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.
Gist of Idea
Force is what turns man into a thing, and ultimately into a corpse
Source
Simone Weil (The Iliad or the Poem of Force [1940], p.183)
Book Reference
Weil,Simone: 'An Anthology' [Penguin 1986], 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.