TELOSscope: The Telos Press Blog

New from Telos Press: Ernst Jünger’s On Pain

Telos Press Publishing is proud to announce the newest addition to our book list: Ernst Jünger’s On Pain, translated and introduced by David C. Durst and prefaced by Russell A. Berman.

Originally published in 1934, this remarkable essay provides valuable insights into the cult of courage and death in Nazi Germany, but also throws light on the ideology of terrorism today.

In On Pain, Jünger announces the rise of a new metaphysics of pain in a totalitarian age, which rejects the liberal values of liberty, security, ease, and comfort, and seeks instead the measure of man in the capacity to withstand pain and sacrifice. Jünger heralds the rise of a new breed of cold and detached warriors, who become one with new, terrorizing machines of death and destruction in human-guided torpedoes and manned airborne missiles, and whose “peculiarly cruel way of seeing,” resembling the insensitive lens of a camera, anticipates the horrors of World War II.

On Pain will be of great interest not only to scholars of modern German culture and history, but also to those interested in the history of photography, history of modern warfare, and contemporary debates on terrorism.

Click here to purchase Ernst Jünger’s On Pain.