Dear Thomas,

I am truly honored by and grateful for your comment here! I must apologize, first, for the delay in approving your comment, and second, for the delay in responding. I have lately been rather inattentive to the blog. I get an email notification when a new commenter attempts to post to the blog. Often the attempted comments are spam, so when I got the notification regarding your comment, I didn’t open the email immediately, not realizing who it was from. When I did open it, I of course approved the comment immediately. The delay in actually responding to your comment has been due to my need to find the time and opportunity to give your comment the substantial response it deserved.

I appreciate and concur with your clarification regarding the relative strength of the anarch and the forest rebel. One could say, as I think you do, that these words represent not so much two distinct (“in existential terms”) “figures,” one of which is “stronger” than the other, but two different “positions,” one of which may be stronger than the other, that may be occupied at different times by one and the same figure. Thus, in the military context, we might say that to hold the higher ground is to hold the stronger “position.” The strength of the company ITSELF doesn’t change with its change of position; nevertheless, relative to the enemy it is stronger when it occupies the stronger position.

There is another subtly different meaning of “position,” though — i.e., when “position” means an opinion or attitude, and connotes that the opinion or attitude is consciously chosen. Thus, when Juenger was about 90 years old, he told an interviewer (as recorded in the book titled “The Details of Time”): ” “the anarch’s position . . . is the position that I favor at present.” But when he was 100, he replied to another interviewer (as recorded in the documentary titled “102 Years in the Heart of Europe”), who asked him about “the Anarchic position”: “It’s not a position. It’s the description of a possibility.” (See the video here at 42:53: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiXSMiDz92c#t=1663.)

Observe Juenger’s demeanor a few moments later in the documentary when he says of the anarch: “But he doesn’t intervene.” Juenger has undoubtedly by some (e.g., George Steiner) been judged unfairly for not martyring himself in WWII. Still, one wonders to what extent, not opinion, but reality, weighed upon him in later years. With regard to all this, please consider another blog post I wrote on the difference between the anarch and the forest rebel, here: http://www.peoplevstate.com/?p=2390.

Incidentally, with regard to my contention in that post that, “while the anarch expels society from himself, the forest-goer (rather than society or the spooked) expels HIMSELF from society, but that this expulsion is decided by an inner necessity,” I recently found confirmation of this contention in this passage from Max Stirner, which is also more broadly suggestive of the relationship between the anarch and the forest rebel:

“Which of the two lies nearer my heart, the good of the family or my good? In innumerable cases both go peacefully together; the advantage of the family is at the same time mine, and vice versa. Then it is hard to decide whether I am thinking selfishly or for the common benefit, and perhaps I complacently flatter myself with my unselfishness. But there comes the day when a necessity of choice makes me tremble, when I have it in mind to dishonor my family tree, to affront parents, brothers, and kindred. What then? Now it will appear how I am disposed at the bottom of my heart; now it will be revealed whether piety ever stood above egoism for me, now the selfish one can no longer skulk behind the semblance of unselfishness. A wish rises in my soul, and, growing from hour to hour, becomes a passion. To whom does it occur at first blush that the slightest thought which may result adversely to the spirit of the family (piety) bears within it a transgression against this? Nay, who at once, in the first moment, becomes completely conscious of the matter? It happens so with Juliet in “Romeo and Juliet.” The unruly passion can at last no longer be tamed, and undermines the building of piety. You will say, indeed, it is from self-will that the family casts out of its bosom those wilful ones that grant more of a hearing to their passion than to piety; the good Protestants used the same excuse with much success against the Catholics, and believed in it themselves. But it is just a subterfuge to roll the fault off oneself, nothing more. The Catholics had regard for the common bond of the church, and thrust those heretics from them only because these did not have so much regard for the bond of the church as to sacrifice their convictions to it; the former, therefore, held the bond fast, because the bond, the Catholic (i.e. common and united) church, was sacred to them; the latter, on the contrary, disregarded the bond. Just so those who lack piety. They are not thrust out, but thrust themselves out, prizing their passion, their wilfulness, higher than the bond of the family.”

I would say that, if a man has truly conquered fear in his own heart, whether he remains an anarch or becomes a forest rebel is, as Juenger says, a “traffic accident”: It’s not so much a matter of will or of choice as of circumstance, and his substance — that of a man who has conquered fear in his own heart, and for whom “nothing is more important than I” — remains unchanged.

