There is no detachment where there is no pain. And there is no pain endured without hatred or lying unless detachment is present too.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that pain and detachment are intertwined, and true detachment requires acknowledging and enduring pain without deceit.
Simone Weil's quote explores the complex relationship between pain and detachment. It posits that one cannot truly experience detachment without first understanding and enduring pain, and that if pain is ignored or lied about, it undermines the possibility of genuine detachment. This interplay implies that facing our struggles honestly is crucial for achieving a state of inner peace and separation from attachments that bind us emotionally.
In practice
In a philosophical debate about the nature of suffering.
The afflicted are not listened to. They are like someone whose tongue has been cut out and who occasionally forgets the fact. When they move their lips no ear perceives any sound. And they themselves soon sink into impotence in the use of language, because of the certainty of not being heard.
The appetite for power, even for universal power, is only insane when there is no possibility of indulging it; a man who sees the possibility opening before him and does not try to grasp it, even at the risk of destroying himself and his country, is either
As soon as men know that they can kill without fear of punishment or blame, they kill; or at least they encourage killers with approving smiles.
Evil is license, and that is why it is monotonous: everything has to be drawn from ourselves. One is condemned to false infinity. That is hell itself.
I am not a Catholic; but I consider the Christian idea, which has its roots in Greek thought and in the course of the centuries has nourished all of our European civilization, as something that one cannot renounce without becoming degraded.
How many people have been thus led, through lack of self-confidence, to stifle their most justified doubts?
Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to cast a stone.
I believe that the entire effort of modern society should be concentrated on the endeavor to outlaw war as a method of the solution of problems between nations.
Two kinds of people live a life without care: one kind are extremely worthy of praise, the other kind are extremely worthy of criticism. The first are those who care nothing for the pleasures of the world and the second (i.e. those who are deserving of criticism) care nothing for haya or modesty.
I will not pretend that if I had to choose between communism and Nazism I would choose communism.
It is when suffering finds a voice and sets our nerves quivering that this pity comes troubling us.
In modern society most of us don't want to be in touch with ourselves; we want to be in touch with other things like religion, sports, politics, a book - we want to forget ourselves. Anytime we have leisure, we want to invite something else to enter us, opening ourselves to the television and telling the television to come and colonize us.
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