A while back, I began a series of posts on Simone Weil’s “vital needs of the human soul” found in her book, The Need for Roots. I got distracted by other things, and by the time I thought of resuming the series, I had begun my Substack “Philosophy of Human Flourishing”. So, the posts are there now! Here are the first two:
Simone Weil’s “vital needs of the human soul”: #1. Order
I mentioned the philosopher Simone Weil a few posts ago (see “Simone Weil’s rootedness”), and her book, The Need for Roots. In that post, I mentioned my desire to meditate on her “vital needs of the human soul”. This post will be the first in a series where I’ll summarize what she says about each one and then share my own meditation on it. For Weil, these vital needs can be understood this way: (1) they are an attempt to answer this question: “what needs related to the life of the soul corresponds to the body’s need for food, sleep, and warmth”; (2) and they “must never be confused with desires, whims, fantasies or vices” (p. 8, Schwartz translation). While this may sound theological in nature, and for Weil it seems like there’s no line between theological and philosophical thinking, let me say that if the word “soul” is distracting, try to think of psychological well-being. Also, I don’t think one needs to assume the a soul/body or mind/body dualism to find value in this list. It’s common to speak of physical and psychological needs as distinct even if we believe that the mind/soul/psyche is material.
The list of vital needs
First, let me share the list that Weil created. It’s fifteen items long, so this series may take some time:
- Order
- Freedom
- Obedience
- Initiative & Responsibility
- Equality
- Hierarchy
- Honor
- Punishment
- Freedom of Opinion/Association
- Security
- Risk
- Private Property
- Shared Property (“participation in collective goods”)
- Rootedness
- The Need for Truth
The reason that I want to (1) summarize and then (2) reflect/meditate upon each is that I’m not sure if I agree with this list as a whole. As I re-read each one, it’ll give me a chance to critically evaluate what Weil wrote. If there’s space, I want to end my class “Philosophy for Human Flourishing” with a lesson on this list, so this gives me a chance to really evaluate it. Let’s begin with “Order”.
Summarizing Weil’s comments on “Order”
Weil calls the need for “Order” “the main need of the soul” that is “the one closest to its eternal destiny” (p. 8). What does she mean by “Order”? Her definition is as follows: “a web of social relations such that no one is forced to violate strict obligations in order to fulfill other obligations” (pp. 8-9). For context, Weil begins the book (p. 1), “The concept of obligations takes precedence over that of rights, which are subordinate and relative to it. A right is not effective on its own, but solely in relation to the obligation to which it corresponds.” In other words, I can demand people recognize my rights all day, but if they feel no obligation to me then there’s nothing to the language of rights; and if I don’t feel obligated to others, then I won’t recognize their rights. As she said, “…a right that is not recognized by anyone amounts to very little.” Also (p. 1), “He in turn has rights when he is considered from the point of view of others who recognize obligations towards him”.
With a shift in our attention from rights to obligations, “Obligations are only binding on human beings” and “Identical obligations bind all human beings” (p. 2). Our identical obligations to other human beings means, “There is an obligation towards every human being through the mere fact that they are a human being” (p. 2). Her foundation for these claims is definitely theological in nature. She says that the obligations are not based on “de facto situations, or on legal precedent, or on customs, social structure or relations of force, or on the legacy of the past, or the supposed direction of history…This obligation is not based on any convention” (pp. 4-5). Instead, “This obligation is eternal.” Why? “It echoes the eternal destiny of all human beings.” Since, theologically speaking, the human is eternal, so our obligation to these other eternal being with which we surround ourselves. “This obligation is unconditional.”
When Weil describes our obligations to every other human, they include “not to let them suffer from hunger”; “shelter, clothing, warmth, hygiene and care for the sick”; and those things that are “not physical” but part of the “moral life” (p. 6). With this in mind, we see that “Order” means that making sure that people can fulfill their varying obligations to others. Weil mourns, writing “Nowadays, there is a very high degree or disorder and incompatibility between obligations.” But she’s not confident that this order is possible. She writes (p. 9), “Unfortunately, there is no method for reducing the incompatibility. It is not even certain that the idea of an order in which all obligations are compatibility is not a fantasy.”
