Simone Weil and the Specter of Self-Perpetuating Force (review)

The idea of force underpins much of Simone Weil's thinking, from her early analyses of the world of work, through the chaotic events in Europe of the 1930s, the rise of Nazism that she observed on her 1932 visit to Germany, and the Spanish Civil War, in which she participated, to her agonized deliberations on the validity of her longstanding pacifist convictions and her eventual acceptance, with the onset of the Second World War, of a limited use of force. E. Jane Doering gives a nuanced account of the way in which this concept is fundamental to an understanding of Weil's life and thought. To support her case she exploits several well-known essays, notably 'Ne recommençons pas la guerre de Troie', one of Weil's key anti-war contributions, and 'L'Iliade ou le poème de la force', with its powerfully crafted depiction of the corrupting effects of war on vanquished and vanquisher alike. But she also refers to other, less-quoted texts, including the projected response to Alain's question (1936) on the nature of dignity and honour in the national context. She does not sidestep the difficult issues raised by Weil's last anti-war essay, 'L'Europe en guerre pour la Tchécoslovaquie?', about which the author later felt deep remorse. The effect of Weil's spiritual experiences, intensifying from 1938 (though never referred to in her essays), brings a new force to counterbalance those of war and conflict, and Doering's study has the merit of highlighting Weil's engagement with the Bhagavadgītā, for which she learnt Sanskrit, in her intense search for guidance on action in the early years of the war. Doering sees Weil's 'action non-agissante' as similar to Krishna's injunction to Arjuna to 'renounce the fruits of action', thereby avoiding contamination in the use of force. It was essentially on this basis that Weil reluctantly abjured her previous pacifist engagement, accepting a limited and principled participation in the war against the Nazis. A significant contribution to Weil studies is Doering's analysis of the early recognition of Weil's oeuvre in the United States by writers such as Dwight Macdonald, on the Radical Left, and his friend and co-editor of his journal Politics, Nicola Chiaromonte. Between them they were responsible for the publication in the journal in November 1945 of Mary McCarthy's translation of Weil's Iliad essay and, after the dropping of the atom bomb on Hiroshima, and in the company of Albert Camus, for an intense debate on the question of how to keep values alive in an atmosphere of brute force, in which Weil's thought played a prominent role. Doering brings Weil's influence right up to date with some final reflections on Hans Küng's 'Charter of Responsibilities', the work of the Albert Einstein Institute on the use of non-violent action, and the conclusions of the 2009 Panel of Eminent Jurists formed to study the implications of the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center. Weil's thinking on the contaminating effect of force on all those it touches is shown to be as relevant as ever.