A Radical Cure: Hannah Arendt & Simone Weil on the Need for Roots

[Philosophy Now]

Scott Remer thinks we arendt happy without a community and considers the complete reconstruction of the modern world to be well worth weil.

https://philosophynow.org/issues/127/A_Radical_Cure_Hannah_Arendt_and_Simone_Weil_on_the_Need_for_Roots

[-1-]

Yeah. I support complete reconstruction of the modern world. Nay, I demand a reconstruction.

Can I also be borne again? Please. Please? Not in the traditional Christian sense, or as in reincarnation, but normatively speaking.

[Nick_A]

Anyone who appreciates Simone Weil can’t be all bad and that includes Scott Remer even with his leftist tendencies. The need for roots is an essential human need which is why Simone wrote “The Need for Roots.”

First of all capitalism is an effect rather than a cause. Consider how Simone describes cpitalism

Capitalism has brought about the emancipation of collective humanity with respect to nature. But this collective humanity has itself taken on with respect to the individual the oppressive function formerly exercised by nature. Simone Weil

The struggle between the opponents and defenders of capitalism is a struggle between innovators who do not know what innovation to make and conservatives who do not know what to conserve. Simone Weil

The Remer article concludes with:

People exist in space and time, and Weil dwells on the importance of rooting ourselves temporally as well as physically. We need to feel connected to the past and its resources; the sense of continuity in time we derive from history is an essential nutrient for the soul (p.96). Cautioning us against facile progressivism, Weil notes: “It would be useless to turn one’s back on the past in order to simply concentrate on the future. It is a dangerous illusion to believe that such a thing is even possible” (p.48). She also movingly comments: “Loss of the past, whether it be collectively or individually, is the supreme human tragedy” (p.114). The uprooting of culture is a problem that must be combated via educational reforms if we are to establish ourselves securely on the planet. We must learn to see ideas and concepts as living nodes in a grand interconnected web of knowledge and wisdom. In this context, the disjointed jumble of disconnected facts and desiccated data that these days often passes for education is itself a threat to rootedness.
Weil wrote prophetically that “Four obstacles above all separate us from a form of civilization likely to be worth something: our false conception of greatness; the degradation of the sentiment of justice; our idolization of money; and our lack of religious inspiration” (p.209). If we read the word ‘religious’ generally, or substitute the word ‘spiritual’, she is absolutely right. She also wrote that the task facing the Western world was “transforming society in such a way that the working-class may be given roots in it” (p.46). More than seventy-five years later, our task has not changed.

After years as a celebrated Marxist Simone finally learned the idealistic goals are impossible for Man left to his own nature. The human condition prevents it. What Remer wrote is very nice but impractical. Simone explains why:

Humanism was not wrong in thinking that truth, beauty, liberty, and equality are of infinite value, but in thinking that man can get them for himself without grace. Simone Weil

Notice how Remer refers to “spirituality.” The imagintion of Feelgoodism doesn’t allow the help of grace. Simone described the human organism as like a green plant. The roots require good soil just like a healthy society needs a good culture. A green plant needs the sunlight to feed the leaves just as the light of grace feeds the higher parts of the collective human soul. Imagination denies the light.
Metaxu refers to the quality within society, its culture which connects it to the source of grace. A meaningful metaxu connects above and below. Without it all that results is fragmentation and organized opinions fighting each other leading to the totalitarianism written about.

Is Scott Remer really describing the Great Beast when he refers to community?

In "Sketch of Contemporary Social Life" (1934), Simone Weil develops the theme of collectivism as the trajectory of modern culture.

“Never has the individual been so completely delivered up to a blind collectivity, and never have men been so less capable, not only of subordinating their actions to their thoughts, but even of thinking.”

https://www.hermitary.com/solitude/weil.html

According to Weil, the person's accession to society, the individual's renunciation of values to the collective as defined by a small group, is based on ignorance and fear, fear that without society (which is to say the state), people will collapse into crime and evil. The social and collective is seen as transcending individuals, as a supernatural entity from which nationalism and war is as normal as science, progress, and consumption. All of these evils are taking place simultaneously in a social context. The individual has probably never reflected on these issues at all, never acknowledged his or her degree of complicity in this system. But, say the apologist for the Great Beast, the individual need have no direct responsibility,
The collective is the object of all idolatry, this it is which chains us to the earth. In the case of avarice, gold is the social order. In the case of ambition, power is the social order.
Thus society itself is the Great Beast, not some particular product of society, not even the state, the mode of production, the capitalist class, or any other social product. The weight of humanity is a heavy and ponderous gravity, a force but a contrived force to which the individual remains oblivious.
As long as one accepts the "totem," and subordinates all values to the collective, the contrived dichotomy of good and evil will trap individuals in fear. But the solution to the dilemma Weil depicts is not Nietzsche's transcendence of morality but a simple perception of the nature of society, of the nature of the "Great Beast."

