147 ideas
23889 | Among the Greeks Aristotle is the only philosopher in the modern style [Weil] |
Full Idea: In Greece, Aristotle is perhaps the only philosopher in the modern sense, and he is entirely outside the Greek tradition. | |
From: Simone Weil (God in Plato [1942], p.45) | |
A reaction: She sees Plato as embodying the true tradition. Everything Aristotle writes is 'peri phusis' (about nature), and that is a standard topic of philosophy right from the start. She emphasises Plato long historical roots. Pythagoras is key. |
23881 | All thought about values is philosophical, and thought about anything else is not philosophy [Weil] |
Full Idea: All reflections bearing on the notion of value and on the hierarchy of values is philosophical; all efforts of thought bearing on anything other than value are, if one examines them closely, foreign to philosophy. | |
From: Simone Weil (Reflections on Value [1941], p.30) | |
A reaction: If nothing else proves that Weil is a platonist, this does. She, of course, has a transcendent and religious view of values, whereas I just see them as concepts which embody what is important. That said, I'm not far off agreeing with this. |
23885 | Philosophy aims to change the soul, not to accumulate knowledge [Weil] |
Full Idea: Philosophy does not consist in accumulating knowledge, as science does, but in changing the whole soul. | |
From: Simone Weil (Reflections on Value [1941], p.33) | |
A reaction: I agree, roughly. In the sense that philosophy is a much more personal matter than any pure pursuit of knowledge, such as geology. Though a life in geology could change your soul. Not just any old change, of course…. |
23886 | Systems are not unique to each philosopher. The platonist tradition is old and continuous [Weil] |
Full Idea: People believe that every philosopher has a system that contradicts all the others! But there is a tradition, genuinely philosophical, that is as old as humanity itself. …Plato is the most perfect representative of this tradition. | |
From: Simone Weil (Reflections on Value [1941], p.33) | |
A reaction: I see roughly two traditions. If you believe in transcendence you follow Plato, like Simone. If you are a naturalist (like me) you follow Aristotle. A third tradition might be much more sceptical. |
23884 | Truth is a value of thought [Weil] |
Full Idea: Truth is a value of thought. The word 'truth' cannot have any other meaning. | |
From: Simone Weil (Reflections on Value [1941], p.32) | |
A reaction: This makes a nice change from truth being a mere predicate. I would call truth the criterion of success in thought, and that counts as a value, so she is right. |
23825 | We seek truth only because it is good [Weil] |
Full Idea: Truth is sought not because it is truth but because it is good. | |
From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace [1942], 'Attention') | |
A reaction: A perfect instance of modern platonism. A few weird people seem to enjoy lying. Personally I cannot find enough content in the word 'good' in such claims. |
23877 | Most people won't question an idea's truth if they depend on it [Weil] |
Full Idea: The majority of human beings do not question the truth of an idea without which they would literally be unable to live. | |
From: Simone Weil (Is There a Marxist Doctrine? [1943], p.163) | |
A reaction: I assume that this inability grows stronger with age, as the dependence on the idea runs deeper. Hence for most people the beliefs which sustain them have a higher value than truth. Obviously we should all make love of truth our guiding idea! |
23853 | Truth is not a object we love - it is the radiant manifestation of reality [Weil] |
Full Idea: Love of truth is not a correct form of expression. Truth is not an object of love. It is not an object at all. …Truth is the radiant manifestation of reality. | |
From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], III 'Growing') | |
A reaction: Wow! Love that one! |
23755 | Genius and love of truth are always accompanied by great humility [Weil] |
Full Idea: Love of truth is always accompanied by humility, and real genius is nothing else but the supernatural virtue of humility in the domain of thought. | |
From: Simone Weil (Human Personality [1943], p.87) | |
A reaction: A striking and attractive thought, true of all the lovers of truth I have ever encountered. Socrates is the role model. She likens truth to an inarticulate plaintiff stammering before a judge who fluently manipulates opinions. |
24189 | The criterion of the real is contradictions [Weil] |
Full Idea: The contradictions the mind comes up against - these are the only realities: they are the criterion of the real. There is no contradiction in what is imaginary. Contradiction is the test of necessity. | |
From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace [1942], 'Contradiction') | |
A reaction: This seems to presume that reality contains contradictions, which I find incomprehensible. It is contradiction in the denial of a proposition which shows its necessity. So the contradictions are not in the real, but in the denial of the real. |
23855 | Creation produced a network or web of determinations [Weil] |
Full Idea: What is sovereign in this world is determinateness, limit. Eternal Wisdom imprisons this universe in a network, a web of determinations. | |
From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], III 'Growth') | |
A reaction: Love this, because I take 'determination' to be the defining relationship in ontology. It covers both physical causation and abstract necessities. |
23900 | Chance is compatible with necessity, and the two occur together [Weil] |
Full Idea: Chance is not the contrary of necessity; it is not incompatible with necessity. On the contrary, it never appears except at the same time as necessity. | |
From: Simone Weil (The Scientific Image [1941], p.175) | |
A reaction: She illustrates it with the six terminating results of a die throw, and the innumerabe ways the throw can occur. This thought strikes me as relevant to discussions of free will. …But I'm not sure I fully understand it. |
24194 | Wanting new discoveries blocks good thinking about what has been discovered [Weil] |
Full Idea: The desire to discover something new prevents people from allowing their thoughts to dwell on the transcendent, undemonstrable meaning of what has already been discovered. | |
From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace [1942], 'Intelligence') | |
A reaction: Struck a strong chord with me. The principal motivation for this collection of ideas. I am generally a pessimistic about future discoveries of anything other than new gadgets. We may be at the end of a two century golden age. Time to consolidate. |
24195 | Don't reject opinions; arrange them all in a hierarchy [Weil] |
Full Idea: We have not to choose between opinions. We have to welcome them all, but arrange them vertically, placing them on suitable levels. | |
From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace [1942], 'Intelligence') | |
A reaction: What a brilliant thought. Relativists and non-relativists might even unite around that vision. |
23888 | Knowledge is beyond question, as an unavoidable component of thinking [Weil] |
Full Idea: The speaker refuses to pose the question of knowledge, since knowledge is a given that is mixed with thought, and that no thinking being can get away from. | |
From: Simone Weil (Philosophy [1941], p.42) | |
A reaction: On the whole I favour belief-first, but I take the primary purpose of minds to be navigation, and that needs facts, not hopeful beliefs. Weil's thought pushes me a bit towards the knowledge first view. |
19513 | A contextualist coherentist will say that how strongly a justification must cohere depends on context [DeRose] |
Full Idea: If you are a coherentist and a contextualist, you'll probably want to hold that how strongly beliefs must cohere with one another in order to count as knowledge (if they are true), or to count as justified, is a contextually variable matter. | |
From: Keith DeRose (The Case for Contextualism [2009], 1.09) | |
A reaction: How exciting! He's talking about ME! Context might not only dictate the strength of the coherence, but also the range of beliefs involved. In fact all of Thagard's criteria of coherence may be subject to contextual variation. |
19514 | Classical invariantism combines fixed truth-conditions with variable assertability standards [DeRose] |
Full Idea: The great rival to contextualism is classical 'invariantism' - invariantism about the truth-conditions [for knowing], combined with variable standards for warranted assertability. | |
From: Keith DeRose (The Case for Contextualism [2009], 1.12) | |
A reaction: That is, I take it, that we might want to assert that someone 'knows' something, when the truth is that they don't. That is, either you know or you don't, but we can bend the rules as to whether we say you know. I take this view to be false. |
19515 | We can make contextualism more precise, by specifying the discrimination needed each time [DeRose] |
Full Idea: We might make the basic contextualist schema more precise ...by saying the change in content will consist in a change in the range of relevant alternatives. Higher standards would discriminate from a broader range of alternatives. | |
From: Keith DeRose (The Case for Contextualism [2009], 1.14) | |
A reaction: This would handle the 'fake barn' and 'disguised zebra' examples, by saying lower standards do not expect such discriminations. The zebra case has a lower standard than the barn case (because fake barns are the norm here). |
19510 | In some contexts there is little more to knowledge than true belief. [DeRose] |
Full Idea: I'm inclined to accept that in certain contexts the standards for knowledge are so low that little more than true belief is required. | |
From: Keith DeRose (The Case for Contextualism [2009], 1.6) | |
