/lit/ - Literature

kill yourself homo

>>18806284
Eros in combat?

Just find a boyfriend and fight with them

If you want good war, look to China. Their tactics are superb.

>>18806284
>Greco-Roman warfare was the finest ever practiced, but it resulted in a violent collapse of their civilization

>>18806284
Germans, homosexuality, and plutocracy killed Rome you pleb

>>18806284
Except for the eros thing. For that read Plato

>>18806284
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred_Band_of_Thebes

>The Sacred Band of Thebes was a troop of select soldiers, consisting of 150 pairs of male lovers which formed the elite force of the Theban army in the 4th century BC, ending Spartan domination.

>>18806523
the best ever practiced doesn't mean perfect. Fix your brain

>>18806572
>homosexuality [...] killed Rome
no, it would have saved them had they embraced it

Start with the Greeks

There's an interesting discussion here, a possible reading list
Thucydides
Herodotus
Homer
Hesiod
Polybius
Josephus
Cyropaedia
Arrian
Plato - Laws
Simplicissimus section on martial order and aristocratic vs natural ranks
Tocqueville - Democracy in America section on Aristocratic and democratic warfare/soldiers
Jünger - Der Gordische Knoten and various war writings
Schmitt - writings on war and response to Jünger
Ortega - Meditations on Hunting
Gracq
FG Jünger - writings on war and heroism
Bloy

>>18808322
Symposium has some sections on eros in warfare. Plutarch too. Xenophon's writings on war and politics are probably relevant also.

>>18808322
I will try to post some quotes/thoughts later. As a preliminary, I think where Nietzsche attacks Homer for ruining the Greeks would be a good starting point. Of course, pan-Hellenism was a great mistake but to what extent are such events fated, even through the mere passing of time.
There are very few great leaders, and even fewer who may said to be divine, which of course naturally leads to oligarchic or democratic forms. So the question then is what steps could men and governmental law make as a means to return, or whether or not this is even possible. It is a similar question to that of class or estate ranking.

One cannot neglect the question of land and something other than the great territories either (großraume). One may revere the warrior and disdain the lower classes, but there is no doubt that land and simple life was important to the Greek warriors and heroes - whether farming or hunting lands. There was love of toil, and great courage of happiness and peace; which gives us the opposite pole to Nietzsche's thought.

One cannot neglect the problem of decadence, in particular homosexuality, either. This can happen either through the martial training or even great victory, which gives an opposite to the meme "Strong men create good times." One will find in the Russian Soul a closeness of male bonding which approaches love but is in no way homosexual. This is similar in Plato, Polybius, Achilles, etc. So another question is what allows this to occur without the degeneracy. What allows for the male territories in war, hunting and work camps which is effectively a nomos against decadence and homosexuality?

And also the question of realism and the divine. Of the imperial cult, divine right. Monuments to divine wars and then the replacement with images of men which may be a law of ruin.

>>18808431
And also the dangers of 'slave morality ' in the soldier class.

What the fuck are you talking about? This shit is meaningless in front of a machine gun.

>cultivating the virtue of Eros in combat?
Books are useless, what I really need is to get myself a /xs/ gf to have friendly (and maybe not so friendly) spars with.

>>18808517
> tfw no fit warrior gf
:(

>>18808544
Maybe OP should read Beautiful Fighting Girl to better understand the archetype, how else is he going to appreciate the distinctly sensual relationship between the erotic and the pugilistic?

"Roman discipline, brought to the peninsula by the Scipios, domesticated the Spaniards of that time, who, like those of today, were as brave as they were frenetic. Scipio Æmilianus was chaste at a time when, according to Polybius, the victory over Perseus of Macedonia had infected the Romans
with sensuality and made them discover homosexuality. Scipio Æmilianus was impartial and generous. “Such generosity,” Polybius also tells us, “deserves admiration everywhere, but especially in Rome, where no one willingly gives up what is his.” Polybius’s text demands a scrupulous commentary, because one of the secrets of why Rome became Rome becomes apparent in it. Scipio Æmilianus was a great general. He restored the gravely demoralized Roman army. He was serious and kind. He was serious and kind. He neither sought power nor turned away from it. He was assassinated, of course. This is the other man."

"Roman discipline, brought to the peninsula by the Scipios, domesticated the Spaniards of that time, who, like those of today, were as brave as they were frenetic. Scipio Æmilianus was chaste at a time when, according to Polybius, the victory over Perseus of Macedonia had infected the Romans
with sensuality and made them discover homosexuality. Scipio Æmilianus was impartial and generous. “Such generosity,” Polybius also tells us, “deserves admiration everywhere, but especially in Rome, where no one willingly gives up what is his.” Polybius’s text demands a scrupulous commentary, because one of the secrets of why Rome became Rome becomes apparent in it. Scipio Æmilianus was a great general. He restored the gravely demoralized Roman army. He was serious and kind. He neither sought power nor turned away from it. He was assassinated, of course."

>>18809737
Bump

>>18806284
First of all, get it right.

