Written in 1932, just before the fall of the Weimar Republic and on the eve of the Nazi accession to power, Ernst Jünger’s The Worker: Dominion and Form articulates a trenchant critique of bourgeois liberalism and seeks to identify the form characteristic of the modern age. Jünger’s analyses, written in critical dialogue with Marx, are inspired by a profound intuition of the movement of history and an insightful interpretation of Nietzsche’s philosophy. -/- Martin Heidegger considered Jünger “the only genuine (...) follower of Nietzsche,” singularly providing “an interpretation which took shape in the domain of that metaphysics which already determines our epoch, even against our knowledge; this metaphysics is Nietzsche's doctrine of the ‘will to power.’” In The Worker, Jünger examines some of the defining questions of that epoch: the nature of individuality, society, and the state; morality, justice, and law; and the relationships between freedom and power and between technology and nature. -/- This work, appearing in its entirety in English translation for the first time, is an important contribution to debates on work, technology, and politics by one of the most controversial German intellectuals of the twentieth century. Not merely of historical interest, The Worker carries a vital message for contemporary debates about world economy, political stability, and equality in our own age, one marked by unsettling parallels to the 1930s. (shrink)

A complete English translation of the correspondence between the philosopher Martin Heidegger and the novelist and essayist Ernst Jünger, together with a translation of Jünger’s essay Across the Line.

