Ellul and Jünger

[Anonymous No.17544025]

"Jünger, who poses this question, is correct in stressing that the system is not hierarchical, that every technical body is independent of its neighbor, and that there is no subordination among them. Economically and politically, however, the risk is very great. Each of the centralized bodies must be put into its proper position and relation with respect to the others. This is a function of the plan, and only the state is in a position to supervise the whole complex and to co-ordinate these organisms in order to obtain a higher degree of centralization. "

Someone made a thread about Jünger being referenced by Ellul. It's actually Ernst's brother that he was referencing in most cases.

A difference to note here is that Jünger's focus is on technology as being and law. The state is in many ways supplanted by technology in the modern period, and what we see in governmental types is often a form of technical organisation rather than state power. The state is essentially determined by the technological relation, a neutralising force which demands a strong politics or simple being. The state cannot be in opposition to technical organisation, nor have the power to control it, as it is part of the same form, it is a way of being specific to our era. This is precisely what allows it to maintain its liberated character, it is a totality, as in the trees of a forest which are given greater character where a great tree or mountain towers above them.

This is essential to the functioning of the society of nations. It effectively has more power than any traditional state, but also functions in a manner that suggests liberation and revolution, and as if all that happens is of nature. It is in this that we sense a great oppression while not being able to communicate what causes our discontent. Revolutionary organisations often lead to a worsening of destructive tendencies, and ossification, as they act blindly against the natural character of technical society without recognising that they are themselves part of it. This adds another stratum to technical order, and a deeper sense of impoverishment once the technical domination is felt. This is what we saw with the Soviet Union, the opposition to technology as material only creates a greater monstrosity. Technology is the most powerful source of profanation, yet its effects are of the sacred. Which is why critiques of technology always fail, they are luddism at the level of theoretical knowledge, and thus deepen the technological relation because of their misunderstanding.

[Anonymous No.17544045]

So what’s the conclusion? We sense great oppression in it but we’re fated to sink deeper and deeper into technological domination necessarily less we worsen destructive tendencies?

[Anonymous No.17544106]

https://direct.warosu.org/lit/thread/S17537050

As for their philosophies of technology, I think Ernst and Friedrich Georg are fundamentally the same. FG's works are pretty difficult to come by unfortunately, and hardly anything has ever been translated into English. Ernst has The Worker, On Pain, Total Mobilization, and multiple later works. I can't think of any off-hand that are specific to technology though, as they are often mystic in style. The commentary is generally scattered throughout a number of works, for instance, his commentary on Spengler spans three or more of his books. His thinking on technology is much like this, taken up in various thoughts, as in notes or aphorisms.

[Anonymous No.17544289]

>>17544045
Give me a bit. These Tocqueville and Jünger quotes on aqueducts will be helpful. I think they get to the heart of it.What
https://direct.warosu.org/lit/thread/S17401170#p17408455

[Anonymous No.17544369]

Where is the best place to start with Jünger to really get to the root of his thinking? I’m only familiar with Storm of Steel and some of his fiction but the more I learn about him, the more I realize just how much he really had to say.

[Anonymous No.17544404]

I know this is a little off-topic but what did Jünger think of modern militaries, belonging to the industrial and commercial type of culture, and the people who serve in them? Would he have thought that was something ignoble or desirable?

[Anonymous No.17545792]

Bump

[Anonymous No.17545853]

EJ stands mountains above everyone

[Anonymous No.17545938]

>>17544045
>>17544289
Quite difficult to answer, but modern technology is essentially formless. It is a transitional and destructive creation, a means towards a new way of being. And what is destructive cannot be destroyed. Nor can the law of being be lost until it is perfected or exiled from the memory and all signs of character. And it is impossible to destroy what is not understood, apart from a great work of chance - at best the destruction is increased. This was the tragedy of the luddites, an important lesson that has been ignored by leftist movements, and which may have been inherited by the right.

In this paradox of destruction and power, of the formless which only increases the violence of law, one may also see Nietzsche's fundamental error. Our age is not at all without spirit, the systematic world may in fact deepen the spirit for specific types. And to fight blindly against this is only to increase the enemy's strength. Where Nietzsche opposed the aesthetics of beauty in the philosophy of his peers he ignored that the aesthetics of the will are only a subset of beauty, of the cursed who can never escape the shadow of Mount Helicon. It is there that maimed beings are marked by gods as a limit, a reminder that the beautiful is only a means, a boundary within a territory where laws of escape do not hold. Their blood must not spread, and so they are turned to stone which will wear away into dust. At their death they become something higher than beauty, the fruitless search for spirit is given to those who will see an eternal memory. Beauty ex negativo. Goethe and Winckelmann understood this.