"Before Jerusalem was walled in, Titus and a few companions went around the walls to do some reconnaissance. As Flavius Josephus vividly describes, he was ambushed and saved by personal courage. If we now ask ourselves whether, in the event of his death, the Romans would have departed in a similar manner to the Assyrians after the murder of Holofernes, it hardly seems possible for us to give a positive answer. The next in command would have taken over and Vespasian would then have confirmed him or sent a new commander.
The terrible emptiness that followed the fall of the king is evidence of the unification of the senses in his person. His downfall could lead to the downfall of the nation, which he turns into a sum of disparate personalities, like a swarm of bees after the death of a queen. This creates the following paradox: on the one hand, the king is irreplaceable, but on the other, his place cannot remain empty. He is as irreplaceable as a king in chess. If he has fallen, a new king must appear on the field for the pieces to regain their positions and a new game to begin. Legitimacy, on the other hand, recedes into the background.
This leads to a spectacle that seems to us like an insect: the sudden rise to power of a new royal figure, who is often the king's assassin. If Artaxerxes had fallen in that battle at the Euphrates, no doubt his mighty army would have saluted Cyrus after a moment's terror; they would have raised their hands in deference to the very arms that had been used against them. And this was not because Cyrus was Artaxerxes' brother. This tribute was also paid to Alexander after the defeat of the great king. It is closely related to the fact that defeated armies can be forced to change direction like enslaved ants."

Bump

"In aristocratic armies, the conservative element is the officer, because only the officer maintains close ties to civil society, in which he has every intention of one day resuming his place. In democratic armies the conservative element is the soldier, for exactly the same reason.
By contrast, it is often the case in democratic armies that officers acquire tastes and desires entirely distinct from those of the nation. This is understandable.
In democratic nations, a man who becomes an officer breaks all his ties to civilian life. He leaves it for good and has no interest in returning. His true homeland is the army, because without the rank he occupies he is nothing. His fortunes therefore coincide with those of the army, and because he now rises and falls with the military, he now invests his hopes in it alone. Since the officer’s needs are quite distinct from those of the country, it is possible for him ardently to desire war or to work toward a revolution while the nation aspires above all to stability and peace.
There are, however, factors that temper his warlike and restless humor. Although ambition in democratic nations is universal and constant, we have seen that it is rarely great. A man who has risen from the nation’s secondary classes through the lower ranks of the army to the grade of officer has already taken an immense step. He has gained a foothold in a higher sphere than he occupied in civil society, and there he has acquired rights that most democratic nations will always regard as inalienable.1 Having made such a great effort, he is glad to stop and dreams of enjoying his conquest. The fear of compromising what he has begins to dampen his desire to acquire what he has not. Having overcome the first and greatest obstacle to his advancement, he is less impatient about resigning himself to the slowness of further progress. His ambition cools even more as he rises still higher in rank and discovers that he has more to lose in the risks that remain ahead. If I am not mistaken, the least bellicose and least revolutionary part of a democratic army will always be its leadership."

mandalietmandaliet
"Coronet militem
finis, non proelium;
dat hoc ancipitem;
metam, is bravium.
Iste quod tribuit
dictat stabilitas;
istud quod metuit
inducit levitas.
Nam palman annuit
mentis integritas,
quam dari respuit
vaga mobilitas. "

("It is the end of war, not a battle,
that wins glory for the soldier;
the battle provides the uncertain turning point;
the finish of the war is the prize.
What he contributes
is determined by his steadfastness;
a lack of resolve
brings on what he fears.
Singleness of purpose
earns the victory
which cannot be vouchsafed
by feckless wavering.")
- Carmina Burana

One can say that the focus on the battle in itself arrives at that point when "war for war's sake" has been democratised. Of course the soldier must only concern himself with victory, and this remains to some extent in the heroics of battle with nothing outside of it - the spirit of blood. However, the individualist aspect cannot be ignored and the metaphysics of combat arises in a man who exists somewhere between the mercenary and the suicide. He cannot be an Ajax, just as the general can no longer be an Alexander.
One may see in the WWI generals an impossibility of victory for either side. They were all replaceable, and seemingly the best were removed or forgotten - and this most importantly for the Germans following their greatest battles. This suggests the extent to which the revolt against the command structure occurred from above and below - both the anonymous peasant and the political commander acted against the officers. They were brought to ruin, both from a point of justice and simple necessity through the era's end.

At the same time, the democratic forces showed a ruthlessness capable only for those who stand apart from war. De Maistre caught a glimpse of it, but only from the wrong side. The defeat of the generals also made every man into a general. "The slave to the guns, but the master of kings." One could see in the anonymous night raider the same heights of victory as the old generals who razed entire nations. In The Great War the continent had razed itself and all that remained was the most brutal survival - the only equal to the machine gun and the livens projector was the knife and shovel. This brutality was shown in the man who fought out of anger over a poor meal which no national triumph could match.

