I am a fan of Simone Weil. It seems popular in “intellectual” circles to find reasons to make negative comments about her - she was “anti-semitic”, she was anti-Catholic, she was too “radical” - etc. I am fascinated by people who spend their lives on the sidelines of living, who don’t seem to be able to accomplish much (by external standards, perhaps), but who seem to want to critique everything beautiful, awe-inspiring and creative made by others.
Simone sought a path of truth and gave her life for it. She was entitled in that experiment to make comments about her progress, provide insights into her thoughts and so much more. I admire her work greatly. I don’t need to share her religion. Simone needs to be met on her own terms AND her thoughts gleaned for anything of value to us.
At the beginning of The Need for Roots: prelude towards a declaration of duties towards mankind (French: L’Enracinement, prélude à une déclaration des devoirs envers l’être humain), Simone talks about our obligations and rights. Even these first few pages of the book, if taken to heart, would make a profound change in our societies. So many argue for their “rights” but minimise their obligations.
Simone says that rights exist in relation to other people. We have these rights because other people have corresponding obligations. If we were the only person on Earth, we would have obligations, but would have no rights as there would be no one to give them to us.
Simone talks about the obligations to help those in desperate need, such as the hungry. She then goes on to discuss less physical needs. Let’s stick with physical needs, here. She says that all cultures understand the need to help those starving. She provides this as an obligation. She limits herself to human beings, as she existed in an era when “the rights of man” were heavily discussed. I imagine that if you had said, “But what about animals?” she would have first looked shocked and then shrugged her shoulders. We will never know her response, but I like to imagine that if she had been overtly questioned about this, she would have begun to consider the wider obligations of our species.
Simone gave the example of a starving person being universally understood as something requiring obligations on the part of those of us who have abundance. Taking this consideration outside of our species, let’s imagine the scene of a old dog being beaten on a public street - do we imagine that most/all cultures would consider this inappropriate? That is, would we have an obligation to stop it? I would suggest most would AND I would suggest that this sort of argument should extend Simone’s initial concern for mankind to a greater concern (and obligations) for other sentient beings.
Of course, we then can ask this question about a mule being beaten on a public street, an elephant being beaten, a COW being beaten . . . I would postulate that we keep the barbarism of abbatoirs hidden because we KNOW we have an obligation to stop such suffering. We do not watch cows, calves, mothers, fathers, children being murdered - we only see packages of “meat” and sandwiches and imagine that nothing terrible has happened. In Simone’s day people used this very hidden nature of suffering to justify concentration camps, gas showers and so much more.
So, using Simone’s logic - if we have obligations to others, others have rights that stem from our obligations. These rights, my friend, are animal rights. Their rights are as real as ours and our ignoring them do not make them any less real.
Thank you, Simone, for your insights!
May all beings know peace!
Aroha nui,
Gerald Tūruapō Jordan, MBA, MEd, MCouns