Ernst Jünger Anarch

“The forest passage confirms the independence of the anarch, who is basically a forest rebel anywhere, any time, whether in the thicket, in the metropolis, whether inside or outside society. One must distinguish not only between the forest rebel and the partisan but also between the anarch and the criminal; the difference lies in the relationship to the law. The partisan wants to change the law, the criminal break it; the anarch wants neither. He is not for or against the law. While not acknowledging the law, he does try to recognize it like the laws of nature, and he adjusts accordingly.

When it is hot, you doff your hat; in the rain, you open your umbrella; during an earthquake, you leave your house. Law and custom are becoming the subjects of a new field of learning. The anarch endeavors to judge them ethnographically, historically, and also – I will probably come back to this – morally. The state will be generally satisfied with him; it will scarcely notice him In this respect he bears a certain resemblance to the criminal – say, the master spy – whose gifts are concealed behind a run-of-the-mill occupation.”
― Ernst Jünger, Eumeswil

“I ponder my mission from three points of view: first as the Condor’s night steward, then as an historian, and finally as an anarch.”
― Ernst Jünger, Eumeswil

“Up in the bunker [a secret refuge that Manuel has selected and prepared for a potentially necessary escape from society], I will also have time for fishing and hunting. There will even be notes for Rosner. During my first exploratory outing, I had noticed an acacia; it grew in the type of clearing that emerges when a tree collapses. The bush, like a gallows, was hung with skeletons. Although the skeletons were small, I recoiled at first glance.

This sometimes happens when we unexpectedly stumble on nature’s cruelty. Rosner views this as resentment. He compares nature to a festive kitchen where everyone both consumes and is consumed. Nothing perishes; the equation works out. ‘Everything fertilizes everything else,’ as the farmers say. If I am to believe Rosner, we live partly on the beings that we produce in our innards in order to digest them. That is how one might picture the demiurge: up there as a world spirit, with Olympian serenity, delighting in the raging of animals and the warring of men; down here as a pot-bellied man, who benefits from every consuming and being consumed.

This of course releases me from pain as little as it does the grenadier whose leg is shot off for the greater glory of the king. As an anarch, I also have to steer clear of martyrdom. And for the historian, the issue of pain is fundamental.”
― Ernst Jünger, Eumeswil

“Equality is based, as we have seen, on the possibility that anyone can kill anyone else. This awareness alone is enough to help us see through the swaggering of the superpowers – or, as here in Eumeswil, to help the historian study human behavior …..

So much for equality. Freedom is based in the expansion of that maxim: on the anarch's awareness that he can kill himself. He carries this awareness around; it accompanies him like a shadow that he can conjure up. ‘A leap from this bridge will set me free.’

That is more or less how I regard the care I am taking in the acacia forest [Manuel’s secret refuge in case he needs to flee]. The anarch, as I have expounded elsewhere, is the pendant to the monarch; he is as sovereign as the monarch, and also freer since he does not have to rule.

The hilltop bulwark is the chapel of my freedom, whether or not I enter it. It will serve as my stronghold when I change into a warring power and obtain my freedom against the demands of society – my exact courage against their exactions.”
― Ernst Jünger, Eumeswil