So we need roots. It seems we also need eyes to see and ears to hear. The question becomes if what we take root in promotes psychological slavery or the ability for a person with the help of grace to become themselves – a true individual?

[Nick_A]

Remer wrote

Weil’s analyses of the human soul’s many needs are united by two essential motifs: spirituality and connectedness. She wants to reintroduce spirituality to modernity, enabling the earthly realm of politics to at least partially reflect the “realm situated high above all men” (p.18).

This is a real mind stretch. Connectedness is the goal of socialism. Its goal is the grand collective working together for the collective good. The problem is the human condition. Without the help of higher values made possible with the help of grace ignored by the grand collective, it falls victim to fragmentation and conflict. Help can only come from individuals having been awakened to the reality of the human condition and how it denies the evolutionary potential for human being. So for the secularist the individual goal is to be an atom of the Great Beast performing ones conditioned function while for those awakened to Man's spiritual potential the goal is to be an individual capable of consciously connecting above and below in their being

[Nick_A]

“Before they seize power and establish a world according to their doctrines, totalitarian movements conjure up a lying world of consistency… in which, through sheer imagination, uprooted masses can feel at home…” (p.353). But as with tribalism and racism, totalitarianism intensifies the very rootlessness, isolation, and alienation that many people sought to flee in the first place. As Arendt wrote, loneliness constitutes “the essence of totalitarian government” (p.475), and the “isolation of atomized individuals provides not only the mass basis for totalitarian rule, but is carried through to the very top of the whole structure” (p.407). She observes that “What prepares men for totalitarian domination in the non-totalitarian world is the fact that loneliness… has become an everyday experience of the ever-growing masses of our century.” (p.478)

The socialist believes that society can provide the answer the problem of lonliness from its own initiative. Simone Weil learned the hard way that this is impossible. I believe it is the Church that can oppose loneliness. A person can become rooted in society if they feel community within the Church. That is why socialism must destroy the Church influence. The question becomes what kind of church in today's times will satisfy the heartfelt need for human meaning and not insult the scientific mind? Is such a religion possible? If it is, when will society as a whole be ready for it? Simone suggests it is possible:

I believe that one identical thought is to be found—expressed very precisely and with only slight differences of modality—in. . .Pythagoras, Plato, and the Greek Stoics. . .in the Upanishads, and the Bhagavad Gita; in the Chinese Taoist writings and. . .Buddhism. . .in the dogmas of the Christian faith and in the writings of the greatest Christian mystics. . .I believe that this thought is the truth, and that it today requires a modern and Western form of expression. That is to say, it should be expressed through the only approximately good thing we can call our own, namely science. This is all the less difficult because it is itself the origin of science. Simone Weil….Simone Pétrement, Simone Weil: A Life, Random House, 1976, p. 488

[Greta]

Fiddling while Rome burns seems the most popular option at present. The truth is difficult to face so why not follow the time-honoured path of going into denial and fussing around the fringes to make ourselves feel like we are doing something?

Meanwhile the Earth is overpopulating with humans, there's diminishing resources, accelerating extinctions, lost ecosystems, reduced arable land and fresh water with increased desertification (both on land and in oceans), much more severe droughts with lost rural properties and new dustbowls, more severe storms, more severe heatwaves and other problems caused by rapid climate change.

[Nick_A]

Fiddling while Rome burns seems the most popular option at present. The truth is difficult to face so why not follow the time-honoured path of going into denial and fussing around the fringes to make ourselves feel like we are doing something?

Meanwhile the Earth is overpopulating with humans, there's diminishing resources, accelerating extinctions, lost ecosystems, reduced arable land and fresh water with increased desertification (both on land and in oceans), much more severe droughts with lost rural properties and new dustbowls, more severe storms, more severe heatwaves and other problems caused by rapid climate change.

So the question becomes if those striving to understand the universal cause of the human condition and why it prevents realistic solutions should be scorned in favor of the secular belief that Man on earth, as he is, can solve them? Why should we care what Hannah Arendt and Simone Weil have concluded? It just gets in the way of debating population control as though choice exists for the Great Beast.

Loneliness leads to the need for community. It is a double edged sword. But why try to understand it? It is more fun condemning Trump and other matters of vital secular importance. But suppose those like Simone Weil are right and the human condition makes a functioning free society impossible without the help of grace?

