference is made:

>„Sie haben recht in der Vermutung, daß Oswald Spengler einen bedeutenden Einfluß auf meine geistige Entwicklung ausgeübt hat. Meinem Bruder Friedrich Georg, der nach seiner schweren Verwundung Muße zum Lesen gefunden hatte, verdanke ich den ersten Hinweis auf den ‚Untergang des Abendlandes‘. Auch mich hat die Lektüre fasziniert. Die Folge war ein Brief an den Autor, dem ich auch mein Kriegstagebuch sandte – er lud mich daraufhin nach München ein. Ich war damals sehr beschäftigt – daß ich der Einladung nicht gefolgt bin, bedaure ich noch heut.
Im Herbst 1932 kam es noch zu einem kurzen Briefwechsel anläßlich meines Buches ‚Der Arbeiter‘. Spengler hat das Wort im Sinn des 19. Jahrhunderts, also des Klassenkampfes, verstanden – damit war ihm, ähnlich wie Carl Schmitt, schon der Titel suspekt. Beide hielten die Absicht des Werkes für ein Lob des Proleten im marxistischen Sinne – für mich ist es ein neuplatonischer Rückgriff auf die prometheische Substanz. Das wird mir erst heute deutlicher.
Dazu empfehle ich Ihnen die Lektüre des großartigen Kapitels, das mein Bruder Friedrich Georg in seinen ‚Griechischen Mythen‘ dem Prometheus gewidmet hat. Die Götter schöpfen aus der Fülle – Prometheus schafft.
‚Prometheus ist stolz auf die Werke seines Geistes und seiner Hand, und dieser Stolz kehrt bei dem prometheischen Menschen wieder, bis in die Verkrümmung hinein, bis in jene Selbsteinschätzung der Arbeit und des Arbeiters, die den Sisyphismus wieder in das Leben einführt.‘“

>"You are right in assuming that Oswald Spengler had a significant influence on my intellectual development. I owe the first reference to 'The Decline of the West' to my brother Friedrich Georg, who had found leisure to read after his serious injury. I, too, was fascinated by the book. The result was a letter to the author, to whom I also sent my war diary - he then invited me to Munich. I was very busy at the time - I still regret that I didn't accept the invitation.
In the autumn of 1932 there was a brief exchange of letters on the occasion of my book 'Der Arbeiter'. Spengler understood the word in the sense of the 19th century, i.e. of the class struggle - thus, like Carl Schmitt, the title was already suspect to him. Both considered the intention of the work to be a praise of the prole in the Marxist sense - for me it is a neoplatonic recourse to the Promethean substance. This is only becoming clearer to me today.
For this I recommend you read the magnificent chapter that my brother Friedrich Georg dedicated to Prometheus in his 'Greek Myths'. The gods draw from abundance - Prometheus creates.
'Prometheus is proud of the works of his mind and hand, and this pride returns in Promethean man, even to the bent, to that self-assessment of labour and the worker which reintroduces Sisyphism into life.'"

Keep this bumped if you can, going to try and post a reading list later.

>>17140378
Ah well, excuse the formatting screw-up. It seems that Spengler's grasp on Der Arbeiter was poor. Spengler had previously invited Jünger to Munich, but it never got anywhere, much to the chagrin of Jünger at the time of Spengler's death in 1936.

>>17140378
Thanks for that.
If you're familiar with Spengler's work, do you know where he discusses the colored races overtaking the class struggle, and heavy struggles surpassing the French Revolution?

>>17141177
He discusses this in Der Mensch und die Technik, towards the end. I think I saw a passing mention of it appearing in the decline too, but I did not get there myself yet.

test

>>17141435
I hope your test was successful.

"For a long time, I didn't want The Worker to be translated [into French] - for one thing because of a purely etymological problem. Arbeiter comes from arbeo, a Gothic word, meaning "inheritance.'' The French word travailleur [worker] derives from tripalium, a torture instrument. At the very root, there is a risk of fundamental misunderstanding, which the translation could only aggravate."

>>17140016
I've never had trouble with On the Marble Cliffs and Visit to Godenholm wasn't all that difficult after reading Drugs and Ecstasy, but I have to admit that I still haven't finished The Worker. It just never gripped me the way some of his other works did.

>>17142732
Some find his writing boring. No idea why.

"It's the same everywhere. A certain state-of poverty, but in which the Prussian ideal is preserved better than in Western consumer society. The figure of the Worker is more sharply embodied in the Kremlin than in us. We live in a bourgeois world. I am not talking about economy: for the figure of the Worker, economy is quite secondary; power is first and foremost. And if We look at the world, the empires that divide it up, we notice that this power is far more distinct in the East than in the West. Naturally, man suffers from the rigorous discipline. But he can always tell himself: "Fine, if that's the way it is, I'll participate; someone like me always takes top place, no matter what the regime may be. I only have to use.the right formulas and become the master.''"

>>17138772
Funny, I just posted a thread venting about it. It's very confusing, but I haven't read a lot of the immediately previous work like Marx or Spengler or Hegel, so I don't know if I'm missing something. I think I'm getting way less out of it than I hoped, though it provides an interesting refutation of Kaczynski.

>>17142732
Reading it, it's a lot more vague and it meanders a lot. It's sometimes difficult to "de-abstract" what he's saying. It gets better in the second half of the book though.

>>17144228
Copying the relevant chapters right now.
In the meantime I would suggest Phaedo as a reading which alters the common understanding of the world of forms. In the discussion of the soul and the form of the world, descending into hell or ascending into heaven, the image is a world in complete metamorphosis. Here the form is not of a separate world, but acts much like the elements: the strength of figures in transition, where each is undiminished. Opposite to our understanding of time, one sees in becoming the whole of nature which cannot be worn away - stone which in contact with the elements reveals its primordial qualities, its beauty as it was formed by creation.

The worker should be seen in the same way. No matter the constrained time in which we exist and see the world - the formlessness of the proletarian who, by most, can only be seen from a second-order, as one who receives the most meagre materials - the figure of wealth remains. There remains an inheritance, even if countless anonymous generations fail to see it themselves. This world will unfold before us, even to the blind, much like the arrival of heaven or hell.

This appears much like the background of an image coming into light, as in chiaroscuro. Technology, the clothing of the figure of the worker begins to disappear, and it is here that one sees his form, the metaphysical laws to which all his efforts were sacrificed. It is the scale of this effort which makes it difficult to see, hence the diminished figure of the worker in Marxism, or the liberal understanding.

I will try to make this more clear after I go through the chapter.

>>17144228
>>17144710
>In form itself rests the whole containing more than the sum of its parts, inaccessible to an anatomical age. It is the sign of a coming age that we will again see, feel, and act under the spell of forms.
The quote in question.
And the passage in Phaedo begins around 107.

>>17144710
>as in chiaroscuro
Or perhaps the opposite of chiaroscuro. The figure must first appear in full light, his entire being must be revealed, before one may see the dominion behind it.
In another sense, the form is the impossible light source, one which seems to rise from within and maintains a boundary against the dark horizon which descends upon the world.

what are the necessary prereqs to the worker?
I've read storm of steel and have marble cliffs and glass bees on my shelf, but am not well read in terms of political philosophy

>>17144228
>>17144727
The Overview at the end of the book is very useful, definitely worth keeping in mind anytime you have trouble. Here are the related sections:

"6. The attempt to situate and understand the worker at a higher and more comprehensive rank than the bourgeois is ever able to imagine him 7. can only be dared if one suspects that, behind his appearance, lies a great, independent form, subordinated to its own very different lawfulness. 8. By ‘form’ we indicate a supreme meaning-giving reality. Appearances are important as symbols, representatives, imprints of this reality. The form is a whole which includes more than the sum of its parts. We call this ‘more’ totality. 9. Bourgeois thinking is not capable of relating to totality. Consequently, it was only capable of seeing the worker as a mere appearance or as a concept – as an abstraction of man. By contrast, the truly “revolutionary” act of the worker consists in laying claim to totality by understanding himself as the representative of a higher form. 10. The “seeing” of forms allows the revision of a world in which the spirit has become self-governing and self-serving through a uniform being . 11. Both the rank of the individual and of communities depends on the degree to which form is represented in them. A contrast of value between ‘mass’ and ‘individual’, or between “collective”and “personal” initiative is meaningless. 12. Likewise, the form – as composed,stable being – is more significant than any movement through which it affirms its presence. The consideration of movement as value, for example as “progress”, belongs to the bourgeois age. 13. The worker announces himself through a new relationship to the elemental. He disposes thus of more powerful reserves than the bourgeois who only yrecognizes security as the highest value and deploys his abstract reason as the means to ensure this security."

>>17142732
>>17140016
please tell me someone has a pdf of visit to godenholm in english

>>17144916
Two sections here:
https://derarbeiternotes.blogspot.com/2020/12/selection-from-the-worker-chapters-on.html

THE FORM AS A WHOLE WHICH INCLUDES MORE THAN THE SUM OF ITS PARTS

7

The answer to the question posed just now [whether the form of the worker does not conceal more than has been suspected thus far] presupposes an understanding of what is meant by ‘form’. This elucidation does not belong by any means to the marginalia, despite the little space which can be devoted to it here.

If, in the pages that follow, we speak of forms in the plural it is because of a preliminary lack of a hierarchy, which will be remedied in the course of the investigation. Because it is not the law of cause and effect which decides on the hierarchical order in the realm of the form, but another type of law, that of the seal and of the imprint. We will see that we are entering an epoch in which the imprint of space, of time and of man stems from a single form, namely that of the worker.

At first, independently of this hierarchy, we will call ‘form’ those dimensions which become visible to an eye capable of grasping that the world is held together by a law which is more decisive than that of cause and effect, without yet seeing, however, the unity under which this integration is achieved.

8

In ‘form’ rests the whole which is more than the sum of its parts and which was inaccessible to an age used to thinking in anatomical terms. It is the hallmark of an age to come [38] that man will once again see, feel, and act under the spell of forms. The degree to which they can perceive the influence of forms will determine the rank of an intellect, the worth of an eye. The first significant endeavours are already underway; they must not be ignored, neither in art, nor in science, nor in faith. In politics too everything depends on the fact that one brings into the debate forms, and not just concepts, ideas or mere appearances.

From the moment when form shapes one’s experience, everything becomes ‘form’. Form is thus not a new dimension to be discovered in addition to those already known; rather to a new gaze the world appears as a theatre of forms and their interrelations. To point out an error typical for the period of transition, it is not a question of the ‘individual’ disappearing and only being able to derive meaning from corporations, communities, or ideas, as higher-order units. Form is also represented at the individual level: every finger nail, every atom in him is ‘form’. Incidentally, has the science of our time not already begun to see atoms as forms and no longer as the smallest of parts?

People, I'm sure you can do better than this guy. He read all volumes of Saint-Simon? He thought so much? And then comes a sentence where he speaks "as a Protestant, Prussian, and German". He's more spooked than Stirner. He's a weak person, who is nevertheless smart - this leads him to the constant agony of seeing the falsity of authority and any status-quo, while at the same time longing for some big daddy, be it bearded and Jewish or moustached and Germanic...

>>17145044
>Ernst Junger
>weak
What a joke.

>>17145044
>He's a weak person
>survived two world wars and their after effects
>spoke his mind under threat of death
>lifetime of experience surviving hardships and atrocities none of us will see or understand
excuse me, who the fuck are you again?

>>17144228
>>17145009
A crude idea of the form is that of an empty box without sides, an emptiness which is also of a certain territory. Small segments which are cut up and cast away from the box will retain their integrity, their attachment to the form. However, the form must also have the ability to impose itself on other forms, to metamorphose and establish dominion. As totality, the form reaches into other dominions, raises their essence alongside it. Thus this shifting of effects suggests that the metaphor of the box will not do.

As Jünger says, the form is imprinted in man, it cannot be understood as a divided world - of cause and effect, inside and outside. Such divisions are already of a fallen world, of beings incapable of seeing the whole. At the beginning of winter one sees the end of spring. Even on the warmest days one will stumble into pockets of cold, where in time and feeling there is a return to the winter, its entire character; in which snow is cleared from the floor of the spruce, its greatest attribute, yet falls softly from its branches. Winter, even as it has passed, remains imprinted within the earth, its character persists against the laws of segmented and linear time.

