Scan barcode
casparb's review
I think if this is yr first brush with weil, as it is for many since! I see this described as the centre of her oeuvre plenty. years ago before i'd even started g&g I remember trying to work out via twitter whether I should read this or Gravity first. anyway, don't make it this. TSE's intro is great I hand it to him. ok ok but WHY ---
-it's so historically put. written in 1943, the year SW dies & I would imagine it's difficult to avoid this sensation of Europe entirely exploding, itself. so we are getting into what FRAnce means. we are getting into what the DISSOLution of unions & the industrial future does. it's boots & it works & her work crushing human rights here is rly nice, foucault also has some very good essays/lectures on this but that's later . I think her prescriptive-ish conclusions are (moreorless) roughly agreeable (as always with sw we have to do a little editing on the fly).
only there's a bizarre experience with this book since it's so materially driven (in the historical sense) that when you get toward the end of the last essay she's working with SPIRIT again, with a slightly familiar take on Truth, but above all SPIRIT and it's the most assured moment of reading, it's where her voice sang the sharpest. o what an experience
-it's so historically put. written in 1943, the year SW dies & I would imagine it's difficult to avoid this sensation of Europe entirely exploding, itself. so we are getting into what FRAnce means. we are getting into what the DISSOLution of unions & the industrial future does. it's boots & it works & her work crushing human rights here is rly nice, foucault also has some very good essays/lectures on this but that's later . I think her prescriptive-ish conclusions are (moreorless) roughly agreeable (as always with sw we have to do a little editing on the fly).
only there's a bizarre experience with this book since it's so materially driven (in the historical sense) that when you get toward the end of the last essay she's working with SPIRIT again, with a slightly familiar take on Truth, but above all SPIRIT and it's the most assured moment of reading, it's where her voice sang the sharpest. o what an experience
smuds2's review
I may come back to the book in the future, but in the last section, Uprootedness and the Nation, I felt like it veered less into philosophy and more into historical analysis - I wasn’t really interested in that when I picked up the book.
The first 100 pages or so were good - thought provoking and occasionally outdated but all good food for thought
The first 100 pages or so were good - thought provoking and occasionally outdated but all good food for thought
gnatroberts's review
5.0
It's a rare pleasure to encounter a brilliant mind that thinks so differently from you, whose almost every thought contradicts the assumptions you've made your entire life. Simone Weil is such a mind for me, and I think for many others of my generation. The spiritual anarchist, whose anarchism was founded in spirituality and not incidental to it. The faithful iconoclast. From the first page, Weil upended my worldview, with her elegant reversal of the common conception of human rights, and her emphasis on obligation. Her distaste for the Romans reframes the entirety of Western history. Her closing thesis on the holiness of labor reminded me of Buddhist walking meditation, the willing subordination of self.
One of the most satisfying things about Weil's philosophy is its consistency. So many European philosophers devoted their lives to the theory of human dignity, but went on to condone genocide and colonialism across the world. Weil applies her principles justly and equitably, and sees the same worthiness in Senegalese and Tahitian culture as in French. She condemns her nation's colonialism at every opportunity, and points out its many hypocrisies. Its sadly refreshing to hear a white person so thoroughly recognize the humanity of BIPOC peoples.
It will be years before I fully come to terms with this book. I do not know how much of Weil's beliefs I agree with and how much I don't. To be honest, it feels profane to consider this book in terms of agree/disagree. This book feels above such concerns, I know for certain I am better off for having read it.
One of the most satisfying things about Weil's philosophy is its consistency. So many European philosophers devoted their lives to the theory of human dignity, but went on to condone genocide and colonialism across the world. Weil applies her principles justly and equitably, and sees the same worthiness in Senegalese and Tahitian culture as in French. She condemns her nation's colonialism at every opportunity, and points out its many hypocrisies. Its sadly refreshing to hear a white person so thoroughly recognize the humanity of BIPOC peoples.
It will be years before I fully come to terms with this book. I do not know how much of Weil's beliefs I agree with and how much I don't. To be honest, it feels profane to consider this book in terms of agree/disagree. This book feels above such concerns, I know for certain I am better off for having read it.
danielad's review
3.0
Simone Weil begins The Need for Roots with a list of our obligations towards other human beings. Against Jacques Maritain, she claims that while rights exist only insofar as there are people who recognize them, obligations are unconditioned: "An obligation which goes unrecognized by anybody loses none of the full force of its existence. A right which goes unrecognized by anybody is not worth very much" (3). Among the obligations that each person has are the need for order, liberty, obedience, and responsibility. Chief among them, however, is the need for roots, that is, the need for each person to belong, whether this is an industrial worker's need to belong in a town, a farmer's need to belong in the countryside, or any given person's need to have a homeland: "To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul" (41). The majority of the text contains Weil's attempt to work out the meaning of roots and the meaning of belonging. And, since it was written in the early part of 1943, the work is especially interesting for having been composed in the middle of World War II.
