Simone Weil om demokratiet

Christian Evensen says: september 9, 2013 at 8:19 pm 

Jeg var i skogen i helgen, og hadde med meg en bok av den franske filosofen Simone Weil, som jeg leste ved bålknitringen, helt alene, borte fra alt valgkjas. Hun har flere interessant tanker, skrevet ned i kjølvannet av 30-tallet og andre verdenskrigs erfaringer, som overraskende nok fortsatt føles treffende i dag. Jeg siterer noen utdrag, som kan leses i forbindelse med hvordan vi organiserer demokratiet i politiske partier: 

"Protection of freedom of thought requires that no group should be permitted by law to express an opinion. For when a group starts having opinions, it inevitably tends to impose them on its members. Sooner or later, these individuals find themselves debarred, with a greater of lesser degree of severity, and on a number of problems of greater or lesser importance, from expressing opinions opposed to those of the group, unless they care to leave it. But a break with any group to which one belongs always involves suffering—at any rate of a sentimental kind. And just as danger, exposure to suffering are healthy and necessary elements in the sphere of action, so are they unhealthy influences in the exercise of the intelligence. A fear, even a passing one, always provokes either a weakening or a tautening, depending on the degree of courage, and that is all that is required to damage the extremely delicate and fragile instrument of precision which constitutes our intelligence. Even friendship is, from this point of view, a great danger. The intelligence is defeated as soon as the expression of one’s thoughts is preceded, explicitly or implicitly, by the little word ‘we’. And when the light of the intelligence grows dim, it is not very long before the love of good becomes lost. 

The immediate, practical solution would be the abolition of political parties. Party strife, as it existed under the Third Republic, is intolerable. The single party, which is, moreover, its inevitable outcome, is the worst evil of all. The only remaining possibility is a public life without parties. [...] A democracy where public life is made up of strife between political parties is incapable of preventing the formation of a party whose avowed aim is the overthrow of that democracy. If such a democracy brings in discriminatory laws, it cuts its own throat. If it doesn’t, it is just as safe as a little bird in front of a snake."