On Pain [antikvár]

Preface to the Telos Press Edition of Ernst Jüngeres "On Pain" Russell A. Berman Ernst Jünger's "On Pain" belongs to the current of thought of the so-called "Conservative Revolution" in Germany during the 1920s and 1930s, a deeply pessimistic critique of the society and culture of the Weimar Republic and liberal modernity in general. Building on nineteenth-century precursors, especially Nietzsche, the conservative revolutionaries expressed adamant contempt for the "bourgeois values" of individualism and sentimentality and generally denigrated the legacy of the Enlightenment, w^hile looking forw^ard to the imminent establishment of a nev^^ order made of sterner stuff. Like Nietzsche, they claimed to diagnose the loss of values and a loss of quality in the decadence of modern life. Yet w^hile Nietzsche countered this decline with the myth of the superman as an aristocratic alternative to democratic leveling, the conservative revolutionaries, and especially Jünger, tried to identify a new heroism emerging precisely out of the technological world of the new mass society. If conventional conservatives emphasized a return to the past or, at least, a program to preserve traditions against the eroding forces of progress, the conservative revolution argued that the fundamental transformations at work in contemporary society could lead to an outcome defined by organized power, discipline, and a will to violence. The outcome of progressive modernization would, paradoxically, not be the standard progressivist Utopia of free and equal individuals but a regime of authority beyond question.