On the Utopia of The End of Alienation. Hannah Arendt (Mis)reading Simone Weil ̶ and Karl Marx
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25180/lj.v25i1.320Keywords:
Hannah Arendt, Simone Weil, Karl Marx, (alienated) labor, oppressionAbstract
The starting point of this paper is Hannah Arendt's positive comment on Simone Weil's La condition ouvrière, in The Human Condition. I first offer a brief reconstruction of Arendt's interpretation of Marx's analysis of labor which is the context in which the above-mentioned comment appears. This interpretation is based, I claim, on a (mis)reading which consists in a rather systematic blurring of the distinction between labor as a universal and irreducible human activity and labor in its historically determined capitalist form, which is the object of Marx's critique, i.e., alienated labor. Following that, I discuss Weil's construal of labor and I shed light on its affinities with the Marxian problematic. My aim is to show that Arendt's comment does not do justice to the problems that Weil addresses both with and beyond Marx.
Downloads
References
Arendt, Hannah. c. 1951–2. "Project. Totalitarian Elements in Marxism." In Hannah Arendt Papers: Correspondence, –1976; Organizations, 1943 to 1976; John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, 1952 to 1975, undated. – 1975. [Manuscript/Mixed Material] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/mss1105600376/.
Arendt, Hannah.1958. The Human Condition. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Arendt, Hannah. 1968. Men in Dark Times. New York: Harcourt Brace & World.
Arend, Hannah. 1973. The Origins of Totalitarianism. New York: Harcourt Brace & Co.
Arendt, Hannah. 1982. Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy, edited by Ronald Beiner. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Arendt, Hannah. 1990. On Revolution. London: Penguin Books.
Arendt, Hannah, and Karl Jaspers. 1992. Correspondence 1926–1969. Translated by Robert and Rita Kimber. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
Arendt, Hannah. 1993. Between Past and Future. Eight Exercises in Political Thought. New York: Penguin Books.
Arendt, Hannah. 2002. "Karl Marx and the Tradition of Western Political Thought." Social Research 69(2): 273–319.
Arendt, Hannah. 2005. Journal de pensée (1950–1973). Translated by Sylvie Courtine-Denamy. Paris: Les Editions du Seuil.
Bernstein, Richard J. 1977. "Hannah Arendt: The Ambiguities of Theory and Practice." In Political Theory and Praxis: New Perspectives, edited by Terence Ball, 141–58. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Canovan, Margaret. 1994. Hannah Arendt: A Reinterpretation of Her Political Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Castoriadis, Cornelius. 1987. The Imaginary Institution of Society. Translated by Kathleen Blarney. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Castoriadis, Cornelius. 1988a. "On the Content of Socialism, I." In Political and Social Writings, Vol. 1. 1946-1955. Translated and edited by David Ames Curtis, 290–308. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Castoriadis, Cornelius. 1988b. "On the Content of Socialism, II." In Political and Social Writings, Vol. 2. 1955-1960. Translated and edited by David Ames Curtis, 90–154. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Castoriadis, Cornelius. 2009. Histoire et création. Textes philosophiques inédits (1945-1967), edited by Nicolas Poirier, Paris: Les Editions du Seuil.
Cedrnonio, Marina. 1996. "Introduction. Modernité, démocratie et totalitarisme. Simone Weil et Hannah Arendt." In Modernité, démocratie et totalitarisme. Simone Weil et Hannah Arendt, edited by Marina Cedronio, 7–41. Paris: Klincksieck.
Chenavier, Robert. 1996. "Simone Weil et Hannah Arendt. La place du travail dans la modernité." In Modernité, démocratie et totalitarisme. Simone Weil et Hannah Arendt, edited by Marina Cedronio, 109–20. Paris: Klincksieck.
Chenavier, Robert. 2001. Simone Weil. Une philosophie du travail. Paris: Les Editions du Cerf.
Devette, Pascale. 2019. "La condition humaine comme travail de perception." In Simone Weil, réception et transposition, edited by Robert Chenavier and Thomas Pavel, 151–67. Paris: Les Classiques Garnier.
Dietz, Mary G. 1994. "'The Slow Boring of Hard Boards': Methodical Thinking and the Work of Politics." American Political Science Review 88(4): 873–86.
Dommange, Thomas. 2007. "Simone Weil. Le marxisme hors de soi." Les Etudes Philosophiques 82: 207–22.
Esposito, Roberto. 2017. The Origin of the Political. Hannah Arendt or Simone Weil? Translated by Vincenzo Binetti and Gareth Williams. New York: Fordham University Press.
Haber, Stéphane. 2006. "Que faut-il reprocher aux Manuscrits de 1840?" Actuel Marx 39: 55 –70.
Haber, Stéphane. 2008. "L'aliénation comme dépossession des besoins vitaux." Mouvements 54: 41–53.
Howard, Mimi. 2020. "Hannah Arendt's Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy." New German Critique 47(2): 45–80.
Iakovou, Vassiliki. 2001. Une Confrontation. Hannah Arendt et la Théorie Critique. PhD Diss. Paris: University of Paris VII.
Iakovou, Vicky. 2022. "Castoriadis, Anti-Humanism and the Problem of Alienation." Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics 24(3): 217–31.
Jaeggi, Rahel. 2014. Alienation. Translated by Frederick Neuhouser and Alan E. Smith. New York: Columbia University Press.
Janiaud, Joël. 2002. Simone Weil. L'attention et l'action. Paris: PUF.
Jay, Martin and Leon Botstein. 1978. "Hannah Arendt: Opposing Views." Partisan Review 45: 347–80.