>>17145322
One may also remember the Greek theory of vision, the eye beam through which particles are shot out from the eye. For Empedocles, there were only four elements and two forms through which the elements irrupted and were acted upon. A gift of Aphrodite. We can only imagine the wealth of vision such a person would have, the extent of what they would see in the hours and passing of seasons, the blossoming of nature. One whose sight is a gift of beauty and can only see the beautiful cannot be understood by the evolutionary mind, which only sees sums, the form of life as a cumulative replacement for the a priori. The closest relation to us only appears in the forgotten territories, a rough figure who is of a lost time, who has never been to a city, and who may read in the shifts of clouds, tidal movements, constellations, and moon phases a fullness of time to which no instrument can compare. This is at least a glimpse of what is meant by the form of time, where it imprints itself upon the world without sum.

In Heine's Silesian Weavers there is a hint of what Jünger is saying. Even where the worker is diminished as a being, and where the rich accumulate resources at their expense, the figure remains - it even increases and takes on a mythic element. In the end their figure will be one, rising against the death of God, King, and Nation. The figure of the worker will form, even if ex nihilo, and there is no material wealth that can compensate for this great curse. It must be seen through to the end. Neither the workers nor the bourgeoisie can have any significant impact upon the formation, the class struggle plays out at a surface level determined by the law of the era. And not only this, the form of the earth also determines what character the worker will eventually take. The proletarian is a mere sum, the nihilism of the worker as it transitions into a new form.

>>17145074
>>17145095
Yet he still needed something stronger, bigger or greater than himself to justify his own existence. This is the weakness I am talking about.

>>17145360
This exists whether or not we acknowledge it. What are you proposing instead?

>>17145334
From a letter.

"You feel that the representation of the figure has so far become most visible in some varieties of socialism. I leave this aside if we maintain that the figure is not to be understood either as a class or as an economic or national greatness. It may have a dialectical effect in many ways, but only the phenomena are visible. These, however, have their order of precedence.

Even the class in the Marxist sense is supposed to dissolve as such after the dictatorial transitional phase. As current politics in the socialist countries confirm, this does not seem easy. It should also be considered whether our ways of life are not shaped much more by technology than by socialism. Society is trying to adapt to the means - first steam power, then electricity, and now nuclear technolog. Primary, however, in terms of the shape of the worker, are neither the technical nor the social structures; their changes are more like the consequences of an eruption.

You quote the 'antiquity of the human being' from a work unknown to me. The expression seems important to me in so far as it refers to a state that can no longer be remedied by historical means - that is, not by war or peace, treaties and dictatorships, nor by a philosophical system.

According to Heidegger, metaphysics has reached its end. That which it meant or aimed at cannot disappear, however; an indication of this is the increased significance of physics, which for its part is beginning to become irrational.

Man might have dared to take a wrong jump like Nietzsche's tightrope walker. But it would be wrong to see the worker as the superhuman or as a Platonic idea - rather as a figure in the sense of Goethe's primordial plant. It is also not a type, but has type-forming power.

From the form, which itself rests, the world is understood as movement, from the atoms to the galaxies. We see, as far as measure and number are concerned, the details immensely sharp, while the sense and purpose of the whole seems to slip away from us more and more. But just precision and interlocking of details let us assume, that there is something 'behind' it, not in the sense of 'backworlds', but of the 'interior of nature'.

The figure stands in its titanic beginnings. Whoever deals with it must venture beyond every historical system. The revaluation of values is no longer sufficient for this. The old morality is not able to cope with the facts, but we rightly shrink from a new morality that corresponds to the facts. This leads to a fatal twilight - for example with regard to war and peace, nuclear power, birth control, and a clear conscience in general.

With these notes I want to suggest that there is still a lot of intuition hidden in what I have called the figure. It is therefore difficult to define, not historically and even less politically..."

>>17144828
Plato, Presocratics, Tocqueville's Ancien Regime, Kierkegaard Present Age, Nietzsche's Gay Science, Political Romanticism, On Pain, Total Mobilization.
Probably the absolute minimum.

>>17145419
>this exists

Carl Schmitt on the persistence of form even in the age of formlessness:

"[T]hat here the political movement has "disguised" itself as a revolution in literary style. This explanatory device is entirely characteristic of the sociological and psychological thought of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In particular, the economic conception of history employs it in a rather naive fashion when it speaks of the religious or artistic disguise, reflection, or sublimation of economic conditions. Friedrich Engels has provided a paradigmatic case of this phenomenon in his characterization of the Calvinist dogma of predestination as a religious disguise for the relentlessness ofthe capitalist struggle of competition. But the tendency to see a "disguise" everywhere goes much deeper than this. It does not merely correspond to a proletarian disposition, but is rather of more general significance. To a great extent, all ecclesiastical and state institutions and forms, all legal concepts and arguments, everything that is official, and even democracy itself since the time it assumed a constitutional form are perceived as empty and deceptive disguises, as a veil, a façade, a fake, or a decoration. The words, both refined and crude, in which this is encompassed are more numerous and forceful than most of the corresponding idioms of other times; for example, the references to "simulacra" that the political literature of the seventeenth century employs as its characteristic shibboleth. Today the "backstage" that conceals the real movement of reality is constructed everywhere.This betrays the insecurity of the time and its profound sense of being deceived. An era that produces no great form and no representation based on its own presuppositions must succumb to such states of mind and regard everything that is formal and official as a fraud. This is because no era lives without form, regardless of the extent to which it comports itself in an economic fashion. If it does not succeed in finding its own form, then it grasps for thousands of surrogates in the genuine forms of other times and other peoples, only to immediately repudiate the surrogate as a sham."

>>17145535
Partly what Jünger was doing was attempting to create ways in which figures and forms could once again be seen, in the age in which such language had been lost. This is to some extent analagous to Nietzsche's creation of a figure capable of retaining the highest values in the age of nihilism.

There is a good quote on the worker, marx, and inheritance, how it relates to form. I will try and find it tomorrow.

Also, if anything I have written isn't clear don't be afraid to say so. I'm trying to learn from this as well.

>>17145095
Also, his son was put in a punishment battalion by the Nazis where he perished.

Anyone got a pdf in english of his book on beetles, Subtile Jagden (Subtle Hunts)?

Also; this features some quotations from Junger that have been translated

https://juenger-juenger.tumblr.com/

>>17138772
Thank you for the creation of this thread, I feel that I am too much of a brainlet to read 'The Worker' yet but I have been enjoying Copse 125.

P.s.

Also, reading such 'great' literature generally makes me depressed wrt. the cultural and social state of the western world, or at least where I live. It always just ends up feeling like escapism to me. There is great analysis and wisdom in works such as these, but feel useless when metaphorically placed over the modern world for comparison.

Gonna ask something about Spengler:

I am some 400 pages through The Decline of the West and I too often struggle with whether I can convince myself if what Spengler writes can somehow be considered anything more than a pleasant sounding story or even right or accurate.
With pic related: Valhall being nowhere specific seems appropriate but why is the imagination of the hall so separate in type from a southern italian's Christian Paradise, especially when compared with Hades or Olymp?
Music being not restricted, soma, like the ancient statues sounds once again nice, but no musician would consider the music he produces infinite in some manner; it's more alive and in movement, becoming than an inamiate object but how is this so defining for the west over any music other civilizations had?
His mathematics distinction between greeks and rationalists is fantastic too, but how am supposed to understand irrational numbers and infinitesimal calculations when I very well use all of them for on hand scientific work (in chemistry: z=x+iy is common for certain molecule structure calculation, or logarithm for radioactive half life, etc. etc.). Its not all abstract mathematics and he obviously was including this, but it seems like he likes to overstep the grasp of mathematics reach sometimes with the way he portrays it.
Did you guys have any secondary literature reading this to help clue you in a bit deeper (or does that perhaps only still lie ahead), or perhaps used some video lectures (preferably german)?

>I also do not quite understand why he seemingly omits England so much, except for the Empire and Newton

>>17138742
bumping to see if anyone has a file of visit to godenholm
>>17145360
Are you saying he's weak because he's a christian or because of his political work? He was not an admirer of hitler, he was just a german, and he became religious, you would too if you'd seen the shit he had. We're talking about a man who's only constant companion was death for almost 100 years.

>>17147587
Probably a leftist who doesn't want people to read Junger.

>>17147587
Both. He mistakes historical conditions for objective ones. I have not once seen him question concepts. And I hope you know what I mean: he might be against something but he does not question the distinction itself l, in simple turns white vs dark and colors as a perception.

>>17147904
I am a leftist indeed bit I have nothing against Junger or people reading him. I just think he's a latent idealist. And I don't find this meaningful.

>>17148041

>>17148129
A third-worldist to boot.

>>17148041
What's wrong with idealism?

HERVIER: Still, you're very aware of the risk of a nuclear disaster.

JÜNGER: The fact that today the weight of the world rests on the shoulders of two partners inevitably causes a kind of movement of balance in armaments: one partner arms himself, the other has to take that into account, and he arms himself too. It's like a set of scales: you keep loading up both sides, and you risk breaking the arm of the scale. You're sitting right where [Alberto] Moravia was sitting a few months ago. He wanted to ask me questions about the atomic bomb, and all I could answer was that I consider what's known as the balance of power more disastrous. My feeling is that everything ought to be in one hand. Whose? East or West, I don't care; but actually, there would no longer be any East or West. People could then think about governing sensibly and making economic use of the monstrous power at our disposal. We ought to think about it. Instead, we keep stockpiling more and more explosive material. The Americans may have lost their chance. They had the monopoly at a certain point; they should have consolidated their monopoly and handed it over to a kind of world committee. Had they done so, our present situation would be totally different. Now it's possible for what's known as a star war to break out., -- that's the problem of the day. It would be just as possible to imagine a pure intellectual confrontation and an exchange of intellectual power, as in chess. During the Renaissance, that kind of phenomenon took place. Cavalry regiments were so expensive that the rulers didn't really want to destroy them in battle: each regiment tried to occupy as favorable a position as possible, and the opponent gave in. Such a solution is not truly inconceivable; the fact that physicists and scientists, the great incarnations of the figure of the Worker, find ways of making such a conflict absurd. Today, it's absurd, but, in a certain degree, mechanically absurd. It would be an intellectual achievement to drive the absurd so far that such an encounter could no longer take place. People would say: "We'd rather get along." The only solution is the world state. Technologically, it's already here, but politics always lags behind the technological evolution.

>>17148492
HERVIER: Does that mean that the current hazards, including those involving the destruction of the environment, are - as you analyzed it in 1932 - linked to the fact that we are entering an era dominated by the figure of the Worker?

JÜNGER: Naturally; those phenomena are part of the negative consequences of a world of titans, which produces a surplus of forces that can lead to catastrophes. The Worker and the figure of the Worker are in a phase of titanism; this is the era in which we have to live. I was recently invited to the Ministry of Defense, and there, from the top of a skyscraper, you can gaze down at other people, who look very tiny. You feel as if you were in a Piranese nightmare. I felt the same malaise at the Centre Pompidou, with its basement, where security agents are scared that someone might set off a bomb. But perhaps the next century will bring us other kinds of enlightenment. If I had to stick to purely technological considerations, I would say that we are currently living in a era in which scattering plays a major role; for example, in nuclear explosions. Nothing prevents us from thinking that we are in an explosive stage, but that a contraction remains possible. We are witnessing attempts at triggering a new fusion of the atom, which could liberate enormous energies for peace. In purely symbolic terms, this could refer to the idea that a certain spiritualization of the world can be manifested according to a healthy orientation. We are now convinced that the world began with an initial explosion, a Big Bang. But every explosion also has its compression, every heartbeat has its systole and its diastole. We could perhaps reach a new spiritual age with different formulations, and an entirely different use of technology: the transformation of technology into pure magic - for instance, the transformation of the telegraph into telepathy, and things of that nature, like a new method of mastering gravity, or whatever! There are so many things in the offing.

>>17146837
Did you make the thread on Copse 125 and The Worker?
>>/lit/thread/S16917848#p16918679

Here is the quote on marxism and the form of the worker.
Last bit on form unless there are any questions that come up. The cliche is that of the forest and trees, it remains the best distinction. One may also see the imprint of the forest, and, as Jünger suggests, Goethe's Urpflanze is the most complete understanding of this form. In the end the tree perfects the form of the plant. Goethe's poems on forests, plants, and animals are great here, as well as Hesse's "Trees".
What is the forest that survives in the German myth when the gods meet there end? This is the highest point where form transitions into dominion.