A reaction: DeRose emphasises that 'a little more' is needed, rather than none. The example given is where 'he knew that p' means little more than 'the information that p was available to him' (in a political scandal). |
19516 | Contextualists worry about scepticism, but they should focus on the use of 'know' in ordinary speech [DeRose] |
Full Idea: While skepticism has drawn much of the attention of contextualists, support for contextualism should also - and perhaps primarily - be looked for in how 'knows' is utilised in non-philosophical conversation. | |
From: Keith DeRose (The Case for Contextualism [2009], 1016) | |
A reaction: Contextualists say scepticism is just raising the standards absurdly high. I take it that the ordinary use of the word 'know' is obviously highly contextual, and so varied that I don't see how philosophers could 'regiment' it into invariant form. |
19511 | If contextualism is about knowledge attribution, rather than knowledge, then it is philosophy of language [DeRose] |
Full Idea: Maybe contextualism isn't a theory about knowledge at all, but about knowledge attributions. As such, it is not a piece of epistemology at all, but of philosophy of language. | |
From: Keith DeRose (The Case for Contextualism [2009], 1.7) | |
A reaction: DeRose takes this view to be wrong. At the very least this will have to include self-attributions, by the supposed knower, because I might say 'I know that p', meaning 'but only in this rather low-standard context'. |
3061 | Anaxarchus said that he was not even sure that he knew nothing [Anaxarchus, by Diog. Laertius] |
Full Idea: Anaxarchus said that he was not even sure that he knew nothing. | |
From: report of Anaxarchus (fragments/reports [c.340 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 09.10.1 |
23747 | What is sacred is not a person, but the whole physical human being [Weil] |
Full Idea: There is something sacred in every man, but it is not his person. Nor yet is it the human personality. It is this man; no more and no less. …It is he. The whole of him. The arms, they eyes, the thoughts, everything. | |
From: Simone Weil (Human Personality [1943], p,70) | |
A reaction: I take her to be referring to exactly the concept of a 'person' which Locke introduced. It is important to remember that his concept is mainly forensic - as a concept of ownership and contracts. A person is an abstraction. Even a corpse is a human. |
24182 | We must be obedient, and love necessity [Weil] |
Full Idea: Obedience is the supreme virtue. We have to love necessity. | |
From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace [1942], 'Necessity') | |
A reaction: Nietzsche loved the slogan 'amor fati', love of fate. I'm not sure why I should love hideous things, just because they are unavoidable. But 'go with the flow' is quite a good slogan. |
23756 | The mind is imprisoned and limited by language, restricting our awareness of wider thoughts [Weil] |
Full Idea: At the very best, a mind is enclosed in language as in a prison. It is limited to the number of relations which words can make simultaneously present to it; and remains in ignorance of thoughts which involve the combination of a greater number. | |
From: Simone Weil (Human Personality [1943], p.89) | |
A reaction: This seems to be a germ of the type of view of language which blossoms in Derrida. But she is on to something. None of us grasp fully, I think, the non-linguistic nature of good thinking. |
24177 | Higher emotions have less energy, and actions may need the lower emotions [Weil] |
Full Idea: As a rule the energy supplied by the higher emotions is limited. If the situation requires us to go beyond this limit we have to fall back on lower feelings (fear, covetousness, desire to beat the record, love of honours) which are richer in energy. | |
From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace [1942], 'Void') | |
A reaction: Presumably there is supposed to be a consensus about which emotions are 'higher'. If she means that most great achievements have rather dishonourable motives, then I don't think I agree. Sustained emotions do that. |
23878 | Weakness of will is the inadequacy of the original impetus to carry through the action [Weil] |
Full Idea: It is naïve to be astonished when we do not stick to firm resolutions. Something stimulated the resolution, but that something was not powerful enough to bring us to the point of carrying it out. Making the resolution may even have exhausted the stimulus. | |
From: Simone Weil (Is There a Marxist Doctrine? [1943], p.169) | |
A reaction: Socrates says it is a change of belief. Aristotle says it is a desire overcoming a belief. Weil gives a third way: that it is a fading in the strength of the original belief/desire impetus. |
24184 | What matters about an action is not its aim, but the origin of its compulsion [Weil] |
Full Idea: Every act should be considered from the point of view not of its object but of its compulsion. The question is not 'What is the aim?' It is 'What is the origin?'. | |
From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace [1942], 'Necessity') | |
A reaction: Doubtful. It is notoriously difficult to know the origins of our motivations. What of the well meaning fool, who has nice origins for motives, but misjudges the aims? |
23848 | The aesthete's treatment of beauty as amusement is sacreligious; beauty should nourish [Weil] |
Full Idea: The aesthete's point of view is sacreligious, not only in matters of religion but even in those of art. It consists in amusing oneself with beauty by handling it and looking at it. Beauty is something to be eaten: it is a food. | |
From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], II 'Country') | |
A reaction: She is endorsing the 'food' view against the 'handling' view. Beauty should nourish, she says. |
23899 | The secret of art is that beauty is a just blend of unity and its opposite [Weil] |
Full Idea: A just blend of unity and that which opposes it is the condition of the beautiful, and it is the secret of art. | |
From: Simone Weil (The Scientific Image [1941], p.169) | |
A reaction: Rather sweeping, but the observation strikes me as fairly accurate. It seems to work for most novels, paintings and music, though more recent art may provide counterexamples. |
23832 | We both desire what is beautiful, and want it to remain as it is [Weil] |
Full Idea: Everything beautiful is the object of desire but one desires that it be not otherwise, that it be unchanged, that it be exactly what it is. | |
From: Simone Weil (Prerequisite to Dignity of Labour [1941], p.268) | |
A reaction: This seems to be mostly true, though I don't think it reveals the essence of beauty. I might love a particular landscape, but want to plant a carefully place tree within it. Or change one or two words in a great poem. |
23758 | Beauty is an attractive mystery, leaving nothing to be desired [Weil] |
Full Idea: Beauty is the supreme mystery of the world. It is a gleam which attracts the attention and yet does nothing to sustain it. …While exciting desire, it makes clear that there is nothing in it to be desired, because what we want is that it should not change. | |
From: Simone Weil (Human Personality [1943], p.92) | |
A reaction: She attributes beauty to a supernatural source. I catalogue this idea under 'the sublime', rather than 'beauty'. It may be better to say that beauty inspires love, rather than desire. |
23887 | Art (like philosophy) establishes a relation between world and self, and between oneself and others [Weil] |
Full Idea: Isn't true art a method for establishing a certain relation between the world and the self, and between oneself and others, and isn't that the equivalent of philosophy? | |
From: Simone Weil (Philosophy [1941], p.38) | |
A reaction: I hope the definition of 'true' art doesn't have to conform to achieving this relation. I suppose each good work of art shows you a distinctive way of relating to the world. An interesting thought (as so often with this thinker). |
24198 | Perfect works of art seem to be essentially anonymous [Weil] |
Full Idea: A work of art has an author and yet, when it is perfect, it has something which is essentially anonymous about it. | |
From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace [1942], 'Beauty') | |
A reaction: It is certainly the case that when you feel a work is perfect, it seems to move into some separate class of existence, as if it were part of nature. |
23903 | When we admire a work, we see ourselves as its creator [Weil] |
Full Idea: It is impossible to admire a work of art without thinking oneself, in a way, its creator and without, in a sense, becoming so. | |
From: Simone Weil (Letters [1940], 1940-03c) | |
A reaction: This rings true for me. You almost see yourself making the brush strokes, or writing the phrase, or penning the chords. It is engagment which is essential for artistic experience. So all art lovers want to be artists? |
23898 | Those who say immorality is not an aesthetic criterion must show that all criteria are aesthetic [Weil] |
Full Idea: Writers and readers who cry out that immorality is not an aesthetic criterion need to prove, which they have never done, that one should apply only aesthetic criteria to literature. | |
From: Simone Weil (Literature and Morals [1941], p.146) | |
A reaction: I take the first criterion of literature that it not be boring, and I don't think that is an aesthetic matter. A lot must be achieved before a work can even be considered for aesthetic judgment. Being deeply offensive might rule it out. |
23826 | Beauty, goodness and truth are only achieved by applying full attention [Weil] |
Full Idea: The authentic and pure values - truth, beauty and goodness - in the activity of a human being are the result of one and same act, a certain application of the full attention to the object. Teaching should only aim to train the attention for such an act. | |
