Excerpt:

Simone Weil, writing at the height of World War II in some of the darkest hours of the struggle against fascism, arrived at a similar conclusion in her oft-neglected but magnificent book, The Need for Roots (1943). The book was about the reconstruction of France and, by implication, all of Western civilization. In it she wrote that: “To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul.” (p.41)

Weil’s method for rerooting humanity is to identify fundamental human needs and devise ways of fulfilling each of them, detailing necessary social reforms. Arendt defined rootedness as having a “place in the world, recognized and guaranteed by others” (Origins, p.475). Weil defines rootedness similarly, albeit in more depth, saying that it is “real, active, and natural participation in the life of a community which preserves in living shape certain particular treasures of the past and certain particular expectations for the future” (The Need for Roots, Routledge & Kegan Paul 1952 edition, p.41).

Religion, State & Society, vol. 26, nos 3-4, pp. 279-289.