Ernst Jünger and individualism in the Age of Technology

• Autor(a) principal: Costa, Jaime
• Data de Publicação: 2020
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: https://hdl.handle.net/1822/88916
• topic: Inner emigration; Individualism; Anarch; Emigração interior; Individualismo; Anarca; Humanidades::Línguas e Literaturas

Ernst Jünger, in the dystopian novels to which we dedicate this paper, On the Marble Cliffs (1939), Heliopolis (1949) and Eumeswil (1977), always comes to identify the same casualty arising from the action of government: the individual. From the rise of National Socialism up until the triumph of parliamentary democracy, Jünger combats the unrelenting asphyxiation of the individual by resorting to inner emigration. Nevertheless, this is only an option available to a minority: the members of a mature intellectual elite who stand above the parties and the masses, and who manage to position themselves above the general mediocrity of the times. In Jüngerian terms, these individuals are ultimately represented by the anarch, an individual who finds an alternative to the leveling world brought about by technology and its side effect of dehumanization. The purpose of this paper is to explore Jünger’s use of fiction and show the path Jünger carefully designs to denounce the order of things, regardless of any possible political ideologies. Inner emigration is ultimately revealed as an ascension of metaphysical intensity focused on the preservation of the realm of individual freedom and the world of values.