
L’attention humaine exerce seule légitimement la fonction judiciaire
Simone Weil.
Among the many inventions that the learned world owes to ancient Greece, the philosophical banquet is not the least valuable. The Greek word symposion has been retained to designate these academic rituals, which enable scholars from all horizons to meet on an equal footing to discuss science or philosophy, while sharing bread and wine. The Greeks placed these meetings under the aegis of Dionysus who, as Cornelia Isler-Kerényi’s masterly book shows, was in no way the god of debauchery, but rather the one responsible for channelling human passions to ensure the good order of the city[1]. During the συμπόσιο (etym. ‘to drink together’) wine was served mixed with water in cups so flared that loss of self-control condemned one to spill the contents. Drinking it in this way encouraged free speech and communion of spirits without making them lose their sense of measure.
The symposium which brings us together today around Emilios Christodoulidis is taking place by correspondence and therefore without libation. But when it came to taking part, I must confess that I had always suspected Emilios of being an envoy of Dionysus, working to contain the everywhere visible return of barbarism. In his presence, the liveliest intellectual jousts are always placed under the aegis of friendship; and his work, by aiming to repair constitutional law in order to repair the world[2], gives substance to the soul of this law, which is first and foremost an art of civilising power.
His thoughts in this area could not fail to meet that of Simone Weil, who situates the Law in a ‘middle region’, a kind of purgatory between the Heaven of justice and the Hell of brute force. This led her to criticise the ‘juridicism’ of those who think they can enclose law in a self-referential loop, cutting it off both from any reference to Justice and from the concrete experience of those who suffer injustice. Just as a critique of scientism is indispensable to a true science, so a critique of legalism is a prerequisite for legal thought worthy of the name. Situated in this ‘middle region’, law must be linked both to the infra-juridical experience of those who refer to it and to the meta-juridical principles to which it refers. But this cannot be done without going beyond legal categories, because if « words of the middle region, such as right, democracy, person, are valid in their own region, which is that of ordinary institutions. But for the sustaining inspiration of which all institutions are, as it were, the projection, a different language is needed. » [3].
Emilios Christodoulidis has shown that the key to overcoming the ‘words of law’ is the concept of attention, which grasps the question of justice at its root[4]. Without attention to the cri infaillible of the being who asks ‘Why am I being hurt?’, there can be no justice[5]. This clarifies Simone Weil’s forceful statement that “human attention can legitimately exercise the judicial function” (l’attention humaine exerce seule légitimement la fonction judiciaire) [6].
But what do we mean by attention? Attention is always a way of looking at the world, but there are degrees of attention. Its lowest form, such as that demanded by Taylorised work, “is not compatible with any other because it empties the soul of everything unconcerned with speed”[7]. The mind’s attention is then « a function of the requirements of the tool, which itself is adapted to the matter being worked upon »[8]. This alienation of the mind to the machine is the opposite of the “extreme attention” that constitutes the creative faculty in man and is in essence religious[9]. This higher form of attention involves looking at others and the world with a certain regard: « This way of looking is first of all attentive. The soul empties itself of all its own contents in order to receive into itself the being it is looking at, just as he is, in all his truth »[10]. This attention is what we read in the extraterrestrial gaze that very young children cast on the world they are discovering.
These two forms of attention – the highest and the lowest – both presuppose an abdication of the ego. But in the lowest form, man is swallowed up by the machine: « The labourer turns his body and soul into an appendix of the tool which he handles»[11]. The risks of this kind of engulfment are now considerably heightened by the digital revolution. For it is from early childhood, and even outside the workplace, that our attention is entirely captured by our new machines. They are – literally and figuratively – a screen impeding any exchange of glances, starting with that of mother and child, that initial attention – essential to becoming human – which inspired so many masterpieces of Renaissance art. Perfectly aware of the latest advances in the science of her time (thanks in particular to her mathematician brother, André, and his friends in the Bourbaki group), Simone Weil prophetically foresaw the devastation likely to be caused by the misuse of what is today very improperly called ‘artificial intelligence’. “These automatic applications, she writes, lead to something new, so we invent without thinking – and that’s the worst of it. From then on, thought itself – or rather what takes the place of thought – becomes a tool […]. Hence the paradox: it is the thing that thinks, and man that is reduced to the state of a thing”.[12].
