Simone Weil (1909-1943). A political theorist and activist, a revolutionary and a philosopher and religious mystic. She starved herself to death in protest against the Nazi occupation of France.

• Preface by/T. S. Eliot -- Translator’s Foreword -- PART I The Needs of the Soul -- Order -- Liberty -- Obedience -- Responsibility -- Equality -- Hierarchism -- Honour -- Punishment -- Freedom of Opinion -- Security -- Risk -- Private Property -- Collective Property -- Truth -- PART II Uprootedness -- Uprootedness in the Towns -- Uprootedness in the Countryside -- Uprootedness and Nationhood -- PART III The Growing of Roots.

'We must simply expose ourselves to the personality of a woman of genius, of a kind of genius akin to that of the saints.' - T.S. Eliot in the Preface'What is required if men and women are to feel at home in society and are to recover their vitality? Into wrestling with that question, Simone Weil put the very substance of her mind and temperament. The apparently solid edifices of our prepossessions fall down before her onslaught like ninepins, and she is as fertile and forthright in her positive suggestions . . . she can be relied upon to toss aside the superficial and to come to grips with the essential and the profound.' - Times Literary Supplement