Ernst Jรผnger was born on March 29, 1895. For the anniversary we want to propose to our readers an extract from his "Treatise on the Rebel" (1951), written exactly seventy years ago, which, read today, appears to be nothing short of disconcerting. What is most striking is the incredible topicality of the German philosopher's analysis and his vision, to say the least, prophetic on what the world would be in what he called the "Age of the Titans", in which we ourselves find ourselves today. to live.
di Ernst Junger
Adapted from The Treaty of the Rebel (1951), ยง13-14.
Italian translation Adelphi, Milan 1990.
Fear is one of the symptoms of our time. All the more it arouses consternation as it has succeeded an era of great individual freedom, in which the very misery, for example that described by Dickens, was now almost forgotten. How did this transition happen?
If we wanted to choose a fateful date, none would be more appropriate than the day the Titanic. Here light and shadow abruptly collide: the hybris of progress collides with panic, maximum comfort with destruction, the automatism with the catastrophe that takes the form of a road accident. It is a fact that the relationships between the progress of automatism and those of fear are very close: in order to obtain technical facilitations, man is in fact willing to limit his power of decision. He will thus acquire all sorts of advantages that he will be forced to pay with one greater and greater loss of freedom.
The individual no longer occupies the place in society that the tree occupies in the wood: he instead recalls the passenger of a fast boat that could be called Titanic or even Leviathan. As long as the weather remains calm and the view is pleasant, the passenger hardly notices that he is in a situation of less freedom: he manifests a sort of optimism, a sense of power due to speed. But as icebergs and fire-mouthed islands loom on the horizon, things change dramatically. From that moment on, not only does technology abandon the field of comfort in favor of other sectors, but the same lack of freedom becomes evident: whether elementary forces triumph or whether certain individuals, who have retained their strength, exercise a absolute authority.
The details are known and many have described them several times; they are an integral part of our most intimate experience. Here it could be argued that in the past there have been periods of terror, of apocalyptic panic, not orchestrated or accompanied by this character of automatism. This is a question on which we do not intend to dwell since automatism becomes terrifying only if one of the forms of fatality is revealed, of which indeed it is the main style, as in the unsurpassed representation that he gave of it in his time Hieronymus Bosch. Does the terror of the moderns have particular characteristics, or is it simply the style that cosmic anguish adopts today, in one of its perennial returns?
We do not want to dwell on this question, but rather to answer the mirror question which is the one that really matters to us: it is possible to mitigate the terror while the automatism persists, or, as is to be expected, as it gets closer and closer to perfection? In short, would it not be possible to remain on the ship and preserve our autonomy of decision - that is, not only to preserve, but even strengthen the roots that still sink into the original soil? This is the fundamental problem of our existence.
It is also the problem that lies behind every anguish of our time. Man wonders how it is possible for him to escape annihilation. In recent years, in any part of Europe one finds oneself conversing, whether with friends or with people whom one does not know, the discourse soon turns to general themes and reveals a profound dejection. It is immediately evident that almost everyone, men and women, is in a panic that has not been seen in our area since the early Middle Ages.
In a kind of blind encroachment, we see them plunge into their terror, of which they exhibit the symptoms without any shame. We are witnessing a contest of spirits who are heatedly discussing whether it is more appropriate to flee, hide or resort to suicide, and who, while still enjoying complete freedom, are already conjecturing with what means and tricks it will be possible to win the favor of the mob as soon as it is seized power. With horror we realize that they would not give their assent to any baseness if asked. Yet there is no shortage of healthy and vigorous men, with a beautiful build of athletes. One wonders what good is so much sport.
Well, these men, besides being fearful, are also fearful. The mood leaps in them from fear to declared hatred as soon as they realize that the same people who a little earlier aroused fear now show some signs of weakness. Such covenants do not meet only in Europe. Where automatism gains ground and approaches perfection, panic becomes even more tangible: in America, for example, it finds the terrain that is most propitious for it, and spreads along networks faster than lightning.
The need to hear the news several times a day is already an indication of anguish; the fantasy expands and, turning more and more whirling on itself, ends up paralyzing. All those antennas over gigantic cities suggest hair standing on end, seeming to evoke demonic contacts. Of course, the East is no exception. The West lives in the terror of the East and the East lives in the terror of the West. In all places on earth, people live in anticipation of frightful attacks: to which is added, for many, the fear of civil war.