In the highest form of attention, on the other hand, the ego « draws back before the object we are pursuing. »[13], reproducing God’s creative gesture, which was an original movement of withdrawal that Jewish mysticism calls the Tsimtsum[14], an indispensable prerequisite for the advent of an ordered world in the primordial space thus created[15]. This gesture is also that of the constituent power, which founds the rule of law on its own self-limitation (Selbstverpflichtung) [16]. To put it in the terms of the philosophies of India, from which Simone Weil also drew much inspiration at the end of her life, the ego is then abolished in favour of the Self (atman), in other words a presence in the world made full and complete by the erasure of the ego[17]. Such withdrawal is creative because, as Tommaso Greco recently observed, it sets in motion a process that is the exact opposite of force[18]. Exercised to the limit, force “turns man into a thing in the most literal sense : it makes a corpse out of him” [19], while on the other hand caring for others, like the Good Samaritan, brings back to life what was no more than “anonymous flesh lying inert by the roadside”[20]. Such attention is creative. “But at the moment when it is engaged it is a renunciation. This is true, at least, if it is pure. The man accepts to be diminished by concentrating on an expenditure of energy, which will not extend his own power but will only give existence to a being other than himself, who will exist independently of him. Still more, to desire the existence of the other is to transport himself into him by sympathy, and, as a result, to have a share in the state of inert matter which is his. »»[21]. To her friend, the poet Joë Bousquet, forever confined to his bed by a war wound, Simone Weil wrote this terrible thing : « To think about misfortune, you have to carry it deep inside you, like a nail, and carry it long enough for your mind to become strong enough to look at it. Looking at it from the outside, having managed to get out of the body, and even, in a sense, out of the soul»[22].
At its highest level, this transcending of the self is the ecstasy we experience in contemplating the beauty of the world, in a loving embrace, or in poetic inspiration. All these experiences presuppose a renunciation of appropriation or consumption, because « The beautiful is a carnal attraction which keeps us at a distance and implies a renunciation. (…) The beautiful is that which we desire without wishing to eat it. We desire that it should be »[23]. Conversely, many depravities and crimes are the result of «attempts to eat beauty, to eat what we should only look at»[24]. One of the hallmarks of today’s globalization is that everything is transformed into capital (natural, tourist, social…). The land, the seas and the forests, the Parthenon, Venice and Mount Fuji, but also the slightest digital trace of our ideas, desires or emotions – everything is handed over for appropriation or consumption. Like King Midas, the Total Market spreads death by turning everything it touches into gold.
Fighting this work of death requires us to re-establish the primacy of the public good and social and ecological justice over private interests. But deciding on the public good, dispensing justice or helping our neighbors also requires a greater capacity for attention. For « where no one’s attention is fixed on the public good, nothing will be achieved for the public good »[25] and it is in vain « to find mechanisms for the maintenance of justice »[26] ; for, finally, « the sufferer exists, not only as a unit in a collection, or a specimen from the social category labeled “unfortunate,” but as a man, exactly like us, who was one day stamped with a special mark by affliction »[27]. At this level of attention, it is no longer a question of mystical ecstasy, but of transcending the ego, without which we cannot put ourselves in the place of others.
