Where to start with Ernst Junger and the Conservative Revolutionaries?

Where to start with Ernst Junger and the Conservative Revolutionaries?

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scribd.com/document/262101189/The-Worker-FULL-TEXT-For-Module-G825-2015-V17
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Storm of Steel.
Get a proper history background too.

i read storm of steel, but didnt get any of the stirner/psychedlia stuff—where's that shit happen

There's a turn around '38, with Adventurous Heart. After that he focuses more on the anarcho-botany. So get yourself Adventurous Heart and On the Marble Cliffs, his WWII diaries. Everything I've read by him was great.

Bolano seems to have had a thing for him, though I haven't read him, but Junger makes an appearance in By Night in Chile and 2666 if I'm not mistaken.

If you can read German, get the Schmitt-Junger correspondences and then translate them into English. Thanks!

>anarcho-botany

Does that involve mystical and nature-mystic themes?

I bought myself a copy of Preussentum und Sozialismus, and a copy of Form and Actuality. Reading Form and Actuality first, don't know whether to get The Perspectives of World History in English or German to antiquate myself with PUS

yeah in part, On the Marble Cliffs is about some pagan brothers who are botanists enjoying living innawoods studying plants and who form an alliance with a Catholic priest against the Grand Forester trying to tread on them

but Junger always maintains a sort of detached style, so it's not exactly nature worship

I heard that Eumeswil is pretty good, important as well for his use of Stirnerian ideas.

Jünger, Spengler, Heidegger, Schmitt and Scheler are the only ones worth reading outside of special interest. None of them should be read as simply "conservative revolutionaries" or in a certain historo-political context.

Friedrich Reck
Also wasn't Thomas Mann associated with this movement?

Yes he was, they were after all drawing a lot on Weimar classicism.

I feel the anarch is more Nietzschean than Stirner-like

Not her, but the essays I've read on Junger did say he was inspired by Stirner. And yes Nietzsche too.
I'm interested in what ideas his buddies had, appearently he was befriended with an anarchist and bolshevik.

It seems the anarch is sorta inspired by Stirner but not in the spook buster sense. The anarch is a detached observer of society who withdraws into himself rather than acting.

It has to do with the ability to maintain dignity and independence in the face of totalitarian power, whether it's nazi, commie, or liberal. I hear Eumeswil is also a response to Evola's critique of later Junger.

"The Worker" is definitely Jünger's most significant work. It's analysis captures the nihilism of daily life and the soulless character of society predicated on capitalist production i.e. the "total work character" of reality in its entirety. All reality has no other standing, no other meaning, no other being than as mere matter to be processed in the production of a world of commodities.

Jünger wrote all this as a conscious criticism of bourgeois society from an extreme conservative/radically nationalist standpoint but I tend to understand its significance as a critique of capital that does not recognize itself as such.

Here's an unpublished english translation:
scribd.com/document/262101189/The-Worker-FULL-TEXT-For-Module-G825-2015-V17

Interesting user, thanks for sharing
Will read it later

>Conservative Revolutionaries
Oxymoron

It's a real thing, but it was really moreso an aesthetic romantic movement, sort of an attempted revival of Weimarer Klassik.

There's a new edition getting released soon.

You sound like someone who hasn't read them and is trying to sound like they have

Well, he is right that they are the best thinkers of the period/movement, and shouldn't be read just out a nice interest of that period (ie, reading mediocre writers because they reveal the period well). They're all great thinkers/writers with a lot to say that shouldn't be limited only to understanding the interwar period. They are still relevant today.

I agree, but depends on the defnition. I go with:
>revolutionary against the status quo
>conservative in favor of status quo
>reactionary in favor of former status quo
But I'm imagining that ideology does not always contain ideas that are all in favor, against, or in favor of former, status quos. More so a mix of it.

Start with the Greeks, my man.

Almost nothing from the conservative revolutionary's or studies on it have been translated from German. That said, Alain de Benoist has some good commentary on it

The circle around Junger is fascinating, his brother, Heidegger (his correspondence aswell as relationship with the man and technology recently published), Ernst Niekisch and Ernst Von Saloman to name a few

>Heidegger (his correspondence

From what I've read about the Junger-Heidegger correspondences, it seems that Heidegger was politely but almost condescendingly replying to Junger and not that interested in what Junger thought. Junger wanted to know more about this legendary philosopher and Heidegger didn't give a shit about anyone who hasn't doing deconstruction.

I think the Schmitt-Junger correspondences would be much more interesting, and they seem to have had more of an influence on both thinkers, especially on developing a theological stance towards WWII. Schmitt cites Junger in Land and Sea and Junger seems to have been brought closer to religion and Catholicism through Schmitt. Schmitt recommended Leon Bloy to Junger and he became a big fan.

Yes, this is emphasised in the openings of Vincents Bloks "Ernst Jünger’s Philosophy of Technology" which is itself largely commentary on the correspondence. Heidegger respected Junger as a Nietzhean warrior poet but little else, though he did influence his ideas on technology. The Conservative Revolution is itself mostly a collection of disparate thinkers who collectively rejected the Weimar, not an organised movement

Literally the last big conservative circle before the end of right-wing philosophy at WW2.

The correspondence with Heidegger began in '49. Prior to this Junger was already writing about technology, had already predicted smartphones.

Thanks for the rec.