>>17149168
>their end

>>17149168
I should have said that the tree perfects and also frees the plant, creates the dominion of the forest. This is not only where we experience death but also the return to creation which endures all great shifts in time, even the end of the world.

>>17148129
...
>>17148392
Idealism is a massive cope. Also, it presents the world in a overly simplified manner.

>>17149345
What's the alternative? And what is simple in Junger's thinking?

>>17149345
chill and just let the psychedelic futurist neoluddism sink in

>>17140016
>Details of Time
got a copy on my desk, nice read

>>17148985
not the guy you replied to but copse 125 is a great read, I read it last year - I got myself the old version

>>17150945
There's probably a lot in it that could be discussed. Interested in how it relates to The Worker.

>>17148985
Yes, I did.

>>17151280
>>17151330
OP of that linked thread. I haven't read all of Copse 125 yet, nor have I read the worker. But I will try and get through it in the next week or so, and will make a thread for discussion and/or notes.

dude...lsd lmao

>>17150934
Anyone read the Gnoli interview?

>>17151513
Yeah it's based.

>>17148682
Maybe some of you folks who actually read the worker can comment more on the nature of the rule of the titans Jünger sees in the worker, because I am having difficulty grasping the concept. Also, his hopes of technology evolving into magic are uplifting, almost a "whitepill" if you will.

It would be a shame if this thread died. There's a great many posts and posters in here.

>>17154446
On an unrelated note.

I would be very interested to hear Junger's thoughts (in his earlier style of writing) on modern China.

>>17154446
Will try later, although it imay be even more difficult than describing forms.

>>17154446
>>/lit/thread/S16426998
This is a good quote to keep in mind in regards to nihilism and technology. And if anyone is reading the Zizek thread it basically explains the underlying problem. Haven't read the thread so wasn't sure if it would be worthwhile posting there.
The comment here on giants and titans is interesting, as the defense and security aspect of liberalism is very much the opposite of titanic striving. What he mentions above in the interview in the creation of the world state, or even nuclear war itself, would be more like titanic striving.
I'm trying to find the translated section from his brother's work on the titans. I'm sure it was posted once.

As for China, I'm not aware of any discussion of China, apart from the Man in China problem (which is useful to understand technological nihilism). Perhaps in one of his later essays, but haven't gotten to it yet. I will look through it at some point to see if China is mentioned at all.

>>17156492
With regards to China, I meant that it would be interesting if he were alive to comment. I haven't seen much in his writings about it

Here's Sunic's translation
http://www.tomsunic.com/2015/01/friedrich-georg-junger-titans-coming-titanic-age/

>>17156492
That link just makes it even more confusing to understand. His prose is very flowery and beautiful but I have a hard time getting what it is exactly he's trying to say.

>>17156697
You will likely notice in that short bit a severity of contradictions - where the titans are not the rule of chaos, yet in one of the next paragraphs that they are closest to chaos, even rule through it and wield it like a weapon. And then, that a man confronted by the titans will perish, but also that life among the titans is easier than the world of the gods. This may be hard to reconcile, but it should be seen as the thought of absolute becoming, the vitality of a world created in contradiction where man can contest all things, even himself. It is also an image of time, of something other than the absolute, in the myth of ages there is a sense that these eras are not completely divided, that they form a whole, and just as the elements can collide with each other every era can flow into another. There is also the suggestion that the Iron Age is not the end. This may be hidden in the Shield of Achilles: it is the end of ages, yet gold rises to the surface in the greatest order.

In a figure like Nietzsche you see an arduous opposition to the Golden Age. This is not only the tyranny of time, but also that of a singular order which stifles becoming and man's contest with himself. Here the will becomes fruitless, man can only cast himself into the abyss.

In Pindar's myths the immortals are subject to the violence of law to the same degree as mortals. In Goethe, man takes up the law of theomorphism after the death of the gods. And in Hölderlin, all must find peace, reconcile with the reordering of dominion. Jünger's theology is perhaps closest to Goethe's, although there may be a synthesis of all three.

>>17158152
In either case, his reading of the myths is heavily focused on becoming (I wouldn't say that there is significant difference between the readings of Friedrich and Ernst), so much so that the kingdom of Zeus is seen as the creation. Friedrich gives us the image of the titans charging forward, drawing behind them the deepest darkness, as if Tartarus is being carried along with their striving. It is much like the chiaroscuro images, but opposite to the Christian effect of an inner light - the light is an elemental force, destructive in its return to the primordial. We may sense that the gods are opposite to this, as if the landscape is illuminated by their presence, or even that in their end they appear in darkness, yet the luminous quality surrounding them remains. The gods retain a dominion of law until the very end, one which we may consult if we know where to look, as in Schiller's Zeus poem; whereas the titans will destroy all dominion in a devastating form of becoming which devours time.

The elemental image is an important one, and it may be likened to dispersal of elements in Empedocles' philosophy. Oceanis controls a much greater territory than Poseidon, but it is also emptier, less free. Poseidon's territory is less in scale and strength, but not its force. What sets it apart to the highest degree is freedom: Poseidon is freed of the elements, and in this he also masters them. One sees this most clearly where he enters the land and begins to rule over it, he can shift the destructive element of the sea, its Proteus force, to the land. He is the earth shaker, his horses are sent across the earth as war forces. In this there is an incredible metamorphosis.

>>17158177
For the human, the centaurs become the image of the earliest age, of one who is born of the titans, or is at least in contact with them. The elemental is in his very relation to the earth, the ease of his movements - he bathes in the springs and is taken awaz into sleep by the night, overwhelming him with intoxication. This is where Friedrich Jünger contests the image of Marsyas as a figure of punishment. In absolute becoming we must imagine the gods capable of retaining the laws of the Golden Age. Marsyas is not punished, he is rather freed - his figure perfected as the natural elements form from within, the wealth and ease of movement between the city and countryside. In his flaying Apollo gifts the inner light, Marsyas is released from the elements and becomes master over them.

The worker as a titanic figure is returned to the elemental striving, enslaved to them. Technology becomes his uniform, his armour, in opposite movement to the freeing of Marsyas.

>>17157730
Any quotes you can share or more specific thoughts on the titans? I didn't get a chance to go through The Worker looking for quotes on the titans, but will try to do it tonight.
It is quite difficult to explain as there is a long line of, now obscure, German thought which the mythic element arises from. Friedrich is sometimes easier to understand than Ernst, so reading the Sunic translation may help you. And hopefully my comments on it are clear, it is a very general look at the myths and a 'theology' of the titans.

If it isn't clear I can try again later. It can sometimes take me several attempts to be concise. More specific thoughts will also help me see what is unclear.

>>17156565
Got you. I read it too fast.
I think he would be more interested in Russia, as it is with them that all the great shifts have occurred. China is mostly interesting because it remains in the 'titanic phase' even as it begins to give way. They are mostly only an economic concern, their power only due to the stupidities of the West and America failing completely in its position as world power.
That said, their rise is also unexpected and any military collision may unfold mechanistically, much like an elemental force which enters into thew unseen realms which the Russia/America conflict could not account for.

>>17158490
Unaccounted for how?

>>17158567
Bump

>>17158152
>>17158177
>>17158192
This is great. Thank you.

>>17157730
>>17158287
Here is a quote from FG's work on technology:
"With the progress of technology, the sum total of the contributions which it exacts from nature grows bigger and bigger. Elemental nature, through mechanical work, is being mastered; it is being conquered and exploited by man-made tools. But if we thought this to be the whole story, we would understand but half of it. We would have only a one-sided idea of the process. For all this seemingly one-sided pressure and compulsion, this engineered extortion of nature, has a reverse side, a counterpart. Because the elementary now floods with its powers all things mechanical, it permeates and expands all over the man-made world which has conquered it. In other words, mechanization and elementarization are merely two aspects of the same process; they presuppose one another. The one is unthinkable without the other. This reciprocal relation becomes increasingly clear with growing technical perfection. From this infiltration of the elementary, there stems the torrential dynamic motion typical of the progress of technology. The elementary is the source of its rolling speed, its vibrations and tremblings, its explosive impact. It is indeed strange that rational thought, poor as it is in elementary power, could have set these tremendous forces in motion. But let us not forget that this mobilization was effected by compulsion, by aggressive and violent means. As we look around today we feel that we are living in a giant mill which works day and night at a furious, feverish pace. In blast furnaces and converters the fires blaze and roar; everywhere the streams of molten metal are pouring forth and huge ingots are glowing cherry red. This is the workshop of the Titans. The industrial landscape is volcanic in its character, and thus are found, especially in the areas of heavy industry, all the companion-signs of volcanic eruptions: lava, ashes, fumaroles, smoke, gases, night clouds reddened by flames – and devastation spreading far and wide.

>>17161211
Titanic elemental forces captured in marvelous engines are straining against pistons and cylinder walls as crankshafts are moving and delivering an even flow of power. All the elements are racing and raging through the jails of man-made apparatus; all those boilers, pipelines, gearboxes, valves are steely and bristling with reinforcements, as is every jail designed to keep its inmates from escaping. But who can remain deaf to the sighing and moaning of the prisoners, to their raging and ranting, to their mad fury, as he listens to the multitude of new and strange noises which technology has created? Characteristically, all these noises originate from the meeting of the mechanical with the elemental; they are produced by the outflow of elementary force from the constraining might of the machine. If they are rhythmical, their rhythm is automatic, regulated significantly by lifeless time. And all these noises are malignant, shrills, shrieking, tearing, roaring, howling in character. And they grow more malignant as the technology approaches perfection. They are as evil as the visual impressions which technology supplies, such as the eerie cold light of mercury, sodium, and neon lamps, which invade the nights of our cities. Likewise it is a significant fact that sound and light signals are increasingly employed as warning signals against dangers. Traffic lights, rail torpedoes, stop lights, fog horns belong to that category, as do the sirens whose mighty mechanical screams announce the approach of bombers."

>>17160387
Are you this poster? >>17157730

>>17158567
Consider the collective fears everyone had in the 20th century: World War 3, nuclear holocaust, the end of the world. Who would have anticipated that the great shift would have played out with minor nations, mercenary soldiers, and even quiet diplomatic moves? It is counterintuitive to the forming of the grossraume, and rising tensions have only amounted to further low-scale conflicts. America was essentially humiliated on the world stage while losing its empire, and relatively speaking not a shot was fired.
In a similar way, China is essentially a non-factor in geopolitics, or at least it was until the past decade (and even then it remains questionable whether or not it steps outside of the Russian grossraume). China could form as an intermediary power or continental divide where the America/Russia conflict goes unresolved. This may be happening already as it makes military pushes and faces economic catastrophe. And in the long run the economic control networks may result in long lasting and low-scale civil wars across the Europe/Middle East/ Asia divide.
It is quite difficult to predict anything because of the scale in which the conflict occurs (AI prediction partly rises because of this), however one can sense that the technical and economic incursions are about to transmute back towards the higher state laws of boundary formations, laws, and war. China has really stepped away from power, contrary to what popular political discussion suggests, and now the conflict between east and west is going to play out almost mechanistically.
In short, we are in another WWI situation, however the scale is much different given the abandonment of politics and world power. Strangely all sides are in a defense position, even as proxies and other forces incur into enemy territory. Most sides will weaken together if there is no decisive action taken.

