On Pain and Other Essays

Four Key Essays by Ernst Jünger

"The Battle as Inner Experience" (1922) is a remarkable document of an intense, intellectually and literarily ambitious reflection on the trauma of World War I. Inspired by Romantic impulses, Nietzsche, and Expressionism, the work is a relentless attempt to offer a visionarily profound image of war and to reveal its true essence.

In "Total Mobilization" (1930), Jünger describes the unique nature of the World War. According to him, it lies in the fact that the genius of war is imbued with the spirit of progress. This manifests in the trend toward total mobilization, or in other words, the "absolute utilization of potential energy, which transforms the warring industrial states into volcanic forges."

Conceived as a complement to the previous essay, "Fire and Movement" (1930)—originally published as "Military Mathematics"—is military-theoretical in nature, with tactics and technology at its core.

The essay "On Pain" (1934) concludes Jünger's "mobilizing" works. Here, the author highlights the transition from the bourgeois world with its humanitarian ideas to a planetary society of workers, the emergence of which entails great sacrifices and therefore demands a new post-bourgeois, post-humanitarian attitude toward pain. Jünger predicts an era of forced world transformation and advises being prepared through a philosophy of pain for the sacrifices and suffering associated with it.