She takes hope is the widely diverse universe working in a synchronized way, and “truly beautiful works of art” doing the same. But it seems to me that this is the best she can offer: a hope. She writes (p. 9):
Lastly, our awareness of our various obligations always stems from a desire for good that is unique, fixed and identical to itself for each man, from the cradle to the grave. This desire perpetually stirring inside us prevents us from ever resigning ourselves to situations where the obligations are incompatible. Either we resort to lying in order to forget they exist, or we struggle blindly to extricate ourselves from them.
If I’m reading her correctly, Weil is saying that we desire a world in which our obligations are not in conflict. This is a need of ours, even the central one. But it’s also one that may be “a fantasy”. We want a morally structured society. I presume that this implies that a morally dysfunctional society leaves us unable to experience this order that we crave
Reflecting on Weil’s comments on “Order”
Every philosophical thought experiment from the trolly-problem on is a reminder that we live in a morally tense universe. As I wrote in my last post, “Effective Altruism and moral intuition”, there are moral systems that make a lot of sense but then when pressed, feel immoral at points. This is true of a lying deontologist and a hard-line utilitarian. But the desire that we have for such a framework is real, and if I’m understanding Weil, then maybe the constant striving for such “Order” is the best we can achieve.
Our pursuit of “Order” and our desire to create it for others is why every moral treatise and moral system has come into existence. We argue for our preferred morality in hopes of finding the morality that will work for all of us. This hasn’t happened yet but again, I think the goal is noble and what’s the alternative. Even if we concede some form of moral relativism, that’s a system, that’s a structure that we land upon in order to find “Order”.
Simone Weil’s rootedness
The philosopher Simone Weil (1909-1943) is a fascinating character. (If you’re interested in hearing more, BBC Radio 4’s “In Our Time” did an episode on her: “Simone Weil”. So did Vox Media’s Sean Illing for his show “The Gray Area”: “Simone Weil’s radical philosophy”. I’m sure there are many more episodes out there not to mention articles!) Her book, The Need for Roots, is one that I’ve been reading through slowly. At some point, I want to write a few posts on what Weil considers to be the “vital needs of the human soul”. They’re sort of like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs but for our psycho-spiritual condition. But here I’m meditating on just one—the one that inspired the title of the book: our need for rootedness.
I’ve been thinking about rootedness for about fifteen years without always having a word for it. This is because fifteen years ago, I left my home in Northern California. I planned to return as soon as I could. First, I went to Portland, Oregon, which was delightful in many ways. I think I could’ve settled there though the constant drizzle that helps make Portland so beautiful can also be quite depressing. When my wife and I had been there three years, we prepared to move back to California but the opportunity that I thought would take me back home disappeared, and we had mentally and emotionally committed to leaving Oregon, so we made the fateful decision to go to where my wife was born and raised: San Antonio, TX.
I felt out of place from day 1. I’ve been here twelve years now, and I’ll admit, I continue to feel out of place. I feel like a visitor. And while I don’t want to speak for my wife here, just so the rest of what I have to say doesn’t sound too whiney, I know she feels about Northern California just as I do. But I must say that hardly a day passes where my mind doesn’t flash an image of Napa, or Sonoma, or Marin, or somewhere along the coast of the Pacific Ocean, or San Francisco. I spent my first twenty-seven years there and while I know I had to venture out, sometimes I wonder if it was the right thing to do, especially as it seems more and more unlikely that I’ll have an opportunity to return.
For some readers, I know this sounds like it reeks of privilege, as I complain about not being in the hoity-toity Napa Valley of my youth. I’ll concede that. But it doesn’t make the feeling go away. When you see yourself as a plant who has been pulled from the soil in which you grew, only to be replanted where you feel like nothing is familiar, it doesn’t matter where the original soil is. And I think Weil gives me philosophical justification for this feeling.
This is what she wrote about rootedness (p. 33):
Rootedness is perhaps the most important and least known human spiritual need. It is one of the hardest to define. A human being is rooted through their real, active or natural participation in the life of a collectivity that keeps alive treasures of the past and has aspirations for the future. The participation is natural in that it stems automatically from place, birth, occupation and those around them. Every humans being needs to have multiple roots to derive all their moral, intellectual and spiritual life from the environment to which they naturally belong.”
