bsmall2Dec 26
> ... she rejects the idea that what prevents us from harming others are their rights. The notions of rights and of the person give you nothing if unconnected with the language of our human relatedness. Rights talk doesn’t stop evil: it is more appropriately the language of commerce and legal pleading. When the language of rights is used, the relationship that we hold towards that person becomes objectifying, it transforms a cry of pain into a weight on the mute scales of justice.
https://aeon.co/essays/for-simone-weil-our-capacity-to-suffer-united-us-all
#SimoneWeil #WeilOnRights
#RoyOnRights too?
For Simone Weil, our capacity to suffer united us all | Aeon Essays

Simone Weil: mystic, philosopher, activist. Her ethics demand that we look beyond the personal and find the universal

bs2Jul 1, 2024
> .. the original advocacy of rights had served the expansion of commerce and a contract-based society in western Europe. But a free and rooted society ought to consist of a web of moral obligations. We have the right to ignore them, but we ought to be actually obliged not to let other people starve, or to let them lapse into destitution.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/18/need-roots-disconnection-past-community
#WeilOnRights #RightsVJustice
#WeilOnObligation #PankajMishra
The Need for Roots brought home the modern era's disconnection with the past and the loss of community

Pankaj Mishra: A book that changed me: Having recently moved to a Himalayan village, I felt Simone Weil's focus on uprootedness spoke directly to me

The Guardian
Show threadbs2Jun 24, 2024

> The Romans, like Hitler, understood that power is not fully efficacious unless clothed in a few ideas, and to this end they made use of the idea of rights, which is admirably suited to it. Modern Germany has been accused of flouting the idea ; but she invoked it ad nauseam in her role of deprived, proletarian nation. It is true, of course, that she allows only one right to her victims: obedience. Ancient Rome did the same.

#RomanAndHitler #WeilOnTheRomans #HumanPersonality #WeilOnRights

bs2Jun 23, 2024

> To the dimmed understanding of our age there seems nothing odd in claiming an equal share of privilege for everybody - an equal share in things whose essence is privilege. The claim is both absurd and base ; absurd because privilege is, by definition, inequality ; and base because it is not worth claiming.

#SimoneWeil #HumanPersonality #SimoneWeilAnAnthology
#WeilOnPrivilege
#WeilOnRights #WeilForJustice like Arundhati Roy...