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Simone Weil's Iliad: The Power of Words
Abstract
Simone Weil's work has always been appreciated for its evocative beauty, but not always for its potential contributions to political thought. In this essay, we engage in a reappraisal of her political thought, and of her relevance to contemporary politics, by way of her discussion of the power of words. Weil shares much with contemporary approaches that view the world as a text to be interpreted. But for Weil, the power of interpretation carries with it an illusion, exemplified in Weil's example of Achilles watching over his war-work, in which the world can be seen, measured, and shaped according to one's will. For Weil, the illusion of control that accompanies this perspective is undermined by our encounter with a world of physical causes and sensations that impact us, quite without us being able to control them.
Despite certain similarities in their backgrounds, French philosopher Simone Weil (1909–43) and German-American philosopher Hannah Arendt (1906–75) had dramatically different perspectives on the importance of politics. Yet both thinkers turned to Homer’s Iliad as a way of understanding the atrocities of WWII and the rise of authoritarian regimes. While each author comments on the beauty of the poem, they also argue that the Iliad demonstrates the grave injustices that humans are capable of as well as a remedy for the same. This shared love of aesthetic beauty drew them to a common account of justice, one that insists on recognizing the full autonomy of the other while also insisting on a duty to care for those in need. Finally, both authors prescribe aesthetic beauty as necessary for maintaining the health of democratic regimes.
Combining contemporary political philosophy with historical, literary, and philosophical texts, this study examines a series of remarkable individuals who promoted justice in early Iron Age, archaic, and classical Greece. From the earlier periods, Homer's Achilles and Odysseus were represented as heroic individuals who are also prototypical citizens, and Solon the lawgiver, wrote the scripts of statute law and the jury trial. The book's focus later turns to dialogues between a citizen's moral autonomy and political obligation in democratic Athens.
Cet article examine la pensee de Simone Weil sur la matiere et l'esprit principalement a travers son interpretation de l'Eucharistie. Il commence par une breve biographie. Puis l'A. s'interroge sur le sens de sa foi en l'Eucharistie et l'Incarnation, car sa conception de la Creation et l'accent qu'elle met sur l'annihilation du soi, la decreation et la Crucifixion, peuvent indiquer un rejet de la matiere et une attirance pour la mort. Par ailleurs, elle croit vraiment que Dieu est reellement present dans l'hostie consacree.
This paper explores Simone Weil's objections to a philosophy grounded on human rights. Weil thinks impersonal justice cannot be expressed in terms of personal rights. Rights, for Weil, are personal possessions; they are claimed or borne by some subject or person (me, you, her or them). The right or the just, however, is not susceptible to possession. When one substitutes a personal pronoun for the definite article before the word right (my right or their right instead of the right), justice is articulated in the manner of liberal contractualism but is biased against a notion of impersonal justice which Weil champions. The incompatibility of Weil's understanding of justice and a rights-based notion of justice is the subject-matter investigated in this article.