Abstract
Simone Weil makes a distinction between the language of “the nuptial chamber” and that of “market place.” Each language is proper to a realm of values. The values of the former are far more important than the latter. A contemporary problem is that these intimate values have been demeaned by treating them as if they were values of the market place. Using political philosopher Michael Sandel’s What Money Can’t Buy, this essay shows the validity of Weil’s distinction. It then goes on to show how paying attention to this distinction adds a dimension of depth to our social discussions—a dimension often lacking when all values become treated as economic ones.
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Notes
- 1.
Simone Weil, Simone Weil: Late Philosophical Writings, ed. and trans. Eric O. Springsted (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 2015), 127.
- 2.
Ibid.
- 3.
Weil, Late Philosophical Writings, 128.
- 4.
Simone Weil, Waiting for God, trans. Emma Craufurd (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), 79.
- 5.
Rainer Maria Rilke, “Interiors, II,” in The Inner Sky: Poems, Notes, Dreams, trans. and ed. Damion Searls (Boston: David R. Godine Publisher, 2010), 13.
- 6.
Michael Sandel, What Money Can’t Buy (New York: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 2012).
- 7.
Sandel, What Money Can’t Buy, 51.
- 8.
Ibid., 8.
- 9.
Ibid., 9.
- 10.
Ibid.
- 11.
Ibid., 64–65.
- 12.
Ibid., Chapter 3.
- 13.
Ibid., 113.
- 14.
“…there is something wrong in the vocabulary of the stream of modern thought called “personalist.” And in this domain, whenever there is a grave error in vocabulary, it is hard to avoid grave errors in thought.” Weil, Late Philosophical Writings, 104.
- 15.
That it is Maritain and his personalism that is the target of her criticisms, see Eric O. Springsted, “Beyond the Personal: Weil’s Critique of Maritain,” Harvard Theological Review 98, no. 2 (April 2005).
- 16.
Sandel, What Money Can’t Buy, 203.
- 17.
In What Money Can’t Buy, Sandel does not spell out what exactly these human values are. He has, however, dealt with them in works such as Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do? (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010) and Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). In what follows, I do not see any reason to suggest that Sandel would be opposed to the additional distinctions Weil draws.
- 18.
The relevant argument on which I am drawing may be found in her essay “Is There a Marxist Doctrine?”, written about the same time as “What Is Sacred in Every Human Being?”. Marx, she argues, had the great insight that there is such a thing as “social matter,” which is analogous to physical matter. It is not subject to the laws of mechanics, but it is an interplay of social forces. It has laws like mechanics has laws. Arguing, as did Plato, that the necessary is distant from the good, and that necessity is not a machine for producing goodness, she asks, “if Marx is right, then how can justice ever occur?” Plato and Weil saw the possibility of exceptions, moments of grace, but these are in some sense from outside the collective. Plato saw the need for something outside the system. Marx did not, and thought that something like the morality of professional groups, a morality of social opinion, could produce justice. But these, too, she argues, are subject to the same forces in the end. This was pretty obvious in those who had achieved the supposedly enlightened workers’ and revolutionary consciousness. She says, “The characteristic common to all these moralities, and to every kind of social morality, was formulated by Plato in definitive terms: ‘They call just and beautiful things that are necessary, for they do not know how great in reality is the distance which separates the essence of the necessary from that of the good’” (“Is There a Marxist Doctrine?” in Oppression and Liberty, trans. A. Will and J. Petrie (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1973), 182–83. We should also take into consideration her comments in a similar vein in the contemporaneous essay “Are We Struggling for Justice?”. She argues there that true morality requires the consent of those whose lives are brought into the sphere of our actions. Of course, in the quotidian world, one can’t go around asking permission of everybody for everything. We accept social morality, and need it to move ahead. Still, we cannot ignore consent, for consent is essential for justice, and it is important for a just society to find ways that people can give their consent. Money, and other forms of coercion, are violations of it. This is why markets can corrupt and do so deeply. “Consent is neither to be bought nor sold. Consequently, whatever the political institutions, in a society where monetary transactions dominate most of social life, where almost all obedience is bought and sold, there can be no freedom” (in Simone Weil Writings Selected, ed. Eric O. Springsted [Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1998]), 127.
- 19.
Weil, Late Philosophical Writings, 112–113.
- 20.
This is not hypothetical for Weil. When in Marseille, she often would go to watch trials. This experience shows up in her thinking about words in “What Is Sacred in Every Human Being?”. For example: “Listening to someone is to put ourselves in his place while he is speaking. Putting ourselves in the place of a being whose soul is mutilated by affliction, or who is in imminent danger of becoming such a being, is to annihilate one’s own soul. […] Thus the afflicted are not heard […] That is why there is no hope for the vagabond before the judge. If through his babblings something heartrending comes out that pierces the soul, it will not be heard by either the judge or the spectators. It is a mute cry,” 122.
- 21.
On one of the better examinations of Weil’s critique of rights, especially in the essay “What Is Sacred in Every Human Being?” see Stanley Hauerwas, “How to Think about Rights Theologically,” in The Work of Theology (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2015).
- 22.
See Michael Walzer, Thick and Thin Moral Argument at Home and Abroad (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994).
- 23.
Alexis de Tocqueville, “Principal Causes Which Tend to Maintain the Democratic Republic in the United States,” chapter XVII, 298–342, in Democracy in America, vol. 1, trans. H. Reeve, revised F. Bowen (New York: Vintage Books, 1945).
- 24.
Weil, The Need for Roots, trans. A. Wills (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), 7.
References
Hauerwas, Stanley. “How to Think about Rights Theologically.” In The Work of Theology. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2015.
Rilke, Rainer Maria. The Inner Sky: Poems, Notes, Dreams. Translated and edited by Damion Searls. Boston: David R. Godine Publisher, 2010.
Sandel, Michael. Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do? New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010.
———. Liberalism and the Limits of Justice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
———. What Money Can’t Buy. New York: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 2012.
Springsted, Eric O. “Beyond the Personal: Weil’s Critique of Maritain.” Harvard Theological Review 98, no. 2 (April 2005): 209–218.
Tocqueville, Alexis de. Democracy in America. Translated by H. Reeve, revised by F. Bowen. New York: Vintage Books, 1945.
Walzer, Michael. Thick and Thin Moral Argument at Home and Abroad. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994.
Weil, Simone. The Need for Roots. Translated by Arthur Wills. New York: Harper & Row, 1971.
———. Oppression and Liberty. Translated by Arthur Wills and John Petrie. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1973.
———. Simone Weil: Late Philosophical Writings. Edited and translated by Eric O. Springsted. Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 2015.
———. Simone Weil Writings Selected. Edited by Eric O. Springsted. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1998.
———. Waiting for God. Translated by Emma Craufurd. New York: Harper & Row, 1973.
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Springsted, E.O. (2020). The Language of the Inner Life. In: Bourgault, S., Daigle, J. (eds) Simone Weil, Beyond Ideology?. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48401-9_2
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