"Force is that which makes a thing of whoever submits to it. Exercised to the extreme, it makes the human being a thing quite literally, that is, a dead body. Someone was there and, the next moment, no one. The Iliad never tires of presenting us this tableau […]

The force that kills is summary and crude. How much more varied in operation, how much more stunning in effect is that other sort of force, that which does not kill, or rather does not kill just yet. It will kill for a certainty, or it will kill perhaps, or it may merely hang over the being it can kill at any instant; in all cases, it changes the human being into stone. From the power to change a human being into a thing by making him die there comes another power, in its way more momentous, that of making a still living human being into a thing. He is living, he has a soul; he is nonetheless a thing. Strange being—a thing with a soul; strange situation for the soul! Who can say how it must each moment conform itself, twist and contort itself? It was not created to inhabit a thing; when it compels itself to do so, it endures violence through and through."

Simone Weil on her text about The Iliad, or The Poem of Force

I was introduced to Simone Weil and her thoughts on the force by a philosopher I admired when he spoke about this poem while discussing the war in Palestine with his audience. I find them to be profound. By far, it has been the definition of force I find more natural to talk about when I reflect on the nature of violence.

You guys might like it or discuss it.

Keep on fighting the good fight, fellow compañeros.