Simone Weil (1909-1943)

Thoughts on Love, Self and Soul

LOVE

"The love of truth. An apparent paradox: one is presented with the two ideas: 'love' and 'truth'. Now 'Love' is something which belongs to the emotions, and 'truth' to the mind. The main difficulty here is: 'Something which belongs to the mind gives rise to feeling.'" (*1)

"The love of truth then is in itself very weak indeed. What is loved, is not the truth, but what gives pleasure; one believes that what is pleasing is true, and believes it sincerely." (*2)

"Descartes thought that whenever whenever someone loves, he is in the same physiological state as he was in at the time when he was in his mother's arms."

"We still have to find out why these physiological states are reproduced: the first pleasure is that of sucking, the sight of the mother gives the child a feeling of pleasure; by a conditioned reflex, when he finds someone who reminds him of his mother, and therefore of a particular physiological state, he will feel love. And depending on the present physiological state and the sex of the object, it will be love in the strict sense of the word, or friendship, etc." (*3)

"Things are means of bringing something to mind; we need things which have no value in themselves to remind ourselves of those whom we love the most. Things then take on a real power. Prisoners who possess nothing of this kind write the names of loved ones on the walls of their cells, lovers on the trunk of trees." (*4)

"Love never exists without admiration; one forces the person loved to resemble the image one has of him. It is because this kind of thing happens that feelings have mastery over thoughts. A man who loves someone else will be right because he will see nothing but good in him; if someone else hates the man the other loves he will be right too. One could think of very many kinds of cases in which the attitude of the body dictates to the feelings." (*5)

"Emotions: one can make the conditioned reflex attached to a name so strong that no natural reflex will be able, later, to destroy it. Whenever a lover is in a state which is like that he is in when he is near what he loves, everything seems to him to emanate from what is loved ('crystallisation')." (*6)

"It is due to religion and art that one can arrive at a representation of what is individual; it is due to feeling (friendship, love, affection) that one human being is different from others." (*7)

SELF

"The first thing that we know about ourselves is our imperfection. That is what Descartes meant when he said: 'I know God before I know myself.'"(*8)

"Every failure is a lack of self-control. As long as one has control of oneself nothing evil can take place. In order to reach this stage, the Stoics put forward a complete theory of judgement. For example, to resist seduction, say to yourself: 'These fair voices are only disturbances in the air; these fine fabrics are only vegetable,etc.' In the same vein: suffering is only suffering, because we think of it in that way. All likes and dislikes have their roots in judgement; but, if we want to, we can always control our judgements." (*9)

"There is certainly no solidarity nor sympathy in all those instances where one does harm to one's neighbours, and good to people far away. We all live by treading on human beings, but we do not give it a thought; it takes a special effort to remember them. When we make a rare and praiseworthy effort to direct our attention to things we easily forget, this is to be explained by our desire to be sincere with ourselves; it is not to be explained by sympathy, since an effort of this kind results in suffering." (*10)

"When one is making observations, it is even necessary not to come to conclusions; one must stop oneself from thinking in order to be completely sure of getting rid of all imagination." (*11)

"The question of personal identity properly arises in so far as we have consciousness of ourselves as subject and object at the same time." (*12)

"We have a number of ways of remembering ourselves as objects: our name, our social rank, our jobs, our dress, other people's attitudes towards us, etc. Society reminds us all the time that we are 'so and so' and not someone else. That is why our memory of orselves is stronger than that of anything else. There is something else too: we are ourselves the seat of our own conditioned reflexes. The desire to escape fro oneself as an object results from romantic feelings, and everyone feels this some ime or other." (*13)

"One connects what one was to what one is by a succession of necessities; but, since one cannot think of oneself as an object, one has to represent yesterday's self to oneself in analogy with that of today." (*l4)

"In all circumstances, to be a man, is to know how to separate the 'I' and the 'self'. This is a task which never ends." (*15)

"The question of personality arises in two ways:

1. the self as existing in the present;

2. the self as existing in time.