From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace [1942], 'Attention') | |
A reaction: A distinctive Weil idea, that absorbed 'attention' produces almost mystical results. I am not convinced that a great still life painter (than which there is no higher criterion of attention) achieves contact with goodness thereby. But attention is good! |
23814 | Every human yearns for an unattainable transcendent good [Weil] |
Full Idea: There is a reality outside the world …outside any sphere that is accessible to human faculties. Corresponding to this reality, at the centre of the human heart, is the longing for an absolute good, which is always there and never appeased by this world. | |
From: Simone Weil (Draft Statement of Human Obligations [1943], p.221) | |
A reaction: I don't believe in any sort of transcendent reality, but I can identify with this. Even if you have a highly naturalistic view of what is valuable (see late Philippa Foot), there is this indeterminate yearning for that value. |
23854 | Beauty is the proof of what is good [Weil] |
Full Idea: When the subject in question is the good, beauty is a rigorous and positive proof. | |
From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], III 'Growing') | |
A reaction: Purest platonism! It is incomprehensible to say 'this thing is evil, but it is beautiful'. But there are plenty of things which strike me as beautiful, without connecting that in any way to moral goodness. |
23824 | Where human needs are satisfied we find happiness, friendship and beauty [Weil] |
Full Idea: Any place where the needs of human beings are satisfied can be recognised by the fact that there is a flowering of fraternity, joy, beauty, and happiness. | |
From: Simone Weil (Draft Statement of Human Obligations [1943], p.230) | |
A reaction: Weil writes a lengthy analysis of what she sees as the basic human needs, beyond the obvious food, water etc. An excellent place to start a line of political thought. |
23879 | In a violent moral disagreement, it can't be that both sides are just following social morality [Weil] |
Full Idea: If two men are in violent disagreement about good and evil, it is hard to believe that both of them are blindly subject to the opinion of the society around them. | |
From: Simone Weil (Is There a Marxist Doctrine? [1943], p.171) | |
A reaction: What a beautifully simple observation. Simone would have become a major figure if she had lived longer. No philosopher has ever written better prose. |
24191 | We want our values to be eternal [Weil] |
Full Idea: We want everything which has a value to be eternal. | |
From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace [1942], 'Chance') | |
A reaction: This seems to be the motivation for platonism, of which Weil was a fan. Nietzsche is the strongest opponent of this aspiration. This dream explains the typical resentment of old people. |
24197 | Power and money are supreme means, thus blinding people to ends [Weil] |
Full Idea: Power (and money, power's master key) is means at its purest. For that very reason, it is the supreme end for those who have not understood. | |
From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace [1942], 'Metaxu') | |
A reaction: A lovely observation about the sort of people addicted to power and money. Her thought seems to be that this means is so pure that they can't see anything beyond it. |
23882 | Ends, unlike means, cannot be defined, which is why people tend to pursue means [Weil] |
Full Idea: Everything that can be taken as an end cannot be defined. Means, such as power and money, are easily defined, and that is why people orient themselves exclusively towards the acquisition of means. | |
From: Simone Weil (Reflections on Value [1941], p.31) | |
A reaction: Nice, but too neat, because so many activities can be treated either as means or as ends, and often as both. It makes sense that people pursue what is clear to them. |
23760 | All we need are the unity of justice, truth and beauty [Weil] |
Full Idea: Justice, truth, and beauty are sisters and comrades. With three such beautiful words we have no need to look for any others. | |
From: Simone Weil (Human Personality [1943], p.93) | |
A reaction: The embodiment of platonist values. Without the platonist ontology, I like the identification of a few core values, and have always thought that Beauty, Goodness and Truth were a well chosen trio. Swapping 'justice' for 'goodness' is interesting. |
23883 | Minds essentially and always strive towards value [Weil] |
Full Idea: For the mind essentially and always, in whatever manner it is disposed, strives towards value. | |
From: Simone Weil (Reflections on Value [1941], p.31) | |
A reaction: A typically platonist thought. If you accept my view that values identify what is important, the thought is plausible. We might distinguish between what the mind pointlessly entertains, and what it 'strives' for. |
23748 | The sacred in every human is their expectation of good rather than evil [Weil] |
Full Idea: At the bottom of every human heart …there is something that goes on indomitably expecting, in the teeth of all crimes committed, suffered and witnessed, that good and not evil will be done to him. It is this above all that is sacred in every human being. | |
From: Simone Weil (Human Personality [1943], p.71) | |
A reaction: I'm thinking that this expectation may come from having at least one loving parent, and failing that there are people who have no such expectation as adults. Simone obviously thinks the hope runs deeper than that. |
24181 | We need love to have a good death [Weil] |
Full Idea: The soul which is not full of love dies a bad death. | |
From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace [1942], 'Decreation') | |
A reaction: Not sure I understand a 'good death', from the point of view of the deceased. Does spending your last ten minutes feeling angry count as a bad death? What matters is how the survivors remember the event. |
24179 | We should never desire the immortality of the people we love [Weil] |
Full Idea: Not to desire that what we love should be immortal. We should desire neither the immortality nor the death of any human being, whoever he may be, with whom we have to do. | |
From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace [1942], 'Detachment') | |
A reaction: The reason why we should not desire their immortality seems a good insight into love. Personally I would certainly desire the death of the occasional hideous human being. |
23759 | Everything which originates in love is beautiful [Weil] |
Full Idea: Everything which originates from pure love is lit with the radiance of beauty. | |
From: Simone Weil (Human Personality [1943], p.93) | |
A reaction: I suppose if I found a counterexample, she would say that is not 'pure' love. This sentence leaves open the possibility of beauty in the absence of love (such as a beautiful face noticed in the street). In her case, can beauty and love be separated? |
23762 | Evil is transmitted by comforts and pleasures, but mostly by doing harm to people [Weil] |
Full Idea: One may transmit evil to a human being by flattering him or giving him comforts and pleasures; but most often men transmit evil to other men by doing them harm. | |
From: Simone Weil (Human Personality [1943], p.94) | |
A reaction: Some people receive harm very passively, especially if it is normal. What of tough love, which is erroneously seen as harm? |
24193 | If we focus on the good, our whole soul is drawn towards it [Weil] |
Full Idea: If we turn our minds towards the good, it is impossible that little by little the whole soul will not be attracted thereto in spite of itself. | |
From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace [1942], 'Attention') | |
A reaction: This is a better expression of Plato's basic metaethics than anything in Plato. What puzzles everyone is what you are supposed to be thinking of when you focus your mind this way. |
23808 | There are two goods - the absolute good we want, and the reachable opposite of evil [Weil] |
Full Idea: There are two goods - one which is the opposite of evil, and one which is the absolute. …That which we want is the absolute good. That which is within our reach is the good which is correlated with evil. | |
From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace [1942], 'Beast') | |
A reaction: Elsewhere she seems in tune with the thought of Nietzsche (whom she despised) that good and evil are false social constructs which are quite different from healthy values. Weil, of course, sees the absolute as transcendent. |
23833 | The good is a nothingness, and yet real [Weil] |
Full Idea: The good seems to us a nothingness, since there is no thing that is good. But this nothingness is not unreal. | |
From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace [1942], 'Detachment') | |
A reaction: A neat move in the notoriously difficult platonic problem of specifying the actual nature of the good. |
23865 | Morality would improve if people could pursue private interests [Weil] |
Full Idea: The common run of moralists complain that man is moved by his private interest: would to heaven it were so! | |
From: Simone Weil (Reflections on Liberty and Social Oppression [1934], p.65) | |
A reaction: Her point is that currently people have to sacrifice their own interests to communal activities which offer dubious benefits. |
24196 | Loving others as ourselves implies varied love, and varied suffering [Weil] |
Full Idea: To love our neighbour as ourselves does not mean that we should love all people equally, for I do not have an equal love for all my the modes of existence. Nor does it mean that we should not make them suffer, for I do not refuse to make myself suffer. | |
From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace [1942], 'Universe') | |
