CrossroadsEvents's video: 2018-12-07-Simone Weil

Simone Weil: A Surprising Interpreter of Today’s World A discussion with Susannah BLACK, Editor, Plough Quarterly & Fare Forward; co-founder, Simone Weil Center for Political Philosophy, and Carlo LANCELLOTTI, Professor of Mathematics, CUNY, Editor and translator of The Crisis of Modernity by Augusto Del Noce December 7, 2018 at 125 Maiden Lane, NYC Presented by Crossroads Cultural Center and Plough Publishing House An important but often unrecognized truth is that political movements are just as good as their capacity to recognize and serve genuine human desires. Seventy five years ago Simone Weil was one of the first thinkers to recognize that the Western world was on the verge of embracing a world view that would radically reduce the scope of human desire. She also understood that when the "needs of the soul" are denied, we all loose the common ground where we can come together as a society, and we gradually become "uprooted." Join us for a discussion of her prophetic work and of the provocations that it still offers us today. "To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul. It is one of the hardest to define. A human being has roots by virtue of his real, active and natural participation in the life of a community which preserves in living shape certain particular treasures of the past and certain particular expectations for the future." (S. Weil, The Need for Roots)