The self existing in the present

There are cases where one has the feeling of being two persons at the same time. But the first thing to say about this, is that, although one says that one is two, one is nevertheless one, since there is one and only one consciousness." (*16)

"It is necessary that man exists in some way or other in order that one can have an idea of him. The relation between things and ourselves is determined by the reactions which things bring about in us. (*17)

"We have to bring into the light of open day the monsters within us; and not be afraid of looking at them straight in the face. The Catholic religion says that there is no need to be afraid of what we can find within ourselves; that we can find all sorts of monsters there. So we can conclude that we are responsible for our evil as well as our good thoughts. . . . What part does the 'self' play in repressed thoughts? It brings about in fact the act of repression. The essence of repressed tendencies is lying; the essence of this lying is the repression of which one is aware." (*18)

"What really marks off the 'self' is method; it has no other source than ourselves: it is when we really employ method that we really begin to exist." (*19)

"On the one hand we have the external world (the physical world), and on the other, the 'self' which is exactly what we have to study. Relations between the external world and the 'self': We find nothing that is purely internal: in mathematical reasoning, for example, we need to have signs of some kind of; while gaity, sadness, depend on bodily conditions. On the other hand, there is nothing which is purely external: the sensations produced by colours, for example, vary from person to person; impressions are subjective, each of us has his own view of the world. We shall put forward the hypothesis that the external world really exists and we shall begin by studying the influence of the body on the soul." (*20)

SOUL

"Every one knows that there are forms of cruelty which injure a man's life without injuring his body. They are such as deprive him of a certain form of food necessary to the life of the soul." (*21)

"The realm of what is eternal, universal, unconditioned is other than the one conditioned by facts, and different ideas hold sway there, ones which are related to the most secret recesses of the human soul." (*22)

"The first of the soul's needs, the one which touches most nearly its eternal destiny, is order; that is to say, a texture of social relationships such that no one is compelled to violate imperative obligations in order to carry out other ones. It is only where this, in fact, occurs that external circumstances have any power to inflict spiritual violence on the soul." (*23)

"One of the indispensable foods of the human soul is liberty. Liberty, taking the word in its concrete sense, consists in the ability to choose." (*24)

"Obedience is a vital need of the human soul. It is of two kinds: obedience to established rules and obedience to human beings looked upon as leaders. It presupposes consent, not in regard to every single order received, but the kind of consent that is given once and for all, with the sole reservation in case of need, that the demand of science be satisfied." (*25)

"Obedience being a necessary food of the soul, whoever is definitely deprived of it is ill. Thus, any body politic governed by a sovereign ruler accountable to nobody is in the hands of a sick man." (*26)

"Initiative and responsibility, to feel one is useful and even indispensable, are vital needs of the human soul. For this need to be satisfied it is necessary that a man should often have to take decisions in matters great or small affecting interests that are distinct from his own, but in regard to which he feels a personal concern. He also requires to be continually called upon to supply fresh efforts. Finally, he requires to be able to encompass in thought the entire range of activity of the social organism to which he belongs, including branches in connexion with which he has never to take a decision or offer any advice." (*27)

"Equality is a vital need of the human soul. It consists in a recognition, at once public, general, effective, and genuinely expressed in institution and customs, that the same amount of respect and consideration is due to every human being because this respect is due to the human being as such and is not a matter of degree." (*28)

"Hierarchism is a vital need of the human soul. It is composed of a certain veneration, a certain devotion towards superiors, considered not as individuals, nor in relation to the powers they exercise, but as symbols. What they symbolize is that realm situated high above all men and whose expression in this world is made up of the obligations owed by each man to his fellow-men. A veritable hierarchy presupposes a consciousness on the part of the superiors of this symbolic function and a realization that it forms the only legitimate object of devotion among their subordinates. The effect of true hierarchism is to bring each one to fit himself morally into the place he occupies." (*29)

"Honour is a vital need of the human soul. The respect due to every human being as such, even if effectively accorded, is not sufficient to satisfy this need, for it is identical for every one and unchanging; whereas honour has to do with a human being considered not simply as such, but from the point of view of his social surroundings. This need is fully satisfied where each of the social organisms to which a human being belongs allows him to share in a noble tradition enshrined in its past history and given public acknowledgment." (*30)

