|
DESCRIPTION
Though Simone Weil (1909-1943) herself was for a while tempted by Communism, because she thought it cared for the oppressed, she eventually perceived its contradictions and lies, and criticized it scathingly. This was not going to make her popular with the French intelligentsia of the time. But Weil did not care about this and only sought the truth. She diagnosed the two main ideologies of her day, namely Communism and Nazism, to be really two forms of idolatries, due to the refusal of God and of morality by her contemporaries. These ideologies, she came to see, are really quite similar: first of all in their use of mass dynamics, for they wrongly give the feeling of community, while they constitute in reality a mere agglomeration of individuals, swayed by passion and propaganda - something described by Plato in his Republic as the “big animal”; secondly in their oppression of the people through a ruling class and bureaucracy; thirdly in their disregard for the human being and in their moral relativism regarding everything except for their idol to which they are willing to sacrifice anything. Weil applied Marx’s definition of religion to Communism and called it an opium for the people. Both ideologies turn their adherents into fanatics. World War II was therefore a war of religions in Weil’s eyes. It was a spiritual problem, and a spiritual problem needs a spiritual answer. Only the renewal of the Christian faith was going to be able to stop this madness. Only true community would present a real alternative to the rallying of the masses. But it would take a while to turn the tide, for while Hitler worked effectively and quickly on the masses, Christianity converts the individual heart and operates slowly like yeast.
Dr. Marie Cabaud Meaney |
SPEAKER/PERFORMER INFORMATION
Dr. Marie Cabaud Meaney recently defended her dissertation on Literature and Apologetics: Simone Weil=s Christological Interpretations on Ancient Greek Texts in French Literature at Oxford University. She has also completed an MA in Philosophy at the International Academy of Philosophy in Liechtenstein on The Cognition of Beauty in the Work of Art: A Phenomenological Analysis. She has taught German and English and has both directed and tutored at the Phoenix Institute=s Summer Program in Oxford. She has written and lectured on the work of Simone Weil, philosophy, and woman=s issues.
LECTURE PREVIEW
SERIES THEME:
Communitas, 2003 Eichstatt
|
|
|
|