Lecerf, Éric. 2016. "Ressaisir la pensée de Simone Weil dans la crise actuelle du travail." Tumultes 46: 77–94.
Lefort, Claude. 1979. Eléments d'une critique de la bureaucratie. Paris: Gallimard (Tel).
Marx, Karl. 1975a. "Proceedings of the Sixth Rhine Province Assembly. Third Article Debates on the Law on Thefts of Wood." In Marx/Engels Collected Works (MECW), Volume 1. 224– 63. London: Lawrence & Wishart.
Marx, Karl. 1975b. "Comments on James Mill, Eléments d'économie politique." In Marx/Engels Collected Works (MECW), Volume 3. 211–28. London: Lawrence & Wishart.
Marx, Karl. 1975c. "Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844." In Marx/Engels Collected Works (MECW), Volume 3. 229–346. London: Lawrence & Wishart.
Marx, Karl. 1996. Capital. A Critique of Political Economy. Volume I. In Marx/Engels Collected Works (MECW), Volume 35. London: Lawrence & Wishart.
Marx, Karl. 1998. Capital. A Critique of Political Economy. Volume III. In Marx/Engels Collected Works (MECW), Volume 37. London: Lawrence & Wishart.
Marx, Karl. 2010. "Critique of the Gotha Program." In Marx/Engels Collected Works (MECW), Volume 24. 75–99. London: Lawrence & Wishart.
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 1973. Adventures of the Dialectic. Translated by Jospeh Bien. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
Nelson, Deborah. 2017. Tough Enough. Arbus, Arendt, Didion, McCarthy, Sontag, Weil. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Noël-Lemaître, Christine and Renato Di Ruzza. 2016. "Weil critique du marxisme: leçons pour repenser l'organisation du travail." Actuel Marx 56: 133–46.
Nye, Andrea. 1994. Philosophia. The Thought of Rosa Luxemburg, Simone Weil and Hannah Arendt. New York: Routledge.
Parekh, Bikhu. 1979. "Hannah Arendt's Critique of Marx." In Hannah Arendt: The Recovery of the Public World, edited by Melvyn A. Hill, 67–100. New York: St. Martin's Press.
Pitkin, Hanna Fenichel. 1998. The Attack of the Blob. Hannah Arendt's Concept of the Social. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Ring, Jennifer. 1989. "On Needing Both Marx and Arendt: Alienation and the Flight from Inwardness." Political Theory 17(3): 432–48.
Ritner, Scott B. 2017. "The Training of the Soul: Simone Weil's Dialectical Disciplinary Paradigm, A Reading alongside Michel Foucault." In Simone Weil and Continental Philosophy, edited by Rebecca Rozelle Stone, 187–203. London: Rowman & Littlefield.
Ritner, Scott B. 2020. "Simone Weil's Heterodox Marxism: Revolutionary Pessimism and the Politics of Resistance." In Simone Weil, Beyond Ideology?, edited by Sophie Bourgault and Julie Daigle, 185–205. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Saint-Sernin, Bertrand. 1996. "L'action selon Simone Weil et Hannah Arendt." In Modernité, démocratie et totalitarisme. Simone Weil et Hannah Arendt, edited by Marina Cedronio, 43–54. Paris: Klincksieck.
Schmidt, Alfred. 1994. Le concept de nature chez Marx. Translated by Jacqueline Bois. Paris: PUF.
Souvarine, Boris. 1977. Staline. Aperçu historique du bolchevisme. Paris: Champ Libre.
Sparling, Robert. 2012. "Theory and Praxis: Simone Weil and Marx on the Dignity of Labor." The Review of Politics 74(1): 87–107.
Taïbi, Nadia. 2006. "Le témoignage de Simone Weil. L'expérience de l'Usine." Sens-Dessous 1: 62–75.
Vető, Miklós. 1962. "Uprootedness and Alienation in Simone Weil." Blackfriars 43, no. 507 (September): 383–95.
Weil, Simone. 1946. "Factory Work." Translated by Felix Giovanelli. Politics 35: 369–75.
Weil, Simone. 1951. La condition ouvrière. Paris: Gallimard.
Weil, Simone. 1978. Lectures on Philosophy. Translated by Hugh Price. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Weil, Simone. 1987a. "The Situation in Germany." In Formative Writings. 1929-1941, edited and translated by Dorothy Tuck MacFarland and Wilhelmina Van Ness, 97–147. Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press.
Weil, Simone. 1987b. "Factory Journal." In Formative Writings. 1929-1941, edited and translated by Dorothy Tuck MacFarland and Wilhelmina Van Ness, 155–226. Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press.
Weil, Simone. 1999. Œuvres, edited by Florence de Lussy. Paris: Gallimard/Quarto.
Weil, Simone. 2004. Oppression and Liberty. Translated by Arthur Wills and John Petrie. London: Routledge.
Weil, Simone. 2005. "Prerequisite to Dignity of Labor." In An Anthology, edited by Siân Miles, 264–76. London: Penguin Books.
Weisman, Tama. 2014. Hannah Arendt and Karl Marx: On Totalitarianism and the Tradition of Western Political Thought. New York: Lexington Books.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2023 Labyrinth
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
After acceptation of the paper, the author has to sign a Copyright Transfer Agreement granting to Labyrinth and Axia Academic Publishers the exclusive copyrights for the online and printed editions, and to deal with reprint requests from third parties. On special occasions, articles and studies published in Labyrinth may be republished in textbooks or collective works of Axia Academic Publishers as well as translated and published in other languages. By submitting a paper to Labyrinth, you implicitely agree with these conditions.
