Abstract
In 1943, at the request of the Free French Committee in London, Simone Weil wrote “The Need for Roots,” a manuscript outlining the possibilities for renewing France after the war. In it, Weil outlines the primary needs of the human being for rootedness and the (im) possibilities of the state in accommodating these needs. The state of France was unable to do so because it was engaged in colonialism.
I will argue that Weil makes three important points as regards the possibilities of politics. First, she locates European (and specifically French) colonialism historically in the collusion of Christianity and the Roman Empire in the fourth century. It was this collusion, she argues, that created the dominant ideology of the west, that of progress. Second, she shows how this ideology functioned (and, I will argue, still functions) in the destruction and uprooting of countless other peoples and cultures. She then tries to expose this ideology as producing the uprooting, violent and totalizing tendencies of Europe (whether that be fascism, communism, colonialism or even present day democracy). Third, I show how Weil’s critique of this ideology is rooted in two unlikely sources: (1) a rigorous materialism, grounded in a reading of Marx, and (2) the ideal of justice found both in the French Revolution and the Gospels. These sources allow her to offer a critique, like that of many feminists, of the omnipresence of western power. Weil undertakes her critique in the hope of minimizing some of this violence so that France and her citizens could be properly rooted—in work and toward her neighbors.
In a society where the good is defined in terms of profit rather than in terms of human need, there must always be some group of people who, through systematized oppression, can be made to feel surplus, to occupy the place of the dehumanized inferior. Within this society, that group is made up of Black and third World people, working-class people, older people, and women.
(Lorde 1984, p. 114).
We all live by treading on human beings, but we do not give it a thought; it takes a special effort to remember them.
(Little 2003, p. 168).
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Notes
- 1.
Weil (2001, p. 86). See also Little (2003, pp. 29–30).
- 2.
Marx (1992, p. 351). Europe, in Marx’s eyes, is contaminated by this “sense” of having. Kristeva offers another approach to this problem of “having” when she notes that even love has become determined by political forces. See Kristeva (1987, pp. 1–18).
- 3.
“Every one knows that there are forms of cruelty that can injure a man’s life without injuring his body. They are such as deprive him of a certain form of food necessary to the life of the soul” (Weil 2001, p. 7).
- 4.
See Fanon (1991, 2004). Also, Said (1994, 2003).
- 5.
“It is the very concept of the nation that needs to be suppressed—or rather, the manner in which the word is used. For the word national and the expressions of which it forms part are empty of all meaning; their only content is millions of corpses, and orphans, and disabled men, and tears and despair” (Weil 1962, p. 159).
- 6.
For a more detailed and complete view of Weil’s Marxism, see Weil (1973) and Blum and Seidler (1989). For a more complete view of the limits of Marx’s ideas about colonialism, see Young (2001, Chapter 8).
- 7.
Historically, she followed Marx in asserting that social relationships underwent a radical transformation when human beings were no longer subject to material forces (nature) and instead, became subject to one another. As human beings increasingly subdued nature, or material forces, Weil observed that they became more oppressive toward one another. Instead of directing force onto matter, human beings started to level it onto one another. See Weil (1973, pp. 37–56).
- 8.
Weil (1973, p. 171). Blum and Seidler (1989, p. 76). See also Balibar (1996).
- 9.
It would be interesting to explore the relationship between Weil’s Plato and her Marx. How does her reading of Marx influence her Plato and how does her version of Plato affect her understanding of Marx?
- 10.
Weil (1998, p. 132). See also Weil (1973, p. 180).
- 11.
This is an idea suggested by the Ghanaian leader, Kwame Nkrumah, see Young (2001, p. 47).
- 12.
Weil (1973, p. 71). See also Blum and Seidler (1989, p. 73).
- 13.
Weil (1973, p. 180). See also Bhabha (1994).
- 14.
In this way she differs from Sartre, who distinguishes between annexation, colonialism, and genocide, and Young, who distinguishes between colonialism, imperialism, neocolonialism, and postcolonialism. It is not that Weil would disagree with their analysis, it is that she would place them all under the same oppressive French system. See Young (2001) and Sartre’s “On Genocide.”
- 15.
See Brown (2001).
- 16.
This notion of teleology could be seen as culminating in Hegel’s philosophy of history.
- 17.
Weil (2003, p. 42). “…[In] any case Christ never said that warships should accompany, even at a distance, those who bring the good news. Their presence changes the nature of the message. It is difficult to retain the supernatural virtues attributed to the blood of the martyrs when it is avenged by force of arms. You are asking for more trumps in your hand than is allowed when you want at one and the same time Caesar and the Cross” (Little 2003, p. 108).
- 18.
What was important to Weil was that this convincing occurred through fixed conditions, not through conscious arguments.
- 19.
Lorde (1984, pp. 110–113, 123).
- 20.
See Anzaldúa (1999), especially “La conciencia de la mestiza/Towards a New Consciousness”, and Kristeva (1984). For Weil, this “third way” was already present with the Greeks, especially Plato (see Weil 1998).
- 21.
Weil acknowledges the difficulty when she writes: However, events do not wait; time will not stop in order to afford us leisure; the present forces itself urgently on our attention and threatens us with calamities which would bring in their train, amongst many other harrowing misfortunes, the material impossibility of studying or writing otherwise than in the service of the oppressors. What are we to do?” (1973, p. 60).
- 22.
In Weil’s view, Marx’s account of society, in which everything was determined by force, was limited. Although she agreed with Marx that relationships of force are determinative, she wanted to maintain a space for countering this force. This space, however small, was composed of what she would call good, or justice, or love. See the discussion in Weil (1973, p. 171).
- 23.
This was the socialist led Popular Front government. See Little (2003) and Young (2001).
- 24.
This rethinking is the subject of Weil (2003).
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Radzins, I. (2009). Simone Weil’s Social Philosophy: Toward a Post-Colonial Ethic. In: Anderson, P. (eds) New Topics in Feminist Philosophy of Religion. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-6833-1_5
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