Die Serie "Meisterwerke der Literatur" beinhaltet die Klassiker der deutschen und weltweiten Literatur in einer einzigartigen Sammlung für Ihren eBook Reader. Lesen Sie die besten Werke großer Schriftsteller,Poeten, Autoren und Philosophen auf Ihrem Reader. Dieses Werk bietet zusätzlich * Eine Biografie/Bibliografie des Autors. Vorländer Werk gehört auch heute noch zu den Referenzbüchern. Inhalt: Karl Vorländer – Biografie und Bibliografie Geschichte der Philosophie Vorwort zur 1. Auflage. Aus dem Vorwort zur 2. Auflage. Vorwort zur 3. Auflage. Zur fünften Auflage. Einleitung. 1. (...) Philosophie. Ihr Name und Begriff. 2. Die Geschichte der Philosophie. Ihre Methode, Quellen und Hilfsmittel. Einteilung des Stoffes. 3. Verhältnis der orientalischen Völker zur Philosophie. 4. Selbständigkeit der griechischen Philosophie. Quellen und Hilfsmittel zu ihrer Geschichte. Die Philosophie des Altertums Erste Periode. Vorsokratische Philosophie. Kapitel I. Anfänge der Reflexion über den Kosmos. Kapitel II. Anfänge der Reflexion über das Denken vom Kosmos. Sein und Werden (die Eleaten und Heraklit). Kapitel III. Die jüngeren Naturphilosophen: Empedokles, Anaxagoras u. a. Kapitel IV. Zweite Periode. Sokrates und die Sophisten. Kapitel V. Die sophistische Aufklärung. Kapitel VI. Sokrates. Kapitel VII. Die sokratischen Schulen. Dritte Periode. Die klassische Philosophie der Griechen: Plato und Aristoteles. Kapitel VIII. Plato. Kapitel IX. Aristoteles. Vierte Periode. Die hellenistisch-römische Philosophie. A. Hellenistische Periode. Kapitel X. Die Stoiker. Kapitel XI. Die Epikureer. Kapitel XII. Die Skeptiker. B. Die Philosophie auf dem Boden des römischen Weltreichs. Kapitel XIII. Die Philosophie bei den Römern. Kapitel XIV. Vorläufer des Neuplatonismus. Kapitel XV. Die Neuplatoniker. Die Philosophie des Mittelalters. Erster Abschnitt. Die Philosophie der Kirchenväter (Patristik). Kapitel I. Ältere Patristik. Kapitel II. Jüngere Patristik Zweiter Abschnitt. Die Scholastik. Kapitel III. Die Anfänge der Scholastik. Kapitel IV. Die Glanzzeit der Scholastik. Kapitel V. Ausgang der Scholastik. Zunehmender Zwiespalt zwischen Glauben und Wissen. Blüte der deutschen Mystik. Die Philosophie der Neuzeit Übergangsperiode. Kapitel I. Die Philosophie der Renaissance. Kapitel II. Die Begründung der modernen Naturwissenschaft. Erste Periode. Die Zeit der grossen Systeme. Kapitel I. Descartes (1596-1650). Kapitel II. Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679). Kapitel III. Spinoza (1632-1677). Kapitel IV. Leibniz (1646-1716). Zweite Periode. Die Philosophie der Aufklärung. A. England und Schottland. Kapitel V. Locke (1632-1704). Kapitel VI. Weitere Entwicklung der Aufklärungsphilosophie in England. B. In Frankreich. Kapitel VII. Die französische Aufklärungsphilosophie von Bayle bis Rousseau. C. In Deutschland. Kapitel VIII. Die deutsche Aufklärungsphilosophie. Dritte Periode.Die Neubegründung der Philosophie durch Immanuel Kant Kapitel IX. Einleitung. Kapitel X. Kants Neubegründung der Wissenschaft. Kapitel XI. Die regulativen Prinzipien der Erfahrung oder die Ideen. Kapitel XII. Kants Neubegründung der Ethik. Kapitel XIII. Die Begründung der Ästhetik. Vierte Periode. Die Systeme der nachkantischen Philosophie von Fichte bis Schopenhauer. Kapitel XIV. Einleitung: Von Kant zu Fichte. Kapitel XV. Fichte. Kapitel XVI. Schelling. Kapitel XVII. Hegel. Kapitel XVIII. Kritische Nebenströmungen. Schleiermacher, Herbart, Beneke. Kapitel XIX. Schopenhauer. Fünfte Periode. Die Philosophie der Gegenwart. Kapitel XX. Der Positivismus. Kapitel XXI. Materialismus und Spiritualismus. Kapitel XXII. Die moderne Entwicklungsphilosophie: Darwin, Spencer. Kapitel XXIII. Idealistische Systembildungen auf naturwissenschaftlicher Grundlage. Kapitel XXIV. Die Erneuerung des Kritizismus. Kapitel XXV. Sozialismus und Individualismus. Kapitel XXVI. Sonstige philosophische Erscheinungen der Gegenwart. Zeittafel zur Geschichte der neueren Philosophie. Fußnoten. (shrink)

My hypoltheses concerning the United States led War on Terrorism are derived from the German novelist, critic and social theorist Ernst J¸nger’s outstanding 1930 essay on ‘Total Mobilization’. Accordingly, this article explores J¸nger’s ‘Total Mobilization’ and what I label the ‘totally mobilized body’ as the philosophical underpinning of the War on Terrorism from the perspective of my own conceptions of ‘ hypermodern total mobilization’, ‘globalitarian rule’ and the ‘neoconservative body’. From this post-J¸ngerian or hypermodern viewpoint, the examination of the (...) War on Terrorism as offered by social theorists such as Jean Baudrillard and Zygmunt Bauman, Gilles Deleuze, Douglas Kellner and Paul Virilio is analytically evaluated and developed. For their research on the ‘spirit of terrorism’ and the new ‘planetary frontier-land’, control societies, the momentous events of September 11, 2001, and ‘globalitarianism’ can help us to understand the complexities and multiplicities of the neoconservative body. The article concludes by probing the distinction between Jünger’s idea of modern total mobilization and my own hypermodern notions of ‘egalitarian rule’ and the ‘neoegalitarian body’. (shrink)

