Simone Weil on Labor and Spirit
This essay argues that Simone Weil appropriates Marx's notion of labor as life activity in order to reposition work as the site of spirituality. Rather than locating spirituality in a religious tradition, doctrine, profession of faith, or in personal piety, Weil places it in the capacity to wor...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Wiley-Blackwell
[2017]
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| In: |
Journal of religious ethics
Year: 2017, Volume: 45, Issue: 2, Pages: 291-308 |
| Further subjects: | B
living labor
B Spirituality B Work B Simone Weil B Karl Marx B Immanence |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (Verlag) Volltext (doi) |
| Summary: | This essay argues that Simone Weil appropriates Marx's notion of labor as life activity in order to reposition work as the site of spirituality. Rather than locating spirituality in a religious tradition, doctrine, profession of faith, or in personal piety, Weil places it in the capacity to work. Spirit arises in the activity of living, and more specifically in laboringin one's engagement with materiality. Utilizing Marx's distinction between living and dead labor, I show how Weil develops a critique of capital as a force that disrupts the individual's relation to her own work by reducing it to the mere activity of calculable production. Capital reduces labor to an abstraction and thereby uproots human subjectivity, on a systemic scale, from its connection to living praxis, or what Weil calls spirituality. Life itself is exchanged for a simulacrum of life. In positioning living labor as spiritual, Weil's work offers a corrective to these deadening practices. |
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| ISSN: | 1467-9795 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Journal of religious ethics
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1111/jore.12178 |