Coronet militem
finis, non proelium;
dat hoc ancipitem;
metam, is bravium.
Iste quod tribuit
dictat stabilitas;
istud quod metuit
inducit levitas.
Nam palman annuit
mentis integritas,
quam dari respuit
vaga mobilitas. "

("It is the end of war, not a battle,
that wins glory for the soldier;
the battle provides the uncertain turning point;
the finish of the war is the prize.
What he contributes
is determined by his steadfastness;
a lack of resolve
brings on what he fears.
Singleness of purpose
earns the victory
which cannot be vouchsafed
by feckless wavering.")
- Carmina Burana

>>18813653
One can say that the focus on the battle in itself arrives at that point when "war for war's sake" has been democratised. Of course the soldier must only concern himself with victory, and this remains to some extent in the heroics of battle with nothing outside of it - the spirit of blood. However, the individualist aspect cannot be ignored and the metaphysics of combat arises in a man who exists somewhere between the mercenary and the suicide. He cannot be an Ajax, just as the general can no longer be an Alexander.
One may see in the WWI generals an impossibility of victory for either side. They were all replaceable, and seemingly the best were removed or forgotten - and this most importantly for the Germans following their greatest battles. This suggests the extent to which the revolt against the command structure occurred from above and below - both the anonymous peasant and the political commander acted against the officers. They were brought to ruin, both from a point of justice and simple necessity through the era's end.

At the same time, the democratic forces showed a ruthlessness capable only for those who stand apart from war. De Maistre caught a glimpse of it, but only from the wrong side. The defeat of the generals also made every man into a general. "The slave to the guns, but the master of kings." One could see in the anonymous night raider the same heights of victory as the old generals who razed entire nations. In The Great War the continent had razed itself and all that remained was the most brutal survival - the only equal to the machine gun and the livens projector was the knife and shovel. This brutality was shown in the man who fought out of anger over a poor meal which no national triumph could match.

>>18813659
Just as the opposition to war increases its force, so too does the anti-theological nature of it force its return - and most catastrophically. The war which would bring an end to heroism also saw each man have his Diomedes charge. And this is precisely why no myths may be spoken to what is experienced by each man alone and in his own way.

The oldest heroes are all anonymous. Both Achilles and Ajax are returned to anonymity. Nestor appears only as if surviving death, and Diomedes lives on in the divine qualities of it. The anonymous hero of Marathon is as striking as any moment in the Iliad, so too the Abyssinian who cut throats like a drunken centaur and then disappeared back into the forests never again to be known.

War does not change in democratic centuries, only the dispersion of focres and territories, and the subversion of the mind to ideological and technical thinking..

>>18813665
The joy of the incursion and the wealth in being wounded follows the certainty of victory. Just as it follows the man sans panache, the one who threatens death through the look in his eyes, or his wild striding and stalking like a pelican. Such men are like Nestor, beyond warfare but also its most complete masters.

>>18808431
>What allows for the male territories in war, hunting and work camps which is effectively a nomos against decadence and homosexuality?
I'd argue that it is due to no political presence on the part of women; these are the great destabilizers of man's social sphere.

>>18813688
One may also say that like the kill in the hunt the incursion into an impossible territory is the highest aim of warfare. This is in the nomos of war: for the Greeks the Tyche, in which gods battle over the fate of the city and the presiding creative elements; the pomerium and underworld territories for the Romans; the natural terror and demonic forests of the Aztecs; and the great territory of the Society of Nations, for which there is nothing but an outside.
In the end the territories themselves incur, overwhelm - that law in which defeat and death is brought to a lower threshold of the earth. And this is where we see the gigantic, unending battles, and then a type of civil war which only incurs metaphysically, then invisibly and all the more catastrophic.

Very nice thread, boys. I've been enjoying the posts!

>>18813769
But is this not the case in military training which degenerates into homosexuality, or in the conquered lands which would have enough free women to go around?
There has to be something else at work, and this is true of the women in the homeland as well, something has to be in place so that women do not succumb to their own weaknesses when men are away at war. Something like the Vestal Virgins and Oracles show the positive aspects of women in 'politics'.

We tend to disregard women today as unnatural and evil, but there is nothing natural about our situation, and to some extent the permanent state of war in our time may be harder on women than men.
One can easily look to the old folk tales and songs to see that women are not always destabilizers, lying in wait like a spider. Here the woman can only think of death when she loses her husband in war, as there is no one else for her.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=GMsjsLtWzKE

Such close bonds to land and family are lost to us, so one cannot expect strength from men or beauty from women. At the same time this increases the desire for return, although we see how poorly this ia expressed.

>>18811172
Thank you based butterfly

>>18813795
There is also FG Jünger who experienced the very worst of war, and said more critical things than any of the anti-war writings even come close to. But he never turned against war or what happened. This shows a strength of character best demonstrated in Goethe's poem on the wounded soldier.

Bump

>>18813980
>based butterfly
Never

Jünger discusses a type of heroic peace, equal to times of war in its significance. This is not only a period of rest and recovery but return and the very essence of victory.

>>18813322
This isn’t even true in America. It’s almost the opposite. Officers join and then fuck off for business management and consulting jobs after successfully transforming into politicking worker bees.

>>18813659
Who wrote this? Where can I read it?

>>18817325
That's the point

Thoughts on Clausewitz? He's insufferable dry desu

>>18806284
Sounds gay, I’d rather kill for money, for material gain than gay ideals. Also honour is gay.

>>18817844
Cringe

>>18817334
Just my notes on the subject. Although there's probably an essay that could be written out of it.

