Simone Weil on the Injustice of Rights-Based Doctrines

Abstract

This paper explores Simone Weil's objections to a philosophy grounded on human rights. Weil thinks impersonal justice cannot be expressed in terms of personal rights. Rights, for Weil, are personal possessions; they are claimed or borne by some subject or person (me, you, her or them). The right or the just, however, is not susceptible to possession. When one substitutes a personal pronoun for the definite article before the word right (my right or their right instead of the right), justice is articulated in the manner of liberal contractualism but is biased against a notion of impersonal justice which Weil champions. The incompatibility of Weil's understanding of justice and a rights-based notion of justice is the subject-matter investigated in this article.