A reaction: It is wonderful the way most people just accept the golden rule, but philosophers pick it apart in so many interesting ways. |
23896 | We see our character as a restricting limit, but also as an unshakable support [Weil] |
Full Idea: Our character appears to us as a limit by which we do not want to be imprisoned, …but also as a support that we want to believe is unshakable. | |
From: Simone Weil (On the Concept of Character [1941], p.100) | |
A reaction: A nice perception. It is fairly easy to criticise, or even laugh at, one's own actions, but extremely hard to criticise our own character. Maybe we all wish we were more determined in our projects, but not much else. |
23893 | We don't see character in a single moment, but only over a period of time [Weil] |
Full Idea: Character is constant over a period of time; the way a person is at a single moment does not at all reflect the character of this person. We do, however, concede that character changes. | |
From: Simone Weil (On the Concept of Character [1941], p.98) | |
A reaction: I do think, though, that there are moments in behaviour which are hugely revealing of character, even in a single remark. But I agree that most single moments do not show much. |
23894 | The concept of character is at the centre of morality [Weil] |
Full Idea: We cannot pose a moral problem without putting the concept of character at its centre. | |
From: Simone Weil (On the Concept of Character [1941], p.98) | |
A reaction: The question for Aristotle (which I derive from Philippa Foot) is whether moral goodness simply is good character, or whether it is the actions (or even the consequences). Weil is close to modern virtue theory here. |
23895 | We modify our character by placing ourselves in situations, or by attending to what seems trivial [Weil] |
Full Idea: We can modify our character, by putting ourselves in circumstances that will act on us from the outside, …or by the orientation of our attention in the moments that appear most insignificant or indifferent in our lives. | |
From: Simone Weil (On the Concept of Character [1941], p.99) | |
A reaction: I've never seen anyone address this question (apart from Aristotle's emphasis on training habits). Choosing your source for current affairs information strikes me as very important. What you read, what you watch, who you spend time with… |
24183 | We should only perform the good actions which we can't help doing [Weil] |
Full Idea: We should only do those righteous actions which we cannot stop ourselves from doing, …but, through well directed attention, we should always keep on increasing the number of those which we are unable not to do. | |
From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace [1942], 'Necessity') | |
A reaction: She disliked Aristotle, but this sounds like his concept of the highest level of virtue. Aristotle is better because what matters is what you do, and a controlled fine deed is desirable, even if inferior. |
23837 | Respect is our only obligation, which can only be expressed through deeds, not words [Weil] |
Full Idea: Humans have only one obligation: respect. The obligation is only performed if the respect is effectively expressed in a real, not a fictitious, way; and this can only be done through the medium of Man's earthly needs. | |
From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], I 'Needs') | |
A reaction: She says man's 'eternal destiny' imposes this obligation. I read this as saying that you should not imagine that you treat people respectfully if you are merely polite to them. Col. Pickering and Eliza Doolittle! Respect is the supreme virtue. |
23815 | We cannot equally respect what is unequal, so equal respect needs a shared ground [Weil] |
Full Idea: It is impossible to feel equal respect for things that are in fact unequal unless the respect is given to something that is identical in all of them. Men are all unequal in all their relations with things of this world. | |
From: Simone Weil (Draft Statement of Human Obligations [1943], p.223) | |
A reaction: Weil votes for some link to transcendence in each of us, but I would prefer some more naturalistic proposal for what we all have in common. There are plenty of aspects which unite all human beings, which grounds this unconditional respect. |
24185 | Friendship is a virtue, not a state we should dream of [Weil] |
Full Idea: Learn to thrust friendship aside, or rather the dream of friendship. To desire friends is a great fault. Friendship should be a gratuitous joy like those afforded by art or life. …Friendship is to be exercised (it is a virtue). | |
From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace [1942], 'Love') | |
A reaction: Presumably we won't have friends if we aren't friendly. Yearning for love is not love. She sounds a bit of a romantic here - that everything must come naturally, or not at all. Desiring friends may be a strategic error - but 'a great fault'? |
23834 | Friendship is partly universal - the love of a person is like the ideal of loving everyone [Weil] |
Full Idea: Friendship has something universal about it. It consists in loving a human being as we should like to be able to love each soul in particular of all those who go to make up the human race. | |
From: Simone Weil (Friendship [1940], p.288) | |
A reaction: Hm. Would you like your lover to dream of loving the human race, rather than just loving you? Perhaps only a Christian could see friendship in this way? |
24188 | It is absurd to say that evil proves life is worthless. If it were, why would evil matter? [Weil] |
Full Idea: To say that the world is not worth anything, that this life is of no value and to give evil as the proof is absurd, for if these things are worthless what does evil take from us? | |
From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace [1942], 'Affliction') | |
A reaction: It is certainly the case that a thoroughgoing nihilist must believe that evil and suffering are also of no importance - which is quite a tought thing to achieve. |
24205 | Monotony is beautiful as a reflection of eternity, or atrocious as unvarying perpetuity [Weil] |
Full Idea: Monotony is the most beautiful or the most atrocious thing. The most beautiful if it is the reflection of eternity - the most atrocious if it is the sign of an unvarying perpetuity. It is time passed or time sterilised. | |
From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace [1942], 'Work') | |
A reaction: I'm afraid I can see not attraction at all in the contemplation of eternity (or the infinities of outer space). I think there are more positive accounts to be given of a localised monotony. |
23823 | Life needs risks to avoid sickly boredom [Weil] |
Full Idea: The boredom produced by a complete absence of risk is a sickness of the human soul. | |
From: Simone Weil (Draft Statement of Human Obligations [1943], p.229) | |
A reaction: An unusual analysis of boredom. I think it is probably purposeful activity that we need, rather than actual risk, with all the stresses that involves. Risks are justified by their rewards. |
23844 | The most important human need is to have multiple roots [Weil] |
Full Idea: To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognised need of the human soul. …Every human being needs to have multiple roots. | |
From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], II 'Uprootedness') | |
A reaction: Agree. I think we are just like trees, in that we need roots to grow well, and plenty of space to fully flourish. Identifying those roots is the main task of parents and teachers. |
23838 | The need for order stands above all others, and is understood via the other needs [Weil] |
Full Idea: Order is the first need of all; it evens stands above all needs properly so-called. To be able to conceive it we must know what the other needs are. | |
From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], I 'Order') | |
A reaction: This may be music to conservative ears, but you should examine Weil's other ideas to see what she has in mind. |
23836 | Obligations only bind individuals, not collectives [Weil] |
Full Idea: Obligations are only binding on human beings. There are no obligations for collectivities, as such. | |
From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], I 'Needs') | |
A reaction: I take it that 'as such' excludes the institutions created by collectivities, such as parliaments and courts. A nomadic tribe seems to have no duties, as a tribe, apart from mutual obligations among its members. Does this excuse crimes by the tribe? |
24202 | Obedience to an illegitimate ruler is a nightmare [Weil] |
Full Idea: Obedience to a man who is not illuminated by legitimacy - that is a nightmare. | |
From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace [1942], 'Harmony') | |
A reaction: [Written in 1942] The worst situation is where one part of society sees the person as legitimate, and enforces the obedience, but another part doesn't. |
24200 | A citizen is defined by their subjection to the laws [Weil] |
Full Idea: The difference between a slave and a citizen: a slave is subject to his master, and a citizen to the laws. | |
From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace [1942], 'Imprint') | |
A reaction: [She mentions Montesquieu and Rousseau] This is perhaps why threats to the rule of law (prominent in the years 2016-2024) are such a potential catastrophe for a society. |
23843 | Even the poorest should feel collective ownership, and participation in grand display [Weil] |
Full Idea: Participation in collective possessions is important. Where real civic life exists, each feels he has a personal ownership in the public monuments, gardens, ceremonial pomp and circumstances; sumptuousness is thus place within the reach of the poorest. | |
From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], I 'Collective') | |
