Tragic death - final!

["Thomas Friese" <tfriese@intergate.bc.ca>]

An interesting exchange - many good points. Let's move back to Die Schere.
Thomas

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-ernst-juenger-l@maillist.ox.ac.uk
[mailto:owner-ernst-juenger-l@maillist.ox.ac.uk]On Behalf Of Gary Kern
Sent: February 20, 1999 12:03 PM
To: ernst-juenger-l@maillist.ox.ac.uk
Subject: [ejlist] Re: Tragic death (final argument)


Thomas Friese wrote:
>
> TF:
> Can we go to the basics here: what exactly has to be "done" in a life?
What
> is the primary objective of a life, by which we are here judging whether
it
> is tragic or not? This is of primary importance, since two of us may judge
> the same life as tragic and fulfilled based on two different parameters.
>
> To my mind, it is personal development that is fundamental; the
development
> of culture, while derived from many individual developments, is secondary.
>
> Personal development is incremental self-knowledge, the goal of the
anarch's
> primary command, "Know thyself". The very first chapter of Eumeswil is
> devoted to this first priority. "To make the vague more precise, to define
> the indefinite more and more sharply: that is the task of every
development,
> every temporal exertion." By this view, we are born for our own gradual
> self-revelation through prescribed lessons within Time. We are also born
to
> make a certain contribution to the external world. But while the world may
> judge the success of our lives on the basis of the influence we have
exerted
> in some form on society, the life's true success is defined by how much
> self-knowledge has been extracted from the lessons which we "enrolled" in.
>
> Junger makes a clear statement of the correct order of the priorities in
> this counterexample to an anarch: "Here I stumbled on the possibility of
an
> error in the wrong direction.... A certain Professor Kiekebusch wrote:'To
> live as a serving link in the whole is both a duty and a reward. The
supreme
> goal of every individual's labor and striving is the good of the
> collective.'" Eumeswil
>
> The two criteria of success are certainly correlated since it is from my
> striving in time that I contribute and, hopefully, that I learn. However,
> IMHO, the two are fundamentally distinguished by their relation to fate
and
> self-determination. My role in the world, whether this is as president,
> artist, farmer, soldier or whore is more or less in the hands of the
Fates -
> like it or not, I will not die before the fulfillment of these objectives
> (which are not strictly my concern but the world's). Conversely, what I
> learn depends entirely upon me - the individual's enlightenment has
nothing
> predestined about it, it is self-made, in the sense of Buddha and Jesus,
not
> the modern "self-made man". If we find it problematic to judge completion
of
> the external objectives of a life such as Mozart's, we cannot even pretend
> to judge the other more important purpose.
>
> Understanding and managing the relation between the two duties -
optimizing
> personal benefit while satisfying an inescapable worldly destiny - is the
> true challenge for the anarch. Junger's personal lessons, well-learned in
a
> century of intense experience, become his contributions to society. I
> believe that in esoteric literature they say that individual progress
cannot
> occur without simultaneous transference to the community.
>
> A tragic life in the original and true sense would be rich in personal
> pedagogical value derived from an awful worldly destiny; a modern
> interpretation of 'tragic' lies in precisely the absence of the redeeming
> lesson amidst the horrors of the worldly destiny. What can we, as
> individuals, learn from this quite unpleasant period of history we have
> chosen as our destiny. In my view, we chose our present manifestations in
> time - each and every one of us ... but why, why THIS exactly?
>
> For what it's worth ...
> Thomas
******************************
All true and well said, but conceived entirely within Jüngerian
parameters.  I am appealing to your direct experience of the world.
Surely the millions of children who die each year--we catch glimpses of
them on television--cannot be done in either sense:  the inner
(achieving spiritual clarity) or the outer (making a social
contribution).  A person who dies at age 13 has attained no degree of
inner clarity, even if a child prodigy.  A person who dies in his or her
twenties or thirties is not mature.  A creative artist who dies in his
forties is not done.  This you should know with every fibre of your
body, before you read Jünger.  What we have read in DIE SCHERE wants to
overturn all this and place a grid on your experience.

Surely you (or others on the list) have had a friend of your own age who
died, while you went on living.  You know from your inner experience
that in those years you have made mistakes but learned, matured to some
degree, perhaps made a contribution too.  Why then think of that friend,
who died 10-20 years ago, that he was done while you were not; that he
had achieved all he could (or "was allotted to") achieve, while you had
10-20 years to profit from the experience of living?  You know from your
own experience that you cannot think that, you would feel guilty to
think that.  He died, you lived, and your task is to remember him and
mourn his loss--not just to you and the world, but to himself.  In your
heart you cannot say that he was done, requiescat in pace.

EJ says his life was complete, he did not die before his work was done.
But you know perfectly well that the summary made of your friend's life
was imposed upon you by the fact of his termination:  it was forced upon
you, just as death was forced upon him (even if he took his own life),
and it is legitimate, for one must deal with reality.  Here, post
factum, EJ has something to say.  But it is wrong, illegitimate and I
think immoral to take that imposed summation and stick it a priori in
front of that death, so as to say that "my friend's task was done (both
inner and outer), then he died, so all is well."  You know that your
friend would have matured in some way, probably with unpredictable
turns, the same as did you.

In my previous remarks I concentrated on great composers, since their
early deaths seemed most illustrative of my argument.  But I did not
mean to say that a person's life is judged solely by his external
contribution to society. Many composers and artists make little or no
contribution to their time, since they are not "discovered" until after
they die.  With the exception of one work ("Sensemaya"), Silvestre
Revueltas was virtually unknown outside of a small circle of Mexican
musicians when he died on his bicycle at age 40.  His music is only now,
50 years later, receiving wide attention by virtue of CD recordings. In
it we can hear what great things he was doing, and we know that he had
many plans for more, left unfinished, so that both internally and
externally he was definitely not done, like my imagined lexicographer
who died on the letter G.  His death was a tragedy, like statistic
1,784,356 in Africa, aged 2, 1996.  We can rate these tragedies, but
that is another matter.  What we cannot do is believe that his death and
the African child's death were not tragedies, but proper culminations, a
beautiful expression of God's will and hidden plan--at least we cannot
believe this without heightened mental gymnastics and a dumming down of
our senses.

EJ tried to solve one of life's most painful problems:  the tragic death
of another, and what to think about our own forthcoming event.  His
attempt in a sense is noble; there is passion in it.  But the
consequences are ignoble and dispassionate:  sophistry, quietism,
acceptance of evil.

I've made my best arguments and will leave it at that.

GK