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.
jakeyjake's review
A bit of an enigma of a book, to be quite honest. Part of T.S. Eliot's preface expresses it well: "In the work of such a writer we must expect to encounter paradox. Simone Weil was three things in the highest degree: French, Jewish, and Christian."
This text, written in 1943 from London, is intended as guidance for post-war France. It is composed of three sections. The first is called the Needs of the Soul and in it Weil goes one-by-one through her list of needs (Order, Liberty, Obedience, Honor, Punishment, etc.). She says countries need to seriously consider what constitutes needs of the soul, "the lack of such investigation forces governments, even when their intentions are honest, to act sporadically and at random." The only two I had stron feelings against were "Punishment" and "Hierarchy'. But the exercise of laying out what humans need to be well felt worthwhile.
The next section is titled Uprootedness. "To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul," she writes. "A human being has roots by virtue of his real, active and natural participation in the life of a community which preserves... certain particular treasures of the past and certain particular expectations for the future. Three of the main causes of uprootedness, she says, are military conquest, modern education (disproportional honor given to 'intellectuals' and scientists), and money. "Money destroys human roots wherever it is able to penetrate, by turning the desire for gain into the sole motive." She cares a lot about workmen at factories. She advocates closing all large factories and moving towards a model where each man is given property and machine capital to make goods. She advocates for young people getting to travel the country before returning home to marry. She considers, and returns to this at the end of the book, true concern for the dignity of work (esp the manual laborer) to be a critical part of France finding its roots.
One of the more interesting parts of this section was an aside on the arbitrary boundaries we draw for our roots. "Present day patriotism consists in an equation between absolute good and a collectivity corresponding to a given territorial area, namely France; anyone who changes in his mind the territorial term of the equation, and substitutes it for a smaller term, such as Brittany, or a larger term, such as Europe is looked upon as a traitor. Why? It is all perfectly arbitrary." This is one of the two topics that drew me to this book. What is the moral obligation we owe to our particular groups, and is there a rationale justification for drawing the boundary of that group at one circumference or another? Weil only had a few things to say here. One was that some needs of the soul can only be met at a national level... Another was that sentiments supporting European unity should be encouraged.
Another interesting point Simone Weil makes is that "If one admires the Roman empire, why be angry with Germany which is trying to reconstitute it on a vaster scale by the use of almost identical methods?" Weil has no patriotism for France's imperial conquest and open questions whether the 'uniting' of many groups into 'France' was actually good. We don't ask ourselves this sort of question often enough, in my opinion.
The last section of the book (The Growing of Roots) was an attempt to provide solutions. This section fell flat to me. It was a meandering passage that boiled down to mostly negativity towards science and faith in Christ. I sympathize with Weil for wanting to find some moral foundation that we can all work off of, and I can understand her defaulting to Christian teachings given her specific 'roots', but it felt like a cop out to me. The last part of the section was an attempt to dignify manual labor. "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." Hmm.
Weil is hard to label. She was a "stern critic of both Right and Left; at the same time more truly a lover of order and hierarchy than most of those who call themselves Conservative, and more truly a lover of the people than most of those who call themselves Socialist." Her passions and admirations (particularly for Christianity and Hellenistic Greece) strained my patience for her otherwise reasoned critical analyses.
If nothing else, this book was good practice for hearing out a well-thought-out dissenting opinion (300 pages worth..). There's tons of good in this. Simone Weil had a beautiful and thoughtful mind.
This text, written in 1943 from London, is intended as guidance for post-war France. It is composed of three sections. The first is called the Needs of the Soul and in it Weil goes one-by-one through her list of needs (Order, Liberty, Obedience, Honor, Punishment, etc.). She says countries need to seriously consider what constitutes needs of the soul, "the lack of such investigation forces governments, even when their intentions are honest, to act sporadically and at random." The only two I had stron feelings against were "Punishment" and "Hierarchy'. But the exercise of laying out what humans need to be well felt worthwhile.
The next section is titled Uprootedness. "To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul," she writes. "A human being has roots by virtue of his real, active and natural participation in the life of a community which preserves... certain particular treasures of the past and certain particular expectations for the future. Three of the main causes of uprootedness, she says, are military conquest, modern education (disproportional honor given to 'intellectuals' and scientists), and money. "Money destroys human roots wherever it is able to penetrate, by turning the desire for gain into the sole motive." She cares a lot about workmen at factories. She advocates closing all large factories and moving towards a model where each man is given property and machine capital to make goods. She advocates for young people getting to travel the country before returning home to marry. She considers, and returns to this at the end of the book, true concern for the dignity of work (esp the manual laborer) to be a critical part of France finding its roots.