This book examines the work of Ernst Jünger and its effect on the development of Martin Heidegger’s influential philosophy of technology. Vincent Blok offers a unique treatment of Jünger’s philosophy and his conception of the age of technology, in which both world and man appear in terms of their functionality and efficiency. The primary objective of Jünger’s novels and essays is to make the transition from the totally mobilized world of the 20 th century toward a world in which (...) a new type of man represents the gestalt of the worker and is responsive to this new age. Blok proceeds to demonstrate Jünger’s influence on Heidegger’s analysis of the technological age in his later work, as well as Heidegger’s conceptions of will, work and gestalt at the beginning of the 1930s. At the same time, Blok evaluates Heidegger’s criticism of Jünger and provides a novel interpretation of the Jünger-Heidegger connection: that Jünger’s work in fact testifies to a transformation of our relationship to language and conceptualizes the future in terms of the Anthropocene. This book, which arrives alongside several new English-language translations of Jünger’s work, will interest scholars of 20 th -century continental philosophy, Heidegger, and the history of philosophy of technology. (shrink)

As a singular witness and actor of the tumultuous 20th century, Ernst Jünger remains a controversial and enigmatic figure known above all for his vivid autobiographical accounts of experience in the trenches of the First World War. This article will argue that throughout his entire oeuvre, from personal diaries to novels and essays, he never ceased to grapple with what he viewed as the central question of the age, namely that of the problem of nihilism and the means to (...) overcome it. Inherited from Nietzsche’s diagnosis of Western civilization in the late 19th century, to which he added an acute observation of the particular role of technology within it, Jünger would employ this lens to make sense of the seemingly absurd industrial slaughter of modern war and herald the advent of a new voluntarist and bellicist order that was to imminently sweep away timorous and decadent bourgeois societies obsessed with security and self-preservation. Jünger would ultimately see his expectations dashed, including by the forms of rule that National Socialism would take, and eventually retreated into a reclusive quietism. Yet he never abandoned his central problematique of nihilism, developing it further in exchanges with Martin Heidegger after the Second World War. And for all the ways in which he may have erred, his life-long struggle with meaning in the age of technique and its implications for war and security continues to make Jünger a valuable interlocutor of the present. (shrink)

Dieser Beitrag hat zum Ziel, in einem Rückblick auf Ernst Jüngers theoretisches Hauptwerk Der Arbeiter. Herrschaft und Gestalt aus dem Jahre 1932 Stärken und Schwächen zu unterscheiden. Ausgehend von einer Rekapitulation seines Gedankenganges wird insbesondere die unzureichende Selbstreflexion der Autorinstanz von Jüngers Essay im Zusammenhang mit dessen unzureichender Reflexion auf sein Verhältnis zur geschichtsmetaphysischen Tradition als Schwäche herausgestellt. Schließlich aber wird auch eine inhaltliche Stärke aufgewiesen, die gerade zu Beginn des 21. Jahrhunderts und bei allen Vorbehalten die Lektüre von (...) Jüngers Werk zu einer lohnenden Zumutung macht – nämlich seine diagnostische Aktualität im Zeitalter des „Krieges gegen den internationalen Terrorismus“. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to distinguish between weak and strong points of Ernst Jünger’s main theoretical work Der Arbeiter. Herrschaft und Gestalt . Starting from recapitulation of his thought, as a weakness appears the insufficient selfreflection of author’s instance in Jünger’s essay together with the insufficient selfreflection regarding his relation towards the historicalmetaphysical tradition. In conclusion, a substantive strength is shown which turns reading of Jünger’s work, right at the dawn of the 21st century and with all (...) due reservations, in a worthwhile suggestion – namely, its diagnostic relevance in the era of “wars against international terrorism”. (shrink)

