Through the Line

In the essay «Through the Line» (1950), Ernst Jünger explores nihilism as a key problem of modernity — a disease process that has engulfed the entire planet. Drawing on the ideas of Dostoevsky and Nietzsche, the author proposes three approaches to the problem: diagnosis, prognosis, and therapy. While in «The Worker» (1932) Jünger saw the way out in «total mobilization», now he speaks of the necessity to «cross the line» — to overcome nihilism through personal experience of freedom, in which a «new turn of being» will emerge. This text is an attempt to find a point of support in an accelerating technical world.
In the afterword to the translation, philosopher Alexander Mikhailovsky explains the key images and concepts — «zero point», «nothing», «pain», «wild wilderness» — and reveals the issues raised in the dialogue between Jünger and Heidegger, who responded to this essay with the article «On the Line».