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Simone Weil's Iliad: The Power of Words

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2010

Dean Hammer  and
Michael Kicey
Dean Hammer
Affiliation:
Franklin and Marshall College
Michael Kicey
Affiliation:
University of Michigan
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Abstract

Simone Weil's work has always been appreciated for its evocative beauty, but not always for its potential contributions to political thought. In this essay, we engage in a reappraisal of her political thought, and of her relevance to contemporary politics, by way of her discussion of the power of words. Weil shares much with contemporary approaches that view the world as a text to be interpreted. But for Weil, the power of interpretation carries with it an illusion, exemplified in Weil's example of Achilles watching over his war-work, in which the world can be seen, measured, and shaped according to one's will. For Weil, the illusion of control that accompanies this perspective is undermined by our encounter with a world of physical causes and sensations that impact us, quite without us being able to control them.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 72 , Issue 1 , Winter 2010 , pp. 79 - 96
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 2010

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References

1 For a discussion of how Weil disorients stylistically, see Dargan, Joan, Simone Weil: Thinking Poetically (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1999Google Scholar).

2 Compare for example Richard Bell's communitarian reading with Mary Dietz's in, respectively, Simone Weil: The Way of Justice as Compassion (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998) and Between the Human and the Divine: The Political Thought of Simone Weil (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1988), 31.

3 The following works by Simone Weil are abbreviated as follows: Waiting for God, trans. Emma Craufurd (New York: Harper, 1951) (abbreviated as WG); Gravity and Grace, trans. Arthur Wills (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1952) (GG); The Need for Roots, trans. Arthur Wills (London: Routledge, 1952) (NR); The Notebooks of Simone Weil, trans. Arthur Wills (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1956) (N); Oppression and Liberty, trans. Arthur Wills and John Petrie (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1958) (OL); First and Last Notebooks, trans. Richard Rees (London: Oxford University Press, 1970) (FLN); Intimations of Christianity among the Ancient Greeks, trans. Elisabeth Geissbuhler (London: Routledge, 1976) (IC); Lectures on Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978) (LP); “Human Personality,” in Simone Weil: An Anthology, ed. Siân Miles (New York: Grove, 1986), 49–78 (HP); “The Power of Words,” in Simone Weil: An Anthology, ed. Siân Miles (New York: Grove, 1986), 218–38 (PW); “Are We Struggling for Justice?” trans. Barabas, Marina, Philosophical Investigations 10 (1987): 1–10Google Scholar (AWS); “Essay on the Notion of Reading,” Philosophical Investigations 13 (1990): 297–303 (ENR); The “Iliad,” or the Poem of Force, ed. and trans. James Holoka (New York: Peter Lang, 2003) (IPF).

4 See Winch, Peter, Simone Weil: “The Just Balance” (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 179–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Nye, Andrea, Philosophia: The Thought of Rosa Luxemburg, Simone Weil, and Hannah Arendt (New York: Routledge, 1994), 107–12Google Scholar.

5 For discussions of Weil's view of Marx, see Nye, Philosophia, 62–74 and Finch, Henry, Simone Weil and the Intellect of Grace, ed. Andic, Martin (New York: Continuum, 1999), 59–69Google Scholar.

6 Nevin, Thomas, Simone Weil: Portrait of a Self-Exiled Jew (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991), 303Google Scholar.

7 Schein, Seth, The Mortal Hero (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 82–83Google Scholar. See also Fiedler, Leslie, introduction to Waiting for God (New York: Harper, 1951), 12Google Scholar; Ferber, Michael, “Simone Weil's Iliad,” in Simone Weil: Interpretations of a Life, ed. White, George Abbott (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1981), 63–85Google Scholar (which is overly reliant on Snell's outdated conception of the Homeric mind); Nevin, Simone, 133; and Redfield, James, Nature and Culture in the “Iliad”: The Tragedy of Hektor (Durham: Duke University Press, 1994), 225Google Scholar n. 4. More sympathetic assessments are provided by Taplin, Oliver, “The Shield of Achilles Within the Iliad,” Greece and Rome, 2nd series, 27 (1980): 17Google Scholar; Macleod, Colin, Homer: “Iliad,” book 24 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 1 n. 1Google Scholar; Simonsuuri, Kirsti, “Simone Weil's Interpretation of Homer,” French Studies 39 (1985): 166–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Zanker, Graham, The Heart of Achilles: Characterization and Personal Ethics in the “Iliad” (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994), 43 n. 93CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Holoka, James, introduction to Simone Weil's the “Iliad” or the Poem of Force: A Critical Edition (New York: Peter Lang, 2003), 1–17Google Scholar.

