Weil on Hierarchism

Simone Weil [The Need for Roots: Prelude to a Declaration of Duties towards Mankind, Routledge and Kegan Paul (London: 1952) pp. 17-18, as quoted in Jonathan Wolff, "Equality and Hierarchy", Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 119, Issue 1, April 2019, Pages 1–23, https://doi.org/10.1093/arisoc/aoz001]:

Hierarchism is a vital need of the human soul. It is composed of a certain veneration, a certain devotion towards superiors, considered not as individuals, nor in relation to the powers they exercise, but as symbols. What they symbolize is that realm situated high above all men and whose expression in this world is made up of the obligations owed by each man to his fellow-men. A veritable hierarchy presupposes a consciousness on the part of the superiors of this symbolic function and a realization that it forms the only legitimate object of devotion among their subordinates. The effect of true hierarchism is to bring each one to fit himself morally into the place he occupies.

Wolff goes on to associate this with "knowing your place", but this is, I think, the exact opposite of what Weil is saying: rather, the point is that we all occupy some kind of place, and what we need to know is not our place but how to be moral wherever we may be situated. For this, she argues, we need our society to have a symbolic structure which can be an object of devotion and a template for our obligations. This symbolic structure serves as a morally better object of devotion than a demagogue, a celebrity, or a magistrate would, which is what in practice we tend to get when people do not recognize such a symbolic structure; it forces people with greater power or knowledge to recognize that any leadership they have is due to their service to something higher than themselves; and it provides a reference point relative to which people can work out how they can contribute morally to society wherever they may happen to find themselves.

Fortnightly Books Index 2019

A fairly diverse year, as I was in part trying to get through a backlog of candidates for fortnightly books. The great discovery this year was, without a doubt, Fanny Burney's Evelina, which is such an extraordinarily good book that I wish it had not taken me so long to get around to reading it. I also, of course, re-read all of the novels of Charles Williams, and brought my tally of Verne's fifty-four Voyages Extraordinaires read up to fifty-two. I still want to try to get some version of the last two, Les Histoires de Jean-Marie Cabidoulin and Un drame en Livonie, in the next year; they're hard to find, so we will see if I manage that. I am also thinking of reading all of Doyle's Sherlock Holmes books next year -- the read-through-an-author approach has been working fairly well (although Verne was a long slog through a lot of books), it wouldn't be much harder than Charles Williams was, and I have an omnibus edition of the books sitting on my stairs so might as well use it. But we shall see; there's always a measure of chance in what comes up in the series.


December 1: John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
Introduction, Review

November 17: Irving Stone, Love is Eternal
Introduction, Review

November 3: Charlotte Yonge, The Heir of Redclyffe
Introduction, Review

October 20: H. P. Lovecraft, The Whisperer in the Darkness
Introduction, Review

October 6: Charles Williams, Descent into Hell; All Hallows' Eve
Introduction, Review

September 22: Bram Stoker, The Jewel of Seven Stars
Introduction, Review

September 8: Robertson Davies, The Salterton Trilogy
Introduction, Review

August 25: The Nibelungenlied
Introduction, Review

August 11: Louis Hémon, Maria Chapdelaine
Introduction, Review

July 21: Maria Edgeworth, Belinda
Introduction, Review

July 7: Oscar Wilde, The Plays of Oscar Wilde; De Profundis
Introduction, Review

June 23: C. S. Lewis, The Space Trilogy
Introduction, Review

June 9: Dora Landey & Elinor Klein, Triptych
Introduction, Review

May 26: Fanny Burney, Evelina
Introduction, Review

May 12: Charles Williams, Shadows of Ecstasy; The Greater Trumps
Introduction, Review

April 28: H. G. Wells, The Time Machine; The War of the Worlds
Introduction, Review

April 14: Sigrid Undset, Gunnar's Daughter
Introduction, Review

March 31: John Milton, Paradise Lost & Paradise Regained
Introduction, Review

March 17: Jules Verne, Keraban the Inflexible; The Steam House
Introduction, Review

March 3: Garland Roark, The Lady and the Deep Blue Sea
Introduction, Review

February 17: Anne Brontë, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
Introduction, Review

February 3: Charles Williams, War in Heaven; The Place of the Lion
Introduction, Review

January 20: Jane Austen, Persuasion
Introduction, Review

January 6: C. S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia
Introduction, Review


*************

Fortnightly Books Index for 2018

Fortnightly Books Index for 2017

Fortnightly Books Index for 2016

Fortnightly Books Index for 2015

Fortnightly Books Index for 2014

Fortnightly Books Index for 2012-2013

Evening Notes Index 2019

January 8: Assertion, Fiction, and Truth

January 30: Baptism of Desire

February 7: Doxastic Synousia

February 12: Three Structures of Design Argument

February 25: Humanitarian Traditions and Cliental Privilege

March 5: Person as Subsistent Right

March 26: The Period Room as Artifact, Sign, and Instrument

April 6: Norms of Etiquette

April 23: Quasi-Arts

May 2: The Structure of Wondering

June 2: Titles of Opinion

June 17: Beattie on Good Taste

July 14: Hayes on Liquids

July 25: Friendliness as a Civic Virtue

August 8: Perversion in the Context of Humanitarian Traditions

August 21: The Unexamined Life

September 5: Civility

September 15: Non Aliud

September 23: Providential Men

October 4: A New Way to Live

October 18: Rosmini on the Rights of the Church

October 30: The Dignity of Plants

November 12: The Internal Moralities of Law and Medicine

November 25: Argumentational Virtues

December 18: Caring About and Caring For


2018
2017b
2017a

Both Orderly and Personal

Music can put us in the presence of something that has no place in this world, and which moves in a world of its own. And it can do this in a way that seems both orderly and personal, moving with a complete necessity that is also a kind of freedom. Two features of music contribute to this effect. First, the space of music, in a listening culture, is what I call an ‘acousmatic space’: it is a space full of movement and fields of force in which nothing actually moves, and of which we ourselves could never be a part. In a mysterious way the order of music transforms sequences of sounds into melodies that begin and end, chords that occupy whole areas and gravitational fields that push and pull in ways of their own. I have elaborated on this in The Aesthetics of Music, and I think one conclusion to be drawn is that musical space is a space in which things move with a singular freedom, precisely because it contains no obstacles – no part of it is occupied, in the way physical space is occupied, but all of it is open.

Secondly, the virtual causality that operates in musical space is or aims to be a causality of reason. In successful works of music there is a reason for each note, though not necessarily a reason that could be put into words. Each note is a response to the one preceding it and an invitation to its successor. Of course, sequences in music may sound facile, mechanical or arbitrary, so that the listener has no sense of a reasoned progression. But when that happens we are apt to dismiss the music as trivial or meaningless. Real music is not a sequence of mechanical movements but a continuous action, to which the ‘why?’ of inter-personal understanding applies.

Roger Scruton, "Effing the Ineffable".