A reaction: OK with gardens. Dubious about fobbing the poor off with pomp. Monuments are a modern controversy, when they turn out to commemorate slavery and colonial conquest. I agree with her basic thought. |
23822 | We all need to partipate in public tasks, and take some initiative [Weil] |
Full Idea: The human soul has need of disciplined participation in a common task of public value, and it has need of personal initiative within this participation. | |
From: Simone Weil (Draft Statement of Human Obligations [1943], p.229) | |
A reaction: The intrusion of competitive capitalism into almost every area of modern life has more or less eliminated such activities. Only state employees now have such satisfactions, on the whole. I admire Weil's approach here. |
23840 | A citizen should be able to understand the whole of society [Weil] |
Full Idea: A man needs to be able to encompass in thought the entire range of activity of the social organism to which he belongs. | |
From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], I 'Responsibility') | |
A reaction: She is urging the active involvement of citizens in decision making - for which they need appropriate knowledge. |
23846 | Culture is an instrument for creating an ongoing succession of teachers [Weil] |
Full Idea: Culture - as we know it - is an instrument manipulated by teachers for manufacturing more teachers, who, in their turn, will manufacture still more teachers. | |
From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], II 'Towns') | |
A reaction: Lot of truth in this. We tend to view our greatest successes in students who become academics and teachers. Culture is very much seen as something which must be 'transmitted' to each new generation. |
23857 | People in power always try to increase their power [Weil] |
Full Idea: Every human group that exercises power does so …in such a way as to increase that power. | |
From: Simone Weil (Prospects: Proletarian Revolution? [1933], p.15) | |
A reaction: Not so true in smaller institutions, but at the centre of power you can control how power is distributed, so the temptation is too much. |
23866 | In oppressive societies the scope of actual control is extended by a religion of power [Weil] |
Full Idea: Every oppressive society is cemented by a religion of power, which falsifies all social relations by enabling the powerful to command over and above what they are able to impose. | |
From: Simone Weil (Reflections on Liberty and Social Oppression [1934], p.69) | |
A reaction: A rather acute and accurate observation, I think. Flashy cars, grand uniforms, lots of medals, rituals of deference….. Sometimes I like the order and security this brings, but Simone Weil could quickly change my view. |
23812 | Force is what turns man into a thing, and ultimately into a corpse [Weil] |
Full Idea: To define 'force' - it is that x that turns anybody who is subjected to it into a thing. Exercised to the limit, it turns man into a thing in the most literal sense: it makes a corpse out of him. | |
From: Simone Weil (The Iliad or the Poem of Force [1940], p.183) | |
A reaction: She celebrates The Iliad as the great examination of force in human affairs. I have felt that sense of reduction to a thing whenever anyone above me in the hierarchy has arbitrarily exerted their power over me. |
24201 | Social order is equilibrium of forces, which must be corrected when imbalanced [Weil] |
Full Idea: Equilibrium is the submission of one order to another. …Equilibrium alone destroys and annuls force. Social order can be nothing but an equilibrium of forces.…If we know how society is unbalanced, we must do what we can to add weight to the lighter scale. | |
From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace [1942], 'Harmony') | |
A reaction: Good. If only political parties would agree on this principle, and confine their haggling to the nature of the imbalance, and proposals to correct it. First we must identify the main forces. |
24199 | There is no oppression, or oppressive class; there is only an oppressive society [Weil] |
Full Idea: The notion of oppression is a stupidity. And the notion of an oppressive class is even more stupid. We can only speak of an oppressive structure of society. | |
From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace [1942], 'Imprint') | |
A reaction: Good. The notion of hatred between the classes is a disastrous mistake. Most people are born into their class, and they barely understand any collusion they have in its bad behaviour. |
23831 | The essence of power is illusory prestige [Weil] |
Full Idea: Prestige, which is an illusion, is the very essence of power. | |
From: Simone Weil (The Power of Words [1934], p.255) | |
A reaction: It is hard to maintain illusory prestige if there is no actual power behind it. |
23839 | A lifelong head of society should only be a symbol, not a ruler [Weil] |
Full Idea: Wherever a man is placed for life at the head of a social organism, he ought to be a symbol and not a ruler, as is the case with the King of England. | |
From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], I 'Obedience') | |
A reaction: Nice to hear a radical French thinker endorsing an ancient British tradition! She may not be endorsing a lifelong head of state. Lifelong rulers are the main agents of totalitarianism. |
23871 | No central authority can initiate decentralisation [Weil] |
Full Idea: It is quite patently impossible for decentralisation to be initiated by the central authority. | |
From: Simone Weil (Reflections on Liberty and Social Oppression [1934], p.113) | |
A reaction: This is contradicted by the creation of regional parliaments and mayors, but we see nothing beyond that. A state could crumble into small parts if there were'lots of autonomous regional groups. Easier for weird minorities to take control. |
23856 | Spontaneous movements are powerless against organised repression [Weil] |
Full Idea: A spontaneous movement is fundamentally impotent when it comes to fighting against organised forces of repression. | |
From: Simone Weil (Prospects: Proletarian Revolution? [1933], p.2) | |
A reaction: Her example is the Paris Commune of 1870. Hence revolution requires prior penetration of the corridors of power. Hence the phenomenon of 'entryism' of more radical people into reformist parties. |
23867 | After a bloody revolution the group which already had the power comes to the fore [Weil] |
Full Idea: There is no real break in continuity after a bloody struggle for regime change; for the victory just sanctions forces that before the struggle were the decisive factor in community life, patterns which were replacing those of the declining regime. | |
From: Simone Weil (Reflections on Liberty and Social Oppression [1934], p.73) | |
A reaction: [from Marx] I assume she has in mind the French Revolution, and perhaps the Russian Revolution, though in the latter the new bourgeois leaders also got swept away. So revolutions are not nearly as dramatic as they appear to be. |
24203 | Atheistic materialism must be revolutionary, because its good is in the future [Weil] |
Full Idea: Atheistic materialism is necessarily revolutionary, for, if it is to be directed towards an absolute good here on earth, it has to place it in the future. | |
From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace [1942], 'Harmony') | |
A reaction: Her alternative, of course, is a religious absolute good, which is presumably timeless. She must have Russia in mind. I'm not clear why atheistic materialists must believe in an absolute good. She says their great idea is 'progress'. |
23830 | A group is only dangerous if it endorses an abstract entity [Weil] |
Full Idea: Any group which has not secreted an abstract entity will probably not be dangerous. | |
From: Simone Weil (The Power of Words [1934], p.255) | |
A reaction: Written in the 1930s, the era of many political -isms. No group can be united if it lacks a clear label, and a few simple slogans. |
23870 | Decentralisation is only possible by co-operation between strong and weak - which is absurd [Weil] |
Full Idea: The only possibility of salvation would lie in a co-operation between weak and strong, with a view to accomplishing a progressive decentralisation of social life; but the absurdity of such an idea strikes one immediately. | |
From: Simone Weil (Reflections on Liberty and Social Oppression [1934], p.113) | |
A reaction: I take this to be a judgement on the anarchist ideal, rather than a bit of modest devolution. The UK government set up regional parliaments. She says centralisation is remorseless. |
24190 | Anarchists thought (hopelessly) that empowering the oppressed would end evil [Weil] |
Full Idea: Sincere anarchists, discerning, as through a mist, the principle of the union of opposites, thought that evil could be destroyed by giving power to the oppressed. An impossible dream | |
From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace [1942], 'Contradiction') | |
A reaction: Weil joined the anarchists in Spain in 1936. Orwell did too, and wrote 'Animal Farm'. So who should we give power to? Showbiz celebrities and poisonous haters? Weil thinks 'destroying evil' is an absurd aim. Do anarchists want to 'empower' anyone? |
23809 | Our only social duty is to try to limit evil [Weil] |
Full Idea: Our only duty with regard to the social is to try to limit the evil of it. | |
From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace [1942], 'Beast') | |
A reaction: This is one of Weil's occasional remarks that have an anarchist flavour. I increasingly sympathise with this less idealistic view as I get older. |
23829 | National leaders want to preserve necessary order - but always the existing order [Weil] |
Full Idea: Those in command see their duty as defending order, without which no social life can survive; and the only order they conceive is the existing one. | |
From: Simone Weil (The Power of Words [1934], p.249) | |
