Content area
Full Text
(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)
In contrasting modernity with antiquity, Simone Weil, a philhellene of the highest order, betrays a surprising ambivalence. If the modern world exhibits an unprecedented degree of misery, where material existence is organized in a manner that prevents human flourishing, we equally live in a period that has made the most important philosophical discovery, a discovery not made by the ancients: the centrality of labor in the good life. In an uncharacteristically cheery moment, she wrote, "In sum, we can have the pride of belonging to a civilization that carries with it the presentiment of a new ideal."1 This "presentiment" is manifest in the numerous thinkers who place labor at the center of their political analyses: Weil cites Rousseau, Tolstoy, Proudhon, and Marx.2 But throughout her writing Weil remained convinced that these writers--and particularly Marx--had failed to give a thorough philosophy of labor, and her philosophical efforts can be seen as a preparatory exercise for such a future philosophy.
Were Weil alive today, she would likely conclude that the philosophy of labor has advanced little. She perceived sterility in the doctrinal battles over the "true Marxism"; she would be even more appalled by the early twenty-first century's apparent lack of interest in the dignity of labor. If one looks at the leading journals of political philosophy over the last two decades one is hard-pressed to find anything pursuing the lines of inquiry that Weil laid out.3 This is not for lack of concern with emancipation, nor, I suspect, is it due to the very real weakening of the Left and of labor movements in the era of accelerated globalization. Rather, I suggest, it is because labor failed to figure centrally in the dominant normative political theories of the late twentieth century.
There has been a tendency in emancipatory thought to retain a classical hierarchy of goods in which labor is relegated to a secondary (or tertiary) status. Hannah Arendt was explicit in this regard, famously relegating labor (and work) to an inferior rung on the ladder of goods.4 Arendt's view has been attacked for aristocratic elitism; her supporters reject the charge. But these discussions are beside the point--Arendt's subordination of both "work" and "labor" to...