PENGUIN � CLASSICS SIMONE WElL : AN AN THOL OGY SIMONE WElL (1909-1 943) is one of the most important thinkers of the modern period. The distinctive feature of her work is the indissoluble link she makes between the theory and practice of both politics and religion and her translation of thought into action . A brilliant philosopher and mathematician, her life rep­ resents a quest for justice and balance in both the academic and the practical spheres. A scholar of deep and wide erudition, she became during the thirties an inspired teacher and activist. So as to experience physical labour at first hand, she spent almost two years as a car factory worker soon after the Front Populaire and later became a fighterin the Spanish Civil War. When her home city of Paris was occupied, she joined the Resistance in the South of France and became for a time an agricultural labourer before acceding to her parents' wish to escape Nazi persecution of the Jews by fleeing to New York. Leaving America, she joined the Free French in London where, frustrated by the exclusively intellectual nature of the work delegated to her, and weakened by a number of physical and emotional factors, she contracted tuberculosis and died in a Kentish sanatorium at the age of thirty-four. The bulk of her voluminous oeuvre was published posthumously. SIAN MILES was born and brought up in the bi-cultural atmos­ phere of Wales and educated there and in France where she has lived for many years. She has taught at a number of universities worldwide, including Tufts University, Massachusetts, Dakar University, Senegal and York University, Toronto. She now teaches at \Varwick University in England. Her other publica­ tions include: George Sa nd : JV/a rianne; a translation of Violet Trefusis' Echo; in collaboration, Paul Valery's CalziersfNote­ books; and Guy de Maupassant: A Parisian Affa ir and Other Stories (Penguin Classics). SIMONE WElL An Anthology Edited and Introduced by SIAN MILES PENGUIN BOOKS PENGUIN BOOKS Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suire 700, Toronto, Ontario. Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen's Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Cambcrwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) Penguin Dooks India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi- 110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), cnr Airborne and Rosedale Roads, Albany, Auckland 1310, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee A venue, Rosebank 2196, South Africa Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England www.penguin.com First published by Virago Press 1986 Published in Penguin Classics 2005 1 Copyright©Introductions and arrangements Sian Miles, 1986, 2005 All rights reserved The moral right of the author has been asserted Simone Wcil's writings are copyrighted as follows: Atte11te de Die11 0 La Colombe Edition du Vieux Colombier 1950; Waiting ou God© G. P. Putnam's Sons and Routledge & Kegan Paul 1951. renewed 1979. Cahiers de Simone Wei/ Vol I.() Librairie Pion 1951, Vol. II() Pion 1953, \"ol Ill ©Pion 1956; The Noteboohs of Simo11e Wei/ 0 G. P. Putnam's Sons 1956. La Pesa1tte11r et Ia Grtice"'Librairie Pion 1947; Grat1ily aud Grace Q G. P. Putnam's Sons and Routledge & Kegan Paul 1952, renewed 1980. L'E11ra<i11eme11t 0 Editions Gallimard 1949; The Need for Roots ©Simone Wei) 1952, preface by T. S. Eliot 0 G. P. Putnam's Sons and Routledge & Kegan Paul 1952, renewed 1980. Oppressioll et Liberte C Gallimard 1955; Oppressio11 a11d Liberty© Routledge and Kegan Paul 1958. Leroru de Philosophie© Librairie Pion 1959; Lectures 011 Philosophy ttl Cambridge University Press 1978. Conditiou premiere d'rm trat,ail uou-senrile from La Co11ditiou Ouvriere ©Editions Gallimard 1951; Prerequisite to Di"g11ity of Labour© SHin Miles 1986. L 'lliade 011 le poeme de Ia force from La Source Grecque C Editions Gallimard 1953; The Iliad or tire Poem of Force() Mary McCanhy 1945. Ser.'etlt)' Letters Q Oxford Uni\'ersity Press 1965. La Vie de Sinrmre Wei/ e Librairie Anheme Fayard 1973; Simoue Wei/: A Lrfe 0 Pantheon Dooks 1976. Ecn'ts de Umdres et Denri�res Lettres 0 Gallimard 1957 and Ecrits lristoriques et politiques© Gallimard 1960. Selected Essays 193�--JJ0 Oxford University Press 1962. Printed in England by Clays Ltd, St I ves pic Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser CO NTENTS Foreword to the Penguin edition Vll Preface to the Virago edition XV Acknowledgements XVll Introduction 1 Human Personality 69 The Self 99 The Needs of the Soul 105 The Great Beast 141 Analysis of