Bump

>>18817724
>unironically reading books about 19th century cavalry warfare thining there is deep and timeless wisdom in it
Honestly no different than reading instruction manuals for betamax machines, except that wouldn't come with an air of cringy LARPing.

>>18817994
gay

>>18819408
Larp

>>18806323
The PLA can't even be deployed against Indian border guards without morale collapsing. If you think that Chinese troops could hold a candle to ROC/Japanese forces, much less Americans, you're delusional.

>>18818573
What I thought was interesting about was this impossibility of warlike heroism today, best summarized here:
>He cannot be an Ajax, just as the general can no longer be an Alexander.
There’s a lot encapsulated in that.

>>18806284
To paraphrase Francis Fukuyama, a short and decisive war every generation would be better than eternal peace. The proxy wars that will stem from the imminent USA-China conflict will provide a great opportunity for this as young western men march once back into the fold to best the enemies of liberty.

>>18820323
In the technology thread someone asked about Ahasverus, who Jünger mentions along with the worker and unknown soldier. He is an interesting figure, and one may sense in it that modern, or democratic, man approached the absolute heights of war, and fell short of it. My reference point here is always the Battle of Anghiari, this is where the end of cavalry first occurred - only to be recognised in 2016. Where man lost all qualities of the centaur. Such a being appears to us as in myth, arriving from out of the forest and changing the course of battle before retreating, leaving us only the images and sounds of cut throats. Man himself becomes theological, and we live in the pain of a death which eludes us.

The significance of technological and material, even territorial, thrusts exists in this. Man directs war from the sidelines, even the lowliest conscript or volunteer. The Ghosts of Vimy Ridge is perhaps even more appropriate as a war image itself. The men existed as if the Wild Hunt returned to the earth, at the precipice of a great peace - Perdix figures. And the monument itself like a divine eruption out of the wound.

It is perhaps the only monument in the era of the world wars which is truly beautiful. And it is of course revered and hated, much like the Great War itself. It says too much about us. In it the mothers of world virtue mourn their sons, while the others flee from the earth like Nemesis. This alludes to something far greater than a political death, and the death of liberalism or humanism.

There remains some element of heroism even in these wars, although it escapes any humanist or even imperial sentiments. Perhaps best encapsulated in How Rifleman Brown came to Valhalla.
Our sense of war evades all questions of justice or strength, even mourning, and we are left with the impending arms of doomed might. Gas was so widely used in the First World War because of the proximity to the end, of the greatest death. Then subsequently banned for the same reason. But it is even more devastating for us that the pallor becomes invisible.

One catches glimpses of this still though, as in Will Bird's writings on the war where the ghost stories seem quaint and peaceful rather than horrifying.

>>18820323
So partly what I mean by this is that the sacrificial death eludes the soldier today, and yet some other form of heroism takes its place, if largely unknown to us. The old heroism had already fallen some time before, so he cannot have the death of an Ajax or Cato. And yet at the same time the soldier is sacrificed monstrously, and he lives on much as Ajax, silently, or with the rushing sounds at his temples and nearby streams.

And interestingly I just read last night a similar comment from Jünger on the generals and destruction of the officers. He said that Hitler would have annihilated them along with the aristocracy in favour of the war of technicians and aristocracy.

>>18817724
Jünger contradicts him a number of times. Here is one passage

"The passage (on the death of Hector) recalls the battles in which death is considered the best fate. The combatant does not risk being imprisoned in war as we know it if he falls into enemy hands. Rather, he is seen as spoils of war, and slavery is his lot. Nor can he expect to be treated better than a wounded man. Then he is likely to be shot as a useless man. As a strong man, he will be humiliated, like Samson who fell into the hands of the Philistines.
In ancient times slave traders followed armies and bought up whole nations. After the conquest of Jerusalem the number of prisoners was so great that thousands of Jews were sent to stadiums where they shed their blood in show matches. In our time, exploitation has become more economical, but no less ruthless; we know how it crushes the latter, and we know that millions of people have been its victims.

These attitudes affect the way we fight. A fighter tries at all costs to avoid a situation which leaves him at the mercy of pure will. Leaders will offer resistance that would otherwise be considered futile. Clausewitz's call to spare the people unnecessary bloodshed becomes invalid. It applies only to an enemy who fights by the rules."

>>18806284
>Greco-Roman warfare was the finest ever practiced,
*shoots you in the ass with an arrow and rides away on a pony*
t. hun

>>18820829
Here we must say that heroism may also be an affliction, the tragic case of those who could not complete a divine quest - and with Achilles and Odysseus something of a catastrophe. Both, in their own way, continue an impossible striving for life. Ajax on the other hand dies as the memory of the old era, its very law which rests waiting along foreign streams. Odysseus dies to the unknown, returned to the sea, and Achilles to the very same fleeting life over which he had sought to triumph - Paris is both Achilles and Agamemnon in one.

What is best of all is to have never have lived, and this applies to the state just as it does to man. The test is if the land will rise again, autochtonously, earth forces mobilised by a god. Poseidon is a recurring enemy of the cities, and Cinryas the only example where neutrality in warfare is acceptable.
The fog of war must be maintained at all costs, even at the expense of one's own city or nation.
Rome was founded on this law, raised it to its highest and died of it. Returning to its fate just as Syracuse met its end.

