Patriotism as Compassion: Simone Weil and the alternative to pride

Excerpt: ” . . . So if liberal patriotism is not just pride in secular futurity, as Rorty would have it, or loyalty to a shared ethos, as Smith thinks, can it be anything at all? I think so, but it seems to me that the best writer on the question is, oddly enough, the French religious writer and social theorist Simone Weil. Weil’s L’Enracinement, or in English, The Need for Roots, written in 1943 while she was working on behalf of the Free French in London during the height of World War II, articulates a totally novel theory of patriotism that lies at the opposite extreme of national pride and does not rely on idealistic notions of a common outlook or way of life. For Weil, in short, patriotism is not national pride, but rather national compassion. . . .”

Source: The Point (Feb. 12, 2022)

Author: Sam Gee is a contributing editor to The Point

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