To fight with a hammer is a matter of desperation and survival, but in the master's hands the tool of tools may forge the highest creations. This is the myth of Hephaestus, in which he creates something higher than beauty, the Great Shield within which the elements form of the world creation and its order of time. All technology must be seen in this sense, it is something higher than art, we see it in the roads and aqueducts of Rome, the war machines of Archimedes, the armour of fallen and anonymous heroes. Without it no festivals would ever be possible. The art of the individual, of lost beauty, is of this fall from the natural and elemental order.

[Anonymous No.17545975]

>>17545938
We cannot say that modern technology is beautiful on the surface, there is little of the Persephonic quality we see in the Roman aqueducts. Rather, we can imagine that no reconciliation between Hades and Zeus ever came to fruition. The torture which goes into the creation of steels and all types of alloys is of this impossibly divided world, the world of the chasm. There is something in this even higher than the festival atmosphere: the monstrosities of steel and plastic are of a vision of the world being torn apart. This is the precise opposite picture of what is imagined with the "anthropocene". One image is of a man so impoverished that he dies in paradise not knowing the abundance which surrounds him; another that of a theology which defaces the humiliating creation of a God who had abandoned man, exiled him from the apocalypse. The most subtle torture exists at the boundaries of life and death, and the elemental man wants to see everything behind creation, the underworld from which all things arise. This is an opposite movement to the Roman myth of creation, but nonetheless equal in its power. One may think of the hero of our age as the only dead man of the Battle of Anghiari, wounded and torn to shreds as an Actaeon figure, one buried beneath the piles of horses who will rise from his death when the continents merge.

There is also the fall of Syracuse in this, the blindness of the festival and the victory atmosphere quickly turned to defeat. The end to the technological order will likely come about in this way, and there are signs it is already happening. We no longer see the Archimedean points, yet they are everywhere, and when they begin to take form one will come to know the convergence of the continents. The formulas will be forgotten but we will see their end as a great vision of colour and light.

[Anonymous No.17545989]

>>17545975
There is also the fall of Syracuse in this, the blindness of the festival and the victory atmosphere quickly turned to defeat. The end to the technological order will likely come about in this way, and there are signs it is already happening. We no longer see the Archimedean points, yet they are everywhere, and when they begin to take form one will come to know the convergence of the continents. The formulas will be forgotten but we will see their end as a great vision of colour and light.

All of this to say that technology will not end, but that its perfection will give way to a new form along with the metamorphosis of the world plan. And as the era comes to a close we will see the final destructiveness of this technology which has been built up and accumulated like the elements. At first the technicians will appear as blind as luddites before the destructive character which is greater than their technical will. There are no materialist or technical terms for it, one may only refer to it as elemental warfare, even though such terminology is easily corrupted today. The man of the next age will fall somewhere within this territory, becoming its myth. Where man is most deeply wounded he survives as the sounds of nature in Mozart's works.


"Arrows, pierce through me now,
Spearpoints, subdue me now,
Clubs, strike and break me now;
Lightnings, unmake me now!
All that is vain and void
Let it be all destroyed:
Shine, star, for evermore,
Love’s everlasting core! "

[Anonymous No.17546990]

Bump

[Anonymous No.17547140]

Anyone have a full version of this picture?

[Anonymous No.17547243]

>>17544045
And here's a chapter on technological perfection.
https://derarbeiternotes.blogspot.com/2021/01/friedrich-georg-junger-immaturity-of.html
The state of technological perfection is essentially the point at which technology disappears (as a metaphysical law) and work enters its next phase. This contradicts the popular thinking on automation but automation itself could be seen as the perfection/end of technology.

[Anonymous No.17547277]

>>17544369
Probably On Pain or Total Mobilization. The Worker and some of his later works are really the root to his thought, but are likely too difficult to start with.
The Interwar Articles are also interesting and perhaps easier to understand, although you have to be careful with misreading him. His later thought is a bit like Schmitt in the sense it is very mythic/esoteric in its meaning and style, this can also be a difficulty for some readers.

