Monday, March 21, 2011

Simone Weil?

An anymous comment (which I post undedited) runs as follows:

Simone Weil was progressive and she too spoke of a need for roots. Dont know whether she fits into Traditionalism or not. But some elements of her work would be highly compatible with traditionalism.

"What makes an impression first is the distinction drawn by Weil between rights and obligations. Weil did not dispute the significance of rights, but she put them, it might be said, in their place. She viewed rights as 'subordinate and relative' to obligations: the exercise of a right did not depend on the demands of the individual possessing them, but on the recognition by others of their obligations....

...Weil insists that a progressive concerned with the promotion of just order must be able to speak about more than economic advancement, the expansion of rights, or the pursuit of individual happiness through restless scientific advance. Weil believed that progressives need to speak, too, to the need for 'roots,' understood as a basic—even spiritual—need. They should be able to speak of love of country, not only of submission to the State. Their language should be that of obligation, not only of rights, informed by morality even before it appeals to law...." (from book review by Bob Bauer on More Soft Money Hard Law website)

Book review: "This is one of those books which ought to be studied by the young before their lesiure has been lost and their capacity for thought destroyed; books the effect of which, we can only hope, will become apparent in the attitude of mind of another generation." T. S. Elliot


More here

http://www.ou.edu/cas/psc/bookweil.htm

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Interesting--this was posted just as I was rereading The Need for Roots for the first time in many years. It seems very unlikely she was influenced by Traditionalism or that she would have found it sympathetic at all, but there are certain parallelisms. Rodger Cunningham