Subscribe to our newsletter. What a country calls its vital economic interests are not the things which enable its citizens to live, but the things which enable it to make war.
Gasoline is much more likely than wheat to be a cause of international conflict.
Simone Weil not only wrote on her philosophical beliefs, she lived them. Born in 1909 to affluent Parisian Jewish parents, Weil's beliefs started at an early age. By the time she was six, young Simone was quoting Racine. By ten, she announced to her family that she was henceforth a Bolshevik, pass the communist party newspaper, thank you very much. A student of radical individualist philosopher Alain, early studies in philosophy, classical philology, and science were always tinged with an emphasis on human freedom and moral responsibility.