Simone Weil’s discussion of the concept of character, as that which conditions our reactions,
divorces it from the domain of choice and will, presenting it as belonging to the domain of
world rather than as a psychological concept. Stemming from Kant’s discussion of character,
character can be conceived, following Weil, as tantamount to the world of the person as a
whole rather than to the person’s disposition to react. Character is unknowable: although we
cannot but attribute character to peopl…
Read moreSimone Weil’s discussion of the concept of character, as that which conditions our reactions,
divorces it from the domain of choice and will, presenting it as belonging to the domain of
world rather than as a psychological concept. Stemming from Kant’s discussion of character,
character can be conceived, following Weil, as tantamount to the world of the person as a
whole rather than to the person’s disposition to react. Character is unknowable: although we
cannot but attribute character to people, we cannot point at something that could
determinately justify the attribution of character.
My claim is that Wittgenstein’s differentiation between the world of the happy and the world
of the unhappy (in TLP §6.43) reflects a similar conception of character as worldly rather than
psychological.
According to this view, character conditions reactions in that it determines the world in which
a person acts and reacts – its limits, possibilities, even the objects that populate it, and the time
of their existence. I elaborate on this conception of character through a reading of an episode
in book 24 of the Iliad, in which Achilles exhibits his magnanimous character when he
concedes to release Hector’s body to King Priam.