Leibniz noted that putting oneself in ‘the place of the Other’ was not only in keeping with the golden rule of the Gospel, but also with political intelligence. This place d’autruy he wrote, is « le vrai point de perspective en politique aussi bien qu’en morale », because it is « a place suitable for making us discover considerations that would not otherwise have occurred to us : that anything we would find unjust, if we were in someone else’s place, must seem to us suspect of injustice. And even anything that we would not want if we were in that position must stop us from examining it more carefully. So the meaning of the principle is: do not easily do or refuse what you would not like to be done or refused. Think about it more carefully, after putting yourself in someone else’s shoes, which will provide you with considerations that will help you better understand the consequences of what you are doing[28].
The attention required to put oneself in the place of Other has therefore its own degrees[29]. It is only a matter of calculation for the chess player, who endeavours to predict his opponent’s movements. It mobilises all the intelligence and sensitivity of the anthropologist who, following Montesquieu, casts a ‘regard persan’ on the spirit of the laws, by considering his own from the point of view of others[30]. It commits body and soul to the friend who « wills good to his friend, just as he wills good to himself: wherefore he apprehends him as his other self »[31]. Idem velle atque idem nolle, ea demum firma amicitia est[32] : this definition of friendship, which Thomas Aquinas and Leibniz inherited from Aristotle, is also in line with Simone Weil’s thought : « L’amitié est pour moi un bienfait incomparable, sans mesure, une source de vie, non métaphoriquement, mais littéralement (…) l’amitié donne à ma pensée toute la part de sa vie qui ne lui vient pas de Dieu ou de la beauté du monde »[33].
Friendship can unite jurists – this collection of essays is proof of that. But it also raises the question for jurists of what kind of friendship binds a human community together. Carl Schmitt’s answer is well known: it is the feeling aroused within a group by hostility towards the same existential enemy[34]. For Schmitt and his Nazi friends, this feeling was that of sharing the same genetic identity and thus being brothers in arms in the same struggle to enslave, expel or exterminate competing or inferior races, starting with the Jews, this ‘people of the Law’, whose legal abstractions were masks used to conceal the ‘concrete order’ of the Law in general and their parasitic relationship to the German people in particular[35]. Schmitt has now emerged from his purgatory, and his ‘friend/enemy’ criterion is presented by many as a realistic and scientific vision, independent of any moral considerations[36]. Presenting himself as a ‘pure scientist’ was, moreover, the defence system he used effectively during the interrogations he underwent at Nuremberg after the war[37].
But despite the seduction it once again exerts, Schmitt’s thesis is neither scientific nor realistic. It stems from a scientism that is the very opposite of science, and that is belied by any serious analysis of institutions. The friend-enemy criterion does not define politics, but its degree zero, that of a collection of individuals with nothing in common but their supposed biological identity[38]. This is indeed the situation to which the Total Market leads, but it in no way characterises the institutional universe studied by generations of ethnologists, jurists and sociologists. A society holds together only by virtue of shared references to third-party principles to which each of its members adheres. To put it in Paul Valéry’s terms, «Order requires the action of the presence of absent things, and results from the balancing of instincts by ideals. A fiduciary or conventional system develops, which introduces between men imaginary links and obstacles whose effects are very real. They are essential to society »[39]. Such a fiduciary system stems from the « fabulation fonction » of human beings[40], which lifts them out of the barbarism of pure power relations and inscribes them in a representation of the world that gives meaning to their lives. It presupposes a power based not on force but on an authority whose legitimacy is recognised. It therefore requires a ‘love of laws’, which Montesquieu saw as the basis of education, and which is the fruit of a civic friendship between those it governs. This friendship is not ‘l’amour fou’, but what Leibniz calls the charity of the wise (caritas sapientis). It consists of putting oneself ‘in the place of others’ and therefore paying attention to them not only to help them, but also to interpret the law in the direction of the greatest possible justice. In the ‘middle region’ that it occupies, law thus requires an ‘average faculty’ of attention in order to be obeyed. This attention is required of the legislator as well as the judge and the legal scholar. Simone Weil made recommendations on this point that might have been found in the writings of Montesquieu. The rules, she writes, « should be sufficiently sensible and sufficiently straightforward so that any one who so desires and is blessed with average powers of attention may be able to understand, on the one hand the useful ends they serve, and on the other hand the actual necessities which have brought about their institution. They should emanate from a source of authority which is not looked upon as strange or hostile, but loved as something belonging to those placed under its direction. They should be sufficiently stable, general and limited in number for the mind to be able to grasp them once and for all, and not find itself brought up against them every time a decision has to be made ».[41].