>>18806284
>Greco-Roman warfare was the finest ever practiced, but it resulted in a violent collapse of their civilization.
Literally how?
> What are some books on how to avoid this fate while cultivating the virtue of Eros in combat?
Oh so you’re just a larper

>>18821039
You got him

>>18821039
>Literally how?
the best doesn't mean perfect, fix your brain

>>18820763
>some other form of heroism takes its place, if largely unknown to us
Does he? It seems to me these markers which make for heroism are rendered utterly meaningless in the age of modern warfare. This nothing has taken its place. It’s been discarded entirely.

Good thread

>>18822584
What Hölderlin says of Achilles is very important, that Homer removes him from much of the work which to a great extent draws us closer to him, even frees him from what is happening. What is so powerful in him is that all his actions seem divine and are closer than anyone else to the fate of the era.
But one should keep in mind that even in the Iliad there is something of a curse against toil - opposite to the love of toil found in someone like Achilles - and the weakness of the generation of men is repeated again and again. So there is a fall in the story from the age of the old heroes. And in the events themselves the heroics often went unnoticed, as we see in the cursing of Achilles, both from the other heroes and some readers today.

No doubt in our time this may be more severe, and there is some truth to the idea that heroism is impossible for us. However, the possibility remains much like the dispersal of elements in Empedocles' philosophy, one might say left to far fewer people. In a sense, Nietzsche's Ubermensch is a figure of heroism that approaches impossibility in our time. And I gave a few examples, the anonymous hero, the night raider, and centaur-like figures. These heroes often spring up in democratic times, the very opposite figure to a Cyrus, yet of his same character. Jünger's Forest Rebel is another image of heroism, although it lacks the iron image which informs most thinking, the imperial cults with man at the center. But man being the center, the great line of monuments coincides with the propping up of slave colonies within the no man's land between states, that place which should be reserved for nature and the fog of war. Without it no great wars can happen, it is a zone of inexperience, where expeditions or incursions may never occur. The land must hold a divine quality, equal in every way to the pomerium or tyche, if there are to be great battles through it - and thus the importance of a hell-like geography, certain locations where war must remain prohibited.

The great fall occurs with the desecration of the oath to Athena, when we see the gods erased from the pediments and monuments, even the unspeakable gods, and replaced with the images of men. It is where man is most prominent that he loses his divine quality. Thus again, the aura of anonymity which must remain even in those greatest men of the Iliad.

The Unknown Soldier is one figure of heroism in our time, although it is much like a Gordian Knot, as we see with Jünger repeatedly returning to it trying to figure it out. Such figures may only reveal themselves in the end, after they are gone, much like the owl of minerva flying at dusk. They return into the forest and we finally see the law.

>>18823513
In Homer's time this appeared as entire forests being felled, as if the mountainous forests were in mourning. In our time it is as if a great tree has died and no man sees it, only the forest which chokes itself out in its mourning - or the lands are completely annihlated, the trees smouldering into ashes from the roots.
This is a problem of causality and polarity, the impossible striving we see as the beginning and end - as if exiled from the creative force yet seemingly closest to it.

>>18823524
To understand this the myths are very important. Particularly the Dioscuri and Cadmus, which are most likely very early myths. One can tell the early from late myths in their proximity to fables or theology.

What is so intimately tied up in the image of the heroes is a violent force of death and rebirth. With Cadmus an entire nation can be lost, and then sprung up from the earth through the casting of the dragon's teeth. This is something very different from the imperial understanding of heroic warfare, or the Jewish theological law to annihilate another nation and refound there. The founding myth is weakened in such theology, little more than a command of survival, and it is much like the difference between Achilles and Odysseus - the latter who counts up the coins which are always spent too quickly. Something occurs in late civilisations wherein no land can never be enough for them, even paradise would be lost through the false relation of war and peace. It is interesting that the conservative response to war is often this very same annihilationism and indifferentism.

Heine saw such warfare metaphysically, in the pantheism of the German idealists. There was a death and rebirth of the idea and law in such thinking, which in the end could destroy the whole of Europe. The return to images of the simpke, of inner worlds, is largely a response to this impossibly destructive character - no matter how wrong the new ideas may be.

And also in Siegfried's funeral a unification of Christian and pagan themes of death and rebirth. Of course, there is nothing beautiful in the death of Europe, but it does speak to the vastness in which a heroism must occur for there to be a return. At times the void is better than any reconciliation, peace, or sacrificial death to honour. This becomes even more true when such values are no longer recognised.

>>18823513
I’m not sure what you mean by “the night raider” or these centaur-like figures but I don’t see the unknown hero, or the unknown soldier, as a hero, but rather exactly a soldier, closer to a worker than a warrior or hero. I believe Jünger himself moved on from the broad archetype of the forest rebel, certainly can’t be said to be culture hero regardless. I’m finding the rest of this nearly unintelligible and somewhat unrelated unfortunately.

