IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - December 2020 - 6

The Needs of the Soul
In the first part of L'Enracinement,
Weil starts out by asserting that
rights are subordinate and relative
to obligations, and that from a sub-
jective point of view, the individual
only has duties (obligations), to oth-
ers and to oneself, while those oth-
ers appear to have rights. However,
that individual has rights, when seen

The substitution of propaganda for
both truth and meaning instilled
a deep uprootedness at the core
of individuals.

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from the perspective of the others,
who (from their own perspective)
each have duties.
This assertion is more or less con-
sistent with Hohfeld's original work
[2] on " fundamental legal concep-
tions, " which posited that " right " and
" duty " were correlatives, in the sense
that if x has a right (claim) against y
that F (be done by y), then y has a
duty to x that F (be done by y); and

Simone Weil, 1922.
6

order, liberty, obedience, responsi-
bility, equality, hierarchism, honor,
punishment, security, risk, private
property, collective property, free-
dom of opinion, and truth. These
needs themselves can be thought of
as seven contrasting, but not contra-
dictory, pairs: i.e., they are more like
yin and yang, there is a need to have
both and they need to be in bal-
ance. Although these needs focus
more on the spiritual rather than
the physical, emotional, or mate-
rial essence of being, it is possible
to find them rather more convincing
than, for example, Maslow's hierar-
chy of needs [7].
While Maslow put self-actualiza-
tion (the full achievement of per-
sonal potential) at the apex of his
pyramid, for Weil, the final solo
need, and, as quoted above, the
most important but least defin-
able, was (figuratively speaking) at
the base: the need for roots. This
is quite the opposite of Maslow,
rather than the exhibition of the self
through self-fulfilment, for Weil it is
the immersion of the self in the envi-
ronment that is most important.
Thus Weil asserted that a human
being " grows " roots through active
and purposeful participation in the
life of a community, and has a multi-
plicity of such roots through associa-
tions with place, kinship, education,
civic engagement, and profession-
al activities.
These communal associations
have both a common memory of
the past and common expectations
of the future (and it could be added,
perhaps, a shared set of congruent
values [8]), and provide moral, intel-
lectual and spiritual well-being (like
a plant's roots provide anchorage,
storage and absorption). A simi-
larity can be drawn here with the
bonding and bridging social capital
of Putnam [9].
However, like Putnam, who
charted a decline of social capital in

that duty and privilege were oppo-
sites: that if x has a privilege over
y with respect to F then x does not
have a duty to y to refrain from F.
We note that Hohfeld's work was
itself the starting point for Sergot's
computational theory of normative
positions [3], specifying a logical
and computational representation
of software agents' obligations, per-
missions, duties, and rights,
and on that basis other
complex normative rela-
tions such as entitlement,
authorization, and respon-
sibility. In the formal speci-
fication of agent societies
[4], the fundamental " build-
ing blocks " were concepts
of permission, obligation,
and institutionalized power
[5], and these were used to
specify more complex nor-
mative relations. For example, in a
formal specification of voting, the
concept of enfranchisement can
be broken down into a right and an
entitlement; the entitlement can be
further broken down into two obli-
gations: one an obligation to count
the vote correctly, and the other an
obligation to declare the result cor-
rectly (i.e., according to the standing
rules) [6].
Therefore, we can perhaps ac-
cept Weil's starting premise of obli-
gations as fundamental concepts,1
based on which we can also rea-
sonably accept her assertion that
" obligations ... all stem, without
exception, from the vital needs of
the human being " [1, p. 7]. She pro-
ceeds to give a list of these needs:
1
In reference to Weil's historical and theologi-
cal commentaries, the poet T. S. Eliot, who
wrote the foreword to the English translation of
L'Enrancinement, said that " I do not know how
good a Greek scholar she was. I do not know
how well read she was in the history of the civili-
sations of the Eastern Mediterranean " [1, p.xi].
Equally, I have no idea how well versed she was
in legal or logical scholarship. All the same her
intuition seems sound enough to take the infer-
ences that she draws on merit.

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