Abstract: “The French philosopher, Simone Weil (1909-1943) elaborated a thought on work, on its organization and its conditions. Having experienced the mechanization of companies, she was able to describe the process of the objectification of the worker. His reflection on the instrumentalization of the worker and that of work always nourishes great contemporary thinkers, such as Alain. This reflection is all the more current at the dawn of new realities, such as digitalization and the Internet revolution, which, supposed to liberate man, are factors of an even deeper objectification of the employee.

This article, therefore, aims to unveil the mechanisms of objectification as Simone Weil described them and to propose some ways to transcend them, faced with the risk of their persistence in an upset work environment.”

Excerpt: :The thirties in France were marked by the great economic depression and political instability: small entrepreneurs suffered, unemployment increased and workers’ strikes multiplied. Weil does not remain indifferent to the social and political events of her time. As a young teacher in the early thirties, she is already working as a trade unionist. She then apprehends the phenomenon of the alienation of the worker through the works of Karl Marx, but it is their objectification that she will confront for several months (from December 1934 to August 1935) while working in the Renault and Alsthom factories. From this period she leaves us her Factory Diary which highlights her own internal conflicts but which also describes the daily life of the workers of the 1930s, daily life often limited to the ‘working time’ factor. In it, she describes their situation, their uprooting and their alienation. . . .”

• Nelli Sołonko, “The Objectification of the Worker: Simone Weil and her Influence on Contemporary Thought,” French Studies Bulletin, vol. 44, no. 166 (Summer 2023), pp. 12–16 {L’Objectification du Travailleur: Simone Weil et son Influence Sur la Pensée Contemporaine} [Yandex Translate]