Remembering Simone

Peter Winch had us reading Simone Weil's The Iliad, Poem of Force quite early on. I first read it in Intimations of Christianity Among the Ancient Greeks, and I still recall how stunned I was by its account of how force turns human beings into things, not just into corpses but into things that are still breathing. Much of human life is conducted far from hot baths ... But what I most remember is the idea that what pervades the poem but is never spoken is a burning sense of justice that is even-handed over the fates of the protagonists of either side.

To put it another way there is a perspective on the events that are described that is shown in the narrative, and it doesn't need to be stated in order to make its palpable presence felt, it is there in the tone of what is stated. Now of course I can refer to that perspective, after all I called it 'a burning sense of justice', but understanding that description depends upon feeling the impact of the persepctive itself. it is not the other way round: I gain access to the meaning through exposure to the perspective, not access to the perspective through an independent grasp of the meaning. This is what we call 'a burning sense of justice', this is what we call 'the majesty of death'. (cf Brian Clack's book on Wittgenstein and Frazer: you will need an Athens login to read this review, though)

But these reflections are prompted by my thoughts about the tribes because it seems so obviously one and the same thing. It is highly significant that there can be at least a tinge of sadness in the description of the warrior elite, the raiding parties, the killings, the reprisals, their description arouses something within us which focuses on just the futility of these things, something opens up within us because it is exposed to its object, to the natural object of its concern ... and someone else will say, no it doesn't, nothing opens up in me, speak for yourself. A certain kind of neocon might say this who thinks of the glory days that lie ahead for the New American Century, and their whole identity and sense of self is formed around this project, and these people will not think that the Iraq war was a disaster or its consequences a catastrophe, they really do think in the long term and they have emasculated or subdued their enemies for several generations, as they believe. I think this is the point of the clash between Socrates and his opponents in the Republic. A sense of what is just is instinct within us but requires to be awakened and the conversation between Socrates and the others is conducted between those who have not yet woken to this perspective and one who has. So there is no point of contact, certainly none around the concept of reason or rationality, or of morality commanding the assent of all rational beings. The idea that it should depends upon a trace memory of the Platonic notion of Reason which is for him a particular direction of desire. I think an analogue of this awakening is to be found in that sense one might sometimes have (I called it walking with the gods) of seeing the whole human condition spread out before one as an object both of joy and compassion. And yes, this is one reason for the claim that we created the gods, personified the discovery of 'something higher' ... nor is this hubris but rather a way of securing the perspective or its memory in our minds in a form that seems adequate to it. It is not a matter of understanding the gods in terms of a well understood conception of what it is to be human but a way of coming to terms with possibilities that stretch our understanding of what it is to be human at all. But, whichever way round, surely all we are talking about is Love as a reality into which we enter ever more deeply and cannot define its boundaries because we see none to define.... but such thoughts require a postscript. I suppose that it is too long ago that I talked with conviction about God, and the language I have appealed to here has been used by theists, God, after all, is Love, so one enters ever more deeply into the mystery of God, and so forth. But now I can see more clearly thepossibility of a different model, not the God of the process theologians, but simply that this possibility of Love continues to emerge, we can observe it and sometimes embody it, but that is all there is to say, we do not need to reinterpret theological language, we can simply abandon it ... and nothing gets lost.