For Weil, to belong to a people in a place is a good thing because you share with those people a commitment to that place, to keeping “alive treasures of the past and…aspirations for the future.” I admit, I’m more concerned with what happens in Northern California, whether it be politically, ecologically, etc., than I am South Texas. I’m invested in that place thriving whereas the place that I live feels distant. Yes, I work here. I vote here. But every time I see a billboard that says, “Don’t California My Texas!”, I know I don’t belong here. Whenever I see the legislative priorities of Texas politicians, I know that I have little place in keeping alive such treasures. I’m a long time visitor.
Weil says that this rootedness is “natural”. I feel this. When I get off the plane at San Francisco International Airport, the sun hits differently, the world feels and smells better. Again, it’s like a root returned to native soil: it feels right.
Now, in a sense, my workplace was become a place of rootedness. In fact, it’s the only reason I’m in Texas. I know that as much as work should not bear too much of our life’s meaningfulness, that if I worked a job that I did find meaningless, even in California, it would impact my emotional wellbeing. So, because I find value in my job, I haven’t been willing to risk that to go home. Whether or not this is reasonable, it’s why in twelve years from now I might be in Texas still, continuing to feel out of place but oddly fulfilled where it really matters.
Though, of course, I doubt myself when I think of what “really matters”. Now that I’m a father, I have this strong desire to offer my son what was offered to me. I’m not necessarily saying what my nuclear family had to offer me. That’s a complicated story. But what my rootedness had to offer me: drives through the vineyards of the Napa Valley, summer trips to Stinson Beach, the majesty of wandering through San Francisco, a game at Oracle Park, but also the culture and values of everything Northern California, save Silicon Valley which I despise. These things are me. I’m an extension of that environment. Will the day come when I say to myself, “Those realities matter more than my 9-5!” Maybe. The tug is always there.
When someone is unrooted, whether traumatically or not, it changes everything. Weil claims, “Every military conquest results in uprootedness.” This isn’t just because a people may be removed from their home but because their home is irreversibly altered into something different. For Weil, every “milieu” of rootedness “should receive external influences not as an addition, but as a stimulus that makes its own life more intense.” In other words, “external influences” can “nourish” a people but it shouldn’t alter what it is that they share. Because of this, it doesn’t take a military invasion. As she says, “…money and economic domination can be such a powerful foreign influence that it results in the disease of uprootedness.” My mind goes to what Silicon Valley did to San Francisco. In many ways, it’s financed San Francisco into becoming one of the most amazing cities in the world; in other ways, the San Francisco that I knew even in the 2000s, and all that it stood for, seems to have mostly disappeared. The Napa Valley where I was raised is almost completely unaffordable for the working class. I guess this is what makes gentrification so disheartening for those who experience it.
The changes that Mammon has wrought on Northern California create a tension when I think of what I want to offer my son. In Texas, I can afford a home for him to grow up in. I can model for him fulfillment in a meaningful vocation. But Texas is, well, Texas. A man like Greg Abbott is Governor. Men like Ted Cruz and John Cornyn are our Senators. Our politicians demonize immigrants. They make the lives of women more and more restrictive to the point where we’re one of the “top 5 worst states” for women. It’s not a safe state for the LGBTQIA+ community. I have no pride in Texas. There are good people here. There are good Texans. I hope they reshape the state into their image but it’s hard to feel committed to this cause because I don’t feel like I’m part of it nor can I ever really be. I’m just one of those dangerous people who might “California” their Texas.
Again, as I said, I might be here in twelve years, working the same job, feeling the same feelings. But Weil is right that having a sense of rootedness is a serious spiritual (however we may use that word) matter. I hope if I stay, it offers my son more opportunities so that I can justify the decision. I hope that I’m not being selfish in needing to work a job that I find meaningful. We humans are complex. Adulthood is just a series is decisions where we can’t know if we’re making the right one. This weighs on me. Will I regret sidelining the spiritual nourishment of rootedness, if I don’t prioritize it?
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