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.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that evil arises from a lack of external guidance, leading to a monotonous existence shaped solely by one's self. It implies that this self-reliance can lead to a form of endless suffering or emptiness.
Simone Weil's quote explores the concept of evil as an unfettered freedom that lacks moral direction, suggesting that such a condition is inherently monotonous because it is limited to self-reinvention without external values or guidance. This 'false infinity' highlights the despair and emptiness that can accompany unchecked freedom, implying that true fulfillment comes from a connection to larger truths or moral frameworks, rather than a solitary, self-referential existence, which she equates with hell.
In practice
In a discussion about moral philosophy, one could use this quote to illustrate the dangers of absolute freedom without ethical guidance.
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.
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?
We must not wish for the disappearance of our troubles but for the grace to transform them.
We do not choose survival as a value, it chooses us.
Love for one's country is part of faith.
When men abandon reason, physical force becomes their only means of dealing with one another and of settling disagreements.
A purpose, an intention, a design, strikes everywhere even the careless, the most stupid thinker.
Take comfort, and recollect however little you and I may know, God knows; He knows Himself and you and me and all things; and His mercy is over all His works.
One's own free and unfettered volition, one's own caprice, however wild, one's own fancy, inflamed sometimes to the point of madness - that is the one best and greatest good, which is never taken into consideration because it cannot fit into any classification and the omission of which sends all systems and theories to the devil.
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