“Being Rooted in Love”: The Trinitarian Ontological Perspective of Simone Weil’s Notion of Rootedness
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The author is trying to do too much in a short paper. The introduction is not clear and does not have a clear depiction regarding how the paper is logically argued. Indeed, I found it difficult to find a coherent argument. Concepts are not clearly defined or applied. Large generalizations are made without any clear support.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
Thank you for reading our article and for your suggestions for improvement.
We have tried to incorporate all your suggestions.
- In order to delimit and better focus our argument, we have decided to take out the first part of the initial article, which focused more on the anthropological and political aspect of Weil's notion of "rootedness", in order to concentrate and improve the second part, dedicated to its relational and trinitarian foundation from the trinitarian ontology.
- We have thus modified the title, the abstract and the introduction (we have marked them in yellow), where we have also tried to better construct the argumentative structure as you indicated.
- The text has also been enriched with both primary and secondary bibliography, as you will see in the references, in the text and in the footnotes, in order to better support the assertions made and not to fall into arbitrary generalizations.
- At the editor's suggestion, we have also tried to elaborate better on the theoretical aspect of Trinitarian ontology and why Weil's thought is consistent with it.
In the hope that you will find these new adjustments suitable for the publication of our text, we thank you once again for your precious remarks.
Yours sincerely.
Reviewer 2 Report
This article first offers a detailed discussion of Simone Weil's notions of rootedness and uprootedness; it then elaborates an ontological foundation for the notion of rootedness. The paper is clearly structured, well written and very interesting.
However, the article has a serious flaw: It cites (almost) no secondary literature on Weil. The only author apart from Weil who is treated in detail is Karol Wojtyla - this is a rather arbitrary choice from the point of view of Weil research.
Apart from that, I have only two minor comments:
line 60: "The concept of roots as a fundamental human right is based on free and active participation in the community that can only be the fruit of love, as the most characteristic act of the human being."
Whose view is that? If it is Weil's, then a citation is missing. If not, what is the basis of this claim, how is it substantiated?
lines 74-108 contain the expression "the author" several times, but referring to different persons; although it is clear from the context, who is meant by the term in each case, it would help the reader if it were replaced by an expression that refers more explicitely to the person who is meant
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
Thank you for reading our article and for your valuable suggestions for improvement.
Please note that we have taken into account your criticism regarding the arbitrary choice of Wojtyla, so we have decided to take out the first part of the initial article, which focused more on the anthropological and political aspect of Weil's notion of "rootedness", in order to concentrate and improve the second part, dedicated to its relational and trinitarian foundation from the trinitarian ontology.
We have therefore modified the title, the abstract and the introduction (marked in yellow).
At the editor's suggestion, we have also tried to better elaborate the theoretical aspect of trinitarian ontology and why Weil's thought is consistent with it.
Finally, we have also increased the secondary bibliography as you will see in the references, in the text and in the footnotes.
In the hope that you will find these new adjustments adequate for the publication of our text, we thank you once again for your precious remarks.
Yours sincerely.
Reviewer 3 Report
I really enjoyed engaging with the article, The need for roots: an anthropology proposal founded in a trinitarian ontology. It offers a solid interpretation of the work of Simone Weil and presents some genuinely interesting proposals, as well as possibilities for further theoretical investigation. My recommendations here are not meant to be taken as unarguable. The author may take what I say seriously or leave it. I do hope, however, that what I do say might act as a way for the author to consider how to better argue what is being argued.
I would recommend, for starters, a slightly heavier edit throughout, starting with the title, which I would suggest should read as follows: The need for roots: an anthropological proposal founded in a trinitarian ontology. The abstract is especially in need of some editorial revision.
Then, leaving the technical stuff behind, I would like to put forward a few other suggestions and contentions that I think the author of the article should contend with to refine the article for publication.