>>17161219
Another:

"The recognition and description of demoniacal traits in the machine deserves a treatment of its own. Demoniacal traits are present wherever the machine is at work, and they unfold in the machine realm with constantly growing power. The reasons are obvious. Technical thinking itself, which must be recognized as a collusion of causal and teleological thinking, throws open the doors for the invasion of the demons. They display their fullest power in the forced organization of elemental energies, that is machinery – and most of all in the consequences of this violation, consequences that turn directly against man himself. Depending upon which aspect of the machine we are studying, the demoniacal activity can be described in various ways. The process as a whole is often understood as one of inner corrosion and emaciation, and from the Christian point of view as a deadening of the soul. The Titanic character of the machine evokes the vision of colossal animals of altogether strange and disturbing shapes. Machinery reminds one of the living creatures of the ice age, of a world filled with saurian beasts that we feel are monstrous. Technical organization is of the Titanic character of a mammoth. Its volcanic nature is disturbing in a different fashion. Again, the precise organization of labor reminds us of insects; it recalls the ant or termite states. One striking likeness is the similarity of airplanes to locusts or dragon flies. Automatism has unmistakable submarine traits; it shows a dreamlike, malignant absence of will and consciousness. E. T. A. Hoffmann more than others was frightened by the sort of automatism he saw in the mechanical figures that were popular in the 18th century. Man's relation to this mechanical world is expressed in centaur-like images – I am thinking here of pictures of his eyes, a metal beak in place of his nose. The dream life of modern man may also be mentioned, for it produces all these painful and disturbing visions."

>>17146980
Also interested in this.

Bump

This thread has been up for a long time and with good reason. Keep going.

>>17164185
Best thread on /lit/ right now.

Thanks for bumping.
If I'm not mistaken there appears to be only one reference to the titanic in The Worker. I can't remember when it is first fleshed out, but I'll look into it.

"One must certainly see how much the concept of culture is influenced by ideas of the individual; it is drenched in the sweat of individual effort, in the feeling of unique experiences, in the meaning of authorship. Creative performance takes place at the border between “idea” and “matter”; it wrestles “stuff” out of forms in titanic battles, and brings forth unique, irreproducible images. It takes place in a special, extraordinary space, whether in the higher regions of idealism, or in the romantic distance from everyday life, or in the exclusive zones of an abstractly artistic activity*. [*It may also operate as “art of the People”.]"

based thread, anyone know where I can find a digital copy of visit to godenholm in english?

>>17165847
Would be nice but I think we're fucked

>>17166022
I just emailed the translator, since I had no idea how to find the defunct publisher

Godenholm is just available used in German too. Really elusive one eh?

>>17141914
interesting

>>17166189
excuse me for not speaking german when I speak two other languages, sadly could not find it in french only spanish and german
there is however an elusive english translation that I refuse to give up on

>>17166673
I did not mean to say that it's easy to find, as even the untranslated original is hard to come by and fresh prints seem nonexistant.

>>17166054
Nice. Let us know what you find

>>17165847
Try zlibrary

>>17167268
found it in french so that was helpful thanks anon!
>>17167247
she just responded, I might be able to help her get it published again in english if she's interested so we'll see where it goes
I'll make a thread once I have something actually coordinated for this too keep you boys in the loop

>>17138742
>The only thing to survive is the mythical figure of the worker. It transcends defeats, civil wars, fire and blood, and is even strengthened by them.
Fast Forward...

>>17167584
Replace worker with farmer and you got a Spengler quote.

despite the fact I think they would've hated eachother, I always think of szukalski's art when junger gets brought up

>>17167584
https://www.prisonplanet.com/author-of-dystopian-classics-predicted-face-masks-to-enforce-uniformity-70-years-ago.html

>>17167615
"First of all, the word "worker" must be re-conceived, it must be recognized in the mutation that many 19th-century concepts and institutions suffer, and also behind it - a transformation that resembles the unfolding of the imago from the chrysalis.

However, it is much easier to communicate a new thought to a thinking person than the view of an image that is surprising. He sees the same thing, but not in the same way. This also applies to heads of Oswald Spengler's rank, as I learned from a letter of 25 September 1932, which has since been published in his correspondence. In it he judged the "worker" from the anti-Marxist, i.e. from an outdated, location by referring specifically to the peasant and his future. That was probably more than a generational question. It is a difference from the very beginning whether one sees ideas or figures. The thirty years that have elapsed since the book was published have sufficiently taught me that.

>>17168553
The reference to the farmer made me think insofar as it contradicted Spengler's system and its main features. Any imperialist must, for better or worse, resign himself to the sacrifice of the peasantry. World power is realized at its expense, as it was experienced in Rome and England and today not only in Russia, but also, in accordance with the development of the world state, in the remotest corners of the earth, in every yard and every native hut, on every plough and every horse.

This raises the intermediate question of who, in the case of the world state, should do the rough work? By its very nature, there can be neither colonies nor exploitation of conquered granaries, nor the difference between "white" and "colored" labor - all those profits that highly developed states since antiquity draw from the harvests and products of conquered territories thanks to their technical, military, and political superiority: Advantages from poorly paid or unpaid work in a word. Political and moral, technical and economic systems meet in this question; it will continue to occupy not only the spirits but also the will beyond the rest of the century. The American War of Secession may be regarded as a model for the relations that developed from it - this makes the studies instructive, almost inevitable in a way similar to that of the Dreyfus affair, which is indispensable for assessing the imponderable within modern democracy.

That the question of the shifting of slave labour will be solved in a technical way, quantitatively through the development of robots and automatons, qualitatively through the refinement and transformation of raw products in a way whose purpose and extent are still hardly to be guessed at - this must be understood as one of the possible achievements among many, not as an intention, but as one of the means of the forming world. It belongs to the inheritance, to the dowry of the worker's figure. The aim of technology is the spiritualization of the earth."

>>17168553
I brought up Spengler because he says something that's not quite the same but still vaguely similar about the farmer in the second volume of the decline, Die Seele der Stadt, chapter 4.

>Der Bauer ist der ewige Mensch, unabhängig von aller Kultur, die in den Städten nistet. Er geht ihr voraus, er überlebt sie, dumpf und von Geschlecht zu Geschlecht sich fortzeugend, auf erdverbundene Berufe und Fähigkeiten beschränkt, eine mystische Seele, ein trockener, am Praktischen haftender Verstand, der Ausgang und die immer fließende Quelle des Blutes, das in den Städten die Weltgeschichte macht.

>The peasant is the eternal man, independent of all culture that nests in the cities. He precedes it, he survives it, dull and procreating from generation to generation, limited to earthbound professions and skills, a mystical soul, a dry mind clinging to the practical, the origin and ever-flowing source of the blood that makes world history in the cities.

The peasant in question of course is a primeval figure, unlike the mythical worker whose dawn is only dimly visible in the mists of the future. But the parallels definitely are there.

I sometimes feel like I have wasted my time reading Junger. To me, the Western world has undergone (and is still undergoing) radical change, and generally seems to be declining in quality of life, education, etc etc - and a new 'slavery' to consumption has arisen via digitalisation. This severs already weak ties to local culture and promotes the global (along with the effects of mass immigration producing unwelcoming, alienating areas).

To put it simply, what he wanted/predicted did not come true and the world quite homo

>>17169430
Maybe that is just my view being distorted by living in a liberal country, but I hate the intrusion of 'tech' into family life and local life.

It seems to have gone far beyond the scope of Junger's writing, or at least that I have read

>>17168754
Yes, but the question is why someone capable of seeing the strength of the idea is incapable of seeing its form and metamorphosis. One can already see Spengler's characterisation as false when looking at the Iliad - the greatest figures remain hunters or farmers, it is their dfream and eternal return. It is there that one may find the peaceful life of a god waiting for his death. The war implement is also a gift, and some of the best warriors are hunters and farmers, just as Athena learned the skills of war from Artemis.

Herodotus speaks of incursions into enemy territory, winning war simply through taking the wealth of farms. And one can imagine the poverty of our own era in its war relation to farming: in The Thirty Years War the plunder which left behind much of the wealth, and in World War Two the total mobilisation of victory gardens in the English cities. Meanwhile, even after all the death and centuries of impoverishment one thinks of great strength in the image of the Russian peasant.

This speaks to a great metamorphosis of the peasant figure. The rebuilding of Europe is not so dissimilar to that of the Soviet Union in this regard. And much of the bourgeois life of security is a transition of peasant life to the city.

I agree that the peasant is an eternal figure, perhaps an even better one than the worker. But Spengler does not describe it in infinite terms, nor do the historical shifts transform according to his model. One may see this quality in the peasant music which survived where classical art could not, composers even returned to it as a source of wealth, the 'primeval culture.' What this speaks to however is a great transition in our relation to nature, how it is cultivated. There is also mourning in the voices, so the return is a solemn one, a memory that what could not be plundered was simply left to decay. Bruegel's Triumph of Death without the violent scenes.

https://youtu.be/49KbGJ7qVdo

>>17169518
In short, partly what Junger is saying is that the peasant is already encapsulated by the form of the worker, he is one of its types, limited in history. What Spengler describes is only a transitional figure, the peasant in moments of nihilism where state law has abandoned. This is equivalent to seeing only one colour as light shines through the prism.

>>17169550
For example, the hunter may be seen as prehistorical, the worker in its greatest era of wealth. The bourgeoisie could likewise be seen as post-historical, capturing all of the wealth of a Golden Age, yet resigned to a deep impoverishment.

>>17169566
Has the worker ever existed?

>>17169430
This is partly answered by the comment on magical tech above, as well as the theory of tech as an upside down pyramid. Friedrich's commentary on perfection is also excellent.
I don't have time now, but look in the archive for the last Worker thread and link to the quotes on Roman roads and aqueducts. Very good example of the form of technology encapsulating the changes you fear.

>>17169573
Yes, to a large degree at any high point of culture. But also in the impoverished eras to a limited degree, perhaps best described by Whitman in the Song of the Broad Axe.

Please bump the thread if you can. Otherwise, probably wait a week or so in between threads.

>>17169634
Bump

>>17138742
Bump.

Final

>>17169619
>This is partly answered by the comment on magical tech above

Could you link the comment? I've read them all but not sure which one you're referring to. Thanks

This thread legitimately has as much value as discussing the magic system used in the harry potter novels

>>17172755
Ok now leave and discuss some ya novel on another thread

>>17172755
Nice try

Bumpooooooo

>>17172755
If your intention was to attract rageposts to bump this thing, it worked.

>>17140224
Only Storm of Steel. As for the forest passage I was scratching my head as to what exactly Junger was trying to say. He advocates resistance to the totalitarian state but is vague as to the details. In terms of external resistance his suggestion amounted to ‘just be a lone wolf gorilla soldier lmao’. But he’s more focused on the ‘inward’ or spiritual level of resistance- he suggests one must undergo some sort of transformation (i.e. take the forest passage) and secede in one’s own mind. But I don’t understand what exactly this transformation entails or how one could carry it out

>>17148682
>magic
>>17172579

>>17169430
>>17169619
Friedrich Georg chapter on perfection
https://derarbeiternotes.blogspot.com/2021/01/friedrich-georg-junger-immaturity-of.html

>>17175948
Quotes from The Worker on perfection of technology, architecture, and art.
>>/lit/thread/S14607086
The short of it is that for us technological perfection amounts to its disappearance, or at least its being streamlined, or left to the background where we can once again take up other forms of work. This becomes clear when we see the comically destructive acts of politicised gender, for example, the technical mask begins to cover the whole of biology, one becomes genderless as a defense against technical destruction. In other words, the technical turns against itself, there is a completion of the immature being.
One cannot expect such a situation to go on forever, and we see already the defeat of Western nations to 'slave hordes'. And it is only a simple matter of history that when the men and women are divided there can be no state.
One may also look to other divisions and the nihilism through which the average person has come to view the world. There is an immense violence just beneath the surface waiting to be released - even a hope and waiting for the end of the world. This is partly caused by technical tensions, but in another sense precedes it, is the very mark of being of modern man.

>>17175098
>But I don’t understand what exactly this transformation entails or how one could carry it out
Read Eumeswil

>>17177066
Is there a difference between the forest flee-er and the anarch? Are Junger's archetypes more of a process which one goes through, acting as an allegory for himself?

>>17140016
>ultra-philistinism
What is this? Super-hero movies and the like?

Anyone have an infographic or a list of what Junger books I should read in order? I've read Storm of Steel and the Glass Bees so far

has anyone read the mysterygrove publishing edition of The Storm of Steel? I found it to be an uneasy read and then when I would look closer I found numerous errors, typos, or awkward translation (I have rudimentary German). pretty pissed i bought this copy because he's a twitter meme among the BAP crowd...i already had the penguin copy and it reads much nicer

>>17177970
>BAP crowd
What does this stand for?

>>17177994
bronze age pervert. a twitter personality

>>17177958
OH IM CHAAAAAARTING

>>17178060
Thanks!

