HOW TO CONCEPTUALIZE ‘CRIMES BEYOND WORDS’? SIMONE WEIL’S PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

It seems undeniable that there are certain kinds of wrongdoing which can hardly be described in terms of rights’ violations. Their wrongful character is so extreme that a different kind of moral language is indispensable to adequately capture their moral gravity. In this paper it is argued that such a language is provided by Simone Weil’s moral theory. The first part of the paper is an attempt at reconstructing this theory, highlighting Weil’s critique of the language of rights and analysing the ‘moral extremes’ that this theory embraces, viz. absolute goodness and absolute evil (which Weil calls ‘injustice’). In this part an attempt is also made at clarifying the normative relations between both ‘extremes’, which Weil did not discuss at greater length. The second part is a case study of a type of injustice, namely crimes committed against the indigenous peoples. In the last part a comparison is made between Weil’s and Hannah Arendt’s views on the legitimacy of using ‘absolutist’ moral language in the public discourse.