First, I think it would be helpful, early on, to simply guide the reader more definitely concerning the general structure of the argument. Articulate as clearly as possible, in other words, why and how the argument is constructed in the way that it has been constructed. In particular, I think that the build-up to a trinitarian ontology makes complete sense. However, two things strike me as needing attention. (1) To begin with, it does not seem to me that the precise theoretical problem, or form of the problem, around migration has been properly formulated. This strikes me as important because it would be in delineating the problem more precisely that the reader could more easily see the need for the Weilienne answer provided. (2) Moreover, I don’t think the trinitarian ontology provided at the tail-end of the argument is sufficiently robust as a foundation. This is an important matter since this is mentioned in the very title of the article. I myself hold to a trinitarian ontology, so this is not a critique of the premise that Weil holds to a trinitarian ontology. I agree with the premise. Rather, I mean simply to point out the need for a more careful articulation of precisely why and/or in what way this ontology is significant in terms of the preceding argument. How, for instance, does this trinitarian ontology maintain the metaxu discussed. And how, to take another example, is the relation between the divine order( God as a trinity) and the anthropological order (relating to the migrant crisis) significant?
Second, I think the author needs to be more mindful of how things have changed such that our own context (locally in most countries and globally) is radically different from that of Weil. A Weilienne sense of what it would mean to find roots now must necessarily, then, acquire a slightly differently articulated space. Most crucially, the issue of uprootedness that Weil discusses applies rather alarmingly, (I’m thinking here of lines 107-112) not just to immigrants but to people who live in their own homelands. Weil lived in a world that was, at that time, by no means as cosmopolitan/multicultural as the same world today (even if signs of the coming cosmopolitanism were well on the way), and so the sense of genuine citizenship (and/or foreignness) was not yet as eroded as it is today.
Third, and related to this second point above, is the problem noted by Byung-Chul Han that otherness itself has been “expelled”. For the self to relate to the other requires a distinction (suggested, of course, in the distinction between persons of the trinity, even within the shared nature of the trinity). The self must not be like the other, even while sharing in the nature of the other, in order for dialogue to be possible. This seems to me to be an essential problem faced by “presentising” Weil’s proposals. Weil’s perspective, as put forward here, assumes: (a) alienation is a problem faced mainly by migrants and not by citizens when the truth is sometimes almost the opposite (in Europe, at least), where migrants are welcomed while anyone asserting patriotic allegiance to their own country is deemed almost insane; and, to complicate matters, (b) that what results from placing ‘self’ and ‘other’ into contact is dialogue and not dilution. Unfortunately, again, as Han’s work suggests, dilution seems to be the norm. The “openness to [the] other milieux” (line 269; cf. 280) requires an “other” but what happens when the current anti-culture is dead set against otherness in the name of consumable otherness? The multiplying of contacts has often lead not to enrichment but to further impoverishment.
Fourth, relating to this exact point. Mention is made of “culture”. Mention is also made of “totalitarianism” (cf. line 300). Regarding the idea of culture, Philip Rieff has described the shift in the West towards an ‘anti-culture.’ He means that what was once defined by clear, distinct boundaries and taboos has given rise to an ethos that forbids prohibition. Liberal democracies have, in general, eroded boundaries and ethical norms. Most of this has taken place after Weil’s death, so (and this is my main point) some kind of translation is needed to bring her point of view into the present context. Then, there’s that idea of “totalitarianism.” I know that there’s a complicated discourse around this but I just want to say that the current ‘totalitarianism’ (the cultural hegemony of liberal democracies and the prohibition of all prohibitions) is by no means identical to what Weil was thinking of. We don’t have Hitlers and Stalins to fear as much as we have influencers and television personalities to fear. The rule is not by terror but by entertainment (as Neil Postman pointed out in Amusing Ourselves to Death). Arguably, we have the opposite of totalitarianism to worry about: not the imposition of a rigid but false form, but rather the imposition of absolute formlessness.
