Simone Weil: Late Philosophical Writings by Simone Weil

Author:Simone Weil
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Modern, Philosophy, Political, PHI000000 Philosophy / General, History & Surveys, History, Religious, Women
ISBN: 9780268092917
Publisher: University of Notre Dame Pess
Published: 2015-08-28T15:24:46.591000+00:00

“You do not interest me.” These are words that one human being cannot address to another without cruelty or offending against justice.

“Your personality does not interest me.” These are words that can have a place in an affectionate conversation between close friends without wounding what is most delicately sensitive in that friendship.

In the same way, one can say without abasement, “My personality does not count here,” but never, “I do not count.”

This proves that there is something wrong in the vocabulary of the stream of modern thought called “personalist.” And in this domain, whenever there is a grave error in vocabulary, it is hard to avoid grave errors in thought.

There is in each human being something sacred. But it is not his person, which is not anything more than his personality. It is him, this man, wholly and simply.

There is a passerby in the street who has long arms, blue eyes, a mind where thoughts are swirling that I know nothing about, but that may well be nothing special.

It is neither his person nor his personality that is sacred to me. It is him. Him as a whole. Arms, eyes, thoughts, everything. I would not violate any of this without infinite scruples.

If the human personality were what is sacred for me, I could easily put out his eyes. Once he was blind, he would still have a personality. I would not have touched his person at all. I just would have destroyed his eyes.

It is impossible to define respect for human personality. It is not just impossible to define verbally. Many luminous ideas are like this. But this notion cannot even be conceived; it cannot be defined and outlined by the silent operation of thought.

To take as a rule of public morals a notion that is impossible to define and to conceive is to open ourselves up to all kinds of tyranny.

The notion of rights, launched across the world in 1789, was by its internal insufficiencies impotent to exercise the function that was given to it.

To join together two insufficient notions in speaking of the rights of the person will not get us any farther.

What is it that keeps me from poking out his eyes, if I am allowed to do so, and might even find it amusing?

Although he may well be sacred to me as a whole, he is not sacred in all respects and relations. He is not sacred to me insofar as his arms happen to be long, or insofar as his eyes happen to be blue, or insofar as his thoughts happen to be common. Nor, if he is a duke, insofar as he is a duke. Nor, if he were a garbage man, insofar as he is a garbage man. None of that would stay my hand.

What would stay it is knowing that if someone were to poke out his eyes that it would be his soul that was lacerated by the thought that someone had done evil to him.

There is at the bottom of

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