“The notion of obligations comes before that of rights, which is subordinate and relative to the former. A right is not effectual by itself, but only in relation to the obligation to which it corresponds, the effective exercise of a right springing not from the individual who possesses it, but from other men who consider themselves as being under a certain obligation towards him. Recognition of an obligation makes it effectual. An obligation which goes unrecognized by anybody loses none of the full force of its existence. A right which goes unrecognized by anybody is not worth very much.

It makes nonsense to say that men have, on the one hand, rights, and on the other hand, obligations. Such words only express differences in point of view. The actual relationship between the two is as between object and subject. A man, considered in isolation, only has duties, amongst which are certain duties towards himself. A man left alone in the universe would have no rights whatever, but he would have obligations.”

― Simone Weil, The Need for Roots: Prelude to a Declaration of Duties towards Mankind

A free society must include a balance between voluntary obligations and rights. As we are the need for power and prestige prevents valuing voluntary obligations. Do as I say, not as I do; the essential truth for the progressive mind.

Is there a way out? Simone had hope. This is one time I have to question her optimism. I don’t think it is possible anymore. Our species is too far gone.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/questionofgod/voices/weil.html

Draft for a Statement of Human Obligation

Profession of Faith

There is a reality outside the world, that is to say, outside space and time, outside man's mental universe, outside any sphere whatsoever that is accessible to human faculties.

Corresponding to this reality, at the centre of the human heart, is the longing for an absolute good, a longing which is always there and is never appeased by any object in this world.

Another terrestrial manifestation of this reality lies in the absurd and insoluble contradictions which are always the terminus of human thought when it moves exclusively in this world.

Just as the reality of this world is the sole foundation of facts, so that other reality is the sole foundation of good.

That reality is the unique source of all the good that can exist in this world: that is to say, all beauty, all truth, all justice, all legitimacy, all order, and all human behaviour that is mindful of obligations.

Those minds whose attention and love are turned towards that reality are the sole intermediary through which good can descend from there and come among men.

So for us to “feel” the value of voluntary obligations so that it motivates us i requires intermediaries to awaken us to what we are.

The secular mind which must deny levels of reality and the higher origin of human values will do what it can to destroy the influence and replace it with its own beliefs. The world must hate the message. It will limit itself to an obsession with facts of the world and remain ignorant of the quality of conscious contemplation which reveals the path to the origin of values. Will our species ever become capable of uniting worldly facts with universal values? Who knows? I just support Simone’s hope

[Dubious]

Our ultimate concern, being literally a matter of life and death for everything that lives on the planet including the oceans, is the planet itself. We are clearly not advanced enough in technology to gradually undue the damage that's done but hey! Apple is now a trillion dollar company based on iPhones and iTune downloads.

We won't need roots in the future if nothing ever grows from it again, if climate change becomes a self reinforcing cycle that's no-longer dependent on us pumping more greenhouse gases into the biosphere. When we can no-longer make retroactive the slow motion Auto-da-fé we've condemned ourselves to then all of human history including all of it's philosophy and even its science will have been a failure because we couldn't compromise with the greatest infrastructure of all, the one that hosts ALL of ours from A to Z.

It almost seems that intelligence in the universe is doomed to fail at some point in its history or maybe it's just those who have proven themselves to be the most defective whose future gets short-changed. Isn't that how evolution works!

[Greta]

Fiddling while Rome burns seems the most popular option at present. The truth is difficult to face so why not follow the time-honoured path of going into denial and fussing around the fringes to make ourselves feel like we are doing something?

Meanwhile the Earth is overpopulating with humans, there's diminishing resources, accelerating extinctions, lost ecosystems, reduced arable land and fresh water with increased desertification (both on land and in oceans), much more severe droughts with lost rural properties and new dustbowls, more severe storms, more severe heatwaves and other problems caused by rapid climate change.

So the question becomes if those striving to understand the universal cause of the human condition and why it prevents realistic solutions should be scorned in favor of the secular belief that Man on earth, as he is, can solve them? Why should we care what Hannah Arendt and Simone Weil have concluded? It just gets in the way of debating population control as though choice exists for the Great Beast.

You are still denying the elephants in the room. None of your fiddling matters now, and you have always been unhinged anyway.

Your return-to-theism "solution" is what exactly brought us to this point of disaster. Religion has ruled the world for millennia and this is where it has brought us - overpopulation and environmental vandalism due to the insane belief that humans are divine and that other species don't matter.

