The Need for Roots: Prelude to a Declaration of Duties Toward Mankind

Voorkant
Psychology Press, 1952 - 288 pagina's
In this, her most famous book, Weil reflects on the importance of religious and political social structures in the life of the individual.Hailed by Andre Gide as the patron saint of all outsiders, Simone Weil's short life was ample testimony to her beliefs. In 1942 she fled France along with her family, going firstly to America. She then moved back to London in order to work with de Gaulle. Published posthumously The Need for Roots was a direct result of this collaboration. Its purpose was to help rebuild France after the war. In this, her most famous book, Weil reflects on the importance of religious and political social structures in the life of the individual. She wrote that one of the basic obligations we have as human beings is to not let another suffer from hunger. Equally as important, however, is our duty towards our community: we may have declared various human rights, but we have overlooked the obligations and this has left us self-righteous and rootless. She could easily have been issuing a direct warning to us today, the citizens of Century 21.
 

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Inhoudsopgave

Order
10
Liberty
12
Obedience
14
Responsibility
15
Equality
16
Hierarchism
19
Punishment
20
Freedom of Opinion
22
Risk
33
Private Property
34
Collective Property
35
Truth
36
Uprootedness in the Towns
45
Uprootedness in the Countryside
78
Uprootedness and Nationhood
98
Copyright

Security
32

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Over de auteur (1952)

Born in Paris, Weil came from a highly intellectual family. After a brilliant academic career at school and university, she taught philosophy interspersed with periods of hard manual labor on farms and in factories. Throughout her life she combined sophisticated and scholarly interests with an extreme moral intensity and identification with the poor and oppressed. A twentieth-century Pascal (see Vol. 4), this ardently spiritual woman was a social thinker, sensitive to the crises of modern humanity. Jewish by birth, Christian by vocation, and Greek by aesthetic choice, Weil has influenced religious thinking profoundly in the years since her death. "Humility is the root of love," she said as she questioned traditional theologians and held that the apostles had badly interpreted Christ's teaching. Christianity was, she thought, to blame for the heresy of progress. During World War II, Weil starved herself to death, refusing to eat while victims of the war still suffered.

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