8 Rees, Richard, Simone Weil: A Sketch for a Portrait (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1966), 62Google Scholar (more spiritual after 1938 but still concerned with affliction in the world); Pierce, Roy, “Sociology and Utopia: The Early Writings of Simone Weil,” Political Science Quarterly 77 (1962): 506CrossRefGoogle Scholar (political to spiritual after 1938 with change in emphasis from “rationalist” to “romantic”); Dujardin, Philippe, Simone Weil: idéologie et politique (Grenoble: Presses Universitaires de Grenoble, 1975), 103, 153–63Google Scholar; Pétrement, Simone, Simone Weil: A Life, trans. Rosenthal, Raymond (New York: Pantheon, 1976), 361Google Scholar; Hellman, John, Simone Weil: An Introduction to Her Thought (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1982), 17Google Scholar; Courtine-Denamy, Sylvie, Three Women in Dark Times: Edith Stein, Hannah Arendt, Simone Weil, trans. Goshgarian, G. M. (Cornell: Cornell University Press, 2000)Google Scholar, esp. 202–5, 218. Vetö, Miklos, The Religious Metaphysics of Simone Weil, trans. Dargan, Joan (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1994)Google Scholar, argues for continuity in Weil's philosophic thought, organized primarily around her Platonic metaphysics. Dietz (Between) rejects the division of Weil's thought between political and spiritual, arguing that her works are organized around an attempt to grapple with “the dilemma of worldliness.” Even Dietz sees Weil retreating to an apolitical stance (Between, 71, 79). Athanasios Moulakis also rejects the division between Weil's spiritual and political thought (Moulakis, Simone Weil and the Politics of Self-Denial, trans. Ruth Hein [Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1998], 16), positioning Weil as the inheritor of Alain's dualistic view of reality as divided between corrupt power and spirituality (150). Civic virtue, thus, appears as a “form of submission that withholds respect” (154). Bell (Simone) provides the most vigorous defense of Weil's politics, but overstates the extent of her communitarian sympathies.

9 Idinopulos, Thomas, “Necessity and Nihilism in Simone Weil's Vision of God,” in Mysticism, Nihilism, Feminism: New Critical Essays on the Theology of Simone Weil, ed. Idinopulos, Thomas and Knopp, Josephine (Johnson City: Institute of Social Sciences and Arts, 1984), 31Google Scholar. Gnostic interpretations are provided by Taubes, Susan, “The Absent God,” Journal of Religion 35 (1955): 10–12CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Idinopulos, “Necessity”; and Cabaud, Jacques, Simone Weil (New York: Channel, 1964), 212Google Scholar. Challenges to these gnostic interpretations are provided by Springsted, Eric, Christus Mediator: Platonic Mediation in the Thought of Simone Weil (Chicago: Scholars Press, 1983)Google Scholar; Wolfteich, Claire, “Attention or Destruction: Simone Weil and the Paradox of the Eucharist,” Journal of Religion 81 (2001), 359–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Madeline Hamblin, “Simone Weil's Theology of Evil, Love and the Self-Emptying God,” in Idinopulos and Knopp, 49–54.

10 On Weil's relationship to Descartes, see Morgan, Vance, Weaving the World: Simone Weil on Science, Mathematics, and Love (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), 23–35Google Scholar.

11 Winch, Simone, 55, italics in original.

12 Helpful discussions of Weil's notion of reading are providing by Allen, Diogenes, “The Concept of Reading and the ‘Book of Nature,’” in Simone Weil's Philosophy of Culture: Readings toward a Divine Humanity, ed. Bell, Richard (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993)Google Scholar, and Puente, Fernando Rey, Simone Weil et la Grèce (Paris: L'Harmattan, 2007), 89–113Google Scholar.

13 On sensations, see Winch, Simone, 18–31.

14 Finch, Simone Weil and the Intellect of Grace, 35.

15 Allen, “Concept,” 103.

16 Ibid., 103.

17 Weil's distinction between power and force is notoriously ambiguous. On Weil's conception of force, see Dietz, Between, 86–90.

18 See Winch, Simone, 51; Little, J. P., “Simone Weil and the Limits of Language,” in The Beauty That Saves: Essays on Aesthetics and Language in Simone Weil, ed. Dunaway, John and Springsted, Eric (Macon: Mercer University Press, 1996), 41Google Scholar. Winch (Simone) provides the most complete discussion of Weil's notion of language, using Wittgenstein as his basis of comparison.

19 See Vetö, Religious, 48–49.

20 Fiedler, introduction, WG, 12.

21 This language recounts Weil's own writing about her experience of the docility inflicted by necessity on the factory floor. See Weil, Simone, Simone Weil: Seventy Letters, trans. Rees, Richard (London: Oxford University Press, 1965), 14–17Google Scholar.

