Anarch (sovereign individual)

The Anarch is a metaphysical ideal figure of a sovereign individual, conceived by Ernst Jünger in his novel Eumeswil (1977).^[1] Jünger was greatly influenced by individualist anarchist Max Stirner. Indeed, the Anarch starts out from Stirner's conception of the unique (der Einzige), a man who forms a bond around something concrete rather than ideal,^[2][3] but it is then developed in subtle but critical ways beyond Stirner's concept. The concept is developed (and may best be studied) through the actions and reflections of Manuel Venator, the protagonist of Eumeswil.

Here are few of the countless quotes in Eumeswil regarding the anarch:

The Anarch is the positive counterpart of the anarchist.

I am an anarch – not because I despise authority, but because I need it. Likewise, I am not a nonbeliever, but a man who demands something worth believing in.

The anarch sticks to facts, not ideas. He suffers not for facts but because of them, and usually through his own fault, as in a traffic accident. Certainly, there are unforeseeable things – maltreatments. However, I believe I have attained a certain degree of self-distancing that allows me to regard this as an accident.

As I have said, I have nothing to do with the partisans. I wish to defy society not in order to improve it, but to hold it at bay no matter what. I suspend my achievements – but also my demands.

Although I am an anarch, I am not anti-authoritarian. Quite the opposite: I need authority, although I do not believe in it. My critical faculties are sharpened by the absence of the credibility that I ask for. As a historian, I know what can be offered.

The Anarch is to the anarchist, what the monarch is to the monarchist.

— Ernst Jünger

References