So we recklessly trashed the joint, believing we had God's blessing in doing so. Do not blame secularism - the west is STILL ruled and controlled by theists as evidenced by the impossibility of a non-religious POTUS.

[Nick_A]

Our ultimate concern, being literally a matter of life and death for everything that lives on the planet including the oceans, is the planet itself. We are clearly not advanced enough in technology to gradually undue the damage that's done but hey! Apple is now a trillion dollar company based on iPhones and iTune downloads.

We won't need roots in the future if nothing ever grows from it again, if climate change becomes a self reinforcing cycle that's no-longer dependent on us pumping more greenhouse gases into the biosphere. When we can no-longer make retroactive the slow motion Auto-da-fé we've condemned ourselves to then all of human history including all of it's philosophy and even its science will have been a failure because we couldn't compromise with the greatest infrastructure of all, the one that hosts ALL of ours from A to Z.

It almost seems that intelligence in the universe is doomed to fail at some point in its history or maybe it's just those who have proven themselves to be the most defective whose future gets short-changed. Isn't that how evolution works!

From the article

Warnings about the tremendous danger of rootlessness run throughout The Origins of Totalitarianism’s nearly five hundred pages. Arendt argued that people who feel themselves to be rootless or homeless will seek a home at any price, with possibly horrific results. For this reason, the “competitive structure and concomitant loneliness of the individual” (p.317) in capitalist mass society can pave the way for authoritarianism and totalitarianism. Indeed, the atomized and individualized mass is a necessary precondition for totalitarianism

Both you and Greta do not seem to offer any solutions for the world situation other than a tyrant to establish order in a way that cannot be refused. Do you propose an alternative to the tyrant and forced slavery to save the world. If so, what is it?

[Dubious]

Our ultimate concern, being literally a matter of life and death for everything that lives on the planet including the oceans, is the planet itself. We are clearly not advanced enough in technology to gradually undue the damage that's done but hey! Apple is now a trillion dollar company based on iPhones and iTune downloads.

We won't need roots in the future if nothing ever grows from it again, if climate change becomes a self reinforcing cycle that's no-longer dependent on us pumping more greenhouse gases into the biosphere. When we can no-longer make retroactive the slow motion Auto-da-fé we've condemned ourselves to then all of human history including all of it's philosophy and even its science will have been a failure because we couldn't compromise with the greatest infrastructure of all, the one that hosts ALL of ours from A to Z.

It almost seems that intelligence in the universe is doomed to fail at some point in its history or maybe it's just those who have proven themselves to be the most defective whose future gets short-changed. Isn't that how evolution works!

From the article

Warnings about the tremendous danger of rootlessness run throughout The Origins of Totalitarianism’s nearly five hundred pages. Arendt argued that people who feel themselves to be rootless or homeless will seek a home at any price, with possibly horrific results. For this reason, the “competitive structure and concomitant loneliness of the individual” (p.317) in capitalist mass society can pave the way for authoritarianism and totalitarianism. Indeed, the atomized and individualized mass is a necessary precondition for totalitarianism

Both you and Greta do not seem to offer any solutions for the world situation other than a tyrant to establish order in a way that cannot be refused. Do you propose an alternative to the tyrant and forced slavery to save the world. If so, what is it?

I have absolutely no idea how this relates to what I wrote. Wouldn't be the first time. I'll be blunt. I didn't even read the article and therefore can't understand how you inserted both "tyrant and totalitarianism" in my post. It was about the planet keeping us alive. Nothing that anyone does or says, including Plato or Simone Weil is of the least importance compared to maintaining the planet as a going concern. Roots of whatever kind for better or worse are useless if they can't develop.

However feel free to admire Trump who wants to resuscitate the coal industry and make things much hotter even quicker! Ever think what Simone would really have thought of your hero? Trump is the epitome of precisely everything the world doesn't need...morally and intellectually defunct as well as being a pathological liar. Can any person be trusted who admires the likes of Trump!

Also don't conflate me with Greta; we go our separate paths and communicate at a fraction compared to the interchanges between yourselves.

[d63]

Yesterday, in a discourse on Democrats are Stronger Together (https://www.facebook.com/groups/Democra ... up_comment ), I went off on this particular rant:

“It goes deep, girls. These red pill sights in which white beta males complain about their frustrations with females (which is generally innocuous (too often digresses into misogyny and rape culture. The In-cells (the involuntarily celibate (only get there quicker. Now imagine the racism that might result from seeing white women go with men of other races. Imagine what a prime recruiting ground these red pill and In Cell sights would be for Neo-Nazis and the alt-right.”

