Simone Weil on force centres on her claim that force, the power that turns a human being into a thing, is the true subject of the Iliad and a key to understanding human history and social life.
The idea sits near the centre of Simone Weil philosophy, where it links her readings of Greek literature to her thinking about oppression, work and justice.
Why the Iliad became an essay on force
Weil wrote “The Iliad or the Poem of Force” at the start of the war, after the fall of France. According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, it appeared in the journal Cahiers du Sud under the anagrammatic pseudonym Emile Novis, a name Weil took up to avoid antisemitic confrontation and censorship. The same entry stresses that the essay was written from a position of exile and marginalisation, which shaped how she wrote about power.
A modern critical edition by James P. Holoka, described on the Peter Lang publisher page, presents the essay as a meditation on the nature of violence and discusses its place both in the development of her thought and in the study of Homer. The publisher also notes that the commentary compares her view of Homer’s warriors with the experiences of modern soldiers.
Force as the hero of the poem
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy summarises her original reading this way: the protagonist of the Iliad, Weil writes, “is not Achilles or Hector, but force itself.” Neither the Greek nor the Trojan side is treated as the hero. Both are caught in a process that none of the fighters controls.
The same entry adds that force, for Weil, “reifies and dehumanizes no matter if one wields or undergoes it.” The word reify means to turn a person into a thing. On this account, the warrior who kills and the victim who is killed are both reduced, because the person who holds power loses his or her ability to see others as fully human. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy puts the logic bluntly, describing the force that turns a human being into a thing as the ultimate logic of force.
Scholars read this as more than literary criticism. The Stanford entry quotes the philosopher Roberto Esposito, who calls the essay “a phenomenology of force,” meaning a careful description of how force appears in lived experience.
- Essay appeared under pseudonym in Cahiers du Sud: Emile Novis
- Essay written after the fall of France, in exile: after the fall of France
- Critical edition by Holoka presents essay as meditation on violence: Holoka
- Introduction discusses essay in Weil’s thought and Homeric studies: intro
- Commentary compares warriors with modern soldiers: commentary
An idea Weil had already developed
The Iliad essay did not introduce the theme. According to the Stanford Encyclopedia, it develops an understanding first set out in her earlier unfinished essay “Reflections on Barbarism,” where she wrote: “I believe that the concept of force must be made central in any attempt to think clearly about human relations.” Here Weil treats force as a tool for analysing history, and not only as a literary theme.
The same source reads her mid-to-late writings as seeing neither class nor the self-development of spirit as the key to history, but force itself. That places her at some distance from both Marxist and Hegelian accounts, while still drawing on thinkers such as Hobbes and Hegel, as the entry puts it. Her point is that force names what renders an individual a slave.
Force is more than physical violence
A common first reaction is to equate force with soldiers and weapons. The Stanford entry explains that her concept is wider: force “includes not only coercion, but also prestige,” which gives it a social element. A person’s standing, family name or appearance, valued in one society and not in another, can work as a form of force on that person’s life.
The same entry draws out an individual and a collective consequence. On the level of the individual, a personality is shaped by social values, so the operations of force show up through accidents of birth and appearance. On the level of the collectivity, force can destroy not only bodies but also values and cultures, and Weil cites French colonialism as an example, according to the entry.
The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy adds that much suffering is the result of what she called social force, and that her political challenge was to shape social force so that it encouraged mutual, attentive human respect instead of simply denying that force exists. In that account she does not imagine a society without those who give orders and those who obey.
Force, affliction and the human thing
For Weil, force leads straight to her idea of affliction, the French malheur, glossed by the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy as “calamitous misfortune.” That entry describes affliction as something that manifests the force that turns a human being into a thing, and as a condition in which identity and the sense of dignity can be shattered by contingency and force.
The same source says she found in the Iliad a bitter justice that, in her words, proceeds from tenderness, and it notes that Homer, in her reading, “saw the infinite value and fragility of human life” from an impersonal, loving distance. The poem is not a celebration of conquest. In her reading, the poet refuses to take the side of force and keeps showing what it does to those who suffer it.
Understanding the poem this way connects it to her later vocabulary. Her account of giving up the will to dominate is developed in the discussion of Simone Weil decreation, which looks at how she tried to describe a self that does not exercise force over others or over reality.
Attention as an answer to force
If force reduces people to things, what counters it? The Stanford entry answers that attention, “in its consent to the autonomy of the other, is an antidote to force.” Attention in this sense means a patient, open looking that lets another person remain a person.
The entry also places force at the centre of her critique of oppression, noting that oppression exercised through force “denies human beings direct contact with reality.” As an alternative to uprootedness, it says, she outlines a civilization based not on force, “which turns a person into a thing, but on free labor.” The details of that civilization belong to her political writings, and scholars discuss them at length.
The essay also raises a question that readers of Weil often ask about her sources: how much of her thinking about force was shaped by her Greek reading. That question is taken up in the guide to Simone Weil and Plato, which looks at how she read the Greek tradition more broadly.
How scholars have used the idea
The Stanford Encyclopedia notes that the political philosophers Giorgio Agamben and Roberto Esposito rely on Weil’s concepts of decreation, impersonality and force in their own work. Because the idea is spread across the Iliad essay, the early political writings and her later work on obligation, readers meet it in different guises.
Readers new to the essay should expect a short, dense piece that moves between Homeric scenes and general claims. A critical edition with commentary, such as the Holoka volume above, helps place the essay in the history of Homeric studies. The wider philosophical picture can then be filled in from the encyclopedia entries cited here.
Frequently asked questions
What does Weil mean by force?
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According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, force is the power that reifies and dehumanizes, whether a person wields it or undergoes it, and it includes social prestige as well as coercion.
Who is the hero of the Iliad in her reading?
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In her original reading, as the Stanford entry reports, the protagonist is neither Achilles nor Hector but force itself.
Did she publish the essay under her own name?
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No. The Stanford entry says it appeared in Cahiers du Sud under the pseudonym Emile Novis.
Is force only physical violence?
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No. The Stanford entry describes it as including prestige, and as able to destroy values and cultures as well as bodies.
What does she offer against force?
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The Stanford entry names attention, which consents to the autonomy of the other, as an antidote to force.