This vade mecum is perfectly in line with what sociology teaches us about the conditions for civil peace, because ‘at the same time as institutions impose themselves on us, we like them; they oblige us and we like them; they constrain us and we benefit from their operation and from this very constraint’[42]. And to be loved, institutions must be lovable; and they cannot be lovable without paying attention to ‘those who are nothing’ in the eyes of the powerful[43].
Alain Supiot FBA, is Professor Emeritus at the College de France
[1] Cf. Cornelia Isler-Kerényi, Dionysos nella Grecia arcaica. Il contributo delle immagini, Pisa-Roma, Istituti Editoriali et Poligrafici Internazionali, 2001, 271 p. ; voir aussi du même auteur « Athènes au VIe siècle av. J.-C. : le vin, le symposion, le citoyen », in A. Supiot (ed.) Tisser le lien social, Paris, Éditions de la Maison des sciences de l’Homme, 2004, pp. 49-60.
[2] E. Christodoulidis, The Redress of Law. Globalisation, Constitutionalism and Market Capture, Cambridge University Press, 2021, 592 p.
[3] Simone Weil, La personne et le sacré, RN éditions 2016, préf. F. de Lussy, p. 57, translated Human Personality, in Simone Weil. An Anthology, Edited and Introduced by Sian Miles, Penguin Classics 2005, p. 97.
[4] Cf. Emilios Christodoulidis, “Les ‘mots du droit’ et le monde vécu”, in A. Supiot (dir.) Mondialisation ou globalisation ? Les leçons de Simone Weil, Paris, Éditions du Collège de France, 2019, pp. 201-220 (accessible en ligne sur Open Edition Books < https://books.openedition.org/cdf/6007 >).
[5] S.W. Human Personality, op. cit. p. 93
[6] S.W. Carnets de Londres, in Œuvres complètes, Paris, Gallimard, t. VI, vol.4, éd. M.-A. Fourneyron, de F. Lussy & J. Riaud, 2006, p. 380. Translated by Richard Rees, First and last notebooks, OUP 1970, p. 351, I thank Florence de Lussy for drawing my attention to this thought, and more generally for her inspiring article. : « Simone Weil. L’attention comme exercice spirituel » (Sorgue, n°6, Novembre 2006, pp. 13-21).
[7] S.W. Condition première d’un travail non servile, in La condition ouvrière, Paris, Gallimard, coll. Idées, 1951, p. 371, translated in Late Philosophical Writings, University of Notre Dame Press, 2016, Chapter 7, “The First Condition for the Work of a Free Person.”.
[8] S.W. L’enracinement, in Œuvres, éd. F. de Lussy, Paris, Gallimard, coll. Quarto, 1989, p. 1217, translated by Arthur Wills The Need for Roots, New-York and London, Routledge Classics, 2001, p. 294.
[9] S.W. La pesanteur et la grâce Paris, Plon, 1948, coll. 10/18, p. 119 (Gravity and Grace translated by $$
[10] S.W. Réflexions sur le bon usage des études scolaires, in Attente de Dieu, Paris, Albin Michel, 2022, préf. Christiane Rancé, p 106, translated by Emma Craufurd, Waiting for God, New-York, Harper and Grow, 1973, p. 115.
[11] S.W. The Need for Roots, op. cit. loc. cit.