>>18823716
As in the night raiders of WWI, such events surpassed the technological limits of the era, although there was an ugliness and brutality in it. Certainly not the beauty of war in bronze and gold armour. But then again something like the harpe holds a brutality and gigantic character which is lost in the gladius.

Jünger did not move on from the Forest Rebel, and doing so would be impossible. In any case, he suggested later in his life the possibility of its return, the point where the anarch can no longer hold onto dignity being one example of such return.

The problem I am speaking to is that of the era, of seeing in terms of polarity and causality. For example, all of the images of Napoleon as the Greatest Man, yet the same rule of no Alexanders applies to him. There is very little heroic in him, and his greatness was as much a mark of modernity.

Goethe focused on the simple wounded soldier, what is beautiful in this is the simplicity, that there is no need for great men, that the law surpasses all of us. In myth and theology one sees the positive aspects of leveling. So perhaps the focus on greatness is closer to the thinking of historicism and the imperial cults, of downfall and profanation.

For Diomedes fighting with the gods was like a non-event, they were just another part of the battlefield. This is both to retain an impossible humitlity and to hold greatness as beneath oneself.

Bump

In the masculinity thread I had mentioned how shield maidens could provide some of this feminine character to mobilisation. Obviously this would have to be very different from the feminist image of the shield maidens, and it is likely closer to the truth.
I'm a bit of a Christian moralist when it comes to sex, but the Romans had an upper class of prostitutes ( the name escapes me) servicing the young aristocrats in particular. Good shield maidens would act much in the same way, and with strict rules could prevent military degeneracy.

There is also a certain number of women, perhaps small, who enjoy this more promiscuous life and such measures would allow it to act positively within the law.

There would also have to be some limits, a religious aspect which reminds the married men of loyalty to the family and a return home. The law of Odysseus.

If anyone is aware of discussion of such things I would appreciate any sources.

"But if the hero be no more
Than bloodstain'd conqueror fierce and fell,
Though o'er him loud the trumpets pour,
And monumental columns tell
His dark and ignominious fate,
Shall he too be accounted great?
- Klopstock

>>18806305
yeah

The question of mutiny and objection is obviously difficult, and perhaps impossible to answer. However, even Alexander's soldiers came to a point of having to refuse battle. Just as racist feeling is something of a force which rises before war the need to abandon the battlefield may suggest some risk to the nomos is occurring. Where the territory expands too far state law can be weakened.

To "flee along the River Hermus" is to leave the donkey king and his cursed state to its doom. One may prepare the ground for new battles, other settlements. It is important to find an opposition to war in our time that is neither pacifist or anti-war. One sees this particularly in the conservative sentiments which also approach the anti-war positions, that it is nothing but ugliness and empty destruction.

We see even in the greatest hero, Achilles, the necessity at times to turn away from one's nation, even those men who stood shoulder to shoulder and shield to shield in the past. Here one must approach the question as the officer who sees each battle as a possible sacrifice of his own sons.

Ernst Jünger's example of one who may go thieving horses is perhaps enough. And again we see it in Will Bird's work. The elimination of the officers who were out of place ,unworthy of authority was necessary, a democratic or even anarchic impulse which actually strengthened the military. Germany only lost where it abandoned such things. But for a time approached an even higher type of militarist anarchism.

>>18823716
Also, the centaur is a very old idea in war, heroism, and realpolitik. Xenophon discusses it, as well as Machiavelli and many others. In simple terms it can be seen in the man who can tame the most wild horse through gentle care and natural character, and also slit the throat of a man who ever treated it harshly. It is the perfect image of the type of warrior who is not hardened by machinery, or the modern tendency to see war as annihilation of lands and enemies.
It connects the warrior and the hunter, or hunting grounds. One must ensure that strong men remain if there are to be great wars in the future, just as there must be a preserve of lions if the most noble hunts are to survive.
Domesticated lions are the curse of both hunter and warrior.

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>>18823863
Thanks for explaining. But what I want to know is what you that looks like heroism in these characters? The Forest rebel, the anarch, these are just archetypes and man-made ones. They contain aspects of noble demeanor, courage, overcoming, the lost goes on but to me, heroism, real, warlike heroism, is more than merely a set of admirable traits and actions. It’s natural and divine. World War 1 brought with it the total leveling of distinctions that awakened the opportunities for heroism and robbed the world of the opportunities for the heroic. Honor, courage, strength, these things are meaningless in front of a machine gun, more so in a gas attack. And Rifleman Brown, for all his admirable traits and actions, remains relatively unknown, unworshipped, heroism in an almost exclusively humanistic sense. I don’t see the divinity in it, and divinity, or the boundary of it and this world is precisely where heroism lies. And here, I really am not just talking about anonymity, although still, I don’t see your point about the returns to anonymity. To liken it to the heroism of achilles, seems to me to further enter into this paradigm of leveling distinction, where there’s no real difference between the hero reaches the gods but dies tragically, or fades into anonymity, and the one who remains anonymous. I think the fact that literary modernism resulted in almost discarding the heroic entirely speaks to this. And Jünger himself doesn’t leave this paradigm. The anarch, for all its virtues, is not a hero in my view and the way I see it, heroism is a total non-factor in our age. If I fail to understand you or you don’t understand me, then you’ll have to forgive me but I’m sure you understand that these concepts are difficult to speak about.