>>17177854
>Junger's archetypes
They're not archetypes.
>>17177944
You could say that. Although extreme anti-intellectualism is written into our form of communication. The very way free speech functions ensures that even high value works will be stripped of value. I think Junger uses the example of works stored away in the back rooms of museums.
An aesthetics following Goethe, where even ugly works have more value than the pretty when the difference lies in harmony and becoming rather than representation and independence of the image.

>>17178060
Nice

>>17177970
Apparently the newer prints of the book by mystery grove that have fewer errors.

>>17177958
Read copse 125 if you liked SoS. You can get it for around 10/15 USD.

More philosophical but paints a good picture of his thoughts and feelings at the time

>>17138772
Based thread.

I had been reading the Worker.and am.over halfway in but lost interest and.got bogged down. It ultimately feels like a cultural critique of a time far past, and a prediction that proved to be impermanent. He's describing the dissolution of Germanic class based society (standenmaatschappij) and predicts its succesion by dominant worker-technocrat class, with military-industrial power being the bar by which societies are measured. However this seems ultimately incongruent to a world based on financial power, culture industry domination and complete and utter atomization instead of centralization under a dominant class. It is an interesting read but even the introduction to mu translation concedes it is an anachronistic work (Arbeiderspers).

>>17180850
You've summarised my thoughts about it well

>>17177970

I did find numerous typos but thought the prose was in line with my expectations for something written in German

>>17178060
I really wish whoever made that graph would not have included some essential reads in the "Other" section. Maybe I should take the time to give this a polish.

>>17180850
This misses the point, it's not a critique, and the world isn't based on financial power. Such a thing is impossible, as Plato rightly pointed out in the hierarchy of laws.

>>17182000
Lots of Jungers work don't have translations

>>17182381
I am aware.

>>17182160
Explain why the populations of Greece, Italy and Spain are cucked and denigrated by austerity measurement, using non-financial power structures. Explain pro-EU riots in Belarussia and Ukraine without invoking economics and culture war. Why did protests in Iran start after trade embargos? Turkey is winning battle after battle but is destroyed by the lira crashing.

Modern power is soft and financial, not industrial and military. The Worker has no part in this, other than being an objective to be influenced. China will never be occupied but a single housing market crash will disintegrate the country.

>>17182000
Go for it!

>>17182567
>explain why cucked nations are cucked
You answered your own question. Technology and economic means are used as a weapon where the traditional means are no longer acceptable. China could easily be occupied (and was) but could man accept the extent of those measures.
If you think it's nonsense then suggest a better reading. Are you suggesting Adorno or other extreme liberalism?
Also, you could explain why economic sanctions haven't had a significant impact on Iran, and why the nations returning to traditional power are thriving while 'economic' nations are all on the verge of collapse.

>>17182160
>the world isn't based on financial power
It's worth exploring this further. Economic thought becomes dominant for two reasons. First, it fulfills the needs of becoming for a simplified subject, the leveled person has no need of infinite becoming, or rather the extent of his becoming can be fulfilled by the simple life of goods. A mechanized being only requires fuel and fluids. Secondly, the vast degree of the stateless society, the world territory, creates a borderless form of power, but one in which the domestic becomes the whole of life for most people. The extent of what one can see thus fits into economic concerns. The primacy of an activity, however, does not necessarily imply that the activity is self-focused. There remain higher laws, greater degrees of power. Laws left unstated may be assumed to be obsolete, in another sense their metamorphosis creates an absolute sovereignty. The general feeling of powerlessness speaks to this, and the economic realm, being of minor value, is one of the last in which the individual may exert an influence. Financial speculation completely freed of value is the ultimate proof of this.

>>17183713
One sees commodification and culture industry. An extended image sees the current 'technical commodities' as military hardware available fifty years ago. The greater question is then, why has military communication hardware being democratised? What type of man needs an absolute military at the same time that he renounces militarisation?
One can see the death of capital in the destruction of the twin towers. With this act, no matter who was responsible, it was announced that the final and endless push towards the world state would be made. And with it all economic participation, technical distribution, would be directed towards a type of man capable of not only enduring but actively participating in this covert and telluric type of warfare. We are no longer expected to endure the total work that goes into infinite becoming, but the end of the very nomos that made such a project possible.
The question must be one of wealth rather than material rationing.

Plato
>Health heads the list of the lesser benefits, followed by beauty; third comes strength, for racing and other physical exercises. Wealth is fourth—not “blind” wealth, but the clear-sighted kind whose companion is good judgment

What we call economics isn't even a law, it doesn't register among the lowest of values.

Worth reposting since the Junger as nazi, traitor, bad writer, and liberal nonsense is back in the other thread:
>>/lit/thread/S16856649#p16879009

>>17183899
Not only an extraordinary refutation of the current right in politics, but also an astute analysis of the meaning of the Illiad. I love that giga-chad Junger anon like you wouldn't believe.

>>17183702
I am not fixed (yet) on an alternative, better reading. I think The Worker is a work with merrit that has ultimately been proven to be incorrect. The Worker has not stood up, He has not learned to rule, and He is politically and historically inconsequential (maybe other than the invention of the atom bomb). Who is ruling now is am interesting question, and Jungers analysis on the decline of the(paraphrasing) Priest, King and Cavalry due to technology is ultimately correct. For lack of better terminology I would say we are currently ruled by an intelligentsia, or intelligence institutes. Rejecting the rest of the analysis, Yarvin captures it effectively in the Cathedral. Junger himself foresees this in the Glass Bees, impressively, by modern surveillance. You could argue that these intelligence institutes fall under the Workers, however you'd be forced to include the City and Manhattan under Workers. This would be awkward

>>17183899
Some examples would have helped the argument, here is one at least:

"The conservative, if there are still forces worthy of the name, is like someone who wants to keep things in their usual place in an ever faster moving vehicle. This is precisely what increases the violence of the catastrophe. The artificially fortified objects form a growing danger. This is especially true where the nation state is to be preserved in its ethos and institutions, in the broader sense of the ideas of 1789 in general. What lies before it is museum-like. This is the reason for the growing sympathy for the princes, even where they still rule, the social protection of nature, and monuments in general.

The conservative spirit's reservations about the prospect of a world state are well-founded; the image of a world divided into three or more parts seems more appealing to it. In doing so, it has both the historical experience for itself, and very general considerations, based on the relationship between quantity and quality. It misses the counterweight.

To this is to be replied that there will be no lack of unrest for any time and no power will lack a countervailing force. Of course, this power always comes from the unforeseen. This also applies to the global order; it belongs to the physical foundations that work before, in and after the historical world - or, as the ancients said, to the plan of creation (Sirach 33:16)."

>>17184242
As usual this gives both the positive and negative view, the conservative here is not an object of critique, but rather a means to make a higher point concerning the shift in power and what forces are capable in mastering it.

The question of power cannot only be of extent, but of type. Classical concerns of power and statecraft cannot be applied to the nation-state, at least not directly. The nation-state arises in part as decline of the monarchistic order (in the sense of being incapable in the face of new laws) and the founding of a whole new world. The world order was already written into European law in the centuries before modernity began to be understood, and Germany's death was perhaps prefigured in these laws - The Peace of Westphalia as a far more destructive and extensive occupation than that of the Versailles Treaty, and one that entailed the whole of Europe.

The weakness of the state and the death of the great man go hand in hand. And as Junger points out, their appearance only increases the destructive forces, the resistance to anything but the world state. The focus on figures is not one of resignation, but rather metamorphosis and holding onto the values of the 'great man' where it is no longer possible to do so overtly without destroying oneself and his values. Again, Evola's non-participation in the great upheavals that were taking place before him while stupidly continuing to recruit his own enemies; this speaks to the depth of conservative foolishness. One may also remember the great metamorphosis of the heroes in the Iliad: after Achilles heroism may never again be seen in the same way.

At the simple level, Carl Schmitt's opposition to liberalism did not stop him from participating in Weimar law and attempting to elevate to a higher level, even one it may never have been capable of. This is a matter of humility and the strength of a vision which knows the possible even when the possibility of the ideal seems overwhelming. The world state is in no way an ideal for Junger, it is simply a matter of inevitability, a form of power which the nation-state cannot master. This does not imply abandonment of nationalism, only that the form of nationalism was itself a force of state weakness and the forming of the world nation.

At another level, what he sees is the end of historical time, within which nations no longer have state-forming power. Here other methods must take the place of the historical regimes. This is why there is so much focus on the elemental and mythic thought, he sees the end of history (and not in the way it is often spoke of in academia, which is just another type of historicised thinking).

>>17184008
Nice that you got something from it. I have some scattered notes on The Iliad and Storm of Steel, here in regards to pacifism:
>>/lit/thread/S17060818#p17063472
And it is to some degree related to our topic since there's an aspect of work (as inheritance) in heroism, and the Greek idea of war.

>>17175098
>>17183899
Thread also has the Goethe poem on forests, very useful and the German is simple. Can't really comment more on The Forest Passage at the moment, but it's likely one of his more difficult essays.
"Over all the mountain peaks
is peace,
in all the tree tops
you feel
scarcely a breath;
the little birds are silent in the forest.
Just wait, soon
you too will be at peace."

>>17184250
Where is this from?

Bump

>>17184651
Maxima-Minima and my commentary.

>>17184225
>He has not learned to rule
Again, you missed the basic point.
>Rejecting the rest of the analysis, Yarvin captures it effectively in the Cathedral.
Please, anon.

>>17184354
Jünger Anon, you will have to forgive me if I am being too forward, but if you have not already done so, it is my earnest opinion that you should draft some sort of commentary or biography of Jünger and his works. I can spot your writing style as if I know you already, and I feel like it would be a great loss to all of us anons if the only thing that remains of your thought are scattered shitposts within the detritus of /lit/.

From what I gather you are more interested in the metaphysics of these questions than in the acquisition of fame or reputation by publishing them. It may seem a tedious task to assemble these thoughts into a permanent written form, but it may serve as a great resource to the members of this board, and others elsewhere who have an interest in the antiquities and their relationship to modernity.

The most difficult part of such a quest I would imagine to be in regards to the framing of a work on the subjects you address, particularly because they are so vast and far reaching (as philosophy should be). For this reason, I think a work of commentary on Jünger's various works might be a good start for putting your thought into a stable and accessible form. You could possibly even take posts that you have written here on /lit/ and assemble them into the book.

Such a book does not have to be the be all end all of your thinking or philosophy. It may however be a good way to assemble a basic outline of your thought and influences, that could be used as a reference book for other anons interested in the antiquities. If BAP could do it, I think you may also have a fair chance of success, although it may be within a more literary circle. If you are curious, I have just finished my first work, which builds off of the philosophy of Terence McKenna, who was very much influenced by Eliade (I saw here that Jünger was interested in Eliade's thinking). IMO the best way to develop your own thought for public use is to claim a literary "Patriarch" as your mentor, and build off of their theory. In your case, you could certainly claim Jünger as your own mentor, and establish a kind of theoretical framework concerning his world view, which to my mind he was never very explicit about and only ever eluded to in his fictional works.

Just my two cents, if you are interested in reviewing my own work I welcome you to do so, although I will readily admit my inferiority to your literary ability.

https://archive.org/details/eden-and-entheogens_202012/mode/2up

>>17184354
>>17185660
If you do have any written works available online, please do link, I would be most interested to read them.

>>17185660
Thanks for the vote of confidence. I will be posting notes here, and will try to compile a single page format as I go along.
https://derarbeiternotes.blogspot.com/
My writings are here, mostly shorter notes and essays.
http://mandalietmandaliet.blogspot.com/

I'm a bit of a 'titanic figure' in the sense that I go along with the elements. I like folk songs and drunken discussions, if that gives you an idea of what I mean, and my understanding of art follows a similar character, something that is passing in its character. To some degree I think 'forgotten works', or the fragmented, as much of the Greek was passed down to us, are the appropriate form of the age. I now have some rough idea how to attempt this, and also to work on improving short essays as I have been reading Hölderlin's philosophy. Herder as well, the letter and discussion format is perhaps much more aesthetic than the focused academic work, and also very much what is needed in our climate.

