Ernst Jünger's "Forest Passage" - An Essay for Our Times

On how to live under tyranny

Ernst Jünger is a fascinating figure. Although he had been vilified in post-war Germany by many left-leaning intellectuals as a proto-Nazi, his thought clearly transcends political categories, and so he has always found fans both on the left and the right, especially outside Germany. He is also a revered figure in France, having lived in Paris during the German occupation, where he hung out with the French cultural elite of the time.

Jünger never joined the Nazis, though, and he was perhaps the only German living in Germany under Hitler who dared to publish a book that was widely perceived as anti-regime. And although he was never a resistance fighter, he was tangentially involved in the Stauffenberg conspiracy that attempted to take Hitler’s life. His writing might even have inspired some of the conspirators.

But for the most part, he chose what is often called “inner emigration,” a term that many people couldn’t really understand until recently, when it became a thing again, as the kids might say. It is striking though that Jünger continued on this path even after the war, remaining receptive to the enormous conformism that characterizes the human condition, and to the tyrannical nature of the modern bureaucratic state, whether there are Nazis around or not. His essay The Forest Passage was written in the early 1950s.

An Anarch Walks Into a Forest…

In this short book, Jünger crystallizes his ideas on how to escape tyranny while living in the midst of it. This form of resistance requires an exceptional man, the anarch, the one who walks in the forest, metaphorically speaking—a man in society, but not of it.

He is someone who cultivates relentless independence of mind and soul, therefore escaping the crushing push towards conformity and the hypnotizing quality of life under the yoke of a modern bureaucratic tyranny. This cultivation may also involve working on his body, and mentally preparing for dealing decisive blows: that is, refusing to believe the illusion of safety and protection by the tyrant. In other words, the Forest Walker perceives the world around him very differently from most people, understands the underlying dynamics from which society and tyranny arise, and refuses to be controlled by it.

Jünger has sometimes been criticized for promoting a sort of inner resignation and political inaction. There is certainly truth to that: his “anarch” is not an anarchist; he doesn’t join a party, and he keeps clear of “isms” of any kind. He can be a man who outwardly plays along, has a job, shows an acceptable appearance to the outside world, while in his inner life he is a different man entirely who uses his spare time to read, prepare, and cultivate fierce inner freedom. This reminds one of G.I. Gurdjieff’s take about how sincerity and honesty with everyone can also be a weakness.¹ Jünger expresses the same idea when he warns that merely reacting to tyranny can sometimes amount to little more than handing over the tyrant a list of dissidents.

At times, however, Jünger seems to recommend direct action, and even talks in some detail about partisan guerilla warfare. He also has this to say, which has sometimes been taken up by gun rights advocates:

More important is to apply the old maxim that a free man be armed—and not with arms under lock and key in an armory or barracks, but arms kept in his apartment, under his own bed.

And:

Long periods of peace foster certain optical illusions: one is the conviction that the inviolability of the home is grounded in the constitution, which should guarantee it. In reality, it is grounded in the family father, who, sons at his side, fills the doorway with an axe in hand.

So, on the one hand, Jünger’s ideas about cultivating freedom under tyranny are directed purely at internal and mental development, on the other hand, he talks about guns and violence. To understand this apparent contradiction, we need to keep in mind that Jünger’s thought is always deeply metaphysical, even mystic: he seeks to lay bare the spiritual reality behind the appearances. What’s going on, and how one should deal with it, is derived from that. What counts is spiritual preparedness based on a true understanding of the hidden reality.

For example, keeping guns under one’s own bed might not be practical, or even advisable, depending on where one lives, and under what circumstances. Neither might be showing up with an axe at the door. What’s important here, however, is to acknowledge the hidden reality: namely that the violence of the intruder always remains a possibility, and self-defense might become a necessity, even though the tyrannical state claims to guarantee the safety of its citizens. Cultivating this mindset is one way of gaining internal freedom, for it refuses to mentally hand over power to the tyrant in the form of trust and dependence: should the need for self-defense ever arise, you won’t be shocked out of your wits, and you will be mentally prepared. And even if it never manifests, you at least live according to the truth that violence and self-defense are part of the human condition, and no state propaganda can ever eradicate it.

Similar with partisan warfare: it might actually not be a good idea at all to engage in anything like that, but being mentally prepared for it, to think of it as a real possibility, is part of the process of gaining and maintaining “soul independence” under tyranny. The same goes for contemplating one’s death, being prepared to die, thinking about different escape plans for different situations, or not identifying too much with material possessions. The thought of this possibility alone moves you away from the spiritual enslavement that the tyrant’s siren song seeks to establish.

Jünger’s message here is that you need to mentally, physically, spiritually work on yourself constantly if you want to belong to the 1% of “forest walkers” or “anarchs,” those able to resist the soul-smashing tyranny on the deepest level. For most of the time, this won’t involve action. But you will also be prepared for the moment when your destiny is revealed: then you know what to do—whatever it might be, and whenever it materializes, should it materialize. The question here is also: how free are you really if you just emotionally react to the tyrant’s shenanigans? And will you be around to fulfil your destiny if you mindlessly sacrifice yourself just because your buttons are pushed, thus playing into the tyrant’s hands?

In his later works, by the way, Jünger emphasizes the inner aspect of resistance even more. In fact, while his program of spiritual preparedness remains valid, he later seems to lean more towards the futility of political action of any kind: in an interview with French TV late in his life, he said: “Le poète, c’est le seul qui peut changer les choses maintenant.” (“The poet is the only one who can change things now.”) This again shows Jünger’s deeply metaphysical view of things: there is no point in any outward freedom, or fight for freedom, if true metaphysical perception isn’t awakened and nurtured. The subtlety here is that these two can go together in a way: there is an eternal dance, an eternal dialectic. To him, however, the development of inner freedom is a spiritual quest, and as such, really the whole point of history.

I’ll leave you with this quote (translation mine):

The real problem lies rather in the fact that a large majority does not want freedom, indeed that it is afraid of it. One must be free to become such, because freedom is existence—is above all the conscious correspondence with existence and the desire, felt as fate, to realize it. Then man is free, and the world filled with constraint and means of coercion must now serve to make freedom visible in its full splendor, just as the great masses of primeval rock bring forth crystals by their pressure.

The new freedom is the old, is absolute freedom in the garment of time; for to lead over and over again to its triumph, in spite of all the cunning of the zeitgeist: that is the meaning of historical existence.

1. In fact, Jünger knew about Gurdjieff, whom he mentions, funnily enough, in the context of “… builders of cults and small circles whose intentions are hard to discern, like, to give an example, Gurdjiew, one in many ways strange caucasian.”

Some Jünger resources:

• A Swedish documentary and interview with the 102-year-old Jünger that has English substitles

• A good Hermitix podcast about Jünger’s concept of the “Anarch”

• The Forest Passage on Amazon.com