The Need for Roots: Prelude to a Declaration of Duties Towards Mankind (Ark Paperbacks) - Softcover

Weil, Simone

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0744800587 ISBN 13: 9780744800586

Publisher: Routledge, 1987

Synopsis

Simone Weil deals with the needs of the soul, discussing order, liberty, obedience, responsibility and many other subjects, finishing with the need for truth.

About this title

From the Back Cover

'This is one of those books which ought to be studied by the young before their leisure has been lost and their capacity for thought destroyed; books the effect of which, we can only hope, will become apparent in the attitude of mind of another generation.' - T.S. Eliot

Hailed by Andri Gide as the patron saint of all outsiders, Simone Weil's short life was ample testimony to her beliefs. In 1943, the final year of her life, unable to join the resistance movement in France, she worked in London for the Free French government in exile. Here she was commissioned to outline a plan for the renewal of Europe after the scourge of Nazism. The Need for Roots was the direct result. In it she seized the opportunity to denounce the false values of contemporary civilization. In the cult of materialism she witnessed a devastating loss of spirit and consequently of human values. To counteract this she sets out a radical vision for spiritual and political renewal with a passion for truth which sweeps through these pages. The book has become a lasting spiritual testament for our age, where we are confronted, as T.S. Eliot comments, by a 'genius akin to that of the saints'.

About the Author

Simone Weil (1909-1943). A political theorist and activist, a revolutionary and a philosopher and religious mystic. She starved herself to death in protest against the Nazi occupation of France.

Edition details

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 1987
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0744800587
• ISBN 13: 9780744800586
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 304