Il lavoro e il lavoratore secondo Ernst Jünger e Simone Weil

Abstract

The present article compares Ernst Jünger’ and Simone Weil’s thought, starting from the concepts of work and worker. Work takes on the meaning of a meticulous exercise of reading and modifying the reality and its stratifications, and coincides with the position of the human being within the becoming of forms and meanings. Both thinkers maintain that the worker can reach a higher stage, i.e., the void that affirms the divine grace, according to Weil, and the anarchic space that captures the elemental, according to Jünger. Despite the similarities, there is a crucial difference between these perspectives: according to Jünger, the fulfilment consists in the dominion, while for Weil fulfilment coincides with radical waiting.