One of the more interesting parts of this section was an aside on the arbitrary boundaries we draw for our roots. "Present day patriotism consists in an equation between absolute good and a collectivity corresponding to a given territorial area, namely France; anyone who changes in his mind the territorial term of the equation, and substitutes it for a smaller term, such as Brittany, or a larger term, such as Europe is looked upon as a traitor. Why? It is all perfectly arbitrary." This is one of the two topics that drew me to this book. What is the moral obligation we owe to our particular groups, and is there a rationale justification for drawing the boundary of that group at one circumference or another? Weil only had a few things to say here. One was that some needs of the soul can only be met at a national level... Another was that sentiments supporting European unity should be encouraged.
Another interesting point Simone Weil makes is that "If one admires the Roman empire, why be angry with Germany which is trying to reconstitute it on a vaster scale by the use of almost identical methods?" Weil has no patriotism for France's imperial conquest and open questions whether the 'uniting' of many groups into 'France' was actually good. We don't ask ourselves this sort of question often enough, in my opinion.
The last section of the book (The Growing of Roots) was an attempt to provide solutions. This section fell flat to me. It was a meandering passage that boiled down to mostly negativity towards science and faith in Christ. I sympathize with Weil for wanting to find some moral foundation that we can all work off of, and I can understand her defaulting to Christian teachings given her specific 'roots', but it felt like a cop out to me. The last part of the section was an attempt to dignify manual labor. "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." Hmm.
Weil is hard to label. She was a "stern critic of both Right and Left; at the same time more truly a lover of order and hierarchy than most of those who call themselves Conservative, and more truly a lover of the people than most of those who call themselves Socialist." Her passions and admirations (particularly for Christianity and Hellenistic Greece) strained my patience for her otherwise reasoned critical analyses.
If nothing else, this book was good practice for hearing out a well-thought-out dissenting opinion (300 pages worth..). There's tons of good in this. Simone Weil had a beautiful and thoughtful mind.
alfyasmeen's review
4.0
There is a scarcity of unique perspectives, and Simone Weil fits the bill. You'll find yourself struggling to place her on a political compass, and that's because she does not really fall under any broad category. This work is opinionated, genuine, and well-intentioned. I found myself in disagreement with some of her infeasible (and in my opinion, sometimes harmful) proposals, but for the most part, her overall message is valid, and we should all acknowledge the problem of lack of well-rooted lives that is super relevant today.
blueyorkie's review against another edition
3.0
This essay was written in 1943 (it seems to me) during the occupation of France by Germany. Simone Weil tries to understand what was lacking in her country in 1939 to allow herself to overcome the Nazi war machine. The Third Republic takes it for its rank, particularly its attachment to secular values resulting from the French Revolution and its lack of spiritual education. It, therefore, calls for reconstruction on a new basis based on the principles of the Christian religion. Simone Weil does not avoid political contradictions and absurdities despite the apparent expression of charitable and fraternal feelings. This book was written at the end of her life when the philosopher turned into mysticism and spiritualism. This fact explains these inconsistencies, but the whole remains refreshing and beneficial for humanity in the 21st century. At a time of the accelerated destruction of our planet, we would be well advised to no longer believe ourselves to be above nature. The duties stated by Simone Weil at the beginning of her essay remind us of those we owe to our environment.
foundeasily's review against another edition
2.0
The very beginning felt very interesting but it slipped precipitously from radical to liberal to a confused, sort of naturalism that supposed people away from their indigenous homes, by choice or by force, were damaged. There's room for an investigation of some of what that implies but in many or most cases it turns, as it does in the text, to a radically anti-immigrant point of view. Once it went down that path I went from a patient reading, to a skimmed one and never found my way back.
This feels, especially in it's anti-Marxian fervor at times, to be an interesting example of a certain radical liberal perspective, which like The New Deal liberalism, offers certain prizes to the working class, in exchange for not challenging the ruling order. In this case, it is a naturalist view of human rights. Elsewhere, however, one can see the shape of a neoliberal modernist perspective, where knowledge work replaces human toil, not to free the human cost but to 'better' them.
This feels, especially in it's anti-Marxian fervor at times, to be an interesting example of a certain radical liberal perspective, which like The New Deal liberalism, offers certain prizes to the working class, in exchange for not challenging the ruling order. In this case, it is a naturalist view of human rights. Elsewhere, however, one can see the shape of a neoliberal modernist perspective, where knowledge work replaces human toil, not to free the human cost but to 'better' them.
shallihavemydwarf's review
4.0
In T.S. Eliot's highly amusing introduction, he speaks of Weil as if she is more like weather than a person: unpredictable, arbitrary, something at once to be on awe of and condescend to. It read like a satire of how accomplished men tend to feel of young, opinionated women, and I was prepared to completely fall in love with Weil.