[Anonymous No.17547312]

>Friedrich Dessauer - Philosophie der Technik
why does /lit/ never include him in the technology threads?
>>17544025
>A difference to note here is that Jünger's focus is on technology as being and law. The state is in many ways supplanted by technology in the modern period,
law literally is part of technology (in Ellul's sense).
Are you memeing?
Technology is not jsut the machine. The machine is only what is allowing technology to become independantly autonomous (not redundant usage).
It is late here so maybe its also jsut my current reading comprehension.
>>17544106
>I can't think of any off-hand that are specific to technology though, as they are often mystic in style. The commentary is generally scattered throughout a number of works, for instance, his commentary on Spengler spans three or more of his books. His thinking on technology is much like this, taken up in various thoughts, as in notes or aphorisms.
why does he write like this? I have never read brother Jünger.

[Anonymous No.17547463]

>>17544404
There are some quotes from his Prognosis for the 21st century here:
>>/lit/thread/S17268778#p17273864
>>/lit/thread/S17285979

I don't think it's really a question of nobility or desire. The questions would more likely revolve around fate, survival, and dignity. He is quite critical of the technological state and military degeneration. At the same time there are certain shifts in the geopolitical and military situation where a sense of nobility has returned. Some of the moves by Putin could be considered masterful and historic, and perhaps could be read as the highest form of war as a simple chess game. My own feeling on it is that the situation even proves the greatness of Kierkegaard's ideal man over Nietzsche's.
In certain areas we have moved from simply preserving one's dignity to the possibility of a fight. And in others it may be said that one must fight simply to preserve dignity. This is quite a significant shift in the military order, and the informal nature of it is perhaps an even greater sign of the shift than any of the events themselves.

[Anonymous No.17547607]

>>17547312
Law in the sense of the nomos, not legislation or regulation.
I think he wrote in this way partly because of tradition, his background in ancient thought, and simply due to who he was. Mythic and early historical thinking are just superior ways of seeing the world, similar to how the people who surrounded Goethe were far better thinkers than any of the pure rationalists and empiricists even though they are nearly forgotten.It's
His concern was with figures and images rather than ideas. His writing methods are in keeping with that, and you could say it is like a socratic dialogue where the whole image is only revealed piece by piece, as if by assembling lattice work.

[Anonymous No.17547617]

>>17547312
>Friedrich Dessauer
What are his ideas? Post a quote if you can.

[Anonymous No.17548902]

B for the only effortposting on the catalog

[Anonymous No.17549918]

B

[Anonymous No.17550495]

Crazy how you can tell just by how someone looks if they are full of shit or not

[Anonymous No.17551396]

B

[Anonymous No.17551441]

>>17550495
That's how I know Marx is trash desu. He has a tiny brainlet nose despite being a Jew

[Anonymous No.17552382]

>>17547617
ill see if i can find some later

[Anonymous No.17552916]

>>17544025
Did you ever buy 'war as an inner experience' and 'fire and blood' from Amazon whilst they were both available?

[Anonymous No.17552945]

>>17544025
I do not wish to derail the thread, but from your comments/notes in the OP, I'd be interested to hear your views on the thoughts expressed in this short video.
Thanks

https://youtu.be/xLgHuOskHAY

[Anonymous No.17553409]

>>17552916
No, I had some other things I needed to get. Was going to get it next month.
What happened? Small print or something?

[Anonymous No.17553429]

>>17552945
Do you know the full speech for this? I'll watch it in a bit.

[Anonymous No.17554027]

>>17553409
I dunno. One is still for sale but one is 'temporarily unavailable'.
I think it is war as an inner experience that is still available, which seems to be the more valuable of the two

[Anonymous No.17554037]

>>17553429
No, I know the second part is from his speech on TS Elliot. Not sure about the first unfortunately. Sorry
I have found to be one of the best orators I have ever listened to, imo

[Anonymous No.17554046]

>>17552945
What in particular were you thinking of in the OP? And do you know if there is a text of this? I might download the captions if not.

[Anonymous No.17554079]

>>17554027
I've read that one but will likely order it anyway. Wouldn't have know if you didn't mention it because I only searched fire and blood.

[Anonymous No.17554115]

>>17554046
I'm not sure, I can't remember what part of the OP I thought it was relatable to, but I'll read through it and see.
I know on the counter currents website they often have transcripts of his speeches, that's all I can help with.

>>17554079
Where did you read it originally? I'm reading through war as inner experience now and it's excellent