"Punishment is a vital need of the human soul. There are two kinds of punishment, disciplinary and penal. The former offers security against failings with which it would be too exhausting to struggle if there were no exterior support. Punishment must be an honour. It must not only wipe out the stigma of the crime, but must be regarded as a supplementary form of education, compelling a higher devotion to the public good. The severity of the punishment must also be in keeping with the kind of obligation which has been violated, and not with the interests of public security." (*31)

"Freedom of soul and freedom of opinion are usually classed together. It is a mistake. Save in the case of natural groupings, association is not a need, but an expedient employed in the practical affairs of life.. . . On the other hand, complete, unlimited freedom of expression for every sort of opinion, without the least restriction or reserve, is an absolute need on the part of the intelligence. It follows from this that it is a need of the soul, for when the intelligence is ill-at-ease the whole soul is sick. The nature and the limits of the satisfaction corresponding to this need are inscribed in the very structure of the various faculties of the soul." (*32)

"Security is an essential need of the soul. Security means that the soul is not under the weight of fear or terror, except as the result of an accidental conjunction of circumstances and for brief and exceptional periods. Fear and terror as permanent states of the soul are wellnigh mortal positions, whether they be caused by the threat of unemployment, police persecution, the presence of a foriegn conqueror, the probability of invasion, or any other calamity which seems too much for human strength to bear." (*33)

"Risk is an essential need of the soul. The absence of risk produces a type of boredom which paralyses in a different way from fear, but almost as much. . . . Risk is a form of danger which provokes a deliberate reaction; that is to say, it doesn't go beyond the soul's resources to the point of crushing the soul beneath a load of fear." (*34)

"Private property is a vital need of the soul. The soul feels isolated, lost, if it is not surrounded by objects which seem to it like an extension of the bodily members. All men have an invincible inclination to appropriate in their own minds anything which over a long, uninterrupted period they have used for their work, pleasure, or the necessities of life." (*35)

"Participation in collective possessions a participation consisting not only in material enjoyment, but in a feeling of ownership-is a no less important need. It is more a question of a state of mind than of any legal formula." (*36)

"The need of truth is more sacred than any other need. Yet it is never mentioned. One feels affraid to read when once one has realized the quantity and the monstrousness of the material falsehoods shamelessly paraded, even in the books of the most reputable authors. Thereafter one reads as though one were drinking from a contaminated well." (*37)

"From now on, we have stopped thinking of ourselves as only coming to grips with the material world, as masters of our own souls. We have an idea of a second soul of which we are not masters. One can, in a sketchy way say that this second soul is thought of in two ways. It can be thought of as the better part of us or as the worse." (*38)

"Joy is the feeling of passing to a more perfect state, sorrow that of passing into a less perfect state. Anything can, by accident, be the cause of joy or sorrow or desire. Each time the soul is moved by two affections at the same time, then, in the future, every time it feels one of them again, it feels the other also...Everything which happens accidentally to the soul when it is in joy or in sorrow becomes afterwards, by accident, a cause of joy or sorrow. So, by the very fact that one thing is like another which makes us feel joy or saddness, the first thing makes us feel joy or sorrow too." (*39)

"Epicurus distinguished between 'pleasure which comes from rest' and 'pleasure which comes from movement'. The first is nothing but the absence of pain; that means the soul which is free from pain can find enjoyment in itself. Pleasure which comes from rest is always pure; it means coming to that state in which the soul delights in its own existence." (*40)

"Marcus Aurelius said: 'The soul is untouched by things; they are completely external to it', and again: 'Things have no way of access into the soul, and cannot move the soul; the soul moves itself.'" (*41)

"Plato has made explicit the relationship between virtue and thought. Moral salvation and intellectual salvation are one and the same; one has to withdraw one's soul from what passes in order to direct it to what is, that is to say one has to deliver it from the passions." (*42)

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