- 27 Dec, 2025 *
Here Weil argues against not just parties as political institutions, but against partisan, limited thinking. Parties are the most radical and organized extension of such “intellectual leprosy” to her, and that is why legal action against the party is just the first step to eradicate that illness.
There’s a tension in the essay: between material analysis of everyday political life and metaphysical conceptualization of Catholic Dogma of Truth and Justice illuminated onto the public life. But they both need each other, because Weil grounds her argument in the idea that democracy is here to serve the publ…
- 27 Dec, 2025 *
Here Weil argues against not just parties as political institutions, but against partisan, limited thinking. Parties are the most radical and organized extension of such “intellectual leprosy” to her, and that is why legal action against the party is just the first step to eradicate that illness.
There’s a tension in the essay: between material analysis of everyday political life and metaphysical conceptualization of Catholic Dogma of Truth and Justice illuminated onto the public life. But they both need each other, because Weil grounds her argument in the idea that democracy is here to serve the public Good, and that parties distort or even hijack that purpose. She believes that once the leprosy is done with, individuals acting out of natural longing for Good and Justice will successfully replace the party.
This understanding of the political comes with opposition with most theories proposed in the 20th century. Namely, a German legal theorist (and a person with Heidegger-level ties to the Nazi party) Carl Schmitt famously described the core of the political as the “friend-enemy distinction”, which is existential and total. To Schmitt, parties are just organized form of that distinction. Removing parties will not remove the core political tension of “us v. them”. Schmitt does critique liberal parliamentarism as defenseless and impotent, which did prove to be correct.
It’s not just Schmitt. Overall, most of 20th century theorists could be called “power-realists”. Weil operates within a pre-modern framework of Christian Good, but thinkers like Michel Foucault developed ideas and concepts that would critique Weil’s proposal. Even if we remove the organizational level of political power, power itself won’t go away, and what is thought of as “Good” and “Just” would be continuously manufactured by power and discourse.
I don’t want to be viewed as overly critical. Weil’s essay is a powerful and radical proposal that – in its’ core – does diagnose the issue of modern identity-based thinking. As political or legal philosophy it may land as naive or too romantic. But it’s neither. Ultimately, Weil is calling for attention, contemplation, reflection, and reason – from both the individual and the collective.