On Pain [Paperback]

Ernst Jünger requires two translations. One from German to English, the second from English to understandable English. I mean this literally. E.J. was without a doubt one of the most brilliant literary minds of the 20th century (which he lived through in its entirety): he was capable not only of compressing enormously complex thoughts and ideas into arresting single sentences, but occasionally of writing prose so beautiful it took on the quality of poetry. However, he was also frequently turgid, opaque, digressive and vague, so that reading his works often required great concentration and patience, not to mention a willingness to sift through those flaws to find what might be called the ores of his meaning. It is possible to read a Jünger book through without actually grasping just what the author wanted to say (Aladdin's Problem confounds me to this day), and this explains partially why "On Pain", a 47 page essay, has 47 pages of forwards and introductions in its vanguard. It is a great and important read, but it is not an easy one.

I say "partially explains" because the other reason Jünger's essays are always prefaced with massive introductions by academics is that he is considered one of the most dangerous writers ever to pick up a pen. His reputation as "the intellectual Godfather of Fascism" demands that legions of scholars feel obligated to hurl their twopenny bits of disclaimer before he is allowed to speak. Jünger's works are presumed, by those who presume to be smarter than you, to be something unreadable unless you've been told how to feel about them beforehand. I remember reading a forward to On the Marble Cliffs which violently attacked E.J. because he admittedly "lacked the capacity for hatred", by far the strangest criticism I've ever heard. It is precisely Jünger's incapacity for ordinary human emotions which allowed him to write the way he did...but I guess that's the problem. His ideas, his conclusions about existence, his particular way of viewing the world, are regarded by a great many people as simply too dangerous to be tolerated, which goes a long way to explaining why most of his works have never been translated, and why the few that have are always so unreasonably expensive or hard to lay ahold of.

"On Pain" is a deceptive title, and here again we come to the issue of translation, which is noted by the translator himself in his forward. This is not a book about the sensation of physical pain, but rather a metaphysical analysis of the changing relationship between human beings and suffering in the broadest sense of that word. In "On Pain", Jünger, who was writing in 1934, and whose outlook was shaped by his combat experiences as a storm trooper in the First World War, posits that mankind is turning away from the values of burgeois morality - saftey, security, ease, comfort, individualism - and becoming harder, more disciplined, and less individual. The new man defines himself via struggle, self-sacrifice, and the ability to withstand pain in all its forms, physical, emotional and otherwise. Jünger likens this evolving consciousness of man to a photographic lens, which gazes upon the most gut-wrenching horror in total objectivity, unmoved by pity or emotion of any kind. He also maintains that his mentality, the conservative mentality, is born out of an acceptance that pain is unavoidable and, in certain mediums, beneficial. Discipline, for example, is "the way man maintains contact with pain." He notes that during the "enlightened" i.e. liberal era, a "good" face was "nervois, pliant, changing, and open to the most diverse kind of influences and impulses." In '34, however (with the Nazis in power in Germany, Communists in Russia, Fasicts in Italy, etc.) the human face is undergoing a "hardening" which brings to mind soldiers of the old Prussian Army, that "stronghold of heroic virtues." What causes this physical manifestation of the inner hardening of the human soul, Jünger writes, is "the imposition of firm and impersonal rules and regulations." Humanity, he believes, has galvanized itself in imitation of the unfeeling, destructive machines he has created, and thus taken a step to become more machine than man.

At the heart of "On Pain" is Jünger's rejection of what we today would call "Western values." America is the stronghold of the pleasure-loving super-individual, who no longer feels much in the way of responsibility, and whose main purpose in life, other than experiencing pleasure, is in the acquisition of money and objects. But it is not the only country to hold these "values", and they are precisely what Jünger wanted to destroy. "On Pain" is, in essence, a gleeful ringing-in of what he thought was a new era, one which shovels dirt over the corpse of bourgeois liberalism. And indeed, as an indictment of "moderate" and "liberal" thinking it is devastating, the moreso because Jünger was not a Nazi. (Indeed, he saw with remarkable prescience that a society founded on the values of the machine could lead to ruin. "One graps how an enormous organizational capacity can exist alongside a complete blindness vis-à-vis values, belief without meaning, discipline without legitimacy.") Rather, it he is simply unwilling to accept that a fat belly, a full wallet and a silk cushion are the highest ideals of human existence. Just as The Storm of Steel committed the ultimate academic sin in refusing to view war as an unqualified evil, finding in it "an incomparable schooling of the heart", "On Pain" compounds that sin by maintaining that the measure of a man lays in his capacity to withstand pain.

