Ernst Jünger’s Ethopoietic Authorship

Abstract

Ernst Jünger’s conception of authorship was closely related to a mode of writing designed to transform the reader’s mode of being. In the first phase of his literary activity, his war diaries were intended to teach readers the behaviour patterns enabling them to cope with the dangerous technology irrupting into their life sphere. In Der Arbeiter, he made use of political myths to induce readers to reshape themselves into the cogs of a totalitarian state machinery. After the Second World War, Jünger provided the readers of his books with ancient spiritual exercises in order that they might work on themselves and thereby attain the selfhood which would allow them to resist technological threats.

Keywords

• Ernst Jünger. Spiritual exercises. Technology