Method and Liberty

Publication Type

Book Chapter

Year of Publication

2000

Author

Rhees, Rush

Editor

Phillips, D. Z. (Dewi Zephaniah)

Book

Discussions of Simone Weil

Pages

3-15

Publisher

State University of New York Press

Place Published

Albany, NY

Language

English

Chapter

1

Keywords

liberty
justice
oppression
social (societal)

Annotation

Rhees takes a critical look at Weil’s essay “Oppression and Liberty”. He argues Weil’s method of beginning with an ideal model of society as a starting point for her discussion of the kind of society that would most support individual liberty and justice, quickly falls into an abstraction too removed from reality to be useful. Weil herself, Rhees says, came to recognize this and attempted to address the problem in her later work.