The need for roots arises when we are uprooted during a military invasion, through monetary greed, or through the social divisions brought about by education ("[t]he Renaissance everywhere brought about a break between people of culture and the mass of the population" (43)). When such breaks or divisions occur, our relation to our history changes and we no longer fit in where we once did. Industrial workers are uprooted when when their employers treat them as mere labourers and when their full character as human beings is ignored. They are considered valuable only as producers and not as thinking, feeling, and worshipping beings. As Weil clarifies, "the abolition of the proletarian lot, chiefly characterized by uprootedness, depends upon the creation of forms of industrial production and culture of the mind in which workmen can be, and be made to feel themselves to be, at home" (69).
Similarly, peasants and farmers are uprooted when they fail to enjoy their work: "the young man starts to spend the week dreaming about what he is going to do on Sunday. From that moment he is lost" (80). Both industrial and agricultural workers should be educated in a holistic way that leads them to enjoy their labour while seeing beauty in it. Like Gandhi, Weil demands that large factories be shut down and smaller, less centralized ones set up. Farmers ought to be encouraged to travel while industrial workers should be given their own plots of land to tend. In each case, we must consider the labourer as being a human being with value extending beyond productivity.
In the next section, Weil deals with uprootedness and nationhood. Totalitarianism begins, she argues, with Cardinal Richelieu's insistence on making the French population loyal to a more centralized state: "Richelieu wanted to enslave people's very minds; not for his own benefit . . . but for that of the State he represented. His conception of the State was already totalitarian" (111). Hence, the nation should not identify itself with a state to the extent that its religious and imaginative interests are subordinated to it. Patriotism must never be confused with total allegiance to a particular state or with imperialism - the mission of imposing a culture on those to whom it does not belong.
The final section, The Growing of Roots, concludes the book with a plan for re-rooting the French nation. While Greece (excluding Alexander the Great) and pre-12th century Christianity serve as positive models to follow, Rome and Judaism are historical failures (Weil reveals herself in this text in particular to be a modern Manichaean). Simply put, for Weil, insofar as a civilization is Roman or Jewish, it is bad, insofar as it is Greek or Christian, it is good. And so an imperialistic nation is not a rooted nation, filled with spiritual inspiration; an imperialistic nation, on the contrary, has a distorted notion of greatness. It has the same notion of greatness that empowers dictators like Hitler: "Our conception of greatness is the very one which has inspired Hitler's whole life" (210). We must replace this notion of greatness - a notion that is built on aggrandizing oneself or one's own nation at the expense of others - with a notion that recognizes 'the void' as well as the dignity of work. By 'the void' (for more on 'the void' see Gravity and Grace) Weil means the space in which an action is done or something is suffered without any thought of compensation. Hence, only once the people of France learn to see greatness in work done without any thought of compensation will they be able to re-grow the roots they have lost: "It is not difficult to define the place that physical labour should occupy in a well-ordered social life. It should be its spiritual core" (288).
So why did I give the book only three stars? I suppose it's because much of her thought seems utopian. Though I agree, for instance, that farmers should be encouraged to travel and that large factories should be demolished with smaller ones built in their stead, it seems that Weil is too optimistic. Or maybe I'm just too pessimistic. She rightly identifies many of the failures of modern European society. But these failures . . . I don't know if they can be corrected in the way she suggests. Yes, I agree that we need a spiritual revival, but I believe that only with the return of Christ will we ever be able to hope to achieve the society she pictures here. Moreover, I find her polarities between Rome and Greece, Judaism and Christianity to be a bit simplistic, especially when she characterizes particular artists as being wholly pure (Homer and Bach) in opposition to those who are less pure (Virgil and Victor Hugo). This being said, I do believe that her thought, combined with Gandhi's and others, can provide a much needed alternative to the disgusting Capitalist/Marxist polarity branded about in so many philosophy departments. If you'll allow me to digress here, Marxism is not the only alternative to Capitalism. Yes, I believe Weil's thought is too utopian. But it is much, much less utopian and ridiculous than Marxist and neo-Marxist thought. I was once mocked for suggesting that Gandhi offers a viable alternative to Marxism . . . . Who is right? Not Marx.