If one looks at discussions at the beginning of German philosophy, or Goethe's essay on writing, there is a deep humility before the law and what is necessary. They were in many ways working collectively towards the new European Laws as well as the German State. I see our position as roughly approximate to this, only that we have no sense of collective effort, humility, or even a general idea of where the path is going. Thinkers like Schmitt and Jünger, who were nearly right about everything, provide the only real path forward.

>>17186477
Before I really began writing, or even heard of Jünger, I had a rough idea for a work that was much like The Worker. And while reading further I found that I was outflanked again by another of his works, as well as one of his brother's. This was probably for the best since my writing is nowhere near that level, nor my understanding of the problems we face.

I basically write rough notes and essays, engaging thoughts as they come about much like in Socratic dialogue. My weakness is obviously not wanting to do the work, as you point out, although with this has come a marked improvement in my writing where I can now sit down and write most everything in a single attempt without editing. I'm now close to a point where I can begin to write seriously. And part of the idea for doing this was also to improve my ability to write longer works, much like your outline suggests.

Two ideas involve an attempt to reconcile Jünger and Schmitt's philosophy of technology, as well as the problem of nihilism and what figures are springing up today/what are likely in future. As you can likely imagine there is an incredible amount of work that goes into understanding such things, let alone trying to write them down. So a study of The Worker will definitely help in that regard, both in form and essence.

I will give your work a look and try to post something about it. Thanks for the link.

>Toasting in Junger thread

>>17186477
>>17186506
A well measured response, and I will soon read your writings. I am myself less familiar with modern writers than I would like to be, and intend to investigate these things after I have finished with a few more ancient works (pic very much related). So hearing from well informed people such as yourself on this period is very useful to me as I currently don't have the time to do a full investigation of European thought.

My book is very strange, but it does possess a number of insights that give color to the Archaic world. Essentially, my thesis is very similar to the thesis of Jaynes' "Bicameral Mind". With the exception that I believe the "Bicameral Mind" to be the product of a temple complex culture that engaged in ritual consumption of hallucinogenic drugs. I demonstrate how these drugs played a critical role within the Religion of the Israelites in the Bible by sharing some unique insights I have discovered over the years. This has a certain bearing on the Archaic Greek world, and in truth, most of the civilizational traditions that came after the Israelites.

My first work covers the period of ~2000BC to about ~900BC. My next work will engage with the Greeks, Romans, Muslims, Renaissance thinkers, and a number of other sources showing the continuity of this hallucinogenic drug cult tradition throughout history, which was eventually passed down into modern times, although this tradition has only been grasped within secret societies who only reference it through occult symbolism (The Freemasons figure largely here). It's a dense work, but if you can read through it you can see how the civilizations of antiquity used to function, and how important hallucinogenic drugs were for the administrative officials in these societies. I think you will grasp these concepts easily, and it may make sense of some inconsistencies that currently exist within the conventional paradigm of the antiquities.

>>17187057
The question as it concerns your own work and it's relation to Jünger may be relevance. Jünger himself however was himself part of the 1960's counter culture in some regard, by his connection to several inluential thinkers of the period. In some ways, his favorable view of hallucinogens may be informative to you in this regard. If Terence McKenna, and my added thesis are correct, then certainly hallucinogens have a fundamental biological relationship to human cognition. Before society can start thinking properly about the issues of the age, my opinion is that the intellectual elite have to be thoroughly inculcated into a hallucinogenic drug cult.

In my opinion, the ritual use of drugs amongst a political elite is the method by which all ancient governments used to function.

>>17186477
>>17186506
>>17187057
>>17187121

To relate all of this back to The Worker, I will mention that the large scale construction projects of the ancient world were certainly managed by this intoxicated priest class. The ornate floral geometry on all of the temples of the archaic world is meant to symbolize the visual hallucinations that occur under the influence of various plant drugs. In this way, the figure of the Worker does not necessarily have to be tragic. The question rather is who is directing the worker, and to what ends? Is the worker like the Freemasons who built the Cathedrals of Egypt, or the Greeks who built the Acropolis of Athens under the directive of Pericles? Mind you, Pericles supposedly consulted with a feminine Goddess to heal a man who was injured while working on the Acropolis, this very likely means that the remedy to the man's illness was divined by Pericles under the influence of a hallucinogenic drug.

In this way, if The Worker is led by an archaic priesthood that is consistent with the traditions of antiquity, then he will make great and beautiful things. If he is not, then he will create an iron prison, and this is largely the world that he has constructed up until our time today. The question yet remains if the power to direct labor might yet be vested out of the hands of capital, and returned to it's rightful place in the possession of a drugged out priest with artistic ambitions to immortalize the name of his nation and people.

That's my autism for the night, cheers lads.

>>17187214
Is the worker like the Freemasons who built the Cathedrals of **Europe**

>>17180800
>copse 125
Is there a digital file of this?

>>17186506
Appreciate the long commentary anon.

Question about Schmitt and Jünger: though they were close friends, and shared a common outlook during the Weimar period, didn’t they have a severe break after the war? On a personal level, I believe Schmitt disapproved of the publishing of Jünger’s Paris Diaries. This would have been at the time when Jünger was speaking opening about the prospect of the world state while Schmitt rejected this idea in favor the his “grossraum”.

At what point did they reconcile their relationship? Did they ever directly address the world-bloc versus world-state issue?

>>17182567
>Explain why the populations of Greece, Italy and Spain are cucked and denigrated by austerity measurement, using non-financial power structures.
They're only as cucked as their governments allow themselves to be, their societies continue on. What I mean by this is that these countries continue to do things that are incongruent with the general trend of how things "should" go. Greece continues to shift between socialists and neofascists until they eventually pick on group who will not simply give in, Italy continues to push farther and farther right as one of the largest economies in the world, and Spain is slowly embracing a literal fascist party.

>Explain pro-EU riots in Belarussia and Ukraine without invoking economics and culture war.
Explain foreign intelligence-backed riots? Foreign intelligence lol, CIA-backed color revolutions work sometimes and they don't work sometimes, it's a tactic more indicative of the veracity of a clearly dying power more than anything else and I say this as someone who literally works for USG.

>Why did protests in Iran start after trade embargos?
Durrr I wonder why, nothing to do with USG intel

>Turkey is winning battle after battle but is destroyed by the lira crashing.
It's not destroyed at all lol, it will continue to do the same shit it's been doing. If anything, the weakness in the Lira will just work to push the Turkish people closer towards the nationalist messages of the AKP. Hardship engenders nationalism, making these people worse off gives them less to lose and more to win. That's why Turkey has become more and more capable and aggressive in the face of increasing Western regulations. Turkey is winning battle after battle lol and as someone who fucking hates Turks and Turkey there's nothing you can do about it, these subhumans are very well positioned.

>>17185441
then enlighten me to the point. In what way are we in the era of the Worker? Junger has no problem pointing out particularities so neither should you.

>>17188553
I am the same poster as >>17188721
I agree with your USG analysis, however I dont see how USG fits in the framework of the worker. The spirit, goals, and methods of power of USG seem radically differenr from that of workers, often diametrically opposed. I dont claim to be a Junger expert, just an interested reader so I'd be interested on how USG, and the associated culture and financial wars fit in his framework.

>>17188553
>foreign intelligence-backed riots
Now it gets interesting.

Only 32 posters?

>>17186477
This may be of interest

https://juenger-juenger.tumblr.com/

>>17187846
I imagine so, check libgen or zlibrary

>>17189342
I'll probably share some of the links posted.

One book by Junger that I long for a translation of is "subtle hunts" or Subtile Jagden.

No translation currently exists, unfortunately

LOOK at this >>17146980

>>17191626
I would like to comment on that but can't say much as I'm no expert on Spengler. Here
>>/lit/thread/S17061607#p17069303
I discussed Junger's analysis of Spengler, with some of my own comments on time and history. No responses to what is Junger's greatest work, and the first time ever discussed on /lit/.
I'll try to think about it more, but there's a lot here to respond to as is.

>>17188282
I don't think I can give you much of an answer as I'm not very well read on their biographies. Do you know any more details on their falling out? I think I saw it mentioned in a thread before, but it didn't seem much more than a minor disagreement.
What I can say is that Schmitt mentions Jünger multiple times in his prison writings, all positive references to thought, works, meetings, or even character. I will have to look at the Correspondence dates closer but there are letters sent towards the end of the war, June or July, 1945, and then again in the winter of 1947. I think these would correspond closely to imprisonment and release.
Nearly two-thirds of their communication is after this date, and ends in 1983. So fairly steady throughout the years, however there are a number of years in the 1960s without letters. Was there a period in which Schmitt was living with Friedrich Georg? I may be confused on that, but if so it may explain the lull in written communication. Many of their letters throughout the years include handwritten quotes, research gifts.
I would be interested if someone knows more about this. If I have time I will try to share a few letters later.

To some extent I think the world state discussion could be even better than the one on technology. But unfortunately this is on the back burner for now. I have most of the works except for Staat, Großraum, Nomos which has Schmitt's response to Jünger's Gordische Knoten. It is very expensive, but if I cannot find an affordable copy in the next few months I will have to get it anyway. Perhaps someone here could loan a copy if their university has it and copy at least that writing, I would be willing to do a trade of some kind.
When I start work on this I will share what I can.

>>17188553
>CIA-backed color revolutions
I don't think this problem can be understated, in the same way that the CIA completely undermined Germany even amidst its occupation creating a second-order of imprisonment. It is likely that the vast majority of the economy is now tied to intelligence agencies, it's even out in the open - hidden in plain sight as the law of cryptography and subterfuge governments.
Unfortunately I don't think there's any real way to write about this either, so it will remain at the level of basic intuition.

>>17192640
>It is also likely
As I said above, with 9/11 they announced all-in on the global push, which would mean mobilisation on two fronts. From a strictly rational point of view there's no doubt that intelligence would have to control this, and from this one may also see how all the identity politics is a control and defense measure. Glowback.

>>17138742
I am a collector of Ernst Junger books, newspaper references, letters, autographs etc etc. and have never actually read Der Arbeiter before. Of course I have a general idea of what it is about and the significance of it in Junger's development of ideas. How essential is Der Arbeiter in understanding his work from say Eumeswil onwards? Also as a side note if anyone has read the Mystery Grove published 1929 edition of Storm of Steel it is absolutely worth getting rather than the P*nguin versions.

>>17193009
You should scan the books you have and upload them to archive.org

>>17193034
I have a publisher's copy of Aladdin's Problem which might fill a gap in the free online market. Also the Hervier-Junger essay/interview book The Details of Time. Other than that some German language newspapers on Junger from the 1950s might be cool too

>>17192498
Probably worth noting that the letters are nearly 500 pages.

>>17193009
I would say it's essential, as I noted above where The Worker is considered one of his three main works of becoming. How his 'Form' establishes itself as force and dominion is mostly worked through in regards to the worker, although there is also commentary on this in his later work. Perhaps Typus may be just as good for understanding Eumeswil, it is one of my next readings after Zeitmauer, which is also essential to Eumeswil.

Eumeswil is quite a late writing is it not? I only glanced at Die Schere to decide what I'll read next, and he mentions Spengler very early on. At least Zeitmauer would be needed to understand his points on Spengler.

That said, I also think it's best to read much in the same way as going to an anticipated festival. Similar to what Goethe mentions in picking through works and then finding one you can drive through over the course of a night. I think there is more to be gained from works reading in this way, works of fate in a sense, rather than any mandatory reading list.

>>17187214
Sorry for the slow response. I think there are some interesting ideas in this that I cannot fully explore at the moment. Wilderness wanderings and monuments to the otherworldly are possibly the highest of the arts, although formalism is always a great danger, as Plato made clear. There is intoxication in the very movement and transition, one does not have to imagine that the Greeks were driven to frenzy by chemicals or gases released by the mountain chasms. Likely they saw another world than that of Plato's soul ascending to the highest, peering back into creation itself, yet part of its continuous becoming.
The laws surrounding wine followed a similar order for some time, a great means of transition where the 'besotted' proscribe the law through its metamorphosis into a higher form. This may be understood as what existed before Saturnalia or the carnival. In the centaurs there is a living intoxication of law, and a higher form even in the presence of the smell of wine. Wars will be fought for it as it brings peace and the return of nature.
Is there an architecture that can be seen in this way? If it is possible then it must have existed before walls, the closing off of nature. Even in the greatest buildings of Rome, which were essentially towering walls of law, there remained elements of movement and transition, if not to nature then the underworld.
So, all this to say that your idea of intoxicated architecture is a good one. And it is worth remembering the blood poured into the foundations of ancient buildings. Jünger takes the Mayan sacrifices as an extreme example of art which exceeds the beautiful, and one may contrast it with the eternal fire of the Romans - blood which can never be enough to sate the movement of the earth beneath a growing empire.

