Author Topic: Eumeswil  (Read 1732 times)

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Silenus

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Eumeswil
« on: March 06, 2021, 06:56:39 pm »

Eumeswil by Ernst Junger

"The anarch, recognising no government, but not indulging in paradisal dreams as the anarchist does, is, for that very reason, a neutral observer. The historian in him, like an arbiter, sees men and powers marching into the arena. Time gnaws on every regime, and even faster on the 'good' ones."

Quote from:  Fragments from a review by Charles Haywood
Ernst Jünger’s Eumeswil, one of the famous German’s last works, published when he was eighty-two years old, is often regarded as an exposition of libertarian thought. This is understandable, but completely wrong. Such a reading attempts to shoehorn concepts in which Jünger had little interest, or toward which he was actively hostile, into an exploration of unrelated themes. Moreover, it ignores that in this book, though somewhat masked, Jünger has more contempt for so-called liberal democracy than dislike for what some call tyranny. Thus, this book is not a call to rework society, or individual thought, along libertarian lines. It is instead a call for human excellence, and a criticism of the modern West for failure to achieve it, or to even try.

One cannot really understand Eumeswil without reading, preferably first reading, Jünger’s earlier The Forest Passage, which was published in 1951, twenty-six years before Eumeswil. On the surface, they are very different—this book is cast as dystopian science fiction, and The Forest Passage is a work of philosophical exposition. But Jünger himself explicitly ties the two books together, linking the earlier book’s concept of the “forest rebel” with this book’s concept of the “anarch.” In both books, the author’s focus on freedom, specific to each individual, is easily misinterpreted, because what freedom means to most people today is not what Jünger means by the term. Jünger means an internal, spiritual freedom, an elitist freedom, not the freedom of license and consequent ennui. This confusion drives all the misunderstandings of Eumeswil.

[...]

Not much actually happens, plot-wise, in Eumeswil. Most of the book consists of the private musings of the protagonist, Martin Venator. He lives in the city-state of Eumeswil, somewhere in today’s Morocco, after an unspecified global apocalypse some time before. (The name comes from Eumenes, the most clever of the Diadochi, the “successors” of Alexander, who fought over and divided his empire. The theme of such decline is everywhere in this book, starting with the city name itself.) Eumeswil is ruled by a man referred to only as the Condor, a soldier who overthrew the “tribunes,” the leading men of a broad oligarchic and quasi-democratic order, the “republic,” whose adherents viewed, and still view, themselves as beneficent and liberal, in contrast to the Condor, whom they naturally loathe.

Venator, a young man, has two jobs. By day he is a historian, or rather some type of graduate student; by night he tends bar in the Condor’s palace, at the Condor’s private bar. This permits him to observe the Condor and his aides, as they interact and discuss both high and low events.

[...]

Venator respects the Condor; he has nothing but a distant contempt for the tribunes, even though they seemed to offer more political freedom. They “had stylized the word ‘human’ into a sublime concept.” But their lofty ideals “all cost money, which, however, they collected from concrete and not ideal human beings.” The tribunes, moreover, were addicted to regulation, such as forbidding private collection of salt so as to maintain their tax revenue, “patrolling by customs inspectors, who ambushed the poor.” They even required the salt sold in government stores to have “mixed in additives that their chemists praised as useful, even though they were injurious. The fact that men with such minds consider themselves thinkers is forgivable; but they also claim to be benefactors.” Worst of all, the tribunes offered, if not utopias, abstract visions. “ ‘There is no progress,’ I often hear my [father] say; he seems to regard this as a misfortune. He also says, ‘Standing still means going backward.’ The little people, in contrast, are satisfied if everyday life remains constant; they prefer to see their chimneys smoking, not their houses.” The type of progress that Venator’s father looks for, in other words, is not progress at all, but false forward movement paid for by others.

Much of the book is taken up with disjointed thoughts, ranging from discussions of how the Condor’s palace, or citadel, the Casbah, is situated a few miles outside the city (complete with references to Machiavelli on such placements), to talk of Venator’s girlfriend, to lengthy expositions of the thought of Venator’s various teachers. To make sense of Eumeswil, you have to pay close attention, pick out, and weave together what Venator says. The only steady and obvious thread is that he clearly and repeatedly identifies himself as an “anarch”; we can presume, I think, that Venator is here a stand-in for Jünger himself. “Such is the role of the anarch, who remains free of all commitments yet can turn in any direction.” The anarch is emphatically not an anarchist. The anarchist is focused on overthrowing the existing order, which inevitably leads to its replacement by something not to the anarchist’s taste. The anarch’s goal is, on the contrary, to remain aloof from all political systems. He obeys the law of the state, just as he obeys, automatically, the laws of nature. His internal freedom is what matters.