>>18827333
I guess to expand on this in a sense that ties it back to Jünger, who is much better with language than I am, there’s a sense in his writing of not just the dehumanization by modern warfare but the de-heroization. For example, Jünger talks about glimpses of the heroic in the pilots of World War 1 and there’s a notion of the pilot as something like the new noble knight, and that’s a fair view. I think the sentiment there is technological word closes off these old forms of heroism, but opens new ones. What I propose is that these are just fading remnants of something that was dying but is now dead. No doubt there was flashes of heroism found then in world war 2, subsequent wars, snd even those imperialist wars waged by America in the latter 20th century and I think this proposed a sort of heroic optimism, as embodied best in the immensely popular Japanese mecha anime of the 1990s. But that too faded. Remnants of heroism remained in the operator, or the worker, even. Mecha, as I see it, was an imagining of machine merged with the human element, and thus, the machine, even if only piloted, could in fact offer the human an opportunity for the heroic but it’s worth noting the popularity of mecha faded, especially with the rise of information technology and automated networks. The modern drone renders the idea of the mecha pilot, even the fighter pilot, almost useless. Do we mean to propose then that the chivalric element will remain in “pilots” who jockey code from a trailer quite a way’s away. I think it’s absurd. And even in the case of purely human reaction, I’d remind that you what we’re talking about is post-nuclear bombing warfare, total annihilation, far beyond the sort of immediate devastation saw in the world wars. I suggest that there’s an element of the heroic archetype which existed through the 20th century, but have been eliminated, or at least occluded completely but these technological forces reaching full maturity. In my view, heroism, real, authentic, warlike heroism, the sort that stands in the liminal space between man and god, anonymous or not anonymous, is completely gone and can be found nowhere besides perhaps those small communities which wage sacred wars against technological powers.

bump. only good thread on here.

>>18827333
Thanks for your effort reply. I will try to answer you fully tonight.

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>>18827333
The forest rebel, anarch, and warrior are not really archetypes, as Jünger makes an important distinction with the figure, which is more like the Platonic forms or Goethe's primordial plant. What we are discussing at this point is the essence of the hero, which is very difficult but seems necessary to make any distinction between heroism and anti-heroism in our time.
You admit yourself that there is something of heroism in the forest rebel and anarch, even if it is only a minor element that remains. So I think one of the questions is different types of heroism, and whether or not the warrior type should be regarded as higher than the others.

In Herodotus, the wisdom of Solon speaks of two farmers who die after guiding oxen on their mother's birthday. This is not what we see as heroism today, but it is deeply connected to the wealth of life and dying within the law and dominion of fate. One finalizes essence in death. This is a personal type of heroism which may be contrasted against the private man in liberal law, and what we see in psychology or the heroism of experience discussed in the Hero's Journey. The danger is that heroism is reduced to its technical measures rather than being a theomorphosis and teleology of being and law. In this sense the man who dies at peace in his forest farm may be more heroic than the great general who attains status and renown but in terms of law may have brought his nation to an end.

This is partly my point, that war is increased in times of democracy, which is a bit paradoxical considering the anti-war sentiments - but Tocqueville explains this very simply and it is always worth remembering. War increases with the leveling process and the forming of a new species. So for the aristocratic soul it may be more heroic in our time to search for peace, to bring an end to the destructive and elemental type of warfare.

This is where Jünger's Peace approaches a sort of heroism, it is not the warrior's heroism as he moves forward in conquest, but one which allows him to return home, to live among the simplest laws and prepare for the next battles. At the same time, Jünger's Worker is seen as a sort of technological heroism, so it is useful to keep in mind the different types.

>>18832676
Again with Tocqueville, he suggests how the military leader is often at a loss in governance, and in times of crisis he even seems weak, as if the laws are completely foreign to him. We find this to be true throughout history, there are very few military leaders who make good statesmen. And often they actually among the worst decisionists outside of military matters. This suggests the importance of another type of heroism, and limits on the military order.

As I mentioned before with the Dioscuri, who are twins and one of them lives in the underworld. There is an entirely destructive and even nihilistic side of heroism which we have to consider. It may move one away from revelation or greatness, complete failure may be the only possible end, as with Ajax. But even there there is something of beauty in it in relation to the law.

As for modern warfare, Jünger also mentions the machine gun being brought up from out of the earth like a dragon. This is a monstrous or titanic type of heroism, and cannot be separated from Verteidegung in der Tiefe (defense in depth) which was the highest victory of the Germans in The Great War. The men remain mostly nameless, anonymous, unknown to us, but the law itself is beautiful and if they had won there would no doubt be many tales of these men. They lived among the earth, in small forested hills and took on men by the hundreds. Rather than staying in the trenches, defending the line, they removed themselves, waited and attacked from a point of law which reaches back into the German eschatological myths. We do not need names or faces to know that this was heroism.

Even in WWII the jets had a gigantic or titanic quality, which does not limit that some type of heroism remains. Of course, it may not be our ideal, and some even described the terrifying screaming as insect swarms, yet there was an incredible power in it, and a law which still remains partly unkown to us.

