> it's pretty clear what he sees as the essence of the
> people is in their philosophy and art
But often the "philosophy and art" he extols are those that make the sort of human doing described in the Nietzsche passages the "essential character" of human being, aren't they? As in his interpretation of the passage from Antigone.
The Nietzsche passages contains the claim that those who "go back to the innocent conscience of the beast of prey, as triumphant monsters who perhaps emerge from a disgusting [Scheusslichen] procession of murder, arson, rape, and torture, exhilarated and undisturbed of soul, as if it were no more than a student's prank" "have provided the poets with a lot more material for song and praise".
Junger didn't point to something like the composition of Macbeth as exemplifying authentic human doing, did he?
In Marx, the "art" that constitutes the "individual's self- realization" is described as follows:
Really free working, e.g. composing, is at the same time precisely the most damned seriousness, the most intense exertion. The work of material production can achieve this character only (1) when its social character is posited, (2) when it is of a scientific and at the same time general character, not merely human exertion as a specifically harnessed natural force, but exertion as subject, which appears in the production process not in a merely natural, spontaneous form, but as an activity regulating all the forces of nature." <https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch12.htm>
Ted