This concept, of internal freedom, is as far as most mention of Eumeswil ever gets. Venator says, “I am an anarch in space, a metahistorian in time. Hence I am committed to neither the political present nor tradition; I am blank and also open and potent in any direction.” He does not oppose the rules of the society in which he lives. “One must know the rules, whether one is moving in a tyranny, a demos, or a bordello. This holds, above all, for the anarch—it is the second commandment, next to the first: ‘Know thyself.’ ” Usually, this conception gets a nod as a type of pure, Zen-like freedom: the sovereign individual, keeping himself internally liberated, but not choosing to fight for formal freedom in the temporal realm. In other words, as with The Forest Passage, a common present-day interpretation of Jünger’s politics is as libertarian—the freedom to do as one chooses, which is what we would have if everyone could take the actions that germinate in an anarch’s head. This is completely wrong. Jünger is instead pushing an elite freedom, the freedom to avoid the mediocrity and oppression of the collective, not the freedom to do as one pleases. The anarch can move in any direction, true, but to what end?

It is the petty and controlling, fake benefactory and semi-utopian, nature of the tribunes to which Venator objects, rather than to their laws as such. The key is that he rejects the tearing down of authority. “Although an anarch, I am not anti-authoritarian. Quite the opposite: I need authority, although I do not believe in it.” Those would who have unbridled freedom are parasitical and destructive. “Why do people who leave nothing unchallenged still make demands of their own? They live off the fact that gods, fathers, and poets used to exist. . . . In the animal kingdom, there are parasites that clandestinely hollow out a caterpillar. Eventually, a mere wasp emerges instead of a butterfly. And that is what those people do with their heritage, and with language in particular.” That’s what Jünger really thinks of libertarians, and it’s not pretty. And for the same reasons, Jünger pretty obviously had no use for what liberal democracy has become, with its closely related destructive rush to atomized freedom and total emancipation.

[...]

Jünger makes it explicit that the anarch is the same as the forest rebel—or at least one conception of the forest rebel. In Eumeswil, however, Jünger seems less enamored of actual action by the forest rebel than in The Forest Passage. He denigrates partisan bands and other commitments to political change (such as anarchism), as “stuffy air, unclear ideas, lethal energy, which ultimately put abdicated monarchs and retired generals back in the saddle—and then they show their gratitude by liquidating those selfsame partisans.” Joining the partisans makes one dependent on them; the anarch’s goal is to avoid dependence, even while he serves someone, whether the Condor or someone else. “The difference is that the forest [rebel] has been expelled from society, while the anarch has expelled society from himself.” Really, though, that’s a distinction without a difference, because the result is the same. Perhaps, I think, what Jünger is saying is that under a totalitarian tyranny, that of the forest rebel, action may make more sense (something covered in The Forest Passage in some detail), but under the modern tyranny of liberal democracy, action is futile, because it is not the government that is the problem, but the society. If you extend Jünger’s line of thought, the Condor points toward a possible solution to the flaws of liberal democracy, not something against which rebellion is either necessary or desirable.

Full review here: https://theworthyhouse.com/2019/01/21/book-review-eumeswil-ernst-junger/

PDF of quotes relating to the concept of the Anarch here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_ScNs9yPyTkb0w5TDJJeHRrd1U/edit

As an aside, one of my favorite moments in the book is when the protagonist mockingly calls Nietzsche "Old Gunpowderhead."   ;)
« Last Edit: March 06, 2021, 07:16:59 pm by Silenus »

"And the strict master Death bids them dance."

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Nation of One

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Re: Eumeswil
« Reply #1 on: March 06, 2021, 08:33:53 pm »
Thanks Silenus.  I will take a look at the quotes and possibly be enticed to read this.  I have been trying to grab the bull by the horns, but it is one step up and two steps back.

Things They Will Never Tell YouArthur Schopenhauer has been the most radical and defiant of all troublemakers.

Gorticide @ Nothing that is so, is so DOT edu

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Silenus

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Re: Eumeswil
« Reply #2 on: March 07, 2021, 08:33:10 am »
You're welcome. I have not viewed this board in some time, but feel free to message me privately if there's anything relatable you'd like to get "off your chest."

Raul, Holden and Ibra, I hope you three are doing as well as you can, too.

