The Need for Roots

By Simone Weil. 2020

299 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Written while Simone Weil worked at the French Headquarters in London, The Need for Roots was published posthumously under the title L'Enracinement , in 1949. She had been commissioned by General de Gaulle, head of the Free French forces, to write a report on the duties and privileges of the French after the liberation. An intensely spiritual person, Simone Weil felt it an obligation to experience life as others had to, working in factories and on farms. She became concerned by the idea of uprootedness and, in this report, called on her fellow French to recover their spiritual roots, stressing the need for security. She was to die of tuberculosis a year after being commissioned to write The Need for Roots , having refused to eat more than the rations of those suffering Nazi occupation in France.

Subfields: Education, Plant Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/173f6beee5db74f111b3e8ee640e71cb4c85105c