The Need for Roots
Prelude to a Declaration of Obligations towards the Human Being
Published on 26. October 2023
288 pages
978-0-14-199419-2 (ISBN)
Description
A new translation of Simone Weil's best-known work: a political, philosophical and spiritual treatise on what human life could be
What do humans require to be truly nourished? Simone Weil, one of the foremost philosophers of the last century, envisaged us all as being bound by unconditional, eternal obligations towards every other human being. In The Need for Roots, her most famous work, she argued that our greatest need was to be rooted: in a community, a place, a shared past and collective future hopes. Written for the Free French movement while she was exiled in London during the Second World War, Weil's visionary combination of philosophy, politics and mysticism is her answer to the question of what life without occupation - and oppression - might be.
'The patron saint of all outsiders' Andre Gide
'The only great spirit of our time' Albert Camus
Translated by Ros Schwartz, with an introduction by Kate Kirkpatrick.
What do humans require to be truly nourished? Simone Weil, one of the foremost philosophers of the last century, envisaged us all as being bound by unconditional, eternal obligations towards every other human being. In The Need for Roots, her most famous work, she argued that our greatest need was to be rooted: in a community, a place, a shared past and collective future hopes. Written for the Free French movement while she was exiled in London during the Second World War, Weil's visionary combination of philosophy, politics and mysticism is her answer to the question of what life without occupation - and oppression - might be.
'The patron saint of all outsiders' Andre Gide
'The only great spirit of our time' Albert Camus
Translated by Ros Schwartz, with an introduction by Kate Kirkpatrick.
Reviews / Votes
A masterpiece ... Today it retains an eerie prescience. Looking to the past, Weil spoke to future generations who would feel, as she did, that history is a trap we only half understand ... luminous -- Madoc Cairns * TLS * One of the most important writings of a unique, flawed and controversial genius, this book warns that modern societies will only be able to resist fascism by a wholesale spring-cleaning of our political imagination in the light of spiritual practice. An excellent, lucid and readable new translation -- Rowan Williams This is one of those books which ought to be studied by the young before their leisure has been lost and their capacity for thought destroyed; books the effect of which, we can only hope, will become apparent in the attitude of mind of another generation -- T. S. Eliot The patron saint of all outsiders -- Andre Gide The only great spirit of our time -- Albert CamusMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
File size
0,81 MB
ISBN-13
978-0-14-199419-2 (9780141994192)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Book
10/2023
Penguin Classics
€16.50
Available immediately
Persons
Simone Weil (Author)
Simone Weil (1909-43) was a French political activist, mystic and a singular figure in French philosophy. She studied at the elite Ecole Normale Superieure, obtained her agregation (teaching diploma) in philosophy in 1931, worked at Renault from 1934 to 1935, enlisted in the International Brigades in 1936 and worked as a farm labourer in 1941. She left France in 1942 for New York and then London, where she worked for General de Gaulle's Free French movement. Most of her works, published posthumously, consist of some notebooks and a collection of religious essays. They include, in English, Waiting for God (1951), Gravity and Grace (1952), The Need for Roots (1952), Notebooks (two volumes, 1956), Oppression and Liberty (1958) and Selected Essays, 1934-1943 (1962).
Kate Kirkpatrick (Introducer)
Kate Kirkpatrick is Fellow in Philosophy at Regent's Park College, University of Oxford. She is the author of several books and articles on twentieth-century French philosophy, including Sartre on Sin: Between Being and Nothingness (Oxford University Press, 2017), Sartre and Theology (Bloomsbury, 2017), and the internationally acclaimed biography of Simone de Beauvoir, Becoming Beauvoir: A Life (Bloomsbury, 2019).
Simone Weil (1909-43) was a French political activist, mystic and a singular figure in French philosophy. She studied at the elite Ecole Normale Superieure, obtained her agregation (teaching diploma) in philosophy in 1931, worked at Renault from 1934 to 1935, enlisted in the International Brigades in 1936 and worked as a farm labourer in 1941. She left France in 1942 for New York and then London, where she worked for General de Gaulle's Free French movement. Most of her works, published posthumously, consist of some notebooks and a collection of religious essays. They include, in English, Waiting for God (1951), Gravity and Grace (1952), The Need for Roots (1952), Notebooks (two volumes, 1956), Oppression and Liberty (1958) and Selected Essays, 1934-1943 (1962).
Kate Kirkpatrick (Introducer)
Kate Kirkpatrick is Fellow in Philosophy at Regent's Park College, University of Oxford. She is the author of several books and articles on twentieth-century French philosophy, including Sartre on Sin: Between Being and Nothingness (Oxford University Press, 2017), Sartre and Theology (Bloomsbury, 2017), and the internationally acclaimed biography of Simone de Beauvoir, Becoming Beauvoir: A Life (Bloomsbury, 2019).
