"Consider all the warriors down through time, without great brains — like you! — who nevertheless struck the enemy right through the breast. They just kept their wrists steady and struck." — Sheila Heti

On the Forceful Critique.
The body is never so strong that a moment of pressure can't pierce it straight through. The same may be true for a text — perhaps this is one theme of Homer's. One surprise: the physical composition of the "glancing" text, is perhaps not as robust as we may might have thought. What does it mean for a critique to strike with such strength-of-wrist that, "struck through the back, the [weighty text] fell oppress'd; (The dart drove on, and issued at [its] breast)?" The "forceful critique" is one that already has its end in mind, and goes beyond fidelity to the text in its pursuit. (Compare with the "tortured critique" which will make the text say anything it pleases.) We should be wary concerning the Janus-face of this approach, strong as it seems, as a critique won from a text by "force" will no longer be in sympathy with it.

Reading The Iliad in Weil's perpendicular fashion (against attention to detail), provides opportunity for a forceful critique (of Force), but tends to leave text behind. Homer's narrative, which regales the noble lives lost to Hades forever too soon, concludes with a tearful, albeit temporal, reconciliation — The Illiad is already a figurative Lycaon-on-his-knees surrendering a critique of the glorification of Force. (Weil's polemic reads redundant like a critique of Melville's Moby Dick for glorification of senseless violence against nature (Ishmael's narration already supplies such commentary (Some authors are cleverer than their critics.).).) Certainly the stooped posture, ill-favored appearance, and sharp words of Thersites, whom Weil exalts as rare voice is reason, recall that other wise Athenian not by coincidence. Weil, on the theme of Force, appears correct: Force is employed for its own sake. One wonders whether this critique is self-reflexive.

On Care.
Isn't The Iliad, rather, "The Poem of Care"? Force says, "the weak have never triumphed over the strong," (I continue to erroneously attribute this to de Beauvoir.) This always proves to have been correct (though it means those thought weak have often turned out to be the stronger). Force looks to the end, at the summation of events, and makes an assessment. Force is always capable of multiplying itself and stepping further back. Care cannot abandon the instantaneous moment in which it is present. Care is watching very closely with its interest in the thriving of another. Care is dividing the space of a moment and stepping further in — deflecting the flight of a dart and wrapping the hero in an impenetrable cloud, protecting, by virtue of the absurd, a soldier who will anyway die shortly. Care is watching the battle turn to the Trojans then to the Achaeans then to the Trojans then to the Achaeans, aware that everything is contingent for the one whose story ends at the present charge, whose history is the accumulation of sedimented years of Care.

He miss'd the mark; but pierced Gorgythio's heart,
And drench'd in royal blood the thirsty dart.
(Fair Castianira, nymph of form divine,
This offspring added to king Priam's line.)
As full-blown poppies, overcharged with rain,
Decline the head, and drooping kiss the plain;
So sinks the youth: his beauteous head, depress'd
Beneath his helmet, drops upon his breast
. . .
[. . . 3000 years later Anne Carson picks up the thread . . .]
. . .
Made the boy neck lean at an odd slow angle sideways as when a
Poppy shames itself in a whip of Nude breeze

Care is, finally, holding hysterical-grim funereal games, and returning a dead murderer's body to his father. (This so-called 'soulful' act conspicuously absent from Weil's narrative, which has already condemned Achilles as a "bad dude" for the slaying of Lycaon. It is [eschatological] Force which can declare these characters bad, but Care which permits the possibility of an uncharacteristic action at any moment.) This is not definitive, but it does go beyond Weil at least to meet Homer on the level at which he is composing. (The next level would read between the lines of our subalterns, but I will leave that here).

On Gravity and Grace.
Part i) On Greater Force

"Force is as pitiless to the man who possesses it as it is to its victims; the second it crushes, the first it intoxicates. The truth is, nobody really possesses it.”

