The Ambiguous Impact of Simone Weil

 I decided to read On The Abolition of All Political Parties by Simone Weil translated from French by Simon Leys because the title attracted my attention.  I also wanted to read a translated book by a woman during August which is Women in Translation month.

 

                                                                 

Simon Leys says in his translator's forward that "taking a conscience vote" in Parliament should be considered a pleonasm.  Pleonasm was an unfamiliar word to me.  I looked it up and discovers that it means redundancy.   

I wondered about Leys' perception.   Aren't members of Parliament supposed to be representing their districts, not themselves as individuals?  So therefore it's not true that they should always be voting according to their own beliefs.  They should be doing what their constituents want and need.  Representing their constituents is what's expected of members of Congress in the United States.  If  members of Congress don't do that, then the United States fails as a democracy. 

Leys, writing in 2012, says that although Weil wrote On The Abolition of All Political Parties 70 years ago, it's particularly relevant now.  Looking at politics in the United States in 2022, I think it's not just relevant but urgent.  I am an Independent who doesn't subscribe to political parties.   I realize that I am in the minority in my extremely partisan country.  

Weil writes that people join political parties in order to be politically effective even if the party doesn't represent their own beliefs and principles.  I don't understand why voters don't consider it counter-productive to achieve political success at the price of sacrificing their principles.  That isn't a victory for the voters.   It's a victory for the politicians who want to have power. 

Poet Czeslaw Milosz's essay "The Importance of Simone Weil" was included in this volume.  Milosz tells us that Simone Weil's support for labor unions caused her to go to work in factories for a year to experience what labor was like.  She contributed her pay to the labor unions.  Milosz says that Weil felt like a slave after having worked in the factories.  She died of malnutrition in a sanitorium.   I have questions.  Was her commitment to that institution voluntary or involuntary?  Did she die of malnutrition because she refused to eat or because the institution was starving her?   The answers to these questions would determine how I see Simone Weil.  

Weil apparently considered the Roman Empire a totalitarian society.  Totalitarianism was impossible until the existence of surveillance technology.  The Romans weren't capable of being totalitarians in our modern sense.  

Milosz said that both he and Albert Camus were drawn to Weil because of her certainty.  Camus was an atheist who doubted atheism and Milosz was a Christian who doubted Christianity.   Simone Weil had said that there were Pagans who were "naturally Christian" and Christians who were "naturally Pagan".  It seems to me that religious beliefs aren't innate.  There is no such thing as a natural adherent to a religion.   You are persuaded to become a religious adherent by your exposure to the religion and its beliefs.  

If I had to try to sum up the influence of Simone Weil on our present times, I don't think that I could do it.  There are unanswered questions that make her life and legacy unclear to me.  So I am inconclusive about Simone Weil at this point.