6 things I got from “L’enrachinement” by Simone Weil

The English title of this 200 pages book is The Need for Roots. I read it in French.

Simone Weil is acute, delightful, bold, insightful, and scandalous. Her vision is bucolic, and human.

Here are some salient ideas I got from her work.

1

Rome corrupted Catholicism by tying itself to the religion. God was made more like a king ruling over the world rather than the world itself.

2

France has a long history as a dictatorial police state ruled by a single person. Democracy hasn’t changed this.

3

Science replaced religion and tradition as the source of truth. While science allows us to know the world better than these old principles, it can’t tell us what is good or bad.

4

Christianity has become a matter of convenience.

5

The priesthood of science is just as corrupt and the religious priesthoods. The noble scientist is an illusion.

6

France has 3 classes: bourgeois, workers, and peasants. The morale flows from the bourgeoisie to the workers, and then to the peasants. Money is what matters most, because that’s what matters to the bourgeois class.