Weil’s philosophy replaced rights with unlimited duty to others

Evidence

Her last work, The Need for Roots, argues, among other things, that none of us has rights, but each one of us has a near-infinite degree of duty and obligation to the other. Whatever the underlying cause of her death — and anorexia nervosa seems to have been involved — no one could deny that she lived out her philosophy with total commitment. Of all the lives touched on in this book, hers is surely the most profound and challenging application of Iris Murdoch’s notion that a philosophy can be ‘inhabited’. Indeed, Murdoch became an admirer of Weil’s thinking, which pushed her to turn away from her early interest in Sartrean existentialism towards a more ethical philosophy based on ‘the Good’. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 632

Categorization

• XREF: Weil’s ‘no rights, only duty’ directly connects to ideas in the reader’s book ‘On Sacrifice: The Real Kind, with Corpses’ — obligation and self-giving.
• ADDENDUM: Weil’s self-starvation as lived sacrifice parallels the ritual sacrifice themes in ‘On Sacrifice’ — duty to others carried to the death.