Simone Weil: Beyond the Language of Rights

The French thinker Simone Weil (1909-1943) was radical, but not in the way that most think of that word today. She was on the side of the oppressed—of those who are “afflicted,” to use her preferred term—but she rejected the typical notions of victimhood and rights that liberals offer to help. She saw in every attempt by liberals to help the oppressed a cynical motive—and in our time, so dominated by performative radical liberalism, her skeptical eye is what we need. She knew that whenever liberals were most puffed up about improving the world, they were in fact at their most devious.

Weil’s thinking possesses one quality that all radicals need—fearlessness. She goes to the root of modern problems without flinching—in her view, it is the notion of rights itself that has gotten us so lost, and is in fact used by elites to increase tyranny: “To set up as a standard of public morality a notion which can neither be defined nor conceived is to open the door to every kind of tyranny. The notion of rights, which was launched into the world in 1789, has proved unable, because of its intrinsic inadequacy, to fulfil the role assigned to it.”¹

Rights are too abstract to provide any kind of help to those who are most in need—they sound nice, and they can endlessly be worked towards, without ever really being attained, which is why elite liberals love to invoke them. Those who are afflicted are in the worst condition of anyone in the world, and notions like rights, democracy, personality or identity do not offer the vital help that they need. Liberals have no real intention to help the afflicted, which is why they talk endlessly of rights. It’s a way of seeming like they care and want to help, without actually caring or helping at all.

She points out that rights have, from the start, been mostly just a way for power to give itself a good conscience: “It was from Rome that we inherited the notion of rights, and like everything else that comes from ancient Rome…is pagan and unbaptizable. 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.”² Rights are an empty idea, perfect for raw power to use to make itself look and feel like something other than raw power. Today, liberals use rights discourse, including democracy and identity to conceal their role as the devoted servants of corporate capitalism, in all its cruelty.

Rights, democracy, and identity are not suitable words for the task of healing the afflicted. As Weil says: “The afflicted are overwhelmed with evil and starving for good. The only words suitable for them are those which express nothing but good, in its pure state…Words which can be associated with something signifying an evil are alien to pure good.”³ Rights discourse fails this test because it is nowhere near inherent goodness, and is too mixed-up in all the low things of this world, and so incapable of lifting the afflicted out of their wretchedness.

Rights “evoke a latent war and awaken the spirit of contention. To place the notion of rights at the centre of social conflicts is to inhibit any possible impulse of charity on both sides.”⁴ She says that there is a “bargaining spirit”⁵ implicit in the notion of rights itself—you owe me this and that as a matter of my rights, and so on. And bargaining is a low matter, not cut out for the great task of giving those who are overwhelmed with evil a lifesaving dose of pure good.

Once again, it’s clear why liberals love to put rights discourse at the center of everything. It is a way of seeming nice while actually being combative and barbaric. No wonder identity politics—the cutting-edge of rights discourse—is so hostile.

All that rights discourse does is make elite liberals feel better about the current state of affairs in which they prosper, and in which the afflicted live wretchedly. Weil describes the state of affliction as having been “struck by one of those blows that leave a being struggling on the ground like a half-crushed worm, they have no words to express what is happening to them.”⁶ This is the condition that most people—more and more every day—find themselves in. Being ground down to a pulp and not knowing why, and not even being able to express what is happening. What they want are words to make sense of what is happening, but what they get is bullshit. Liberal elites give the afflicted words, but they are not words that are capable of helping; as Weil says: “Affliction is by its nature inarticulate. The afflicted silently beseech to be given the words to express themselves. There are times when they are given none; but there are also times when they are given words, but ill-chosen ones, because those who choose them know nothing of the affliction they would interpret.”⁷

The language of rights, democracy and identity come from nowhere, and so it leads to nothing. It is the height of cruelty to offer such inadequate words to the afflicted—and what’s worse, liberals today pat themselves on the back for doing this. They think they are the pinnacle of morality when they offer such meaningless words to those who are drowning in evil and desperate for meaningful goodness. Weil says that such words “do not dwell in heaven; they hang in the middle air, and for this very reason they cannot root themselves in earth.”⁸ Those who are afflicted need something that they can grab hold of, that can make sense of their wretchedness. The only words that can do this are words that come from heaven—not from middle air, as she says. This might at first seem paradoxical, since, after all, words that hang in middle air are closer to the ground where the afflicted are writhing like crushed worms. But anything from the middle is worthless—only heaven and earth count, and the middle is neither of these. As she explains the connection between heaven and earth: “It is the light falling continually from heaven which alone gives a tree the energy to send powerful roots deep into the earth. The tree is really rooted in the sky. It is only what comes from heaven that can make a real impress on the earth.”⁹ Liberals never use words that come from heaven, so they never make an impact to people in the real world.

Instead of these middle words, Weil prefers words like God, truth, love, justice, and good. But these words are difficult, as she says: “They are uncomfortable companions. Words like right, democracy, and person are more accommodating and are therefore naturally preferred by even the best intentioned of those who assume public functions.”¹⁰ But uncomfortable words are the ones that the afflicted—who are living the most uncomfortable lives—need the most. These are uncomfortable times, and only uncomfortable words will do. Words like rights, democracy, and identity are preferred by liberals because they are easy, they are comfortable, and they change nothing—they come from nowhere, they lead nowhere, and they keep the afflicted in place, writhing around on the ground, wondering when their pain will end, while they look up at the nice liberals, smiling down on them. Words like God, truth, love, justice, and good never enter into the equation, because those words actually come from somewhere, and lead somewhere. Such words must be avoided at all costs.

1. Simone Weil, “Human Personality,” in Simone Weil: An Anthology, ed. Sian Miles. (New York: Grove Press, 1986), 51.

2. Ibid., 61-2.

3. Ibid., 66.

4. Ibid., 63.

5. Ibid., 60.

6. Simone Weil, Waiting for God (New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2009), 69.

7. Weil, Anthology, 65.

8. Ibid., 66.

9. Ibid.

10. Ibid., 77.