I will say I will reveal my conservatism here. I am very loyal to wine, the outdated drug. But would still be interested in your thoughts. It's interesting too given some recent attempts to discuss art in relation to the drinking festival. Jünger's work on drugs is another possible next reading, and should likely be bumped due to the synchronicity. The night I wrote the notes linked below I looked at Approaches to find that he used the same Hölderlin quote. Should be an interesting read.
https://mandalietmandaliet.blogspot.com/2021/01/intoxication-and-memory-draft.html

Unironic question for the intelligent Jungerposters here.

How do you stop nihilism (and/or depression) from interrupting your studies? E.g. I get hit with some nuclear blackpills when I visit twitter or look into modern politics.

All this online woke, extremely lefty, BLM normie stuff just makes me depressed.

>>17193868
Read Junger's post war works (or his war diaries if you want to see some serious blackbill).

But for real read one of his contemporary writers, Josef Pieper. He has some incredible essays on the purpose of philosophy even for rubes such as you and I

>>17194189
>Josef Pieper
QRD?

Nigger

>>17193868
Junger isn't the first person to say this but his anarch concept is basically just taking things in stride historically. Like Spengler said
>Our duty is to hold on to the lost position, without hope, without rescue, like that Roman soldier whose bones were found in front of a door in Pompeii, who, during the eruption of Vesuvius, died at his post because they forgot to relieve him. That is greatness. That is what it means to be a thoroughbred.
Junger says on a similar theme (but less dramatically)
>(the anarch is like) the peasant, who works his plow while armies march across his fields.
Junger again and again says that certain epochs have certain trajectories and limitations. Understanding where you are in history is important. The Titan Age we're in will drag on for another century or two according to him. All in all unfortunately it can be condensed into "hey dude suck it up, it is what it is." This knowledge that things will go where they will can be terrifying but can also be liberating. You can check out and play your own game out of sight from the big forces in the world destroying everything and themselves. The ability to not fall for hype and hysteria is a skill you have to practice these days though. I mean look at how easily whipped up your average white liberal is. It gets exhausting having to care about every single little thing over and over again. No wonder anxiety and depression are so rife.

>>17193868
"Ach, wer heilet die Schmerzen
Des, dem Balsam zu Gift ward?
Der sich Menschenhaß
Aus der Fülle der Liebe trank?
Erst verachtet, nun ein Verächter,
Zehrt er heimlich auf
Seinen eignen Wert
In ungnügender Selbstsucht."

Two letters
https://derarbeiternotes.blogspot.com/2021/01/ernst-junger-to-carl-schmitt-kirchhorst.html

The final letters before the end of the war. This follows a card Schmitt sent with condolences for the death of Jünger's son. There are two more from Schmitt that follow, maybe tomorrow I can post them.

ERNST JÜNGER to CARL SCHMITT
Kirchhorst, 10.2.1945

Dear Mr. Schmitt,

Your card has made me anxious. It also indicates that you are in circumstances that are not appropriate for you. If I have read correctly, you are living in Teerofen.

I, too, am now taking part in the Volkssturm, since I have been appointed company commander for Kirchhorst and the surrounding villages. But I am certainly less bothered by such things than they are.

My reading mainly consists of reports about shipwrecks - I started a collection of them in Paris, which serves me as a treasure trove here. From a constitutional point of view, the shipwreck hides a wealth of information. It contains all the elements of catastrophe and reveals both the human qualities that sink with order and those that are independent of it. Recent history begins with the sinking of the Titanic; even then it was seen as an omen.

>>17194266
Virtue philosophy, one of the most erudite men on the nature of the western tradition.

An interesting foil to Junger, made turns in his thought that it would take Junger longer to reach, Pieper refers to Junger a lot in his essays.

>>17196452
What book do you recommend?

>>17196788
Leisure Basis of Culture, or The Philosophical Act

>>17194189
>Read Junger's post war works (or his war diaries if you want to see some serious blackbill).

His concept of the Anarch is a response to the conditions of post-war Germany, isn't it?

>>17195134
>The ability to not fall for hype and hysteria is a skill you have to practice these days though. I mean look at how easily whipped up your average white liberal is

I understand that but I also understand the radical changes that western nations have (and are) undergoing - cultural and demographic that are unprecedented. These are not small changes.

You can be an anarch, keep to yourself and out of mainstream politics. are certain macroscopic changes (e.g. demographics) that are outside of Jungers scope of thought.

Bumpbump

>>17191974
Appreciate your reply and reading the post was interesting.
I cant help but to fail seeing Spengler in your writing of the greeks though.
(That's my whole point:) I can't tell how your elaboration on greeks relation to time and Spengler's perception of different notions of time actually gain validity over the other.
I know Spengler states in I think the chapter on the Form of the Soul that such UrWorte as Time, Space, Will, God, etc. and jsut smoke and mirrors as words and sound, but gain their truth in an undeniability of their instantaneous reality in us, in our experience.

When Spengler writes on the greeks being ahistorical as opposed to modern western philosophers only being able to be antihistorical I actually see a very cogent argument. How can any modern western man see Parmenides as anything more than a curious insight into being, nothing and becoming; but in the end it is of no more REAL value than Xenon's paradoxa.
If Parmenides only ever could have been Greek and impossibly western then that is a great indicator of an actual difference in the Urworte of Being for a westerner and a greek.

>Spengler is born of dead time, and proceeds to think through historical science, after the end of history - which prevents him from seeing the essential. Time and space for him appears vast, but in the opposite sense of Herodotus, a closing before which nothing can be approached. He applies to the Greeks the modern will to endure, and is incapable of seeing the great wealth of their relation to time.
I am not quite certain how to make sense of this. If you could elaborate on Spengler being born of dead time perhaps.

I found another interesting idea (perhaps only interpreted into) the chapter on the form of the soul, that for the greek man, mount olymp is always there, and even for their primus inter pares, Zeus, he is not in absolute control of destiny (schicksal) but has to question the balance to find out about Hector's fate. No westerner would assume that a part of the earth would exist or continue being when he is not there, nor that he actually is the originator of autonomous, self directing "nature", but that the reality aspect of it only stems from him. He is not simply in the world as some chinese understanding of being in the tao, but Cecil Rhodes is the kantian whose a priori Intuition (anschauung) is what makes the world he finds himself in. There is no ataraxia for Cecil Rhodes, but only the will, which with the kantian approach becomes his will, his will to power. The greek, chinese could never understand this, and the westerner could never not think like this even if the tries to understand Plato, Parmenides, Heraclit etc.

>>17197525
Likely in part, but it goes beyond that.

>>17197559
>macroscopic changes (e.g. demographics) that are outside of Jungers scope of thought.
Such as?

>>17200184
Mass immigration, mainly. I doubt the concept of the Anarch applies very well to such great change.

Instead of armies marching across the fields plow. Your field is occupied and you flee to somewhere else.

>>17200377
Is the Anarch a fixed concept? A dogmatic religious initiation, or an ideological role to play?

>>17200483
I meant mass immigration causes such radical change that there might not be much to return to when you come out of the Anarch phase

>>17200576
But the same questions apply.

>>17200636
The second one

>>17200891
But it isn't. That's the point.
"Free men are powerful, even in tiny minorities. Our present epoch is poor in great men, but it brings figures to the light."
Rather than a concept or ideology, the figure is something like an elemental territory. The individual is not the concern, at least not how we understand the individual today (note how much stronger the individual was in the ancient or even primitive world where law, divinity, or group is everything). And the focus cannot be mere survival nor even aesthetic concerns.
The figure is rather a measure in which to endure nihilism, to hold to the highest laws where they begin to diminish (again, I like Empedocles as an analogy, where the elements begin to dissipate). One may think of Poe's Maelstrom, one needs a certain and inviolable law in order to escape, but there must also be a simplicity in this.
Where nihilism subsides those who have held to the highest laws will be in the strongest position possible, one in which dominion can begin to reform.

>>17201157
Or another way of putting it. The figure acts much like in myth or folk tales, it is capable of metamorphosis, of being carried off into a higher wealth in its death.
The figure is not a moral or instructional tale in the dogmatic sense, but something like a magical garment or talisman that intensifies being in the world and the depth of what is seen. It is intended as a means to sense the whole, or even the 'noumena'.

>>17200377
>>17200576
I think you are missing the point. There is no coming out of the Anarch phase, it is a true way of life, one which probably came as close as any ideological system to that of the ancients.

You have to recognize, in antiquity, you had Greek, Etruscan, Phoenician, and Roman incursions into all sorts of different places at different times. They certainly changed the "Demographics", but here we are today. The point is that life goes on, and being an Anarch is mastering the ability to weather the political storms of life, which sometimes are great, and sometimes not.

Junger lived through two world wars, and radical shifts of power on the European continent. IMO Junger's lived experience going from weimar Germany, to Nazi Germany, and back again to shitlib Global order in the wake of the second world war should be informative to you. He knew what he was talking about, in order to be a meaningful agent in these times, your first duty is to survive and outlast the political hegemons, and slowly continue the work of chipping away at their veneer, but never in such a way to compromise your own position. Eumeswil is also an excellent novel that clarifies this point, you have to surrender to the rampant idiocy and bullshit, and manage yourself under these circumstances. This is what it means to be a soldier, to be capable of handling any battlefield and mainting your own fortitude of mind.

Needless to say, I think crying about demographics is a complete waste of time. Whether we like it or not, Demographics are like language, and they are predestined to be in an eternal state of flux. No race or language can last perpetually in the same state without altercation. These altercations will happen, learning how to manage these changing circumstances in a benevolent and generous manner is all that is truly left to the civilized and decent men left among us.

>>17193647
I was meditating on your post last night, and thought of our seperate methods of writing. I see your literary style after the fashion of dance or music, you appear to me to be very much against formalization, which is interesting in and of itself and perhaps generates a certain amount of creative flow. In your writing I find a certain kind of eros, where you are consistently touching on, and then even fleeing from great insights. This generates a certain desire in myself to continue reading your works, but I find that this style is beyond my ability to draft myself.

My own writing is done after the fashion of the stone masons and sculptors. With my writing I have attempted to create an immortal form that will stand through the ages. I am attempting to formalize a new theory of Evolution and Religion that is deeply entwined with the arts and literary traditions of the ancient world. My hope is to create a new scholastic branch of the antiquities, not to entirely replace it, but to offer a wholistic paradigm that explains the general pattern of how ancient cultures came into being in the Bronze Age world, and beyond.

I do understand your misgivings considering formal theory that is meant to endure any lasting epoch of time, particularly in the ephemeral age that we currently occupy. It is my view however, that formalism and consensus on various branches of theory are precisely the kinds of academic reforms that are necessary at this time to account for the collapse of the age. My book claims that the reason modernity is in a state of crisis, is because we have abandoned the ancient priestly tradition of using hallucinogenic drugs to manage our societies. Surely a strange thesis, but if you do examine my scholarship you may be inclined to see things in a similar manner.

As far as conservatism goes, the hallucinogens are very powerful drugs, and most scholars in this area tread carefully and take minimal doses only under the most auspicious circumstances. So I certainly do not countenance against any man who does not take these drugs, as they are largely alien to the modern world and we have so little a framework for understanding the experiences they induce. My book hopefully is meant to help with this in some regard.

>>17193647
>Is there an architecture that can be seen in this way? If it is possible then it must have existed before walls, the closing off of nature.

My view is that the City-State of the ancient Greeks was itself a kind of super-organism in the mind of the Greeks and other antique cultures. They did not perceive any difference between wilderness and city, both were a different kind of jungle, with different kinds of beasts and plants, but they were both enmeshed into the fabric of the natural world.

