Simone Weil for Americans
lareviewofbooks.org
lareviewofbooks.org
Some quotes from Weil:
"The Great Beast^1 is the only object of idolatry, the only ersatz of God, the only imitation of something which is infinitely far from me and which is I myself.
"It is impossible for me to take myself as an end or, in consequence, my fellow man as an end, since he is my fellow. Nor can I take a material thing, because matter is still less capable of having finality conferred upon it than human beings are.
"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."
"The power of the social element. Agreement between several men brings with it a feeling of reality. It brings with it also a sense of duty. Divergence, where this agreement is concerned, appears as a sin. Hence all returns to the fold are possible. The state of conformity is an imitation of grace."
"The social order is irreducibly that of the prince of this world. Our only duty with regard to the social is to try to limit the evil of it."
"The collective is the object of all idolatry, this it is which chains us to the earth. In the case of avarice: gold is of the social order. In the case of ambition: power is of the social order. Science and art are full of the social element also. And love? Love is more or less of an exception: that is why we can go to God through love, not through avarice and ambition."
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1 - The Great Beast is a reference to Plato's Republic, Book VI, establishing the epistemological problem of socially derived consensus reality:
"I might compare them to a man who should study the tempers and desires of a mighty strong beast who is fed by him--he would learn how to approach and handle him, also at what times and from what causes he is dangerous or the reverse, and what is the meaning of his several cries, and by what sounds, when another utters them, he is soothed or infuriated; and you may suppose further, that when, by continually attending upon him, he has become perfect in all this, he calls his knowledge wisdom, and makes of it a system or art, which he proceeds to teach, although he has no real notion of what he means by the principles or passions of which he is speaking, but calls this honourable and that dishonourable, or good or evil, or just or unjust, all in accordance with the tastes and tempers of the great brute. Good he pronounces to be that in which the beast delights and evil to be that which he dislikes [...]"
Regarding the Great Beast metaphor and its consequences, I believe much of the issues that run deep down in society these days have to do greatly with it.
We should connect, I barely know other people with whom I can share what I read.