Rights or Obligation: which comes first?
A short blurb about Simone Weil’s “The Need for Roots:
Prelude to a Declaration of Duties towards Mankind.”
French philosopher Simone Weil argues that obligations
come before rights in her book “The Need for Roots: Prelude
to a Declaration of Duties towards Mankind.” This book was
written by order of deGaulle for purpose of rebuilding France
after WWII. Weil argues that the concept of rights is involved
in creating the setting that lead to war and that the French Revolution
framers were mistaken in their populist emphasis on rights.
She says they used it to motivate the masses but that it’s
logically incorrect and functionally poisonous. And that it contributed
to the French malaise that keeps swallowing France in war and weakness.
To rebuild France after Germany was defeated (again) she says that
the French relationship to Rights has to be reformed or else the cycle
of despair will continue. She looks to be right.
She died at age 33 while living in London on the same rations the
Resistance fighters were living on. She had TB but refused
special treatment. Before that, even though a genius and
child of privilege, she worked in factories and vineyards and lived
anonymously while she wrote and worked in league with her
advisors who feared for her frail health the whole time.
She’s considered one of the great minds of 20th C. France.
Relatively unknown and underrated, I’d say. I’ve always
thought that she was quite a pistol and really kicked butt.
The epitome of independent yet disciplined courage, mind and heart.
>From the first page:
“A right is not effectual by itself, but only in relation to the obligation
to which it corresponds, the effective exercisxe of a right
springing not from the individual who possesses it, but from other
men who consider themselves as being under a certain obligation towards
him. … An obligation which goes unrecognized by anybody loses none
of the full force of its existence. A right which goes unrecognized by
anybody is not worth very much. …
“[Rights and obligation] only express differences in point of view.
The actual relationship between the two is as between object and
subject. A man, considered in isolation, only has duties…. Other men,
seen from his point of view, only have rights.
“The notion of rights, being of an objective order, is inseparable from the
notions of existence and reality. This becomes apparent when the obligation
descends to the realm of fact; consequently, it always involves to a
certain extent the taking into account of actual given states and particular
situations. Rights are always found to be related to certain conditions.
Obligations alone remain independent of conditions. They belong to a realm
situated above all conditions, because it is situated above this world.
“The men of 1789 did not recognize the existence of such a realm.
All they recognized was the one on the human plane. That is why
they started off with the idea of rights. But at the same time they wanted to
postulate absolute principles. This contradiction caused them to tumble
into a confusion…which is largely responsible for the present situation.”
