Inese Radzins

This work argues that Simone Weil and Michel Henry appropriate two key insights from Marx—the critique of abstraction and the possibility of living labor—in order to philosophize subjectivity more actively. I place the two philosophers together because there is an uncanny similarity in their interpretations of Marx and specifically, in their use of his notion of praxis. The work begins with Weil’s and Henry’s criticism of philosophy for ignoring what is most human—praxis, or subjectivity. Following Marx’s _First Thesis on Feuerbach_, both argue that philosophy problematically abstracts subjectivity by objectifying it. In other words, philosophy too often identifies the subject as a _thing_ that can be described, analyzed, and examined. Both assert that just as Capital deadens workers and their living laboring capacity, western philosophy is limited by various objectifications that function to deaden the individual, most notably _a knowledge of consciousness. _The two reject these objectifications and argue that Marx’s praxis offers another, more active, modality for considering subjectivity. The second half of this work focuses on what is unique to Weil and Henry: the suggestion that Marx’s living has not been adequately understood. Both suggest that Marx attends to praxis philosophically by creating a new method: one that emphasizes what Weil calls _experiencing_ and Henry designates _knowledge of life._ Attending to this method provides the operative distinction in my work: the difference between a philosophy that objectifies by relying on a _knowledge of consciousness_ and a philosophy that attends to _experiencing_ and depends upon a _knowledge of life_. The key for Weil and Henry is that Marx attends to the active dimension of subjectivity: _real_, lived, existence. For both, praxis and living labor point to a singular dimension of subjectivity that is irreducible to objectification, generalization or even to theorizing. In the concluding section I discuss how both thinkers’ interpretations of Marx provide a different modality for philosophy: the possibility of considering subjectivity subjectively by focusing on cultures that foster _knowledge of life_ and promote the singular dimension that is living labor.

This essay argues that Simone Weil appropriates Marx's notion of labor as life activity in order to reposition work as the site of spirituality. Rather than locating spirituality in a religious tradition, doctrine, profession of faith, or in personal piety, Weil places it in the capacity to work. Spirit arises in the activity of living, and more specifically in laboring—in one's engagement with materiality. Utilizing Marx's distinction between living and dead labor, I show how Weil develops a critique of capital as a “force” that disrupts the individual's relation to her own work by reducing it to the mere activity of calculable “production.” Capital reduces labor to an abstraction and thereby uproots human subjectivity, on a systemic scale, from its connection to living praxis, or what Weil calls spirituality. Life itself is exchanged for a simulacrum of life. In positioning living labor as spiritual, Weil's work offers a corrective to these deadening practices.