Abstract

The religious concepts encountered in Simone Weil's late political work are often regarded as a puzzle: is that work actually political, or religious, or something else entirely? This dissertation argues that the puzzle is solved in recognizing how religious ideas, primarily a religious anthropology, are deployed by Weil to serve a specifically philosophical purpose. ;Weil's early Oppression and Liberty envisions an ideal, free society. That society's essence is that in it, methodical thought is possible; individuals can conceive the step by step attainment of their self-given projects. But the reality of modern life is a struggle for power so constant that it displaces all other projects. The specialization of modern labor produces alienation and oppression. Finally, the unpredictability of man makes planning unthinkable. Hence, emancipation can be imagined but can never be achieved. The foundation of this conclusion is Weil's conception of persons as autonomous centers inevitably competing with other autonomous centers. ;In the late The Need for Roots, Weil's vision of an ideal post-World War Two France, emancipation remains the goal. But it is no longer as centers methodically laying plans that we lead ideally human lives. That now consists in possessing a deep receptivity to others' needs as well as to that supernatural goodness that quietly seeks entry into the world through service to those needs. This new anthropology, adopted from Weil's religious reflections, is supplemented by the idea that necessity, the world's mechanical operation, is the mode of God's presence in the world. In contemplative openness to its deliverances, both good and bad, we encounter the good, the true, the perfect. The political meaning of these ideas is that emancipation, achievement of man's ultimate good, is now reached not by anticipating or overcoming what resists us but in such resistance when rightly met and understood. ;The dead end in Weil's early political thought is thus overcome by a novel sense of human potential and human good that is of religious origin. The role of religious ideas in Weil's late thought is, then, philosophical: they identify a logical space for emancipation even in an inescapably oppressive world