This very form of thought is the cure to our contemporary malaise (imo). It is my view, that this form of thought, seeing cities as super-organisms attatched to and feeding off of the natural environment surrounding them (The farms and wilderness), was a mentality induced by hallucinogenic drugs. It is a fractalization of the cosmos, the temple functions as a cell nucleus, and it's walls and houses as it's various organs. Surely because mammals have skin that protects their organs from the environment, does not mean that skin or mammals are unnatural. The same goes for cities, walls are a natural part of their function, to ensure the capacity to defend it's interior organs (the machinery of the state & religion).

It is a different way of seeing things, but in my view it is entirely preferable to the modern position which claims some kind of bifurcation between man and nature. I don't see any reason to believe that the Greeks or any other ancient culture held this belief to be true. It seems to be largely a post-renaissance invention that was not present in the ancient world. The people of the archaic world were totally enwrapped in the cosmic push and pull of mother nature, and ascribed various attributes of hers to a number of different gods, Aphrodite/Venus for the sex urge, Poseidon for the ocean waves that at times hurled men to alien shores, or sent them to their doom. Chronos/Janus who establishes the correct timing for all things. These people were fully enmeshed into a cosmic ehtereal view of their own civilizations that were inseperable from the natural world to a very large extent. I think this mystical awareness is largely what we feel is missing from modern life, we have cognitively divorced ourselves from the forces that created us, and in so doing, have violated all of the most sacred and ancient customs and laws of the archaic world.

Apologies for derailing the thread, just felt it might be worth while to share some of these thoughts.

>>17200891
>>17201192
Are you the Yarvin poster? If so, you do see the point of disagreement, right? i meant to post something on this, but the difference may be a bit like Yarvin's concept of the Cathedral and Schmitt's idea of the Cathedral of the personality. What Yarvin is seeing is limited in time and place, it is a historical reaction, a material construction which, in turn, limits the extent to which one may respond and create countermeasures. Schmitt's idea is that of a force, and not only that of world law but the very essential law (nomos) of the era (here in regards to being). In this case the structures which appear in the organised world are more a formative order rather than the causal thing. Strangely, this greater power also gives greater agency, which is entirely counter-intuitive to modern means of thought. One anticipates that critique may wash all things away, clear a new order of being, but as Schmitt rightly pointed out such effort which ends the Katechon only displaces the Eschaton, and all creation with it.

In any case, one of the best sections from The Worker which clearly situates the extent of such a vision, an optimistic morphology:
https://derarbeiternotes.blogspot.com/2021/01/morphology-and-form-as-rank.html

>>17198944
The section may also be useful for you as it regards Spengler's thought in general.

>>17198944
And I will try to give you a full reply when I get a chance. But in very simple terms I mean that Spengler sees back in time in the same way that Herodotus sees forwards. His weakness however is that he has nothing to draw on, other than the science of history, which becomes useless where we begin to escape historical time; whereas Herodotus saw through mythical sight, or at least its remaining wealth and laws.
This is not really intended as a critique of Spengler (Junger clearly respected him), but of additions and seeing in another way. Junger's concern is how to see in this new form of time, a world which is no longer historical. There is great strength in Spengler's method, but also a glaring blindness in that he is applying the ideas of history, morphology as almost mechanical movements, as mere association - mapping historical time onto the entirety of time itself, and thus the non-historical.
This is where his weakness really appears, a mechanical attenuation of the unfloding of time to history. Very much a product of his time, the declining age, history becomes the unfolding of his own consciousness. Great from afar, looking at the old world, but poor in regards to the new. This is why Junger says that in his time, the passing of only a few decades, Spengler would only be more wrong in his predictions, he is lost to time, has very little sense for the forming age.
This weakness is really highlighted when one looks at Tocqueville's writings, simple sentences which encapsulate entire eras of European and American history, the very nomos of war, and the metamorphosis of racial tensions and democratic character. The further question here is, what use is Spengler's science of history, even apart from its ability to see what is forming? Does this not lose sight of the very intent of history, its Muse? For Junger, the intent is a fairly simple laying to rest, giving peace to the death of time and its events. What is it for Spengler other than a meta-analysis of decline?

That may be a bit rough, I will try to find a quote at some point.

>>17201708
>https://derarbeiternotes.blogspot.com/2021/01/morphology-and-form-as-rank.html
And the summary for this section:
"It is particularly important to note that the form ranks above questions of dialectics, evolution, and value, and cannot be grasped through such questions."

I like this thread

>>17202938
Yeah

Why are there only like 5 of his books translated into English?

>>17203965
the publishing jew fears him

>>17203965
Difficult

>>17203965
first they should be some sort of archive of all his works on archive.org, it's so fucking hard to find em
and then for someone to translate them is another story

Keep going

>>17193009
Read 1929 Storm of steel, It is fantastic and I get the impression you are already leaning towards it so go for it

>>17193009
>>17203965
Please read "Subtile Jagden" if you understand German. I very much wish there was an English translation of it

>>17206863
>"Subtile Jagden"
Also want to read this.

b

Bump

HERVIER: In Seventy Wanes, you write: "Technology can assume a magical tendency; it can become spiritual or turn to stone, according to the model of animal gregariousness, as Huxley described it."

JÜNGER : It's possible that a magical time is coming. The whole of technology would be transformed: technology as we know it would become purely a preliminary stage, yielding to silent and pleasant devices that would be run by only a small number of men. An embryo, for example, has lungs before it actually needs them; it's a preliminary phase that makes birth possible, a kind of anticipatory programming as the current phrase goes, for the moment when the baby is born; once the umbilical cord is cut, 'the baby can talte its first breath of air. So it can't be ruled out that the figure of the Worker may be in an embryonic state at this moment; and perhaps we'll get to see him in an entirely different state. However, this can't come about without the help of man on the one hand and without transcendental influences on the other hand-what Heidegger designates as 'the gods."

HERVIER: That's what you wrote me: one has to knock on the door, but it also has to yield on the other side.

JÜNGER : That's true purely in physical terms.

HERVIER: But there's also the other term of the alternative. You've just said that Nietzsche's last man was merely the next-to-last.

JÜNGER : Since you've read Eumeswil, you must have noticed that in my opinion the last man has already come; but behind that last man, we can just barely discern the ultimate man, who is nothing but a phantom. That's a somber vision of the future, it's sort of what will survive after an atomic conflict.

>>17198944
>>17201896
Some of the main commentary:

"When Spengler says in the introduction to his main work: "The means to recognize living forms is analogy", he is touching the essence of physiognomic methodology. Much can indeed be achieved by the conclusion of analogy, including the recording and ordering of historical figures under the mere surface similarity of the temporal garments, and furthermore the insight into still forthcoming processes from the knowledge of periodicity: as prediction. This is where the physiognomic instinct of the person entering gains prophetic power.

Now, however, it is one of the peculiarities of the human mind that the arrangement and sequencing of the similarities occupies it greatly, but does not satisfy it as long as the question of the source of the comparisons and of the joint composition of the acts and performances of the great play remains open. The pure comparison creates relations, not standards. The question remains as to the inner unity of the manifold phenomena and processes beyond the similarity. Similarity is not only an inexhaustible field of interpretation, but also points to inexhaustible meaning, to creation itself.

Spengler refuses to answer this second question; we look in vain for an answer with him. Thus his morphology of world history resembles an excellent group picture of eight brothers, who are both different from each other and similar. If one could still know the father or even infer him, one would have the inner bond.

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

The question of the world plan or the world sense, be it of divine, moral or material nature, is therefore not answered by Spengler. His morphology resembles a palace that lacks the top floor. This takes nothing away from its morphological greatness, but does not lead out of the comparable into the incomparable. From there, we assume, the orders come.

In this context, Spengler quotes a Goethe word: the meaning of life is life itself. That is an ambiguous saying. The comparison of cultures with thousand-year-old trees would probably have met with Goethe's undivided applause; in this respect Spengler rightly refers to him. In addition, however, Goethe's morphological genius is enhanced by a synoptic one. He would have attempted to capture the trees not only in their diversity but also in their unity as primordial plants. The main danger of morphology is that one does not see the forest before the trees.

The word "world map" is put in quotation marks by Spengler. He reproaches the philosophers for being the originators of the word "endeavouring God". Nevertheless, the world plan remains the great idea that holds together Herder's view of history in a meaningful way. The same applies to Hegel's interpretation of history as the self-development of the world spirit."

>>17198944
>>17210044
This may be as indirect as is possible, but it's what I came up with in the time I had.
https://derarbeiternotes.blogspot.com/2021/01/morphology-and-myth.html

In regards to evolution Jünger asks what a beautiful conception would be. This is, rather than adaptation in which the fish develops lungs as he transitions to land, a formation and metamorphosis. Intelligence can only understand the lung adaptation, but a divine plan would be much more subtle, shifting the power within the being much as in the reflection of light. For instance, the development of animals who breathe through the skin.

"Every animal is an end unto itself; it arises in perfect form
from the womb of nature and engenders perfect children."

This is how nature may be understood as the elemental, or as the rising of blood which fell from the heavens. A great order courses through all beings; Aphrodite is born of the blood and the oceans and the Nymphs carry her wealth into the forests. In the mythic there cannot even be an understanding of Goethe's primordial plant, the forests already exist in the beginning and give rise to the floor beneath. Even the subterranean receives its diffuse light, the ugly knot of roots rising up into beautiful blossoms. Thus Plato imagines the sea as the great hollow from which we spring forth - the wandering freedom of the soul with the undiminished, the death springs before which all life is made possible.

The animal cannot starve of its own being, only its territory can be diminished, its paths taken from him. The abundance is shifted into worn away stone, torn limbs, and paths crumbled away into dust. This is the territory in which other animals live, the highest, who must form an 'upper jaw equal to the horned brow.' He is not, who is taken, and he who is lost to nature must become the whole of it.

>>17211202
It must be said that there are many Zeuses. If the myths are correct then Greece also existed, perhaps in its greatest period, before the reign of Zeus, or even before he was known.
There is also the Zeus of the Trojan war, in the brilliance of Homer where the gods are taken to the line of mortality before the law.
The gods of Pindar in which this violence of the law becomes total over mortals and immortals alike - the line which divides more deeply than the chasm.
The Zeus of the Olympic festivals.
The Zeus of Hellenistic order.
And so on.

There is also the Zeus of Goethe, Schiller, and Holderlin. Can we conclude from this that the ancient god may not be known to the Westerner, only to the Greek? It seems that the understanding is only diminished in number, not form or degree.
In the same way, one may say that the a priori is not really an unknown, but only a shift in orientation. There become other certainties and other faiths where Zeus is bound to the margins (which in the myth is a form of greatets punishment for the human, but what we have taken as power).
There is no will that can endure the highest laws, even in a figure like Rhodes. Or more accurately, the will only exists in his workers, bestowed not by him, but the same laws to which he harmonizes with power. The will is only a seeking out of this harmony, or a rejection of it.

>>17211340
We do not believe in gods, but elemental factors, or the dirt which encases them. In this sense the a priori factors are only the husk that is whisked away by the grain shovel. It only becomes hard to see through matter of extent. This and there is simply no need because the laws are total in their sovereignty.
The will is only received, a gift of necessity. Or in our case an austerity measure. The extent of one's travels demands strict measures to control the stores, diet restrictions, drop offs or relay points.
This is in the same way that one notices the tortured nature of Nietzsche's poetics. They are torn into a wound by the will towards an infinite knowledge, one which may never be complete and only returns against itself.
One may see that the will only ever arises in the smallest measures of time. From there the elements always take over, and the weight approaches a form of justice dependent on the quality of decision..

>>17211439
"Fear of truth, out of liking for it."
One may thus presume the cause of a subterranean universe of dead nature.

>>17211340
>>17211439
Just to be clear, these tow do not follow from >>17211202
They are just additional notes.

I have to go, but will try to come up with something more direct.

>>17201472
>>17201659
Same thing, no time now but hope to respond as soon as I can.
In the meantime, have you read Goethe's Tischlied? I will likely have to incorporate it into a writing on wine, but discussion such perfect things is always difficult.

>>17203965
Wonder if anything is being worked on

>>17138742
>The historical necessity of the First World War was that it did away with monarchy. The monarchies vanished among both the winners and the losers. The inherent necessity of the Second World War was the elimination of national states. Now, there are only huge empires, such as Russia, America, China; such is the form that power assumes today. This is a necessity - as bitter as it may appear to some people.
What should I read to get more on this, and more specifically, learn about what form power assumes now in 2021?