These are the thoughts that occurred to me while reading the article and, as the above suggests, my sense is that it would help if the author would simply ‘translate’ Weil’s ideas a little more crisply for our present context, especially to address a more clearly defined ‘problem’. This is not to disparage the entire argument, however. There is a great deal of value in it and my suggestions here may end up needing to be addressed only in a very small space. I will leave it to the author, however, to determine this.
As suggested in my above assessment, I do think the article would be improved by more careful language editing.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
Thank you for having read our work in depth and in detail, as well as for the important and opportune suggestions to improve its content and form.
With regard to this, we would like to tell you that, having received criticism from one of the reviewers that we "dealt with too many points", we have decided to remove the first part of the initial article, which focused more on the anthropological and political aspect of Weil's notion of "rootedness", in order to concentrate on and improve the second part, dedicated to its relational and trinitarian foundation from the trinitarian ontology.
We have thus modified the title, the abstract and the introduction (we have marked them in yellow), where we have also tried to better construct the argumentative structure as you indicated.
We found the various suggestions you made very interesting and stimulating, and they will certainly be useful for future approaches and elaborations. However, having taken out the first part, we have not been able to adopt them in depth, although we have tried to clarify certain of Weil's ideas (idolatry, for example) in the text. In the same way, we have decided to keep the argument more generic and less declined in the present day, focusing rather on Weil's vision, hoping that it may eventually inspire further deepenings more connected with the diverse realities and new uprootings of our time.
At the editor's suggestion, we have also tried to better elaborate the theoretical aspect of trinitarian ontology and why Weil's thought is consistent with it.
Finally, we have also increased the secondary bibliography as you will see in the references, in the text and in the footnotes.
In the hope that you will find these new adjustments appropriate for the publication of our text, we thank you once again for your valuable comments.
Yours sincerely.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
This revision is much clearer. I do have a few minor issues. First, the opening paragraph is confusing. The author shifts pronouns from her to him. I cannot make out if the author is talking about Weil or someone else. Second, please use more inclusive language. The author uses "man" to refer to human beings in several places. I understand that Weil, writing during her time, would have used "man" to refer to human beings, but most academics no longer use this. Third, I would advise some qualification. There is an understandable tendency in the article to universalize Weil's and the author's ideas. I suggest indicating that this is clearly a Western Christian anthropology, which may have little or no relevance to Indigenous anthropologies.
See above.
Author Response
First of all, thank you for your review:
- About the first paragraph we make all the changes suggested. Indeed, we make a mistake in the translation of the pronouns.
- We agree with you in this point. We tried to use the language of the philosopher, but is right that we not longer use this expressions today. So we change it and we think that is a way of differentiate with Simone Weil historical context.
- Simone Weil is a thinker that precisely wants to show that her thought was applicable to any culture. She studied a lot of different cultures and religions and she always found the truth and love contained in them. That why we chose the direct quote where she states that every religion is the true religion. As we show in the paper:
In this same way, the thinker also considers religion as a ‘mother tongue’ given by the divine so that every human community can pronounce the name of God and relate to him. Hence her incisive maxim: “Every religion is the only true one” (cf. Weil, 1997, p. 326).
Reviewer 2 Report
There is still relatively little secondary literature taken into account, but for the specific subject matter this seems tolerable to me.
Author Response
Thank you for your suggestions. In this new version of our paper, we added the following:
In section 3. "Return to religion," lines196 to 205, we added a quote from Castleton, which complete reference is:
Castleton, Alexander. “Tecnología, desarraigo, y prácticas focales: José Ortega y Gasset y Albert Borgmann frente a la alienación tecnológica del mundo”. Humanidades: revista de la Universidad de Montevideo, nº 10, (2021): 39-68. https://doi.org/10.25185/10.3
In the last section, lines 396 to 392, we added a quote from Jane Doring about love. The complete reference is:
Doring, E. Jane (2010). Simone Weil and the specter of self-perpetuating force. Notre Dame: Notre Dame Press.