Johann Georg Hamann, filozof z Królewca, filolog oraz teolog był nazywany przez Goethego „najuczeńszą głową swojego czasu”. Twierdził, że właśnie od niego „najwięcej się nauczył”. Dlatego też zbierał i czytał jego pisma. To samo można powiedzieć o stosunku Ernsta Jüngera do „maga Północy”. Usłyszał o nim przypadkowo w roku 1924 od lipskiego docenta filozofii Hugo Fischera i odtąd był Hamannem zafascynowany. Często powoływał się na niego w węzłowych miejscach twórczości, jak np. w postaci motta z Hamanna w obu wersjach swojej (...) pierwszej pracy Das abenteuerliche Herz. Także dzięki Hamannowi powziął przekonanie, że „wyrazistość jest słusznym podziałem między światłem i cieniem”, jak i to, że najważniejsze fenomeny nie są zjawiskami przyczynowo uszeregowanymi, możliwymi do opanowania przez człowieka, lecz zjawiskami podpowierzchniowo powiązanymi ze sobą. Można je poprzez analogię opisać w zbliżony sposób. Jünger stanął tutaj w jednym szeregu z Hamannem i Goethem. Pod koniec swoich opublikowanych dzienników nazwał swoją znajomość z magiem Północy „nieuniknionym” i zaliczył go do „budzicieli”, którzy uformowali jego charakter. (shrink)

Volume 51, Issue 1, January 2020, Page 91-93.

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

The article provides a comparison of two intellectual accounts of experiences in the First World War—From the Letters of an Artillery Ensign by the Russian philosopher and writer Fjodor Stepun and The Storm of Steel by the German essayist Ernst Jünger. The aim of this article is to reveal similarities and differences between the “optics” of Jünger and Stepun who are reporting one and the same event but deal with two different images of the Great War.

L’objectif de cet article est de distinguer les points forts et les points faibles du principal ouvrage théorique d’Ernst Jünger, Der Arbeiter. Herrschaft und Gestalt . Partant de la récapitulation de sa pensée, apparaît comme faiblesse une autoréflexion insuffisante de l’instance d’auteur dans l’essai de Jünger tout comme une autoréflexion insuffisante concernant son rapport à la tradition historicométaphysique. En conclusion, un point fort en ce qui concerne le contenu est relevé, ce qui fait de la lecture de l’ouvrage de (...) Jünger, tout juste à l’aube du XXIème siècle et en dépit de toutes les réserves, une proposition qui vaut la peine : sa pertinence diagnostique à l’époque des « guerres contre le terrorisme international ». (shrink)

Ernst Jünger is known for his war writings, but is largely ignored by contemporary phenomenologists. In this essay, I explore his e Adventurous Heart which has recently been made available in English. is work consists of a set of fragments which, when related, disclose a coherent ow of philosophical thinking. Speci cally, I show that, beneath a highly poetic and obscure prose, Jünger posits how subjective experience and poetry allow individuals to realize truth. I relate parts of Jünger’s insights (...) to contributions by Husserl, Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, arguing that Jünger o ers a unique and valuable contribution to the phenomenological discipline. (shrink)

The diaries that detail Ernst Jünger’s time in occupied Paris can be as frustrating as they are captivating. Their tone is often both elegiac and detached, at once keenly aware of and distant from the suffering occurring all around their author. This ambiguity becomes particularly apparent in the contrast between the remarkable everyday encounters the diaries describe and their broader cosmic and world-historical ruminations. In this paper, I want to suggest that this tension can be read as a response (...) to the imperatives through which totalising thought shapes how subjects operating under its confines relate to time itself. This dynamic, which can already be found in Jünger’s own earlier work, is dramatized in the way that the diaries construct the alternative temporal perspective of the witness. The witness here is one who survives outside of, and yet also remains caught between, two temporal imaginaries characteristic of modernity: Totalising historicization – the sweeping narrative of progress that demands the sacrifice of the present individual and individual present – and mechanised temporality, that is, instrumentalised clock time. (shrink)

