For some philosophers, it’s not enough to preach their points from the top of an overturned crate or from behind their desk. Some, their principles unbreakable, have to live their philosophy, not just to get to the core of it but to evade the accusation of hypocrisy. Simone Weil (1909–1943) was such a philosopher. Rebellious and without fear or concern for convention, she rejected middle-class bourgeois comforts enjoyed by many of her contemporaries in order to empathize with—and accurately write about—the working classes and their precarious place in society. She went as far as to don the clothes of a factory worker and work the machinery. Few thinkers of her time can make the same claim.
Weil was born in Paris on February 3, 1909, into a Jewish family of means, writes Elizabeth Hardwick. Though she enjoyed the security and support of a wealthy, affectionate household, debilitating illness plagued her. But she didn’t let health concerns get in the way of her achieving success. She won first place in a competitive exam for a “General Philosophy and Logic” certificate, beating out Simone de Beauvoir, of all rivals. With such an accomplishment, Weil was set up for a career in academia. It wasn’t expected that she would ever have financial woes or be forced to take on a demeaning post in life.
And so she did pursue teaching, in Le Puy and Auxerre. She was good at it, notes Ashlee Cunsolo Willox, and her students admired her. But she wasn’t satisfied, “detesting any sort of privileged position,” Willox writes. Weil had a job, but she wanted to know what it was like to be a real working body, grinding at all hours for a pittance. She resigned her teaching position and sought work on the factory floor.
“She wanted to experience firsthand the life of the factory worker, whose rights she had so passionately championed,” writes Françoise Meltzer. “Her writing repeatedly asserts, both from the perspective of the factory worker and from that of the intellectual, that (skilled) manual work is the prerequisite for attention because it allows for the union of action and thought.”
Jean-Paul Sartre famously speculated on the life of a café waiter in Being and Nothingness. For Weil, speculation wasn’t enough. She worked in three factories, including a Renault plant, in 1934–1935.
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Though none of it was necessary, given her family wealth, she put herself through the grueling workdays of lower-class Frenchwomen who weren’t afforded an education or any privileged shortcuts to prosperity. Weil would, alongside her philosophies on work and capitalism, record her year as a laborer in her “Factory Journal.”
Today, we would equate Weil’s actions to investigative reporting. But all that mattered to her was developing an understanding of the value of labor and growing into a person who could contribute to humanity outside the bubble of privilege. She wasn’t a muckraker, but a philosopher.
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