A reaction: She sympathises with them, because a new order is such an unknown. But it always struck me as weird that traditions are preserved because they are traditions, and not because they are good. (My old school, for example!). |
23817 | We need both equality (to attend to human needs) and hierarchy (as a scale of responsibilities) [Weil] |
Full Idea: The human soul has need of equality and of hierarchy. Equality is the public recognition …of the principal that an equal degree of attention is due to the needs of all human beings. Hierarchy is the scale of responsibilities. | |
From: Simone Weil (Draft Statement of Human Obligations [1943], p.228) | |
A reaction: This is the conservative aspect of Weil's largely radical political thinking. Presumably what we respect in these people is their responsibilies, and not their mere rank. Idle members of the British House of Lords have no rank in this hierarchy. |
23842 | Party politics in a democracy can't avoid an anti-democratic party [Weil] |
Full Idea: A democracy where public life is made up of strife between political parties is incapable of preventing the formation of a party whose avowed aim is the overthrow of that democracy. | |
From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], I 'Opinion') | |
A reaction: We have seen this around 2020 in the USA and the UK. Freedom is compulsory? Weil hates political parties (as did Rousseau). |
23859 | True democracy is the subordination of society to the individual [Weil] |
Full Idea: In the subordination of society to the individual lies the definition of true democracy, and that of socialism as well. | |
From: Simone Weil (Prospects: Proletarian Revolution? [1933], p.19) | |
A reaction: This is the simplest definition of the liberal view. The big difference is whether this subordination is the starting point of political thinking, or the end result at which it aims. |
23863 | Only individual people of good will can achieve social progress [Weil] |
Full Idea: The enlightened goodwill of men acting in an individual capacity is the only possible principle of social progress. | |
From: Simone Weil (Reflections on Liberty and Social Oppression [1934], p.57) | |
A reaction: I identify with this. Virtually every admirable institution in a society can be traced back to the initiative of a few individuals. Every helpful technology was someone's brainwave. |
23869 | In the least evil societies people can think, control community life, and be autonomous [Weil] |
Full Idea: The least evil society is that in which the general run of men are most often obliged to think while acting, have the most opportunities for exercising control over collective life as a whole, and enjoy the greatest amount of independence. | |
From: Simone Weil (Reflections on Liberty and Social Oppression [1934], p.97) | |
A reaction: So Simone Weil was a liberal. How do you stop the most dynamic thinkers, social controllers, and exercisers of their own independence from coming to dominate the others? Only liberal institutions, such as the law and education, can do this. |
23847 | Socialism tends to make a proletariat of the whole population [Weil] |
Full Idea: What is called Socialism tends to force everybody without distinction into the proletarian condition. | |
From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], II 'Towns') | |
A reaction: For example, Weil favours maximising private house ownership, rather than communally owned housing. She is describing wholesale nationalisation. I would incline towards nationalisation only of all basic central services. |
23750 | It is not more money which the wretched members of society need [Weil] |
Full Idea: Suppose the devil were bargaining for the soul of some wretch, and some pitying person said to the devil 'Shame on you, that commodity is worth twice as much'. Such is the sinister farce played by the working class unions, parties and intellectuals. | |
From: Simone Weil (Human Personality [1943], p.80) | |
A reaction: A striking thought. It is paradoxical when the working classes despise the middle classes, and yet aspire to be like them. It's hard to know what a mystic like Weil has in mind. An obvious thought is that the aspiration should be freedom, not money. |
23807 | The collective is the one and only object of false idolatry [Weil] |
Full Idea: The Great Beast is the great object of idolatry, the only ersatz of God. …Only one thing can be taken as an end, for in relation to the human person it possesses a kind of transcendence: this is the collective. | |
From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace [1942], 'Beast') | |
A reaction: [Society as the Great Beast is in Republic Bk 6] She is referring to both fascist and communist states. Weil seems to be a left-wing liberal, with a tendency towards anarchism, because her priority is the individual, not the group. |
23749 | The problem of the collective is not suppression of persons, but persons erasing themselves [Weil] |
Full Idea: The chief danger does not lie in the collectivity's tendency to circumscribe the person, but in the person's tendency to immolate himself in the collective. | |
From: Simone Weil (Human Personality [1943], p.78) | |
A reaction: I'm guessing that in 1943 she had in mind both Nazis and Communists. She seems to articulate a strong form of liberalism in an interesting way. It sounds like a form of Bad Faith. |
23861 | Marx showed that capitalist oppression, because of competition, is unstoppable [Weil] |
Full Idea: Marx gives a first-rate account of the mechanism of capitalist oppression; but so good is it that one finds it hard to visualise how this mechanism could cease to function. …The exploitation is the competitive need to expand as rapidly as possible. | |
From: Simone Weil (Reflections on Liberty and Social Oppression [1934], p.39) | |
A reaction: [Last bit compressed] This pinpoints the main motivation for desiring to overthrow capitalism. Resistance to that view is presumably the fear that an even worse oppression might replace it. |
23897 | Once money is the main aim, society needs everyone to think wealth is possible [Weil] |
Full Idea: Money, once it becomes the goal of desires and efforts, cannot tolerate in its domain internal conditions in which it is impossible to be enriched. | |
From: Simone Weil (The Work of a Free Person [1942], p.134) | |
A reaction: The possibility for everyone that they might become rich seems basic to capitalism, even though it is utterly impossible. In theory we can all set up small successful businesses, but if they are good they nearly all get squeezed out. |
23845 | The capitalists neglect the people and the nation, and even their own interests [Weil] |
Full Idea: The capitalists have betrayed their calling by criminally neglecting not only the interests of the people, not only those of the nation, but even their own. | |
From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], II 'Towns') | |
A reaction: It is certainly true that the dedicated capitalist has little loyalty either to the people or to the nation. She doesn't spell out their failure of self-interest. I guess it produces a way of life they don't really want, deep down. |
23828 | National prestige consists of behaving as if you could beat the others in a war [Weil] |
Full Idea: What is called national prestige consists in behaving always in such a way as to demoralise other nations by giving them the impression that, if it comes to war, one would certainly defeat them. | |
From: Simone Weil (The Power of Words [1934], p.244) | |
A reaction: It's true. No nation gains prestige because of the happy lives of its citizens, or the creativity of its culture. |
23810 | Charity is the only love, and you can feel that for a country (a place with traditions), but not a nation [Weil] |
Full Idea: We must not have any other love than charity. A nation cannot be an object of charity. But a country can be one - as an environment bearing traditions which are eternal. Every country can be that. | |
From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace [1942], 'Beast') | |
A reaction: This definitely strikes a chord with me. I am English and British to the core, but don't feel any love at all for the current central institutions of the state. But I love my island, and its history, and its culture, and its style. |
23868 | The pleasure of completing tasks motivates just as well as the whip of slavery [Weil] |
Full Idea: The sight of the unfinished task attracts the free man as powerfully as the over-seer's whip stimulates the slave. | |
From: Simone Weil (Reflections on Liberty and Social Oppression [1934], p.94) | |
A reaction: This is Weil's key social idea - that freely performed productive work can be, and should be, a joy, as long as it is accompanied by respect and friendship, rather than oppression. Did this idea ever occur to a slave owner? |
23811 | If effort is from necessity rather than for a good, it is slavery [Weil] |
Full Idea: To strive from necessity and not for some good - ...that is always slavery. | |
From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace [1942], 'Work') | |
A reaction: It is usual to see the possibility of anarchism as the starting point for political thinking, but I think for Weil the state of slavery has that role. |
23819 | Deliberate public lying should be punished [Weil] |
Full Idea: Every avoidable material falsehood publicly asserted should become a punishable offence. | |
From: Simone Weil (Draft Statement of Human Obligations [1943], p.228) | |
A reaction: Yes please! The early 21st century has become the time when truth lost all value in public life. Lying to the House of Commons in the UK required instant resignation 50 years ago. Now it is just a source of laughter. No freedom to lie! |
23818 | We have liberty in the space between nature and accepted authority [Weil] |
