The list of obligations towards the human being should
correspond to the list of such human needs as are vital, analogous to hunger.
Among such needs, there are some which are physical, like
hunger itself. They are fairly easy to enumerate. They are concerned with
protection against violence, housing, clothing, heating, hygiene and medical
attention in the case of illness. There are others which have no connexion with
the physical side of life, but are concerned with its moral side. Like the
former, however, they are earthly, and are not directly related, so far as our intelligence
is able to perceive, to the eternal destiny of man. They form, like our
physical needs, a necessary condition of our life on earth. Which means to say
that if they are not satisfied, we fall little by little into a state more or
less resembling death, more or less akin to a purely vegetative existence.
They are much more difficult to recognize and to enumerate
than are the needs of the body. But every one recognizes that they exist. All
the different forms of cruelty which a conqueror can exercise over a subject
population, such as massacre, mutilation, organized famine, enslavement or large-scale deportation, are generally
considered to be measures of a like description even though a man’s liberty or
his native land are not physical necessities. Every one knows that there are
forms of cruelty which can injure a man’s life without injuring his body. They
are such as deprive him of a certain form of food necessary to the life of the
soul.
--Simone Weil, The Need for Roots
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