[12] « Ces applications automatiques conduisent elles-mêmes à du nouveau ; alors on invente sans penser – c’est bien le pire. Dès lors la pensée elle-même – ou plutôt ce qui en tient lieu – devient un outil […]. D’où ce paradoxe : c’est la chose qui pense, et l’homme qui est réduit à l’état de chose » S. Weil, Cahier I (1933- septembre 1941), in : Œuvres complètes, Paris, Gallimard, t. VI, vol. 1, éd. André Devaux et Florence de Lussy, 1994, pp. 97-98.
[13] S.W. L’attention et la volonté, in La pesanteur et la grâce, op. cit. p. 119. Translated in Simone Weil. An Anthology, op. cit., p. 232
[14] Cf. Gershom G. Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, Jerusalem, Schocken publishing, 1941, pp. 256-261.
[15] S.W., L’amour du prochain, in Attente de Dieu [1942] Paris, Albin Michel, 2016, pp. 137-138 (Waiting for God, op. cit. p. 145).
[16] Cf. Georg Jellinek, Allgemeine Staatslehre, Berlin, Häring, 3e ed. 1914, pp. 367-375
[17] Cf. Heinrich Zimmer, Philosophies of India, [1st. ed. 1953] Edited by Joseph Campbell, Princeton Classics ; trad. fr. Les philosophies de l’Inde, Paris, Payot, 1997, pp. 186-197.
[18] Tommaso Greco, Curare il mondo con Simone Weil, Bari-Roma, Laterza, 2023, pp. 22-24.
[19] S.W. L’Iliade ou le poème de la force, Les Cahiers du Sud (Décembre 1940-Janvier 1941) under the pseudonym ‘Émile Novis’. ; translated in Simone Weil. An Anthology, op. cit. p. 183.
[20] S.W. Waiting for God, op. cit. p. 149.
[21] S.W. Waiting for God, op. cit. p. 150.
[22] « Pour penser le malheur, il faut le porter dans la chair, enfoncé très avant, comme un clou, et le porter assez longtemps, afin que la pensée ait le temps de devenir assez forte pour le regarder. Le regarder du dehors, étant parvenue à sortir du corps, et même, en un sens, de l’âme » Lettre à Joë Bousquet (in Simone Weil. Joë Bousquet. Correspondance 1942. Quel est donc ton tourment ? réunie et présentée par Florence de Lussy & Michel Narcy, Paris, éd. Claire Paulhan, 2019, p. $$
[23] S.W. Gravity and Grace. First French edition 1947. Translated by Emma Crawford, London Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963.
[24] S.W. The Love of our neighbor, in Waiting for God, op. cit. p. 146
[25] S.W. Écrits de Londres, Paris, Gallimard, 1957, p. 150
[26] S.W. Carnets de Londres, (First and last notebooks, op. cit., p. 351).
[27] S.W. Reflections on the Right ‘Use of School Studies, in Waiting for God, op. cit. p. 115.
[28] Leibniz, « Notes sur la vie sociale », in Gaston Grua, Leibniz, Textes inédits, Paris, PUF, 1948, t. 2, pp. 699-702 ; Leibniz, Sämtliche Schriften und Briefe Berlin, Akademie Vorlag, 1986, Reihe IV, Band III, 3, N 137, p. 903. (my translation).
[29] Cf. Martine de Gaudemard, « Leibniz (1646-1716) : une philosophie chrétienne du bien public », in A. Caillé, Chr. Lazzeri et M. Senellart (dir.), Histoire raisonnée de la philosophie morale et politique, Paris, La Découverte, 2001, pp. 354-368.
[30] Cf. On this Persian/perçant look (pun untranslatable into English), dee Montesquieu, Lettres persanes, édition du tricentenaire, précédée de Alain Supiot, Nouvelles du XXIe siècle à l’attention de l’auteur des Lettres persanes Paris, Points/Seuil, 2021.
[31] Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae la Ilae, qu. 28, a. 2.
[32] To desire the same things and to reject the same things, constitutes true friendship..