22 What is real, as Nye writes, “is concrete interactions between the world and human agents,” a reality that may be “a physical thing, her own feelings, or her own actions” (Nye, Philosophia, 82, 78). See also Frost, Christopher and Bell-Metereau, Rebecca, Simone Weil: On Politics, Religion and Society (London: Sage, 1998), 58Google Scholar; Rhees, Rush, Discussions of Simone Weil, ed. Phillips, D. Z. (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2000), 36Google Scholar.

23 Winch compares Weil's treatment of necessity to Wittgenstein's notion of necessity as a product of acting in “ordered sequences of operations” (Simone, 61). Others have sought to place Weil's notion of necessity into a “Christian Platonism.” See, especially, Dupré, Louis, “Simone Weil and Platonism: An Introductory Reading,” in The Christian Platonism of Simone Weil, ed. Doering, E. Jane and Springsted, Eric (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2004), 9–22Google Scholar; Patterson, Patrick and Schmidt, Lawrence, “The Christian Materialism of Simone Weil,” in The Christian Platonism of Simone Weil, 77–93Google Scholar; Vetö, Religious; Springsted, Christus Mediator; Allen, Diogenes and Springsted, Eric, Spirit, Nature, and Community: Issues in the Thought of Simone Weil (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1994), 33–52Google Scholar.

24 See especially Cameron, Sharon, “The Practice of Attention: Simone Weil's Performance of Impersonality,” Critical Inquiry 29 (2003): 225CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 We can place this silence in Weil's negative theology, derived from her reading of Plato and the Gnostics, that sees the presence of God, truth, and beauty in its absence in the world. See Dupré, “Simone,” 9–22, and Patterson and Schmidt, “Christian,” 81. I am emphasizing how this absence returns us to, or immerses us in, the world. On this return, see Patterson and Schmidt, “Christian,” 82–85.

26 This debate is reviewed in Clay, Jenny Strauss, The Wrath of Athena: Gods and Men in the “Odyssey” (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), 215–39Google Scholar; Farenga, Vincent, Citizen and Self in Ancient Greece: Individuals Performing Justice and the Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 181–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Dean Hammer, “Homer and Political Thought,” in Cambridge Companion to Greek Political Theory, ed. Stephen Salkever (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).

27 See Hammer, Dean, The “Iliad” as Politics: The Performance of Political Thought (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2002)Google Scholar; Farenga, Citizen, 68–108.

28 See also Finch, Simone Weil and the Intellect of Grace, 39.

29 This power is also the power to refuse. See Winch, Simone, 102–19.

30 Ferber seems unfair to Weil here, suggesting that Weil misreads the Greek (which she does) when indicating that Achilles pushes Priam to the floor and then claiming that Weil “recognizes she has not done justice to this scene” and “contradict[s]” herself when describing this encounter as a luminous moment (“Simone,” 71–72).

31 On Weil's conception of justice, particularly in its contrast to a Rawlsian position, see Winch, Simone, 179–90. See also Richard Bell, “Reading Simone Weil on Rights, Justice and Love,” in Bell, Simone Weil's Philosophy of Culture, 229.

32 On the relationship between poetry and silence, see especially Little, “Simone.”

33 On attention and reading, see Dietz, Between, 96–103; Winch, Simone; Bell, “Reading”; Allen, “Concept,” 93–115; Sharon Cameron, “The Practice of Attention,” 216–52; and Vetö, Religious, 41–55.

34 Helpful here is Dietz, Between, 96–97.

35 Ibid., 99.

36 See Finch, Simone Weil and the Intellect of Grace, 38–39.

37 See Michel Narcy, “The Limits and Significance of Simone Weil's Platonism,” in Christian Platonism of Simone Weil, 29; Vance Morgan, “Simone Weil and the Divine Poetry of Mathematics,” in Christian Platonism of Simone Weil, 95–114; Allen and Springsted, Spirit, Nature, and Community, 47–50; and Puente, Simone, 119–20.

38 Dietz, Between, 79.

39 See Andrew, Edward, “Simone Weil on the Injustice of Rights-Based Doctrines,” Review of Politics 48 (1986): 62–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40 Springsted, Eric, “Spiritual Apprenticeship,” Cahiers Simone Weil 25 (2002): 337Google Scholar.

41 See, especially, Rhees, Discussions, 23–29.

42 Vetö, Religious, 32.

43 See Cameron, “Practice of Attention,” 248, for a discussion of the implications of attention.

44 See Taubes, “Absent,” 11.

45 Ibid., 14.

46 Springsted, “Spiritual Apprenticeship,” 344. Springsted also argues that Weil challenges us to enter into a dialogue about the historical and cultural values to which we subscribe. See “Conditions of Dialogue: John Hick and Simone Weil,” Journal of Religion 72 (1992): 33–36.