That the poison-pill of Force merely produces "intoxication" suggests that it's possible to 'drink yourself sober' on Force. The dialectic of Force is not by necessity an equilibrium. Though we are always being transported behind the battle lines of the Trojans and the Achaeans (with an equanimity in victory that is almost certainly the product of an already-defeated people looking backward, which remains an understated aspect of this poem's greatness), it's always possible to be destroyed completely — then the intoxicated hubris of Force becomes clarity in absolute victory. Even in the less-than-absolute struggle, we are dangerously close to making a Karl-Jaspers-style blunder: In Jasper's On German Guilt, we are shown how edifying and healing it is to be disarmed and divided, so that we might logically conclude that to really punish the defeated Nazi's, we should immediately proceed to re-armament and re-unification. Here we might conclude that, if force really harms its possessors, we should punish our enemies by supplying them arms.

So it's not so much Force that harms as its absence in a moment of need. Remarkably, the "intoxication" attributed to Force also appears to be a symptom of its absence. When, with reference to the slaying of Lycaon, Weil criticizes Achilles, who has "castrated himself for all yearning for [life]," we know this is because he has already heard of his prophesied death 'straight from the horse's mouth,' (It's absurd that, searching the origin of this phrase, no Google results refer to Prophesizing Xanthus, the horse of Achilles made to speak the words of true prophesy, another sign of how bad Google's first-page results are these days.) A more Forceful hero would not have such a vulnerable heel, and, destined to survive the war, would not be susceptible to the cynical internal monologue: 'Why should I spare him — When have I ever been spared?' like something out of Céline.

(When Weil states, "to respect life in somebody else when you have had to castrate yourself of all yearning for it demands a heart breaking exertion of generosity. It's impossible to imagine any of Homer's warriors being capable of such an exertion, [other than] Patroclus, who [...] throughout the Iliad commits no cruel or brutal act," we wonder if she is talking about the same murderous Patroclus who taunts "wise-hearted" Cebriones whom he kills with a rock, voicing some of the most vulgar lines of the poem:

"Good heaven! what active feats yon artist shows!
What skilful divers are our Phrygian foes!
Mark with what ease they sink into the sand!
Pity that all their practice is by land!"

(In fact, no hero in The Iliad meets Weil's criteria for sainthood, yet none is incapable of the generous acts she exalts. Better than an ontology of selected Innocent-Persons who are Lost once fallen from grace, one ought instead to emphasize the Caring action of which anyone is capable in any given moment. (The fact that our heroes are on the receiving end of Force defines them more thoroughly and more universally than when they are its deadly wielders. (We should also not forget the Deleuze who states that, "the punishment never succeeds in the aims it proposes as its justification. The guilty party escapes in the moment punishment is applied to the body and reifies a different person.")))

And we can take this analysis even further. Once we have begun to add Force on top of Force to shore up our weaknesses, we are already thinking of a Force stronger than all other forces, yet also Forceful enough to restrain the undue use of Force — that is, a Being Most-Forceful which exceeds the Force of all others (anyone else notice the similarity with Aquinas's Argument From Degree?) It would follow that, by nature of Force being what it is, we should seek is to invest in the greatest Force, ensure its beneficence, and defend it from detractors (creating a Universal (καθολικός - katholikos) Church, of sorts). This becomes, perhaps, one of the rare instances where we see the analysis turn on itself. (We find that Weil is even a bit more Catholic than previously advertised . . .)

On Gravity and Grace
Part ii) On Greater Meekness
The victim of force is not quite an “inert object.” His response is compelled, but Lycaon is touching in the moment he lays down his arms and begs Achilles for mercy. This moment for Weil is ‘chilling,’ as example of ‘becoming object,’ but it’s also a moment of Grace unacknowledged. Force is mortifying Lycaon’s flesh, but opens the possibility of an abstemious Grace in this would-be soldier-slayer. From the perspective of Grace, the meek (who shall inherit the earth) are stronger than the strong.

