Study Questions
How do Weil's positions compare to those of Schiller? What are the similarities and differences? How do those similarities and differences reflect the relations between Romanticism and Modernism? What historical changes or events might explain the different assessments of civilization by thinkers in the 18th-19th centuries and in the 20th century? Are there any post-modern elements in Weil's thought? What may those be?
What is the source of Weil's pessimism regarding the present and future of modern civilization? Are there any traces of hope in her assessment of that civilization or its future possibilities? Is she correct in that assessment? If so, what are the implications? What is the individual to do in the face of such massive and impersonal forces of oppression?
Weil herself eventually became a sort of Catholic mystic. Is this a meaningful stance against the evils of modern civilization or merely a retreat into the "mysteries, occult qualities, myths, idols and monsters" (392) which she herself believed to be characteristic of the irrationality, confusion, and alienation from truth of the bourgeois?
How does Weil criticize Marx? What are her objections to the Marxist conception of history and its forward march? What problems does she see in the idea of the working classes as liberators of humanity? How does she object to Marx's optimism about human productive forces and their adaptability to changing conditions?
What are Weil's criticisms of the Soviet Union? What specific features of the Soviet political life undermine the communist ideals of freedom and well-being for all? What paradoxes does she perceive in the case of Lenin?
What is the significance of her comparison of our present situation to "a party of absolutely ignorant travellers who find themselves in a motor-car launched at full speed and driverless across broken country" (394)? How does this compare to the situation in Miller's Death of a Salesman where Willy dies in a car and Dave Singleman in a train? How about the Joad's truck/car traveling along Route 66 (and the deaths of Granpa and Granma along the way)? Why are motorized vehicles connected to death and the problems of our civilization in these assessments?
According to Weil, what is the main problem with the modern economic system? What are its aims? What are its methods? What role does "conspicuous consumption" play in such a system? Is perhaps a concept of "conspicuous destruction" implicit in Weil's analysis?
How is the picture of commercial life painted by Hume simultaneously realized and unmasked in Weil's characterizations? What did Hume miss? Where was he right on target?
Consider Weil's statement, "The means employed in the economic struggle--publicity, lavish display of wealth, corruption, enormous capital investments based almost entirely on credit, marketing of useless products by almost violent methods, speculations with the object of ruining rival concerns--all these tend to undermine the foundations of our economic life far more than to broaden them" (390). What examples of such practices may be found in the contemporary setting? Does this seem to recall somewhat the case of the Microsoft Corporation?
Quite a few of our authors have argued that "retail trade," or the capitalist form of commerce is characterized by an inversion of means and ends: instead of money being a means for the exchange of use values, the exchange of use values becomes a means by which to make money. Weil, too, notes this inversion, but she calls attention to several other important inversions. What are they? Might they be related to the first inversion? How?
Does Weil's essay shed any light on what it is that the music group "Rage Against the Machine" is raging against? What is "the machine"? Consider the significance of this talk of "the machine" in connection with the importance that Weil places on human thought. Compare what Weil has to say about "the machine" with what Steinbeck said about the "machine man" (Chapter 11).
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