John King wrote:
>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....
In Eumeswil Juenger, as you know, speaks at length about the "Anarch". I
believe he gives as an example the little bourgois of 19th-century French
romans (Maupassant), who stays on his spot and says to everything, like
Stirner: Das ist nicht meine Sache, ça m'est égal, or something like that.
This bourgois has had hard times in this century, but has survived by
becoming very flexible.
As to 'the ethical': The anarch is not amoral. He respects the domain of
morality, which in essence is very simple, but does not involve himself in
actions because of vieuws and theories. Somewhere Juenger says with regard
to Hitler (the economic aspect of the extinction), that one who has become
amoral in the end becomes illogical. So morality is not simply something to
throw overboard, even in a big passage. The anarch must keep his integrity.
In the same time he may be convinced that change is ephemeral, even in the
case of killing Hitler. This one too is "nach seinem Gesetz angetreten" That
is something other - another level, I would say - than saying: "It would
have been better if he was shot, that would have saved a lot of lives, among
them that of my son." (Juenger).
René
drs. R.B.M. de Bakker
Universiteitsbibliotheek Amsterdam
Catalogisering Faculteiten
tel. 020-5252368
Markup © John King, 2008. Web archive generated Tue, 21st August 2007.