[33] « Friendship is for me an incomparable blessing, beyond measure, a source of life, not metaphorically, but literally (…) friendship gives my thoughts all the part of their life that does not come from God or the beauty of the world ». in Simone Weil. Joë Bousquet. Correspondance 1942. Quel est donc ton tourment ? réunie et présentée par Florence de Lussy & Michel Narcy, Paris, éd. Claire Paulhan, 2019, p. 149.
[34] Carl Schmitt, Der Begriff des Politischen (1st ed. 1927) Hamburg, Atische Verlagsanstalt, 1933, 61 p.
[35] Carl Schmitt, Die deutsche Rechtswissenschaft in Kampf gegen den jüdischen Geist, Deutsche Juristen-Zeitung, Heft 20, 1936, pp. 1193-1999 (Closing speech at the Congress of University Professors of the National Socialist Federation of Defenders of the Lawon 3 and 4 October 1936 on the theme: ‘Judaism in the science of law’) ; for more on this text, see Johann Chapoutot, La loi du sang. Penser et agir en nazi, Paris, Gallimard, 2014, pp. 95-100 ; Olivier Jouanjan, Justifier l’injustifiable. L’ordre du discours juridique nazi, Paris, PUF, 2017, pp. 278 sq..
[36] In his preface to the French translation of Der Begriff des Politischen, Julien Freund presents Schmitt as ‘an author who tries to analyse politics phenomenologically, independently of any moral a priori’ (C. Schmitt, La notion de politique, Paris, Flammarion, Champs classique, 1992, p. 12).
[37] Cf Céline Jouin, « Carl Schmitt à Nuremberg. Une théorie en accusation », Genèses 74, mars 2009, pp. 46-73.
[38] Cf. Louis Dumont, « La maladie totalitaire. Racisme et individualisme chez Adolphe Hitler », in Essais sur l’individualisme. Une perspective anthropologique sur l’idéologie moderne, Paris, Seuil, 1983, pp. 152-189.
[39] Paul Valéry, Préface aux Lettres persanes, in édition du tricentenaire précitée pp. 373-385. On Simone Weil’s relationship with Valéry’s thought, see Florence de Lussy, « Paul Valéry et Simone Weil. Deux natures mystiques. Deux pensées antithétiques », in Paul Gifford et Brian Stimpson (éds), Paul Valéry. Musique, Mystique, Mathématique, Presses Universitaires de Lille, 1993, pp. 243-266.
[40] H. Bergson, Les deux sources de la morale et de la religion, [1932] Paris, PUF / Quadrige, 1988, pp. 111 sq. (This notion of ‘fonction fabulatrice’ has been mistranslated into English as ‘myth-making faculty’. Such a translation fails to grasp the crucial place of imagination in the making of the religious or legal institutions that ensure social coherence).
[41] « Il faut que les règles soient assez raisonnables et assez simples pour que quiconque le désire et dispose d’une faculté moyenne d’attention puisse comprendre, d’une part l’utilité à laquelle elles correspondent, d’autre part les nécessités de fait qui les ont imposées. Il faut qu’elles émanent d’une autorité qui ne soit pas regardée comme étrangère ou ennemie, qui soit aimée comme appartenant à ceux qu’elle dirige. Il faut qu’elles soient assez stables, assez peu nombreuses, assez générales, pour que la pensée puisse se les assimiler une fois pour toutes, et non pas se heurter contre elles toutes les fois qu’il y a une décision à prendre » S.W. L’enracinement, éd. préc. p. 1033, translation (slightly amended) Arthur Wills, The Need for Roots, op. cit.p. 12
[42] Émile Durkheim, Règles de la méthode sociologique, Paris, PUF, 1987, Préface de la seconde édition, (1902), pp. XX-XXI.
[43] S.W. Lettre à un ingénieur directeur d’usine, 3 mars 1936, in La condition ouvrière, op. cit. p. 188.
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