Oppression 147 The Mysticism of Wo rk 178 The Iliad or the Poem of Force 182 Vo id and Compensation 216 Draft for a Statement of Human Obligations 221 Attention and Will 23 1 The Power of Words 238 Contradiction 259 Prerequisite to Dignity of Labour 264 Detachment 277 Friendship 281 Love 290 Chance 297 Bibliography 299 Index 303 FOREWOR D to the Penguin Edition In the decade and a half since the first publication of this anthology, the influence of Simone Weil's life and work has spread and deepened in many different spheres. Some of these include the familiar fields of philosophy and religion with which her name has traditionally been most closely associated. Some, however, represent other areas where the seeds of her understanding have taken strong root and produced the kind of interdisciplinary cross-fertilization characteristic in aspiration of both her formal and informal writings. These include the political, the educational, the psychological as well as the cultural, in which strands of her thinking have developed in ways marking it as having been unusually prescient, innovative for its time and spectacularly applicable to our own. In the fields of politics and economics her many per­ suasive arguments on the inherent tendency of power to over-extend itself have an all too resonant ring. 'If we want to consider power as a conceivable phenomenon, we must think it can extend the foundations on which it rests up to a certain point only, after which it comes up, as it were, against an impassable wall. But even so it is not in a position Vlll SIMONE WElL- AN ANTHOLOGY to stop; the spur of competition forces it to go ever farther, that is to say, to go beyond the limits within which it can be effectively exercised.' (Weil, 1958) Some might argue that the imperative which drives the US and her allies to attempt to control ever greater proportions of the world's dwindling oil resources does indeed lead them into ever wider confrontations, creating opposition which they can neither understand nor overcome. Claiming that wherever small is possible, big is bad, she anticipates by several decades the notion, though not the sadly revelatory name of subsidiarity now enshrined in the European Community Treaty, and Schumacher's 'small is beautiful' ethos which emerged in parts of the West after her death and is ever more widely accepted as a means of controlling irresponsible expansion. Small-scale production, localized economies and greater emphasis on regionaliza­ tion are expressed as objectives and consummations devoutly to be wished in the many essays on the nature of work and on industrial relations written after her own experiences as a factory hand and agricultural labourer in the late thirties and soon after the occupation of France by the Nazis. Some readers have been tempted to muse on the contem­ porary relevance of her proposition that the complexity of relations between developed states and a perceived need for co-ordination lead to increased hegemony and consequent domination. Advanced nations (including especially the UK since the demise of virtually all its manufacturing sector), exercise control and exploitation over the world economy through the manipulation of information in ways she anticipates with chilling accuracy. The intense discussion which took place a few years ago about the poten­ tially revolutionary influence of the internet because of its decentralized structure and the at least theoretical possi­ bility that information would be available to all equally has proved something of a chimera due to the fact that information remains heavily controlled. Others have noted her influence in the area of resistance FOREWORD IX to war and argue that the industry of war in consumer soci­ eties is supported by two factors: the objectives of statecraft and the desires of consumers. Thus pacifist platforms, even if supported by millions of people, are likely to fail primarily because the roots of consumption and the inability to give up socialized ways of thinking about needs are obstacles to anti-war movements. Statecraft implicates, at the occupa­ tional level, workers who might be opposed to imperialism or war, but as soldiers or technicians or specialized skill workers, like miners or drillers, they have a job to perform and keep. This locates both the routes of recruitment to war and the movements to protest along specificclass channels. Simone Weil's ideas on bureaucracy and work are particu­ larly useful in helping to understand the limits of freedom as well as the necessity of enracinement or rootedness for survival.