The crude mechanism of politics is not the only source of so much fear. Beyond that there are countless other forms of distress, all of which involve that insecurity that incessantly appeals to doctors, messiahs, thaumaturges. Indeed, everything can give rise to fear. This is, more than any material danger, the premonitory sign of decline.
In this vortex, the fundamental question is whether it is possible to free man from fear. A far more important objective than supplying him with weapons or providing him with medicines. Strength and health are the prerogative of the fearless. Fear, on the other hand, besieges even - indeed above all - those who are armed to the teeth. The same goes for those who swim in gold. The threat is not averted with weapons or wealth, which are and remain mere tools. Fear and danger are so intimately connected that it is almost impossible to tell which of the two forces generates the other. But given the greater importance of fear, it is better to start here if you want to try to untie the knot.
As for the reverse method, that is, the attempt to deal with the danger in the first place, we must warn against adopting it. We will never solve the question in a nutshell by pretending to be more dangerous than those we fear: this is the classic relationship that reds establish with whites, reds with each other, and tomorrow, who knows, whites with people of color. Fright resembles a fire that is preparing to devour the world. Meanwhile, fear always makes new victims. Whoever puts an end to fear thereby legitimizes his claim to domination: and it is the same individual who first eradicated the fear within himself.
It is also good to know that fear cannot be defeated once and for all. Nor would this allow the chain of automatism to be broken, rather it would open the doors to the most intimate recesses of man. The man who seeks advice in himself always finds his privileged interlocutor in fear; except that fear aims to transform the dialogue into a monologue: only here in fact he manages to keep the last word. If, on the other hand, fear is forced into dialogue, man can in turn speak up. Thus the sensation of encirclement will disappear and, in addition to that of the automatism, another solution will appear. From now on, in short, there are two ways, or, to say the same thing in different words, the freedom to decide has been re-established.
Even at worst, in the case of total defeat, there remains an abysmal difference, like that between day and night. A road climbs towards the realms of great feelings, towards those who sacrifice their lives for a noble cause, towards the destiny of those who fall with arms in hand; the other instead descends towards the lowlands of the slavery camps and slaughterhouses, where primitive beings have made a murderous pact with the technique.
Here we no longer speak of destinies, here each is just a number. Whether to still have one's own destiny or to be considered a number: this is the decision that is faced by everyone today, but that each one must make alone. The individual is sovereign today just like in any other period in history, and perhaps even stronger today. Since the individual, the more the collective powers gain ground, the more he becomes autonomous from the ancient organisms formed over time, and then he is a part for himself. He thus becomes the antagonist of the Leviathan, or even his ruler, his tamer.
But let us return for a moment to the image of the vote. The electoral mechanism, as we have seen it, it has become a concert of automatons, operated by a single organizer. The individual can be forced, and indeed is, to participate in it. He must know, however, that the positions he is given to occupy on the field are all equally worthless. Wherever the game moves, it does not matter if it remains among the beaters' webs anyway.
The place of freedom is very different from simple opposition, and is not even found through flight. We have given this place the name of wood. There are different means available here besides the simple "no" to be written in a certain box. We are certainly forced to recognize that perhaps in the current state of things only one person in a hundred is able to take the path of the woods, but here it is not a question of numerical proportions. When the theater is on fire, a clear mind and a fearless heart are enough to stem the panic of the thousands who abandon themselves to a bestial terror and risk death by suffocation one on top of the other.
When we talk about the individual in this book, we mean the human being, but deprived of that kind of aftertaste that has been associated with this term in the last two centuries. We intend to speak of the free man as God created him, the man who hides himself in each of us, and does not constitute an exception, nor does he represent an elite. If there are differences, they are due exclusively to the extent to which the individual succeeds in making operative that freedom that he was given as a gift. For this he needs help - the help of the thinker, the sage, the friend, the lover. It can also be said that man sleeps in the woods. As soon as he opens his eyes he recognizes his power, order is restored. The superior rhythm of history can even be interpreted as the periodic rediscovery of man.
There are forces - now totemic, now magical, now technical - that incessantly want to impose a mask on him. The rigidity then grows, and with it fear. The arts petrify and the dogma becomes absolute. But since the earliest times the same scene has been repeated: man throws off his mask, and then that serenity takes over which is the reflected image of freedom. Captured in the game of powerful optical illusions, we are used to considering man, when compared with his machines and with the arsenal of his technique, a grain of sand. But these illusions are and remain the basis of a gregarious imagination. As man has built them, so he can demolish them, that is, he can insert them into a new order of meanings.
The constraints of technique can be broken, and it can be the individual himself.
sic east