But, all other things being equal, which “position” (if either) is in itself “preferable,” and in that sense “stronger”? I can’t help but think that the man who still has to hide who he is is in a weaker position than the man who doesn’t. All Juenger could do was silently look into the eyes of the young man about to be executed for deserting from the army of the Third Reich. Perhaps that’s all he could do. Perhaps that was the wisest and the best thing he could do — in those circumstances. Still, I don’t think that position — of being constrained to hold one’s tongue and do nothing while murder is committed in front of you — can be called a position of “strength.” Juenger, at that moment, was in a “bad position.” And the man in the position of the anarch has to ask himself, and perhaps, since his substance is not in accord with his words and deeds, be in doubt as to the answer: To what extent am I still bound to society by fear? (Juenger somewhere wrote that the courage of the soldier is by no means the highest expression of courage.) The forest rebel, because he has already thrust himself out from society, no longer has to ask himself that question. I take Juenger to agree with Stirner that “society” per se is a negative, and does not afford the anarch “his greatest gains” — that is why the anarch (as an element of his very definition!) expels society from himself. As Stirner put it: “[T]he dissolution of society is intercourse or union.” It is not necessarily isolation. The forest rebel, by expelling himself from society, does not thereby cut himself off from what Stirner calls “the action, the commercium, of individuals.” Keeping in mind the relative freedom (e.g., of speech) in the United States compared to that in the Third Reich, one could say (respectfully reversing your formula above) that only when the position of the forest rebel is untenable, dangerous, does he fall back on Plan B, the position of the anarch. Otherwise, he does not step shyly back, but, as Owner, appropriates all that is his, i.e., all that he has the power to appropriate.

Of even greater mystery than the Great Hunt which concludes Eumeswil is Juenger’s decision to convert to the Roman Catholic Church in the very last of his many years. I have been unable to find anything that sheds light on this momentous and intriguing decision. Would you happen to have any information or insight on this matter?

Also, are there any plans in the works to translate Heliopolis?

A pleasure to come across your review and analysis! In response to the points you make:

No offence taken at your preference for the anonymous partial translation – important is that my translation is accurate; the differences or preferences in style are a Geschmacksache, a matter of taste on the respective parts of the translator and reader.

Regarding the choice of forest rebel and forest passage. I address this dilemma in my short translator’s introduction. Whichever way one goes here, a compromise is unavoidable. The obvious choice was to follow Neugroschel’s translation from Eumeswil of forest fleer and forest flight. But, as much as this action is also a fleeing from society into the literal or metaphorical forest, I don’t like the weakness that is implied by the word flight. The forest rebel is not weaker than the average citizen but stronger – his move is one of relative strength. I did consider forest-goer, but that, in my opinion, is an awkward expression. A matter of taste! The French and Italian translations use rebel, and I followed their lead, adding forest to make it a clearly Jüngerian figure. For its part, passage implies both an initiation of sorts and the movement, the “going” to the forest. And for same reason I don’t like forest wanderer, which is more about being there than going there.

Finally – and this is the critical point you bring up – the question of which figure is stronger, anarch or forest rebel. You cite the critical passage:

“Nor, on the other hand, is the forest fleer to be confused with the anarch, although the two of them grow very similar for a while and are barely to be distinguished in existential terms.
The difference is that the forest fleer has been expelled from society, while the anarch has expelled society from himself. He is and remains his own master in all circumstances. When he decides to flee to the forest, his decision is less an issue of justice and conscience for him than a traffic accident. He changes camouflage; of course, his alien status is more obvious in the forest flight, thereby becoming the weaker form, though, perhaps indispensable….”

but you ignore the obvious phrase in the last sentence “…, his alien status is more obvious in the forest flight, thereby becoming the weaker form,…”

As Jünger says, the two figures are existentially identical, the main difference being the context of their life-expression. Thus, “weaker” refers not to differences in the essential strength of individuals embodying the two figures, forest rebel or anarch, but to the relative strength of the two positions themselves. That should be clear, since the same individual can be now an anarch, later a forest rebel. In any case, thanks for pointing out the ambiguity in my introduction, where I somewhat inaccurately related the weakness to the figure and not to his position.

To clarify my view: when an anarch’s position in society is tenable, he chooses to stay there, as an anarch, even if he is prepared for a forest passage. For it is in society, in the company of men and even opposition, that he reaps his greatest gains. Only when this position becomes untenable, dangerous, does he fall back on Plan B, the forest passage. Yes, in this new position he is able to openly enjoy the full expression of his essential freedom, as you point out, but this does not make it the first or most desirable of the two options. Rather, it is a contingency that arises, for which he has prepared himself, and which he will enjoy somewhat like a well-earned holiday, if it becomes necessary. Unless the need arises, he stays hidden in society. If the forest passage were the stronger form, the fulfilment of the anarch’s aspirations, he would be striving to gain it whenever possible; in reality, he falls back on it only if necessary. The plot of the novel supports this view: Manual has perfectly prepared a secret bunker for the eventuality of a forest passage, but he never chooses to take that step, even though he could. Near the end of the novel he even makes a last visit to his bunker to seal it up. The forest passage was not necessary, so it never happened.

I will not comment on your last point except to say that I am not convinced of an analogy between the Great Hunt and a forest passage. The purpose and nature of this symbolic conclusion to Eumeswil remains a true mystery to me.

It was my understanding however that that anonymous translation was indeed by Friese but perhaps Telos might confirm this.