From Jünger's The Worker: Sections on Sum and Form

THE FORM AS A WHOLE WHICH INCLUDES MORE THAN THE SUM OF ITS PARTS

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The answer to the question posed just now [whether the form of the worker does not conceal more than has been suspected thus far] presupposes an understanding of what is meant by ‘form’.  This elucidation does not belong by any means to the marginalia, despite the little space which can be devoted to it here.

If, in the pages that follow, we speak of forms in the plural it is because of a preliminary lack of a hierarchy, which will be remedied in the course of the investigation.  Because it is not the law of cause and effect which decides on the hierarchical order in the realm of the form, but another type of law, that of the seal and of the imprint.  We will see that we are entering an epoch in which the imprint of space, of time and of man stems from a single form, namely that of the worker.

At first, independently of this hierarchy, we will call ‘form’ those dimensions which become visible to an eye capable of grasping that the world is held together by a law which is more decisive than that of cause and effect, without yet seeing, however, the unity under which this integration is achieved.

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In ‘form’ rests the whole which is more than the sum of its parts and which was inaccessible to an age used to thinking in anatomical terms. It is the hallmark of an age to come [38] that man will once again see, feel, and act under the spell of forms. The degree to which they can perceive the influence of forms will determine the rank of an intellect, the worth of an eye. The first significant endeavours are already underway; they must not be ignored, neither in art, nor in science, nor in faith.  In politics too everything depends on the fact that one brings into the debate forms, and not just concepts, ideas or mere appearances.

From the moment when form shapes one’s experience, everything becomes ‘form’.  Form is thus not a new dimension to be discovered in addition to those already known; rather to a new gaze the world appears as a theatre of forms and their interrelations. To point out an error typical for the period of transition, it is not a question of the ‘individual’ disappearing and only being able to derive meaning from corporations, communities, or ideas, as higher-order units.  Form is also represented at the individual level: every finger nail, every atom in him is ‘form’.  Incidentally, has the science of our time not already begun to see atoms as forms and no longer as the smallest of parts?

Admittedly, a part is just as far from being ‘form’ as a sum of parts can result in a ‘form’.  This must be considered for instance if one wants to use the word “man” in a sense which goes beyond the usual phrases.  Man possesses form insofar as he is grasped as the concrete, tangible ‘individual’.  This does not, however, apply to “man” in general, which is simply one of the commonplaces of understanding and which can mean anything or nothing, but can in no case mean something precise.

The same applies to the broader forms to which the individual belongs.  This inclusion can be calculated neither by multiplication nor by division – numerous men do not result in a form, and no dividing up of form leads back to the individual. Because the form is the whole which entails more than the sum of its parts. A man is more than the sum of the atoms, limbs, organs and fluids of which he consists; a marriage is more than man and wife, a family more than man, woman and child. A friendship is more than two men, and a people is more than can be expressed by the results of a census or by any number of political polls.

In the Nineteenth Century, it became normal to consign any spirit professing to belong to this “more”, to this totality, to a kingdom of dreams befitting a more beautiful world, but which have no place in reality.

However, there can be no doubt that precisely the opposite assessment is correct, and that in the political sphere too any mind unable to see this “more” is of inferior rank.  Such a mind may play a role in cultural history, in economic history, in the history of ideas – but history is more.  History is Form inasmuch as its content is the destiny of forms.

Certainly – and this bracket might emphasise more clearly what is to be understood under the category of form – then, the majority of those challenging the logicians and mathematicians of life did not themselves move on a different plane. Because there is no difference between appealing to a disconnected soul or a disconnected idea, and appealing  to a disconnected man.  Neither ‘soul’, nor ‘idea’ are ‘form’ in this sense, nor is there a convincing contrast between them and the ‘body’ or ‘matter’.

It is this which seems to contradict the traditional representation of the experience of death in which the soul leaves the body, and hence the immortal part of man leaves the ephemeral one.  It is, however, an error, an alien idea, that the dying man leaves his body – rather his form enters a new order inaccessible to any spatial, temporal, or causal determination.  From this knowledge derived our ancestors’ view according to which, at the moment of death, the warrior was led to Walhalla – but not just as a soul, rather in a radiating corporeality resembling the hero’s body in battle.

It is very important that we once again achieve full consciousness of the fact that the corpse is not a soulless body.  Between the body in the moment of death and the corpse in the instant that follows it, there isn’t the least relationship; this points to the fact that the body is more than the sum of its parts, while the corpse is perfectly equal to the sum of its anatomical parts.  It is a mistake to think that the soul leaves dust and ash behind like a flame.  It is of utmost importance, however, that form is not subordinated to the elements of fire and earth, and that therefore man as form belongs to eternity.  In his form, quite detached from any simple moral values, any redemption, or any “aspirational ardour”, lies dormant his innate, immutable and imperishable merit, his highest existence and his most profound confirmation. The more we dedicate ourselves to movement, the more genuinely we must be convinced that a motionless being lies concealed beneath it, and that every increase in its speed is merely the translation of an immortal primal language.

From this awareness, results a new relationship to man, a more ardent love and a more terrible ruthlessness.  From it results the possibility of an exultant anarchy,which comes to be equated with the strictest order – a spectacle already evident in great battles and giant cities, whose image stands at the beginning of our century. In this sense, the engine is not the ruler, but the symbol of our time, the symbolic image of a power in which deflagration and precision are not opposed to each other.It is the audacious toy of a race able to blow itself up with desire and still see a confirmation of order in this very act.  This attitude, which cannot be traced back either to idealism or materialism, and has to be approached rather as heroic realism,produces an attacking force of the highest degree, which we need. Its exponents are like the volunteers who welcomed the Great War with open arms, and who welcome everything which followed and will follow it.

Again, as we said, the ‘individual’ also possesses form, and the supreme and inalienable right to life which it shares with stones, plants, animals and stars, is his right to form.  As form, the ‘individual’ encompasses more than the sum of his powers and capacities; he is deeper than what he can imagine it in his deepest thoughts, and more powerful than what he can express in his most powerful acts.

He carries thus, within himself, the reference and the measure, and the supreme art of life consists, to the extent that he lives as an ‘individual’, in the fact that he takes himself to be reference and measure.  This constitutes the pride and sorrow of life.  All the great moments in life, the glowing dreams of youth, the intoxication of love, the fire of battle, coincide with a deeper consciousness of form, and memory is the magical return of form which touches the heart and convinces it of the immortality of these moments.  The bitterest despair of a life lies in not having been fulfilled, in not becoming fully grown.  Here, the ‘individual’ resembles the prodigal son who squanders his inheritance abroad, no matter how great or little it may have been – and there can thus be no doubt about his return to the fatherland.  Because the irreducible heritage of the individual is that he belongs to eternity, and in his highest and most unambiguous moments he is entirely aware of it.  It is his task to express this in the course of time.  In this sense, his life becomes an allegory of the form.

Beyond that, however, the ‘individual’ is integrated in a great hierarchy of forms – powers whose reality, corporeality, and necessity one cannot adequately imagine.  By comparison, the ‘individual’ himself becomes an approximation, a representative – and the force, the wealth, the meaning of his life depend on the extent to which he participates in the order and clashes of forms.

Genuine forms are recognized by the fact that the sum of all forces can be dedicated to them, the highest worship can be devoted to them, the most extreme hate can be borne against them.  Since they conceal the whole within themselves, they make a claim on the whole. Thus it is that man shares the purpose and fate of form and it is this discovery which makes him capable of the sacrifice which finds its most significant expression in the sacrifice of blood.