The Organization of Society
Publication Type |
Book Chapter |
Year of Publication |
2000 |
Author |
|
Editor |
Phillips, D. Z. (Dewi Zephaniah) |
Book |
Discussions of Simone Weil |
Pages |
17-22 |
Publisher |
State University of New York Press |
Place Published |
Albany, NY |
Language |
English |
Chapter |
2 |
Keywords |
oppression |
Annotation |
Here Rhees argues, Simone Weil reduces the organization of society to economics, ignoring other, important ways of understanding such organization. Weil falls into this trap, he suggests, in her desire to get people to look at social organization in a different or particular way. Unfortunately this leads her to ignore the complexity of social organization, opting instead for a view that suggests the only way to avoid social oppression would be to have everyone involved in a common enterprise or to be organized in such a way that individuals could understand, at least in a general way, the techniques employed by others in their work. The ability to do this would mitigate the development of experts and thus circumvent the problems with power to which a society constituted by such experts gives rise. Rhees criticizes Weil’s view as he presents it, saying it is misconceived, overly abstract and ignores important elements of individual existence. Ultimately he argues, a view of social organization must avoid both the ‘blind abstraction’ of a solely scientific approach and the individualist account found in theories that reduce such organization to psychological accounts of human nature. |