The essence of Nietzscheanism as a philosophical doctrine has never been characterized by a definite consistency or certainty. Instead "indirect followers" and interpreters of Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophy (since this thinker did not have direct followers or a particular school) resorted to a variety of interpretations of his concepts. Considering that, the hermeneutic aspect of the study not only of Nietzsche's texts, but also of his interpreters allows us to look at the hidden potential of the concepts of the German philosopher (...) from a new point of view. In this research, we seek to focus on looking for Nietzschean roots in Ernst Jünger's creative legacy, tracing the transformation of his ideas along the author's intellectual path and showing how those ideas correlate with those of Friedrich Nietzsche himself and how they differ. As a reference point for any study of interpretations of Nietzsche's philosophy, the author singles out many German philosopher concepts at the edge of various interpretations. Such central concepts in the article include the idea of "Apollonian" and "Dionysian" principles (the first), the anthropological idea of " Overhuman" and the interrelated metaphysical triad of "will to power," "reevaluation of all values," and "eternal return." In addition, one of the leading motives of the 20th century, which can be traced to an attempt to read Nietzschean ideas, postulates their location at the junction of philosophical and political-ideological concepts. Analyzing the peculiar hermeneutic conflict of Nietzschean philosophy based on this phenomenon, the author turns to early attempts to understand and implement the ideas of the German thinker, which were carried out directly in Germany. This context is connected in the article with the formation of the foundations of the conservative revolution and the figure of Ernst Jünger since the interpretation of this thinker, to some extent, can be considered one of the first and, undoubtedly, the most resonant. In the course of the research, the author turns to Nietzsche's original texts, forming a kind of hermeneutic circle of the author and interpreters, interpreters and the interpreted, ultimately obtaining in this system the opportunity for a thorough and as independent as possible analysis of the original ideas, counting on the probability of reducing the error of one's interpretation due to paying attention to the entire interpretive field texts The considered ideas of Ernst Jünger demonstrate this thesis, expanding the contextual field of the Nietzschean Overman and the metaphysics of the Will to Power and giving these concepts in an interpreted form a particular social dimension along with the philosophical one, which provides a new context for the interpretation of the ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche. (shrink)

Volume 51, Issue 1, January 2020, Page 91-93.

In the thirties, Martin Heidegger was heavily involved with the work of Ernst Jünger (1895-1998). He says that he is indebted to Jünger for the ‘enduring stimulus’ provided by his descriptions. The question is: what exactly could this enduring stimulus be? Several interpreters have examined this question, but the recent publication of lectures and annotations of the thirties allow us to follow Heidegger’s confrontation with Jünger more precisely. -/- According to Heidegger, the main theme of his philosophical thinking in (...) the thirties was the overcoming of the metaphysics of the will to power. But whereas he seems to be quite revolutionary in heralding ‘another beginning’ of philosophy in the beginning of the thirties, he later on realized that his own revolutionary vocabulary was itself influenced by the will to power. In his later work, one of the main issues is the releasement from the wilful way of philosophical thinking. My hypothesis is that Jünger has this importance for Heidegger in the thirties, because the confrontation with Jünger’s way of thinking showed him that the other beginning of philosophy presupposes the irrevocable releasement of willing and a gelassen or non-willing way of philosophical thinking. -/- In this article, we test this hypothesis in relation to the recently published lectures, annotations and unpublished notes from the thirties. After a brief explanation of Jünger’s diagnosis of modernity (§1), we consider Heidegger’s reception of the work of Jünger in the thirties (§2). He not only sees that Jünger belongs to Nietzsche’s metaphysics of the will to power, but also shows the modern-metaphysical character of Jünger’s way of thinking. In section three, we focus on Heidegger’s confrontation with Jünger in relation to the consummation of modernity. According to Heidegger, Jünger is not only the end of modern metaphysics, but also the perishing (Verendung) of this end, the oblivion of this end in the will to power of representation. In section four, we focus on the real controversy between Jünger and Heidegger: the releasement of willing and the necessity of a radical other beginning of philosophical thinking. -/- . (shrink)