/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.20969612]

I finished reading 'Uber Die Linien', its my first time reading Junger and I wasnt expecting the writing to be so obscurantist and dense, i liked it alot but I didnt understand one of the central concepts he mentions like the titular 'line' or 'limit' or 'zero point' of nihilism. At a point in the book he argues nihil cannot be truly reached by human perception and how it is only present in the World as transformative of other objects. So what is that 'line' relating to nihilism then? Im kinda confused.

[Anonymous No.20969707]

He writes like Heidegger, and actually, Junger and Heidegger have a lot in common. The only obvious concept in Junger is this figure of the anarch. Everything else is exactly like you said.

Here's a Junger scholar on Uber de Linie:
>(nachhaltige Förderung) in the work of Jünger be?
In Über die Linie, which was first published in a liber amicorum
occasioned by the sixtieth birthday of Heidegger in 1949, Jünger discusses the
question whether we live in the age of fulfilled nihilism and, if so, whether we
can overcome such nihilism. Jünger wants to cross the line of nihilism into a
new era where “eine neue Zuwendung des Seins” takes place and puts an end
to the age of fulfilled nihilism.

Basically, he's saying there's a line where nihilism either subsumes everything like a black hole or is overcome with a new way of being. As best I can tell, Junger's conception of nihilism was bound up closely with technology, and it sounds to me like he explains more or less the same concept as this in An der Zeitmauer.

[Strange Love No.20969721]

>>20969612

"Nihilism" is not crossing into the zero point but merely dwelling at its threshold ... edgy despair in self denial, nothing else. Those actually achieving the zero point might either put a gun to their heads without further comment or hesitation ... or pass through it.

[Anonymous No.20969741]

>>20969721
But there's absolutely no prediction as to what passing through it could look like, just like in Heidegger.

And this is why Spengler is read more than Junger today.

[Strange Love No.20969781]

>>20969741

Noticed with Jünger that he had some good understanding but didn't bother to give detailed explanations ... more like he assumed the reader was aware of certain "prerequisites", either through other literature or particular personal experiences. Can imagine this does make it a bit inaccessible.

[Anonymous No.20969824]

>>20969741
>people reading something makes it right

[Anonymous No.20969831]

>>20969781
It's the best way to filter out retards.

[Anonymous No.20969836]

>>20969781
It's not the inaccessibility. It's the thing that was very fashionable for these guys to where they write this highly jargonized and vague philosophy to say things that really could have been said in far simpler terms because they're doing this sort of academic game that has no bearing on actuality and indeed will have no effect on actuality. Everything they said could have been said in simpler terms. Spengler was right about this.

[Anonymous No.20969844]

>>20969824
Right about what? He never said what crossing the line looks like, how to get there, or anything. All he did was write this extremely vague and jargonized philosophy like his buddy Heidegger, another writer who almost no one gets anything out of because he really did not saying anything.

[Strange Love No.20969903]

>>20969831

Unnecessarily cruel at times. ;)

>>20969836

>Everything they said could have been said in simpler terms.

Could, yet this would have taken away certain implications of his terminology. Simplification would then achieve nothing but opening the writings up to arbitrary speculation and relativism. Not a damn Ikea assembly manual after all. Instead should have elaborated more on certain "difficult" points and assumptions.

[Anonymous No.20969970]

My challenge remains. If any a reader finds a shred of praxis in this author, then say so, because I, for myself, find nothing.
> be a forest rebel
> be an anarch
> make art and poetry
This from the man who wrote exhaustively on the ever-expanding reach of the technological world state and the methods by which it throttles art, chokes off poetry. If this is his praxis, it is beyond useless.
Here I would like to add that Jünger was a very valuable writer, an important figure, and admirable man. But he was not a worker. He did not no work, economy, or even technique (ironically). Ernst Jünger knew war, the machine, thought, and writing, but he knew little else. He was a romantic. He was the last remnant of a heroic ideal which was allied to shine brightly just before it faded from the world. He did his military service and retired to live his life as an essayist and then a bohemian writer, like a Greek. What can the modern man in say, Britain or America, deprived of estate and pensions, get from him? Or the student, trapped between disciplines and a ballooning debt burden? Or the man who wants to return to the other, but has to work for a living, forced to live in the dredge and muck of a modern megalopolis while he works as a Sys Admin for the city? Nothing. He has nothing to offer them. He’s a man who, like others in the 20th century, held romantic and idealistic notions about art, poetry, and myth especially, but conveniently forgot that the ever-expanding technological machine and its global apparatus is precisely the throttling of art and the death of poetry, something he foresaw and diagnosed himself. Those myths were not even his own, but belonged to the Greeks, and those which he leaves us have no praxis at all, and barely an origin which can be relied upon. Modern man cannot live inside those myths any more than he can live inside those which we find in the Holy Bible or in the works of Homer. That is to say, he can’t live inside them at all. And those capable of realizing dome abstract, Jungerian ideal (were it to exist)? Ironically, they are the extremely few and the only ones who have no need for him at all.
> you’re just missing the forest for the trees
Perhaps I am. But either way, I grow very tired of engaging with nonsensical and illusive language that can hardly be parsed out at all. It’s extremely frustrating.