And I know how strange it must have seemed in the context given that the board is primarily focused on the political which tends to be more mainstream and practical in nature –understandably so. I understand why it got no response. It was just one of those situations in which my tendency to straddle the political and theoretical led to me breaking into a theoretical rant that seemed out of place to those witnessing it.

However, in my defense, I read, today at the “library”, an excellent article in Philosophy Now, Scott Remer’s “A Radical Cure: Hannah Arendt and Simone Weil on the Need for Roots”, that kind of went to my point. I quote in reference to Arendt:

“Indeed, the atomized and individualized mass is a necessary precondition for totalitarianism (p.318). Languishing in a “situation of spiritual and social homelessness” (p.352), shorn of sustaining social bonds and ties, individuals are forced to live in a world where they cannot exist meaningfully and fruitfully. They try to escape this agonizing limbo and, in the absence of powerful inclusive left-wing alternatives, they look to exclusivist reactionary movements for succor.”

Now, of course, Red Pill sights were not foremost on Arendt’s mind. They didn’t really exist in her time. But still her point seems prescient given what we face in the age of Trump and the alienated that constitute his followers. And as is made very clear, Arendt roots this in the alienation created by producer/consumer Capitalism and the “in-crowd” mentality that emerges from it and leaves those who are not part of that in-crowd in desperate situations.

Hence: their distaste for the intellectual elite (the democrats and progressives (that Trump exploited. But more on this tomorrow. It’s far more complex than today’s window would allow.

[A_Seagull]

Yeah. I support complete reconstruction of the modern world. Nay, I demand a reconstruction.

Can I also be borne again? Please. Please? Not in the traditional Christian sense, or as in reincarnation, but normatively speaking.

Yes, of course you can.

[-1-]

Our ultimate concern, being literally a matter of life and death for everything that lives on the planet including the oceans, is the planet itself.

This is absolutely true, provided you and the followers of the quote outright reject the workings of the neo-Darwinist theory in practice.

In my belief mutations will support the survival of those species that can adapt to the status quo of the climate change(s).

Upheavals and complete turn-around of organic life forms have happened many times in the past. Three hugely drastic ones, much more than what we face, are the appearance of oxygen in the environment, and its proliferation, from an environment with no free oxygen molecules; the number of ice ages alternating with ages of high temperatures; and adapting to live outside the waters walking the land, breathing the air. Dinosaurs lived in an era of what we would consider soaring temperatures, and (I think) similarly what we fear, the melting of the polar ice caps, was the status quo then.

The changes we face and fear today are small and negligible compared to the above three, Mankind won't perish, and life on earth will happily continue.

Christians are exempt from considering the above, since a body of untested and unverifiable stories in text written 2000 years ago by superstitious and uneducated dilettantes obviously take precedence in credibility over scientific findings. And everyone knows that.

[Nick_A]

I received an email from the American Weil Society announcing the 2019 colloquy. The topic concerns rootedness in the context of individuality and nation. I know philosophy as a whole is dying in favor of arguing agendas but it is still good to know that there are not for profit efforts to keep the essence of philosophy and the ability to think outside the box alive in the world. The topic allows one to think beyond the scope of this article and enter into important areas anyone with the need for meaning can be drawn to. Anyhow:

http://americanweilsociety.org/annual_colloquy

We are hereby pleased to announce the 39th Annual Colloquy of the American Weil Society, which will be held at IQS (Institut Quimic de Sarrià), one of the schools associated to the Universitat Ramon Llull, Barcelona, on April 25, 26 and 27, 2019, hosted by Oriol Quintana, Associate Professor at IQS. This colloquy will have an intentional international character, reaching scholars from around the world, specially from France, Italy and Spain. The topic of this year’s colloquy is: Rootedness, Identity, and Nation. This theme is deliberately broad, so that Weil’s religious, political, and/or ethical philosophy may be addressed under the heading.........................

It is a worthwhile struggle for me to ponder how rootedness, identity, and nation, can fit together into an organic whole. I recognize the need to belong but also the danger in becoming an atom of the great beast. How do I define an individual in a human rather than a societal perspective? How do I understand the value of a nation in these times where globalism is so popular? What are the benefits and drawbacks of patriotism?

All this isn't so easy. I see my ignorance I am grateful that there are ways in which people can join in making a better use of philosophy than the modern glorification of self importance. And of course I am grateful for those like Simone whose lives have inspired sincere questions as to the objective meaning and purpose of humanity

“To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul.” ~ Simone Weil

Rooted in what? What makes for good societal soil?