Viewed as prophecy, "On Pain" is faulty as of now, but one can already see in certain places in the world a deep-seated rejection of "Western values" and a desire to define life in terms of the acceptance of suffering rather than in its avoidance. Radical Islam, for example, views the individual as of no consequence except in his relation to the struggle, the struggle itself as waged without mercy or restraint, and death as simply the price of devotion to the faith. Terrorism is a cult of pain as Jünger defines the word, and if we see it in those terms the magnitude of the task of defeating it becomes clear: one of many reasons why "On Pain" remains relevant after 76 years.

Excellent, yet short, treatise criticizing liberal bourgeois ideals of safety and security. While it is easy to see what the Nazis might have gotten from this, it also has to be understood in the context of the German Lost Generation writings. While Remarque and Junger are pretty far apart, there is the common theme that the middle class values had devalued the comradeship and sufferings of the Front (see Remarque's The Road Back). While Remarque kept his ideas in the novel form, Junger was wiling to explore these in a Nietzsche-inspired philosophy. The translation is OK, though it could use more notes in the text. Klunky terms such as "lumpen-proletariat" need some explanation. Also, the intro which attempts to make the work "relevant" by reference to modern terrorism is just a mess. Skip it for the translator's intro and then to the text.

Ernst Jünger has always been somewhat of anomaly. His worldview was a wild and peculiar hybrid of totalitarianism, nationalism, conservatism, existentialism, magical realism, psychedelic experimentalism, traditionalism, emotional masochism and ironically a type of modernism and proto-technocracy. At odds with more palatable versions of European conservatism being bantered about at the time (Spengler, Evola, Hamsun, Heidegger, Rosenberg, et al) Jünger happily remained an enigma mistrusted by by both the right and the left, concurrently, for most of his long life. His cult status afforded him a wide variety of supporters and his reputation as a dilettante endeared him even to those who could never quite figure him out.

One specific aspect of Jünger's eccentric weltanschauung comes to the forefront in his influential fringe essay, "On Pain" - and it is the one he was most criticized for; the submission of optimism, individualism and liberty for the sake of pain (in both the figurative and literal sense). Jünger imagined the body politic prostrating to a highly idealized violence that would both dehumanize and liberate simultaneously. The warrior was to exist not just for the sake of war, but for the process of war. Unlike Nietzsche's energetic Übermensch however, Jünger's soldier was to never lay down his arms to ring in a new age, a new aristocracy. No enlightenment. Only pain.

"On Pain" is an illuminating peak into the nihilism and chaos that had leaked into conservative philosophical and literary thought as Germany sank into National Socialism. At best we might declare that in "On Pain" we have a unique if somewhat linear view of a culture in the midst of an identity crisis, staggering under the weight of its own spiritual and moral exhaustion.

David Durst's introduction to "On Pain" is enlightening (if pedantic) and somehow manages to make Jünger seem a bit more influential than he was. In an effort to bring new relevance to "On Pain however, Durst draws weak conclusions between modern day suicide bombings and Jünger's fantastical ideas about the reduction of the personality for the sake of a mechanistic, life-defying violence. Islamism's "Martyrdom culture" (more realistically interpreted as a communal expression of desperation) as understood by Orientalists such as Matthias Küntzel has only a superficial resemblance to 20th Century European militarism ("Long Live Death"). For the "shahid" or martyr, death is welcomed in defense (jihad) of the Muslim community and never approaches anything nearly as authoritarian, as spiritually anemic, as ritualistic or as empty as Jünger's lionized breed of automated soldier.

Beyond this shortcoming the book is worth reading for anyone interested in better understanding how one peripheral thinker helped shape both pre-war and post war German identity.