[Strange Love No.20970016]

>>20969970

>Those myths were not even his own

Is something I have forgotten not "my own" until I remember it again? ;)
Anyway, amused and curious so I'll leave this to others now. Just hope my initial comment on nihilism was useful.

[Anonymous No.20970207]

Unfortunately there's no serious discussion here since jungeranon left. He seemed to be the only one who could parse Junger's obscure language.

[Anonymous No.20970309]

>>20969903
What implications would those be? There are none that I can think of.

>>20970016
I think that's a bot, but it's referring to Greek mythology. He can't forget Greek mythology because he was never Greek. It was an entirely different culture that ended a long time ago. Spengler wrote about this also.

[Anonymous No.20970361]

>>20969707
Thanks I kind of get the central point better now, reading Heidegger's reply also cleared it up, regarding An Der Zeitmauer, are there any editions on Spanish or English? I can only find french, italian and german editions and I dont speak those, I guess I could learn Italian but I'd rather not read an author like Junger while reading a different lenguage, its pretty confusing as it is.

>>20969721
I feel like in the essay it's framed more in the context of technology and civilization rather than individual/personal involvement with nihilism

>>20969781
Yeah I also felt that way reading him, granted 'Uber Die Linien' was specifically adressed to Heidegger so if they already share so much in thought maybe some things are useless to elaborate on.

[Anonymous No.20971066]

Essentially what Junger is saying is that nihilism is a transitional dominion rather than a sinking of territory into nothingness. This is similar to the forming of ages in myth, metamorphosis and transubstantiation, or Goethe's sense of inborn wealth and the proteus of nature. Where one sees only the negative, the decline of his territory, the moral will cannot persist and must approach death or a willless rage. Rather than being a formation in its own right nihilism is nothing more than a substratum of transitional law. It is the violence of law at its minimum which causes one to succumb to it or attempt to draw out and refine its force, elevating it. Paradoxically, those who fight nihilism only succeed in extending its power, in drawing it out across time. Its line is perpetually extended. One cannot think being, and being cannot precede itself - it is always there, and yet it is nothing but the relation to the highest laws in metamorphosis. At the utmost, being retreats into the darkness, and, at least at the level of the individual, is indistinguishable from nihilism.

One could rework the metaphor or try to give it a complimentary image to help with understanding. In Holderlin's notes on the Iliad he discusses the harmony of character and its force. We are captivated by one person because of the simplicity in which they are aligned with the wealth of nature; another in their inner strength and will of conviction, the profound spirit; and still another in the completeness of his being, in mastering law and aligning himself with invisible forces. In each there is also a danger, where one cannot see the forest for the trees another cannot see the trees for the forest; one is made to be uncomprehending, the other deepens the incomprehensible. This type of high yet uncomprehending character is what many today would accuse Junger of, even though in the past he would have been a noble figure, common in statecraft and military order. Mostly the high are only made incomprehensible through levelling, the opposite order of the incomprehensible.

>>/lit/thread/S16856649#p16874664

[Anonymous No.20971730]

Anything else?