Full Idea: Liberty is the power of choice within the latitude left between the direct constraint of natural forces and the authority accepted as legitimate. | |
From: Simone Weil (Draft Statement of Human Obligations [1943], p.228) | |
A reaction: Accepting legitimate authority is a nicely softened version of the social contract. We often find that the office and rank are accepted as legitimate, but then are unable to accept the appalling individual who holds the office. |
23901 | Relationships depend on equality, so unequal treatment kills them [Weil] |
Full Idea: I conceive human relations solely on the plane of equality; therefore, so soon as someone begins to treat me as an inferior, human relations between us become impossible in my eyes. | |
From: Simone Weil (Letters [1940], 1936-03) | |
A reaction: Love that. This is precisely where equality starts. I fear that the problem is that people who don't treat others as equals don't want relationships with them, which particularly occurs in a competitive or hierarchical culture. |
23841 | By making money the sole human measure, inequality has become universal [Weil] |
Full Idea: By making money the sole, or almost the sole, motive of all actions, the sole, or almost the sole, measure of all things, the poison of inequality has been introduced everywhere. | |
From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], I 'Equality') | |
A reaction: Presumably this dates right back to the invention of money, and then increases with the endless rise of capitalism. |
23753 | People absurdly claim an equal share of things which are essentially privileged [Weil] |
Full Idea: To the dimmed understanding of our age there seems nothing odd in claiming an equal share of privilege for everybody - an equal share in things whose essence is privilege. | |
From: Simone Weil (Human Personality [1943], p.84) | |
A reaction: Not sure what she has in mind. Probably not the finest food and drink. I suppose she is attacking the modern egalitarian view of democratic society. What things have privilege as their 'essence'? Being a 'winner'? Interesting, though. |
23864 | Inequality could easily be mitigated, if it were not for the struggle for power [Weil] |
Full Idea: Inequality could easily be mitigated by the resistance of the weak and the feeling for justice of the strong, …were it not for the intervention of a further factor, namely, the struggle for power. | |
From: Simone Weil (Reflections on Liberty and Social Oppression [1934], p.62) | |
A reaction: The implication is that many of 'the strong' are inclined to diminish inequality, but find themselves trapped and unable to do so, because of irresistable capitalist forces. Sounds plausible. |
23835 | People have duties, and only have rights because of the obligations of others to them [Weil] |
Full Idea: A right is effectual only in relation to its corresponding obligation, springing not from the individual who possesses it, but from others who consider themselves under an obligation to him. In isolation a man only has duties, and only others have rights. | |
From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], I 'Needs') | |
A reaction: This seems correct, and obviously refutes the idea that people have intrinsic natural rights. However, it may be our sense of what nature requires which gives rise to the obligations we feel towards others. |
23752 | Giving centrality to rights stifles all impulses of charity [Weil] |
Full Idea: To place the notion of rights at the centre of social conflicts is to inhibit any possible impulse of charity on both sides. | |
From: Simone Weil (Human Personality [1943], p.83) | |
A reaction: I think she exaggerates. To place personal charity at the centre of social conflicts strikes me as extremely conservative, and unlikely to improve the situation very much. I'm unsure how to reconcile this with Idea 23750. What sort of charity? |
23751 | Rights are asserted contentiously, and need the backing of force [Weil] |
Full Idea: Rights are always asserted in a tone of contention; and when this tone is adopted, it must rely upon force in the background, or else it will be laughed at. | |
From: Simone Weil (Human Personality [1943], p.81) | |
A reaction: This is the sort of observation which leads on to Foucault's account of all-pervasive power. Her observation may not be so sinister. It is obvious that introductions of new rights go against the grain of a conservative society - and so need a push. |
23820 | People need personal and collective property, and a social class lacking property is shameful [Weil] |
Full Idea: The human soul has need of both personal property and collective property. …The existence of a social class defined by the lack of personal and collective property is as shameful as slavery. | |
From: Simone Weil (Draft Statement of Human Obligations [1943], p.229) | |
A reaction: Nice. Particularly the idea that we all need collective property, such as parks and beaches and public buildings. |
23757 | The spirit of justice needs the full attention of truth, and that attention is love [Weil] |
Full Idea: Because affliction and truth need the same kind of attention …the spirit of justice and the spirit of truth are one. The spirit of justice and truth is nothing else be a certain kind of attention, which is pure love. | |
From: Simone Weil (Human Personality [1943], p.92) | |
A reaction: I'm not sure about this as an observation, but as an inspiration it is very appealing, and (as so often with Weil) strikingly and attractively independent. I prefer love to arise naturally, rather than be a product of exhortation. |
23761 | Justice (concerning harm) is distinct from rights (concerning inequality) [Weil] |
Full Idea: Justice is seeing that no harm is done to men. When a man cries inwardly 'Why am I being hurt?' he is being harmed. The other cry of 'Why have others got more than me?' refers to rights. We must distinguish them, and hush the second with law. | |
From: Simone Weil (Human Personality [1943], p.93) | |
A reaction: Her great passion is for justice, and so she downplays rights. The simple 'why am I being hurt?' has a horrible resonance in 1943. What of the hurts of disease? Are they unjust? |
23813 | Only people who understand force, and don't respect it, are capable of justice [Weil] |
Full Idea: Only he who has measured the dominion of force, and knows how not to respect it, is capable of love and justice. | |
From: Simone Weil (The Iliad or the Poem of Force [1940], p.212) | |
A reaction: There are, of course, occasions when we are grateful to people who exercise appropriate force on our behalf. I think she was concerned with what is inappropriate. |
23852 | To punish people we must ourselves be innocent - but that undermines the desire to punish [Weil] |
Full Idea: In order to have the right to punish the guilty, we ought first of all to purify ourselves of their crimes. …But once this is accomplished we shall no longer feel the least desire to punish, or as little as possible and with extreme sorrow. | |
From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], III 'Growing') | |
A reaction: Elsewhere she endorses punishment, as a social necessity, and a redemption for the wicked. This idea looks like a bit of a change of heart. She may be thinking of Jesus on the mote in someone's eye. |
23764 | The only thing in society worse than crime is repressive justice [Weil] |
Full Idea: There is one, and only one, thing in society more hideous than crime - namely, repressive justice. | |
From: Simone Weil (Human Personality [1943], p.95) | |
A reaction: Presumably fans of 'repressive' justice would describe it as 'reformative' justice. In general, one of the most hideous parts of historical human societies has been the punishments they dished out (simply because they had the power to do it). |
23821 | Crime should be punished, to bring the perpetrator freely back to morality [Weil] |
Full Idea: The human soul needs punishment and honour. A committer of crime has become exiled from good, and needs to be reintegrated with it through suffering. This aims to bring the soul to recognise freely some day that is infliction was just. | |
From: Simone Weil (Draft Statement of Human Obligations [1943], p.229) | |
A reaction: The Scanlon contractualist approach to punishment - that the victim of it accepts its justice. Given her saintly character, Simone had a very tough view of this issue. |
23763 | Punishment aims at the good for men who don't desire it [Weil] |
Full Idea: Punishment is solely a method of procuring pure good for men who do not desire it. The art of punishing is the art of awakening in a criminal, by pain or even death, the desire for pure good. | |
From: Simone Weil (Human Personality [1943], p.95) | |
A reaction: I know Weil is seen as some sort of saint, but this remark could have come from the Inquisition. I'm always alarmed by talk of 'pure' good and 'pure' evil, which seem to need a superior insight the rest of us lack. But see Idea 23764. |
23827 | Modern wars are fought in the name of empty words which are given capital letters [Weil] |
Full Idea: For our contemporaries the role of Helen in the Trojan War is is played by words with capital letters. …When empty words are given capital letters, then, on the slightest pretext, men will begin shedding blood for them and piling up ruin in their name. | |
From: Simone Weil (The Power of Words [1934], p.241) | |
A reaction: This seems particularly true of the 1930s, where specific dogmatic ideologies seemed to grip and divide people. Simple aggressive nationalism seems to be the cause of current wars, now the fear of Communism has diminished. |
23880 | When war was a profession, customary morality justified any act of war [Weil] |
Full Idea: At the time when war was a profession, fighting men had a morality whereby any act of war, in accordance with the customs of war, and contributing to victory, was legitimate and right. | |
