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What can I hope for (from politics)? 1143
each other through a perpetual oscillation. Equilibrity alone reduces force to
be nothing. If we know in what way society is unbalanced, we must do what
we can to add weight to the lighter scale... (...) But we must have formed a
conception of equilibrium and be ever ready to change sides like justice, ‘that
fugitive from the camp of conquerors’. (The meaning of the famous passage in
the Georgias about geometry.) No unlimited development is possible in the
nature of things; the world is entirely based on measure and equilibrium, and
it is the same with the city."
Finally, there is solid ground under our feet: back to Plato; back to
Aristotle. What is there to see here, however? The proponents of
freedom have been arguing for at least a hundred years over who can
find more “repressive structures” in human relations: in the division of
labour, culture, religion, regarding public power, between sexes and
races and so on. ‘They tirelessly urge us to put an end to the violence,
exclusion and expropriation that lie at the bottom of pre-existing
conditions. They reproach us if we fail to do so and irritably deflect
responsibility if their followers’ eagerness results in ever newer and more
cruel repressive systems. Few among them have reached the point of
recognising the necessity of the asymmetry of social conditions and the
unavoidability of the compulsion present in institutions. Or, if they do,
few forgo using this compulsion in service of the noble goal, the
hammering of the asymmetries into symmetry; let it cost what it will.
Weil reminds us that never in the course of human history has anyone
managed to eliminate the institutions of compulsion standing in the
way of an order based on mutual understanding and acceptance; at most,
one can play them off against one another. ‘The closest we can get to the
desirable state of a lack of compulsion is if these forces balance and
cancel each other out and thus hinder the members of the political
community from seeking the truth as little as possible — simply put,
from communicating with each other and holding a fair, continuously
renewing dialogue over their common goals — since this is the original
raison d'etre of politics and the only thing which makes their coexistence
bearable.
It is now perhaps clear that this conviction demands significantly
more from its proponents than the division of power or the limitation
of the market. It requires the restoration of a third regulatory principle
besides bureaucratic rationality and market competition (even in
opposition to these two, if needs be), as the final source of legitimacy:
135 Simone Weil: Gravity and Grace. Routledge, London, 2002, p.171.