Comment by iAmAPencilYo
6 years ago
> One of my favorite readings are the essays of french philosopher Simone Weil after two visits to germany in the thirties. She was concerned with the rise of the nazis, while at the same time describing the natural and understandable forces that were making them gain support.
Could you point me to those essays? Would like to examine those!
If you can read in French, they were published on 2015 on a book "Écrits sur l’Allemagne 1932-1933". It is a loose collection of articles and letters that were put together for this book. There are some translations to English of slightly different collections. The most prominent articles that you want to read are
* "The situation in Germany"
* "Germany waiting"
* "Are We Really Heading Towards a Revolution of the Proletariat?"
They have been translated into English and edited several times. For example they appear on the collection "Simone Weil, Formative writings 1929-1941".
They offer a rare insight written by a "leftie" germanophile french jew, and her dismay at the two-pronged attack that the German working class (whom she admiringly describes as the most cultured working class in the world), who were at the same time being destroyed and being seduced by the nazis. Somewhat naively she insists that no matter what atrocious things the nazis do, if they end up conquering Europe they will be seen forever as the good guys. She says that this is the normal course in history, and that the "good guys" in Europe's past were no worse than the nazis of today. She also draws parallelism between the German and the Soviet states, that caused her starch criticism in left-wing french circles. Since all of this was written well before the war, there is an ominous prescience to these texts that makes them extremely interesting to read. Curiously enough, there is no mention to the nazi hatred of the jews, she is mostly concerned with their hatred and exploitation of the working class.
Thank you for this. Will be going through them!
> Since all of this was written well before the war, there is an ominous prescience to these texts that makes them extremely interesting to read.
This is the part struck me as fascinating from your earlier post and my googling on her writings. Excited to read the essays. Sadly I will have to resort to the English translations since je ne parle pas francais.
You can find many of her writings online (and all of them on Library Genesis), while you wait for the dead trees to arrive.