> Maybe it would be more correct to > say that EJ is a bourgeois anti- > modernist and not use the left-right > scale. Sure, Juenger came from a bourgeois background and after retirement from the Reichswehr was able to earn enough to live comfortable but I feel the label "bourgeois anti-modernist" isn't quite right. What about "Der Arbeiter"? That would seem to be a modernist anti-bourgeois piece to me - as would much of the 20s stuff. Even with the later work - I think one would do EJ an injustice to label him bourgeois. Even if notions of the "Anarch" can be used to evade what one might broadly label ethical responsibilty - and which would thus suit those in an adequately leisured/well-off position (bourgeois) not prepared to dirty their hands changing the world one way or the other - the Anarch's non-committal to the world and refusal of instrumental intervention in the world is radically un-bourgeois. What remains exciting about Juenger's work (even coming up towards the end of a D.Phil ;-) is its sense of non-conformity. Even if industry and elements of the literary establishment feted him, his work on drugs, on decentered perspectives and his critique of "Titanism" surely makes him as uncomfortable to them as his nationalist background makes him uncomfortable to those of a left-liberal persuasion. And in that sense, I contend he is beyond the bourgeois.... JK ============================================================================== John King St. John's College GB - Oxford OX1 3JP ==============================================================================
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