If we are brave we can take the first conclusion from this: that, perhaps, it's better for the meek to be even meeker. For those who still cling to power and violence, Force may even do good work (the Lord's plan is already to lay low the mighty), since it's that Forceful steel-bending quality which beats those swords into plowshares and bends the already-meek into greater-meekness. The second conclusion, with audacity, remarks that there is a meekness that is meeker than the greatest meekness in existence: at the level of the non-existent. Those who have gone down to Hades, and those not yet borne up into bodies — surely those who do not even draw breath are among the most exalted (because our deity is good above all things and His domain, which is the largest domain and therefore more good (another corollary of Acquinas) would be even larger if extended also to the non-existent). This is a bit of twisted eschatology that comes out the bottom of Gravity and Grace, but it's useful if we are willing redeem baby Scamandrius and also to see the Force which is using his body as a club as a beautiful thing. ( )

Frequento un gruppo facebook in cui si condividono letture di saggi. A novembre mi ha incuriosito un post sul breve saggio che la Weil dedica all’Iliade. Riflettere sulla forza come valore essenziale di un’opera come l’Iliade mi è sembrato fosse un modo interessante per guardare a un mondo fondamentalmente dominato dal patriarcato e dall’uso maschile della violenza.

Una delle tesi della Weil è che l’uso della forza e della violenza trasformano sia chi le subisce, sia chi le agisce, in cose inanimate. Entrambi, reificandosi, perdono la loro umanità.

La tesi è indubbiamente interessante ma non mi convince. Non mi sembra che sia l’uso della forza a trasformare l’uomo in cosa ma è la trasformazione dell’uomo in cosa a eliminare eventuali remore verso l’uso indiscriminato e senza scrupoli della forza.

In un mondo sempre più dominato dalla reificazione e dalla trasformazione di tutto ciò che esiste in valore economico o risorsa utile non c’è più nulla che ostacola l’uso dell’uomo come mero strumento inanimato e insensibile di cui si possono tranquillamente ignorare i sentimenti e le emozioni. Non ci sono più nè anima nè spirito, non c’è più nulla di sacro o di magico nell’altro, sia esso un essere vivente o no.

La Weil ha bisogno, negli anni ’30, di capire da dove viene ciò che vede diffondersi intorno a lei: da un lato la sopraffazione del primo capitalismo industriale che schiaccia i lavoratori trattandoli solo come ingranaggi del meccanismo produttivo della fabbrica; dall’altro la morsa dei regimi totalitari che cerca di azzittire il pensiero critico; infine la reazione violenta dei rivoluzionari tesi ad eliminare le forze antagoniste. Lo cerca nelle profonde radici di un passato per trarne delle indicazioni da cui partire per giustificare un approccio in cui la comprensione dell’altro, l’amore e l’amicizia riescano a rappresentare valori sui quali poter costruire nuove e più umane relazioni.

Mi sembra però che da allora non si sia fatta molta strada. Sono certamente cambiate molte cose ma l’approccio più frequente verso l’altro è ancora caratterizzato da una scarsa empatia. Il capitalismo continua a considerare i lavoratori come ingranaggi con la sola importante differenza di aver esteso ai lavoratori la possibilità di acquistare azioni della loro stessa fabbrica. Così sono sempre molti quelli che pensano che non si diventa ricchi con la gentilezza ma che anzi molto dipende dalla forza.

The Iliad, or: The Poem of Force was written in the summer and fall of 1940, after the fall of France. It may thus be read as an indirect commentary on that tragic event, which signalized the triumph of the most extreme modern expression of force. It was originally published, under the acrostical pseudonym “Emile Novis,” in the December 1940 and January 1941 issues of the Marseilles literary monthly, Cahiers du Sud. The present translation is by Mary McCarthy. The quotations from Homer were first translated from the French manuscript by Miss McCarthy and then checked and revised by Dwight Macdonald in accordance with the Greek text. “The Iliad” appeared in the November 1945 issue of Politics and was later issued in pamphlet form. It is the only one of Weil’s writings on ancient Greek literature which is commonly used in university courses on the Classics.

role of force in human life

This amazing pamphlet is a profound and brilliant commentary on force: the effects of force, human faith in the use of force, and the retribution force delivers on its users, as understood by Greek civilization. It is readable, quotable, memorable. Quakers will especially appreciate how the costs of force on the users are made clear. ( )