A review by roll_n_read
The Need for Roots: Prelude to a Declaration of Duties Towards Mankind, by Simone Weil
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.