Ernst Jünger

On Pain

Bryan Alexander

A very strange, powerful essay from the 1930s, "On Pain" covers a lot of ground in a very few pages. 

Junger starts off by a deep dive into psychology and embodiment, exploring how humans react to pain personally and socially. This lets him bring in an unusual range of sources, from his own WWI experience to philosophy and ethics to classical literature, medieval art, contemporary politics and science (remember, the whole piece is barely 47 pages).

Then "On Pain" twists into a Spengler-like analysis of its time, trying to suss out where civilization was headed. Being written in 1934, Junger's conclusion - that humanity was developing into cogs for giant, aggressive mechanisms of power and power, about to burst forth into epochal violence - was pretty solid, given what was about to unfold - i.e., WWII. Editor Russell Berman paraphrases Junger nicely: "the reduction of the personality through a thorough instrumentalization, a transformation of the formerly heroic warrior into a merely technical component" (xvi). Junger's essay's last few pages are nightmarish, sober, and accurate

That sense of humans being objectified (38ff) resonates with other writers of the time. I'm reminded of the Theodor Adorno of WWII and the Walter Benjamin of "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (just two years later, 1936). "The amount of pain we can endure increases with the progressive objectification of life" (43) could fit into many of Minima Moralia's terrifying, dark meditations.

In pursuing objectification Junger is doing media criticism, with his main object being photography and its rising power (example: "a means to hunt down the individual as an opponent no longer capable of defending his ways", 40). I like the way he takes photography and film back to (an unnamed) Kleist by seeing parallels and lessons from "[t]he real of masks, marionettes, puppets, and mannequins" (43). This points forward, for me, to the great work of American horror writer Thomas Ligotti. "On Pain" gives us a deep insight into the use of propaganda in WWII - and, of course, in subsequent media regimes.

"On Pain" wears its Nietzschean influence clearly, which leads to some splendid aphorisms.[L]ife strives incessantly to stay in contact with pain. Indeed, discipline means nothing other than this... (16)
Archaeology is actually a science dedicated to pain... (7)
Technology is our uniform. (31)
The masses have been left with only one liberty, the liberty to consent. (30)
Tell me your relation to pain, and I will tell you who you are! (1; emphases in original)

Telos has produced "On Pain" in a really lovely edition. The cover links Junger's WWI experience with photography very neatly. Translator David Durst offers an excellent introduction to Junger's work and the essay. Editor Russell Berman presents some characteristically unorthodox and provocative reflections, notably some reflections on present-day Islamism (xv) and, inevitably, postmodernism (xix). 

Recommended. Obviously.

On Pain

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