>>18832679
I think that heroism relates to man and the highest laws. And what is significant in our time is a move away from the destructive wars,even being above them and their anti-war origins. This suggests a sort of silent or anonymous heroism, and more than anything one is like a runner or Aeneas figure. It is a matter of fate that even a warrior may only find his end outside of war. This partly goes against our senses of will and historical time. However, again, one sees in the great heroes of the Iliad that even they must resign themselves. Achilles who abandons war and turns against his nation, and Nestor, the last of the old heroes, who exists much as in death, reserved and conducting events from within, behind.

This is very different from the idea of the Great Man, who as Tocqueville points out is really part of the democratic idea of war. In the same way our sentiment for such a man is part of the leveling process, of a democratising type of war. One may say the same of the 'jihadist warriors' who are of a 'titanic' and destructive warfare, the society which will survive annihiliation.

>>18832687
And also in the stories of Stalingrad, where men lived where nothing else could, and where even dogs fled. This is an apocalyptic and gigantic type of heroism, which may be nothing to aspire to, there is nothing positive in it, and it is part of the destruction of values. Yet it is also where the law resides , and the only possible means of return.
It is hard to say anything good about apocalyptic heroism, yet its truth remains and we must live with it, and the reality is that divinity is not always found in pain. It may be left for thousands of years, just as Hölderlin redeemed Ajax.

Hopefully that is more clear. If I missed anything I will try to respond tomorrow.

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>>18832706
Clear enough but also not clear since there’s fundamentally a language problem here and actually this is the problem I find in most of Junger’s writing. Sometimes his use of forms slips into vaguery that allows designations to be more fluid than perhaps they should be. So there’s a departure between us over what heroism actually is. But let me concede for a moment because I see your points and for the sake of argument allow me to come around to this notion of a hero and assume we agree in premise. Where I depart still is this idea that warfare has not changed through the 20th century. I like the image of the machine gun-dragon because it’s very evocative and one can easily see an element of the heroic in, for example, the nameless and faceless German soldier who evades dragon breath and upon boldly facing it, slays it. But I’ll remind you that I stated this optimistic view of heroic opportunity has faded into the 21st century. There’s something medieval in that act on the machine gun bunker, even physically that, in my view, actually does not exist on the modern battlefield. Information technology rendered this up close and personal approach with the technological made mythological totally absurd. I fail to see the old myths in a drone strike, for example. So we have two big departures here: that first regarding what the heroic is and means but I’m afraid we won’t reach agreement there and that second which implies that these things you point to may have been valid in Junger’s time but not in hours. The way I see it, these are circular and engage in a degree of vaguery. We can suggest that in a Democratic age heroism exists in being an operative of peace, but is that really true? I’m not so sure.

>>18833906
Well I'm not suggesting war didn't change. For example, the outlaw of chemical weapons does not present something like the Vietnam War deforestation, in which the weapon formally disappears and yet is even more destructive. It exists in conjunction with a type of invisible warfare and the mobilisation of territory.
There is of course a danger in forms and mythology, especially in secular times, but I sense an opposite one in the arguments you are making: that it must be all-pervading and applicable in each case. Of course there is no heroism in the drone operator but a man who saves his unit, a family, creates a counter-operation, or even simply survives is a heroic type in this time. One may similarly point to historical examples of raiding and razing, where the force mobilised by early civilisations against Golden Age people was too great and they wiped them out entirely. There is an overwhelming force in this that wiped villages, towns, forests and even cities from the world, and this annihilation would not be entirely unlike the drone strike. The Aztec raiders were entirely foreign and monstrous to those erased from the earth.

One also sees in the Russia conflict a type of geopolitical heroism. Putin was able to navigate this new type of warfare and deliver crushing defeats to the United States. This is again a type of hidden or anonymous warfare, another part of what Jünger calls the war of invisible forces, and no doubt to those involved there are many heroic individuals.
This also suggests the possibility of other victories, and within the very type of warfare. One cannot assume that military philistinism will last forever, and even if it were the case tht heroism was impossible today this does not preclude that tomorrow a monumental or theological shift could occur in the military and state order. Such a shift will happen eventually.

Also, I think the ending of Eumeswil suggests such a shift in warfare. And one may say that things like street battles and rioting enter as a post-historical warfare. It is not the political type of the revolutionaries, and more akin to prehistory skirmishing, or the overwhelming that occurs among immortals.

>>18834606
Also worth noting how ineffectual drone warfare is. We are witnessing the total defeat of the democratic armies.
And also in the contested regions there is a development similar to the livens projectors, easily replicable and roughly created autonomous weapons that one fights side by with. Even though they are the same technological type as drones, they are employed much differently by warriors in the field.
Not to say that this is in any way heroism, but it is an interesting development.

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>>18806572
Replace homosexuality with Christianity and you'll start to make sense.

>>18820839
Huns lost though, also they were manlets

>>18806323
>Their tactics are superb.
>self aggrandising academic comes up with convoluted strategy
>they win but it was mostly because half the enemy died of starvation or in a flood
>strokes beard