A “No” that Is an Affirmation: Etty Hillesum and Simone Weil Against the Laws of Force

Summary

Abstract

Although from different perspectives and backgrounds, Etty Hillesum and Simone Weil shared an attentive look on reality that made them able to understand contemporary historical events and to reject any kind of totalitarianism from its roots. The two women also believed in the need of re-founding Europe upon intertwining values for a new humanism and a new civilization based on a real sense of justice. This contribution focuses on their specific but somewhat similar opposition against evil: a choice that led them to say “no” to the outrages of history in the name of every human being.

Keywords: justice, force, totalitarianism, resistance

Pour moi, la résistance consiste à dire non.Mais, dire non est une affirmation.

C’est positif. C’est dire non à l’assassinat, au crime.

Il n’y a rien de plus créateur que de dire non à l’assassinat, a la cruauté, à la peine de mort

− Germaine Tillion

In the midst of Western civilization's 20^th century crisis, a generation of female writers and extraordinary thinkers was able to read into contemporary historic events and take a stand against the blind laws of force. They did this with an exceptional clear-headedness. Though they never met, the fates of two of them, the passionate and yet very different personalities of Simone Weil and Etty Hillesum, crossed in the struggle to defend humanity against the cult of history of their time.

Born within five years of each other in two different countries, both faced death at an early age. Their existences show only a few points of convergence. While Hillesum didn't feel herself cut out to be “a social worker or a political reformer,” on the contrary Simone Weil's life and philosophical adventure was shaped by militancy in the French revolutionary trade union movement and by her work as a laborer in a factory. While Etty Hillesum was fresh and ironic and readers of her work come away with a feeling of intimacy and an understanding of her life as a model of self-actualization, Simone Weil was both a political activist and a mystic, a combination so rare she was nicknamed “the Martian” as a student at Lycée Henri IV by her teacher, the philosopher Alain. Both women were Jewish.