[Anonymous No.20973076]

bump

[Anonymous No.20973947]

>One similarity was an affinity with Heidegger. For Ernst it was more limited to work and discussion of texts. Heidegger had great respect for The Worker and held seminars on it in Freiburg in the 1930s; Ernst contributed the essay "About the Line" (Über die Linie) to the commemorative for Heidegger's birthday in 1950, a fundamental confrontation with nihilism that prepared the Waldgang. In Fritz's case it was a personal friendship marked by repeated visits and returns to the hut near Todtnauberg, where Heidegger tried to transform into a Black Forest peasant, wearing a pointed cap, knee-length breeches, and long stockings. Fritz also met with him in the circle of Countess Sophie Dorothea von Podewills, whom he visited regularly at her manor in Pfänder or at her castle Hirschberg. She admired his poetry and wrote a short pamphlet about him, in which she compared his voice to that of a bird that "rejoices timelessly over spring gardens as over the ruins of destruction."On 7 June 1950, according to hisjournal, Fritz travelled to Weilheim with the princess, Heidegger, and his wife. From there by carriage to Hirschberg. It was a very hot day. We swam in the lake and had a picnic on the beach. In the evening we sat in the garden over the lake by candlelight. It was a moonless night, dark and warm. Heidegger read an excerpt from his work on technology in which he calls it Gestell. He concludes with the question, "What is Gestell?" He likes to interrupt with questions and interjections." The next morning they also went swimming in a nearby lake. Fritz notes that Heidegger camped under a juniper tree. "He persuaded me to publish my remarks on line and verse, whichI had discussed the day before."

[Anonymous No.20975349]

>>20969903
Not cruel.

[Anonymous No.20975912]

>>20969707
I know it has nothing to do with your reply, but do you recommend reading Jungers diary from occupied Paris?

[Anonymous No.20977684]

>>20969824
yeah

[Anonymous No.20978006]

>>20969707
Going to be honest, I was not expecting a good effort post. Thanks anon.

[Anonymous No.20978580]

>>20971066
Very helpful. Thanks.

[Anonymous No.20978946]

>>20969836
Spengler was wrong.
>>20977684
So popular music is good because people listen to it.

[Anonymous No.20978953]

>>20969970
Great example of someone who will never cross the line.

[Anonymous No.20978956]

>>20975912
I think he's an author that if you want to really understand what he's about, you have to read as much as possible and in chronological order, so yes.

[Anonymous No.20978959]

>>20978946
He was right about 20th-century philosophers as classroom philosophers.

[Anonymous No.20978971]

>>20969970
>Faggot Fedsperm

[Anonymous No.20978976]

>>20978959
That says nothing of Junger since he was neither.

[Anonymous No.20979000]

It was so cool how spotemgottem and pooh shiesty linked up like this

[Strange Love No.20979410]

Damn, this thread's still up ...

>>20970309

Hmm, his use of the term "Gestalt" in Der Arbeiter might be an example. Just one example where a certain lack of prerequisites could lead to some confusion or make the musing appear pointless where they are not.

>Greeks

Bit of a trick question from my side here. But after all even our contemporary "myths" have not been created ex nihilo but rest on a clear foundation, therefore ...

>>20970361

>I feel like in the essay it's framed more in the context of technology and civilization rather than individual/personal involvement with nihilism

Might be, yes. Though these angles are ofc not mutually exclusive.

>granted 'Uber Die Linien' was specifically adressed to Heidegger

Interesting to know!

>>20975349

Ya think ? ;)

[Anonymous No.20979681]

>>20979410
Read Spengler. It's a mistake to believe that our myths arise out of Classical myths.

[Strange Love No.20979818]

>>20979681

>assumes I haven't

Actually one of the few where I bothered to get a printed version. Nonwithstanding, at least if we go by this general idea of "civilization as organism" it would not make much sense to see them as isolated cases ... gotta assume both lateral and horizontal gene transfer (and with much likelihood some form of LUCA).

[Anonymous No.20981057]

The line has two forms. It is also the progress of ideas and technology which can first appear as awe-inspiring, but then fall into a formalistic norm. Then a new line arrives, and is extended. The mass groth of the city is no different from its being on fire.
There is also a greater line than in the specific instances of nihilism, this is something unknown or hidden. It carries a theological power. To know this is akin to revealing the carcinogens in a room. Here questions of health or sickness, activity or passivity disappear, as all are affected.
Crossing the line is not something that can be chosen, it may only be something fated. We see that even the greatest institutions are levelled in our time. This is perhaps like Goethe's wall of time, in which one is carried off as with a divine presence, and "eon's are behind us." This follows a period of great necessity which towers over our freedom like a great wall.

In this sense, the line is like a single moment of time which, despite the apparently constant change, becomes an eternity for modern man. He lives as if petrified between two great places. For him both past and future become increasingly unknown, and as the line is extended there is nothing but an irrational abyss.

[Anonymous No.20981081]

>>20979818
Not isolated but not the same, and definitely not the same understanding