The need for roots arises when we are uprooted during a military invasion, through monetary greed, or through the social divisions brought about by education ("[t]he Renaissance everywhere brought about a break between people of culture and the mass of the population" (43)). When such breaks or divisions occur, our relation to our history changes and we no longer fit in where we once did. Industrial workers are uprooted when when their employers treat them as mere labourers and when their full character as human beings is ignored. They are considered valuable only as producers and not as thinking, feeling, and worshipping beings. As Weil clarifies, "the abolition of the proletarian lot, chiefly characterized by uprootedness, depends upon the creation of forms of industrial production and culture of the mind in which workmen can be, and be made to feel themselves to be, at home" (69).
Similarly, peasants and farmers are uprooted when they fail to enjoy their work: "the young man starts to spend the week dreaming about what he is going to do on Sunday. From that moment he is lost" (80). Both industrial and agricultural workers should be educated in a holistic way that leads them to enjoy their labour while seeing beauty in it. Like Gandhi, Weil demands that large factories be shut down and smaller, less centralized ones set up. Farmers ought to be encouraged to travel while industrial workers should be given their own plots of land to tend. In each case, we must consider the labourer as being a human being with value extending beyond productivity.
In the next section, Weil deals with uprootedness and nationhood. Totalitarianism begins, she argues, with Cardinal Richelieu's insistence on making the French population loyal to a more centralized state: "Richelieu wanted to enslave people's very minds; not for his own benefit . . . but for that of the State he represented. His conception of the State was already totalitarian" (111). Hence, the nation should not identify itself with a state to the extent that its religious and imaginative interests are subordinated to it. Patriotism must never be confused with total allegiance to a particular state or with imperialism - the mission of imposing a culture on those to whom it does not belong.
The final section, The Growing of Roots, concludes the book with a plan for re-rooting the French nation. While Greece (excluding Alexander the Great) and pre-12th century Christianity serve as positive models to follow, Rome and Judaism are historical failures (Weil reveals herself in this text in particular to be a modern Manichaean). Simply put, for Weil, insofar as a civilization is Roman or Jewish, it is bad, insofar as it is Greek or Christian, it is good. And so an imperialistic nation is not a rooted nation, filled with spiritual inspiration; an imperialistic nation, on the contrary, has a distorted notion of greatness. It has the same notion of greatness that empowers dictators like Hitler: "Our conception of greatness is the very one which has inspired Hitler's whole life" (210). We must replace this notion of greatness - a notion that is built on aggrandizing oneself or one's own nation at the expense of others - with a notion that recognizes 'the void' as well as the dignity of work. By 'the void' (for more on 'the void' see Gravity and Grace) Weil means the space in which an action is done or something is suffered without any thought of compensation. Hence, only once the people of France learn to see greatness in work done without any thought of compensation will they be able to re-grow the roots they have lost: "It is not difficult to define the place that physical labour should occupy in a well-ordered social life. It should be its spiritual core" (288).
So why did I give the book only three stars? I suppose it's because much of her thought seems utopian. Though I agree, for instance, that farmers should be encouraged to travel and that large factories should be demolished with smaller ones built in their stead, it seems that Weil is too optimistic. Or maybe I'm just too pessimistic. She rightly identifies many of the failures of modern European society. But these failures . . . I don't know if they can be corrected in the way she suggests. Yes, I agree that we need a spiritual revival, but I believe that only with the return of Christ will we ever be able to hope to achieve the society she pictures here. Moreover, I find her polarities between Rome and Greece, Judaism and Christianity to be a bit simplistic, especially when she characterizes particular artists as being wholly pure (Homer and Bach) in opposition to those who are less pure (Virgil and Victor Hugo). This being said, I do believe that her thought, combined with Gandhi's and others, can provide a much needed alternative to the disgusting Capitalist/Marxist polarity branded about in so many philosophy departments. If you'll allow me to digress here, Marxism is not the only alternative to Capitalism. Yes, I believe Weil's thought is too utopian. But it is much, much less utopian and ridiculous than Marxist and neo-Marxist thought. I was once mocked for suggesting that Gandhi offers a viable alternative to Marxism . . . . Who is right? Not Marx.