Power backwards

The recent completion of the publication of the complete works of Simone Weil (2019) invites us to reread all of her writings by taking into account their chronology, undoubtedly marked by great ruptures at the existential, historical and political level, but also by focusing at the tireless work of the concepts to see the question which was always the center: that of the dramatic game that is leading to justice and the strength in this world. On the political level, how to explain the permanence of a social oppression, however recognized as unfair, and how to consider the ideal of an emancipated society without renouncing the realistic description of the social relations ? From a theological perspective, how to understand the existence inevitable of the evil, which seems to have to limit or the goodness, or the power of the creator which allows or fails to prevent it ?

Policy and theology according to Simone Weil

Alexandra Féret’s work shows that despite the difference in their origin, these two questions should not be asked separately, which would be missing the rigorous coherence of Simone Weil’s thought. Political theory and religious metaphysics do not constitute, in fact, disjoint moments of the work, but they are the two dimensions in which the reality of violence and the requirement of justice are to think. Furthermore, the principle of reading here proposed is that the articulation of politics and theological is the only one capable of highlighting the anthropological conditions which are at the origin of violence and to suggest an alternative to spontaneously unfair forms of human action. The reflection on the mechanisms of social oppression and the critical analysis of politics are therefore not dismissed by religious metaphysics, but they receive their deepest meaning by seeing themselves renewed to the more fundamental categories of ontology.

Refruiting the originality of Weil’s thought, however, requires not renewing his position of the problem of power to the classic model of the theological-political analogy between the reign of God and the government of men, neither to his contemporary reformulations. If the analogy remains the adequate scheme to think of the exercise of power on earth as in heaven, it is not in the problematic relationship of sovereignty, but through the paradoxical idea of ​​a divestment of sovereign power, whose act of divine creation offers the model. A theological reflection led in the light of political categories thus makes it possible to reveal the possibility of another configuration of power relations, which presents in human action an alternative model to the uncontrolled and necessarily unfair exercise of force. The articulation of politics and theological therefore constitutes neither a detour to think of social relations, nor a transformation of philosophical conceptuality under the influence of religious ideas, but offers the possibility of thinking about politics to its limit, since a transcendence that will be necessary, following R. esposito, qualify asimpoliticand which must be understood according to the paradigm of the abdication, guiding thread of the interpretation of Alexandra Féret.

For a power metaphysics

By a careful reading of the writings of Simone Weil, the author highlights the centrality of the concept of power, which makes it possible to re -enter the whole work in unity of the same problem: that of violence inherent in the sovereign exercise of force. Heiress of Thucydides and Machiavelli, attached like them to the principle of realism in politics, Simone Weil recognizes that force cannot not be exercised in the world, in a few hands that it is and with some degree that it manifests. This is the common root of the imperialism of states and social oppression: all forms of domination have their anthropological foundation in the inevitability of the struggle for power, that is to say for the sovereign exercise of force, which leads the forces present to perpetuate the inequality of the relationship which opposes them despite its proven injustice and the sufferings it entails. This analysis sheds light on Weil’s relationship to the tradition of political philosophy: the impossibility of renouncing to run for power puts in control the contractualist theories, which make depending on the constitution of the political body of the voluntary renunciation of the natural exercise of force, while the Marxian analysis of social relations reveals the insufficiency of its concept of force (ch. I).

The realization of justice, which is not an ideal vain but an imperative requirement, therefore seems possible only at the cost of a renunciation of power ; However, it can only be conceived in a supernatural form, because it is foreign to this world where the natural relationships of strength and weakness reign. Divine abdication offers the model of such renunciation, expected by pagan religions in the sacrificial figures of the divine and led to its truth by the Christian dogmas of creation and incarnation. The analysis of Alexandra Féret does not decrease before the radicality of this thesis, since it is not a question of contesting or even limiting the omnipotence of God by the thesis of a divine helplessness or a self -collectation of his power, but of maintaining that the refusal to intervene in the world is an irreversible abdication of the absolute sovereignty which is his. The true God is therefore an almighty but non-dominating God, whose supreme freedom is to divest himself of his own power, to withdraw to let exist a world on which he will not exercise the command which returns to him by right. The analysis and demonstration of this thesis initiate a renewed study of divine attributes and a reformulation of the problem of theodice, which are confronted with other contemporary metaphysics of divine power, eminently that of Hans Jonas (ch. II).

Human action and social institutions to the prism of abdication

What about the human response to the divine omnipotence, if the latter strips the traditional figure of the sovereign prevailing at an absolute master on a very perfect creation to embrace abdication and consent to the existence of a world that God knows how to be bad ? Human action must be understood on the substance of a metaphysics of creation which accounts for the existence of evil and prescribed to the creature sinks an attitude of obedience and conversion. The Weilian concept of decreation, often put forward to explain the correlation between the voluntary withdrawal of God and the required dissolution on the part of man, is here taken up in the light of the paradigm of abdication, which Alexandra Féret shows that it is slightly later but also more fundamental, and therefore better capable of enlightening both the ontology of subjectivity and the theory of action. Autonomous existence being already sin, the human creature is called upon to renounce itself, which is not self-destructing but recognizing the limitation of the ego in favor of the plurality of people and coexistence with others.

This is also the condition of a thought of acting which emphasizes attention and obedience to necessity rather than on the autonomy of the will: the paradigm of abdication thus makes it possible to instruct a true criticism of practical reason, whose fundamentally negative orientation does not prevent the positivity of an effective action, which we know has always been undertaken without reservation. Although the model of abdication leads to favor abstention as the restraint of the exercise of the force, Weil therefore does not intend to advocate the inaction but to delimit the field of the necessary action (ch. III).

As soon as the concept of abdication appeared as the theological-political paradigm par excellence, it must lead to the examination of the relationships between politics and religion in a secularized world, where the stake is no longer only to think of power to understand the balance of power, but to fight against their most unfair forms. Noting the empowerment of politics with regard to the religious, Weil sees it as the effect of a sacralization of the social, attributable to Durkheimian sociology, and of a dedication of the State and the nation, new idols which no longer leave anything to the true God and condemn the peoples to the spiritual impoverishment in this ersatz of religious belief that is ideology. To this phenomenon of politics idolatry, Weil attributes of origins disorders: it indeed recognizes the refusal of the paradigm of divine abdication, which it reproaches harshly and problematically in Israel as in Rome, confusion that the analysis of Alexandra Féret does not intend to ignore.

Closer to us, in contemporary times, secularization has not only consequently the decline in any authentic religious life, but also the depoliticization of society, delivering it to the ever more absolute power of the State. The salvation of society then depends on the fight against the absolutization of politics and a reintegration of religion into the framework of the social, through a mystical which does not aim so much on individual religious exaltation as union with absolute good, promise of supernatural justice which places the much higher than power and then determines the definitive renunciation of the exercise of force (ch. Iv).

Written in a fine and precise language, taking into account the latest editorial state of Weil’s work and discussing the recent research devoted to it, the work of Alexandra Féret offers a remarkably coherent interpretation of the problem of power, which manages to maintain the rich and nuanced articulation of politics and theological to the end. We will particularly salute the accuracy of the conceptual work carried out throughout the investigation, which makes it possible to establish the distinctions necessary for the intelligence of the problem and to highlight the radical singularity of the thesis of abdication, taking care to clarify or rule out certain less precise readings. The entry into the work by the theological-political question then highlights the continued power of a thought where force gives in to grace and violence to obedience.