And she is incredibly interesting, her distinguishing feature being above all else the strength of her convictions. Much of her thought is prescient and relevant, and I would venture to say the work is improved rather than detracted from by its flaws. Weil's focus is on constructing a complete, coherent plan for the post-war restoration of France. Her flaws ride on the strength of her convictions to sustain a consistent vision. While it may seem natural to suggest that had Weil lived, the wisdom of age would have improved her philosophy, I am hesitant to believe she would have been improved upon by any application of the self-doubt inherent to growth.
And she is incredibly interesting, her distinguishing feature being above all else the strength of her convictions. Much of her thought is prescient and relevant, and I would venture to say the work is improved rather than detracted from by its flaws. Weil's focus is on constructing a complete, coherent plan for the post-war restoration of France. Her flaws ride on the strength of her convictions to sustain a consistent vision. While it may seem natural to suggest that had Weil lived, the wisdom of age would have improved her philosophy, I am hesitant to believe she would have been improved upon by any application of the self-doubt inherent to growth.
eberico's review
I made it literally 5 pages before giving up. I'd like to read this - I just don't have the energy or focus right now. Nicolas, on the other hand, immediately went out and downloaded other books by Weil! So at least someone is benefiting from my book club's pick.
therealesioan's review
4.0
TS Eliot's preface summed up the book pretty well. Where Weil is strongest is in her criticism of the rootlessness in modern europe, and how the Left and the Right have failed to offer an antidote. Much of the progressive left can never truly be SOCIAList because it actually hates society, it is inherently anti-social. You can't have a collective labour movement with a hatred for all of what binds people together (the nation, patriotism, religion, etc). But similarly you can't have be a conservative while holding onto global capitalism. The rootlessness that free trade and globalization enforces destroys tradition, hierarchy, identity, etc.
Her analysis of France's defeat against the Germans was quite interesting too. She seems to fall into a similar tradition within the leftists of the French Resistance as Jacques Ellul. I think the rapidness of France's fall forced many thinkers into considering the need for a palingenesis (or at least an intellectual one). Many of these Leftist thinkers like Weil and Ellul moved heavily toward radical Christian (usually Catholic) thought, being heavily critical of technology and modernization.
In this sense I think Weil fits very nicely into the socially conservative economically socialist communitarian school of Alasdair MacIntyre, Christopher Lasch, Wendell Berry and (with less of an emphasis on socialist) Patrick J Deneen. I'm surprised those authors don't reference Weil more actually. The critique of both sides of the false dialectic is here, the critique of technology, globalism, etc.
Regardless, an excellent read, if a tad soft at times. Nice quote:
"Even without a military conquest, money-power and economic domination can so impose a foreign influence as actually to provoke this disease of uprootedness. In all parts of our country at the present time there are two poisons at work spreading this disease. One of them is money. Money destroys human roots wherever it is able to penetrate, by turning desire for gain into the sole motive. It easily manages to outweigh all other motives, because the effort it demands of the mind is so very much less. Nothing is so clear and so simple as a row of figures."
Her analysis of France's defeat against the Germans was quite interesting too. She seems to fall into a similar tradition within the leftists of the French Resistance as Jacques Ellul. I think the rapidness of France's fall forced many thinkers into considering the need for a palingenesis (or at least an intellectual one). Many of these Leftist thinkers like Weil and Ellul moved heavily toward radical Christian (usually Catholic) thought, being heavily critical of technology and modernization.
In this sense I think Weil fits very nicely into the socially conservative economically socialist communitarian school of Alasdair MacIntyre, Christopher Lasch, Wendell Berry and (with less of an emphasis on socialist) Patrick J Deneen. I'm surprised those authors don't reference Weil more actually. The critique of both sides of the false dialectic is here, the critique of technology, globalism, etc.
Regardless, an excellent read, if a tad soft at times. Nice quote:
"Even without a military conquest, money-power and economic domination can so impose a foreign influence as actually to provoke this disease of uprootedness. In all parts of our country at the present time there are two poisons at work spreading this disease. One of them is money. Money destroys human roots wherever it is able to penetrate, by turning desire for gain into the sole motive. It easily manages to outweigh all other motives, because the effort it demands of the mind is so very much less. Nothing is so clear and so simple as a row of figures."