THE JUENGER CASE
beings in purely instrumental relations. In his early works they were
nothing but objects to be manipulated in the processes of war and
technology; in his later works, objects of the inanimate world exclusively.
While evil is loose in the world, this type of humanist tradition elects
to dissect and record, to collect and classify, to struggle for the precise
word, the perfect phrase-much as the Nazis never failed to exploit
the instrumental value of their victims and never failed to keep a beau–
tiful administrative record of their "experiments" and exterminations.
This may indeed
be
intended to convey an a:nti-Nazi attitude, an oppo–
sition to the evil in the world; what it reveals more basically, I think, is
an attitude of making one's peace with such a world, of pronouncing
one's own absolution for the evil it has generated.
To consider this a transition from nihilism to tradition, as Mr.
Clair in PR did, is harmless as long as we state explicitly the continuity
between
this
form of nihilism and
this
type of tradition. To consider it
as anything else raises the question of whether we are not in danger of
suspending cri ·cal judgment in order to make our peace with the forces
behind this type of tradition.
Hans Meyerhoff
347