From: Simone Weil (Is There a Marxist Doctrine? [1943], p.173) | |
A reaction: Note the caveat about 'customs', which were largely moral. See the discussion of killing the non-combatant prisoners in Shakespeare's 'Henry V'. |
23850 | The soldier-civilian distinction should be abolished; every citizen is committed to a war [Weil] |
Full Idea: The distinction between soldiers and civilians, which the pressure of circumstances has already almost obliterated, should be entirely abolished. Every individual in the population owes his country the whole of his strength, resources and life itself. | |
From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], II 'Nation') | |
A reaction: Written in London in 1943. The year carpet bombing seriously escalated. The facts of warfare can change the ethics. |
23858 | War is perpetuated by its continual preparations [Weil] |
Full Idea: War perpetuates itself under the form of preparation for war. | |
From: Simone Weil (Prospects: Proletarian Revolution? [1933], p.16) | |
A reaction: There are periods when military preparations are scaled down, but a reason is always found to scale them back up again. |
23851 | Education is essentially motivation [Weil] |
Full Idea: Education - whether its object be children or adults, individuals or an entire people, or even oneself - consists in creating motives. | |
From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], III 'Growing') | |
A reaction: I can't disagree. Intellectual motivation is simply what we find interesting, and there is no formula for that. A teacher can teach a good session, and only 5% of the pupils find it interesting. A bad session could be life-changing for one student. |
23873 | Dividing history books into separate chapters is disastrous [Weil] |
Full Idea: The division of history textbooks into chapters will cost us many disastrous mistakes. | |
From: Simone Weil (Fragments [1936], p.131) | |
A reaction: Nice observation. The point is that we fail to grasp what really happened if we draw sharp lines across history. |
23860 | Even if a drowning man is doomed, he should keep swimming to the last [Weil] |
Full Idea: A man who is thrown overboard in the middle of the ocean ought not to let himself drown, even though there is very litte chance of his reaching safety, but to go on swimming till exhausted. | |
From: Simone Weil (Prospects: Proletarian Revolution? [1933], p.21) | |
A reaction: You might survive a little longer if you don't exhaust yourself! Not clear where her authority for 'ought' comes from, but it expresses an interesting attitude. |
24204 | The past is known to us but unreachable - a perfect image of eternal, supernatural reality [Weil] |
Full Idea: The past: Something real, but absolutely beyond our reach, towards which we cannot take one step, towards which we can but turn ourselves, so that an emanation from it may come to us. Thus it is the most perfect image of eternal, supernatural reality. | |
From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace [1942], 'Harmony') | |
A reaction: For Weil that is a transcendent religious insight, but for the non-religious it is still a wonderful observation. There is nothing else in our experience like the eternal unchanging reality of the past. |
23816 | Attention to a transcendent reality motivates a duty to foster the good of humanity [Weil] |
Full Idea: Anyone whose attention and love are directed towards the reality outside the world recognises that he is bound by the permanent obligation to remedy …all the privations of soul and body which are liable to destroy or damage any human being whatsoever. | |
From: Simone Weil (Draft Statement of Human Obligations [1943], p.225) | |
A reaction: [abridged] An interesting attempt to articulate the religious motivation of morality. The Euthyphro question remains - of why this vision of a wholly good higher morality should motivate anyone, unless they already possess a desire for that good. |
23754 | The only choice is between supernatural good, or evil [Weil] |
Full Idea: In all the crucial problems of human existence the only choice is between supernatural good on the one hand and evil on the other. | |
From: Simone Weil (Human Personality [1943], p.86) | |
A reaction: This idea strikes me as absurd, but I include it for a fuller picture of Simone Weil. Aristotle (my hero) is referred to, and labelled as more stupid than a village idiot. |
24192 | My love makes me believe in God; the inconceivability of this God makes me disbelieve [Weil] |
Full Idea: True contradictories. I am sure there is a God in the sense that I am quite sure that my love is not illusory. I am sure there is not a God in the sense that I am quite sure nothing real can be anything like what I conceive when I pronounce this word. | |
From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace [1942], 'Atheism') | |
A reaction: [She adds that inconceivability doesn't mean illusory] I can't see a feeling of love as a reason for theism. But the inconceivability of God isn't a good reason for atheism. |
23892 | The only legitimate proof of God by order derives from beauty [Weil] |
Full Idea: The only legitimate proof [of God's existence] from the order of the world is the proof from the beauty of the world. | |
From: Simone Weil (God in Plato [1942], p.89) | |
A reaction: She finds this proof in Plato. Hume's critique never (I think) mentions beauty, although in the 18thC love of the sublime could play that role. For me, the human experience of beauty doesn't have such cosmic significance. |
23904 | The cruelty of the Old Testament put me off Christianity [Weil] |
Full Idea: I have always been kept away from Christianity by its ranking the Old Testament stories, so full of pitiless cruelty, as sacred texts. | |
From: Simone Weil (Letters [1940], 1941-01) | |
A reaction: After 1938 she was a devout and intense Christian, but of a highly individual and platonist kind. Her religion is dominated by love and beauty. |
24178 | We must leave on one side the ordinary 'consolations' of religion [Weil] |
Full Idea: We must leave on one side the beliefs which fill up voids and sweeten what is bitter. The belief in immortality, in the utility of sin, in the providential ordering of events - in short the 'consolations' which are ordinarily sought in religion. | |
From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace [1942], 'Detachment') | |
A reaction: Her positive views of religion seem rather daunting, and may only be for the few. |
24206 | Revolution (not religion) is the opium of the people [Weil] |
Full Idea: It is not religion but revolution which is the opium of the people. | |
From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace [1942], 'Work') | |
A reaction: Right now in Europe hatred of migrants is the opium of the people. Maybe football, or television light entertainment. Or nationalism. Or fast food… Vodka? |
23849 | Religion should quietly suffuse all human life with its light [Weil] |
Full Idea: The proper function of religion is to suffuse with its light all secular life, public or private, without in any way dominating it. | |
From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], II 'Nation') | |
A reaction: Even for the non-religious there is something attractive about some view of the world which 'suffuses our lives with light'. It probably describes medieval Christendom, but that contained an awful lot of darkness. |
23902 | I attach little importance to immortality, which is an undecidable fact, and irrelevant to us [Weil] |
Full Idea: You attach great importance to the reasoning about immortality. I myself attach little. It is a factual question, which cannot be decided in advance by any reasoning. And what does it matter to us? | |
From: Simone Weil (Letters [1940], 1937-04c) | |
A reaction: I love 'what does it matter to us?'. The idea that our future bliss or misery depends on how we live now is an utterly wicked fiction, which derails attempts to live a proper life. |
24180 | We just see immortality as prolongation of life, making death meaningless [Weil] |
Full Idea: Belief in immortality is harmful because it is not in our power to conceive of the soul as really incorporeal. So this belief is in fact a belief in the prolongation of life, and it robs death of its purpose. | |
From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace [1942], 'Decreation') | |
A reaction: I can possibly see a cosmic purpose in death, but hardly matters to individuals. Interesting that a mystic can't shake off the need for the body. |
23765 | The soul is the intrinsic value of a human [Weil] |
Full Idea: The soul is the human being considered as having a value in itself. | |
From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace [1942], 'Love') | |
A reaction: [from 'Gravity and Grace'] A rather modern view, treating the soul as an abstraction, rather than as an entity. |
24186 | If the world lacked evil, then the evil would be in our desires, which would be worse [Weil] |
Full Idea: How could there be no evil in the world? The world has to be foreign to our desires. If this were so without it containing evil, our desires would be entirely bad. That must not happen. God's world is not the best possible, but contains all good and evil. | |
From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace [1942], 'Evil') | |
A reaction: What an original mind she had! Doesn't seem to answer the standard problem, of why a benevolent God gave us evil desires. |
24187 | Without worldly affliction, we'd think this is paradise [Weil] |
Full Idea: If there were no affliction in this world, we might think we were in paradise. | |
From: Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace [1942], 'Affliction') | |
A reaction: Peersonally I wouldn't object to living in paradise, even it is temporary. Interesting, though. |