A new translation of Simone Weil's best-known work: a political, philosophical and spiritual treatise on what human life could be
Translated by Ros Schwartz, with an introduction by Kate Kirkpatrick.
What do humans require to be truly nourished? Simone Weil, one of the foremost philosophers of the last century, envisaged us all as being bound by unconditional, eternal obligations towards every other human being. In The Need for Roots, her most famous work, she argued that our greatest need was to be rooted: in a community, a place, a shared past and collective future hopes. Written for the Free French movement while she was exiled in London during the Second World War, Weil's visionary combination of philosophy, politics and mysticism is her answer to the question of what life without occupation - and oppression - might be.
'The patron saint of all outsiders' Andre Gide
'The only great spirit of our time' Albert Camus
'A masterpiece … Today it retains an eerie prescience. Looking to the past, Weil spoke to future generations who would feel, as she did, that history is a trap we only half understand … luminous' -- Madoc Cairns ― TLS
'One of the most important writings of a unique, flawed and controversial genius, this book warns that modern societies will only be able to resist fascism by a wholesale spring-cleaning of our political imagination in the light of spiritual practice. An excellent, lucid and readable new translation' -- Rowan Williams
'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