"And the strict master Death bids them dance."

Nation of One

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Re: Eumeswil
« Reply #3 on: March 07, 2021, 05:33:57 pm »
Silenus,

These quotes related to the concept of Anarch you pointed us toward are great for reading aloud --- and, at least, speaking for myself, required I stop every now and then to look up a definition/etymology of certain words, like when reading Cioran.  That gives me a "scholarly" feeling, something I may have been denying myself as of late.

Maybe I am breaking some spell or on the verge of coming up out of a slump.

Thanks again for the heads-up.
Things They Will Never Tell YouArthur Schopenhauer has been the most radical and defiant of all troublemakers.

Gorticide @ Nothing that is so, is so DOT edu

~ Tabak und Kaffee Süchtigen ~

Holden

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Re: Eumeswil
« Reply #4 on: March 11, 2021, 04:54:13 am »
I am beginning to see why you find individual anarchism interesting,Mr.Silenus.

La Tristesse Durera Toujours                                  (The Sadness Lasts Forever ...)
-van Gogh.

Nation of One

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Re: Eumeswil
« Reply #5 on: February 15, 2022, 10:50:37 pm »
There is a blogspot dedicated to Ernst Juenger. 

Quote
We aspire to an objective, practical understanding of Ernst Jünger's life and works, and encourage other seekers of freedom and self-realisation to join us. Jünger's insights can function as a valuable roadmap to freedom and meaning for individuals in today's social and spiritual landscape. Crucial is his figure of the autonomous and inwardly-free anarch (in contrast to the impotent and self-destructive anarchist) as presented in his important novel EUMESWIL.

See The Essential Anarch (Quotes on the anarch from Ernst Jünger's Eumeswil)

"In the Trenches of History: the author Ernst Jünger" - 2019 documentary with English subtitles!

(I think Holden would be especially inspired to learn that Ernst Junger had been an avid reader, up all night reading in his youth, which would have a negative imact on his "school performance."  Nothing that is so, is so.   Maybe great thinkers challenge the entire meritocracy which rewards conformity in thought and behavior.)

While researching the Eernst Juenger bibliography, I followed a link about his book, The Forest Passage.  On Library Genesis, it is the only one translated to English.

Ernst Jünger's The Forest Passage explores the possibility of resistance: how the independent thinker can withstand and oppose the power of the omnipresent state. No matter how extensive the technologies of surveillance become, the forest can shelter the rebel, and the rebel can strike back against tyranny. Jünger's manifesto is a defense of freedom against the pressure to conform to political manipulation and artificial consensus. A response to the European experience under Nazism, Fascism, and Communism, The Forest Passage has lessons equally relevant for today, wherever an imposed uniformity threatens to stifle liberty.

Praise for The Forest Passage

"In a strikingly poetic political statement written soon after the Second World War, Ernst Jünger rejects the two reigning ideologies, democracy and communism, in favor of an individualistic stance anticipating what we now call libertarianism. The ideal that Jünger projects for us is a metaphorical 'passage through the forest' in which we remain constantly put to the test, with the result that we emerge self-sufficient, rebellious, heroic."
—Herbert Lindenberger, Stanford University

"The Forest Rebel says no to power, outwardly unobtrusive but inwardly rebellious and martial, spiritually, politically, and intellectually, an anarch as opposed to an anarchist. Many of the ideas here reflect Germany's geopolitical situation in the Cold War, powerless against the occupiers of East and West. But the treatise transcends the context in which it was born and manifests Jünger's sharp analysis of trends and problems that are as relevant today as ever. Particularly in the age of the mass plebiscite called the internet and as the marriage of the state and technology has given government unprecedented power over its citizens, a book about how to resist modern forms of tyranny is timely and much needed."
—Elliot Neaman, University of San Francisco

"This fascinating work seeks out a place of inner subjective freedom where the besieged citizen of the modern world may withhold consent and refuse participation in the hellish tyranny of administrative totalitarianism. Jünger invites his reader to become a passenger in this forest of thoughtful reflection beyond the reach of political coercion and conformism."
—Robert Harrison, Stanford University

ISBN 978-0-914386-49-0
Pub. Date: December 1, 2013
« Last Edit: February 15, 2022, 11:14:00 pm by Kaspar Hauser »
Things They Will Never Tell YouArthur Schopenhauer has been the most radical and defiant of all troublemakers.

Gorticide @ Nothing that is so, is so DOT edu

~ Tabak und Kaffee Süchtigen ~