Interpreting Weil's The Iliad, or the Poem of Force (part two)

The more complicated issue that I must reconcile in order to support my claim is Weil’s apparent disregard for the Iliad’s focus on kleos and war-glory. In all of her discussion of the devastating effects of force on the participants of war in the Iliad, Weil never mentions that one of the major themes of the poem is achieving kleos – and thus a form of enviable immortality – through excellence in battle. While it is true that Weil avoids touching this topic explicitly, I believe that an implicit treatment of the issue may be teased out of her essay.

Consider her statement that “if the existence of an enemy has made a soul destroy in itself the thing that nature put there, then the only remedy the soul can imagine is the destruction of the enemy” (pg. 24, my edition). This quote illustrates that soldiers in war are faced with the destruction of their souls (i.e. loss of subjectivity) due to their employment of the force-that-kills and by their psychological submission to the force-that-can-kill expressed in the form of the enemy. Faced with one’s destruction (i.e. transformation into an object), the only solution for maintaining subjectivity is the destruction of the enemy.

I believe that this claim parallels the presentation of war in the Iliad, and thus provides the grounds for explaining Weil’s implicit treatment of kleos. When we discussed whether the Iliad was pro- or anti- war, we concluded that it couldn’t be anti-war in the sense of a call for pacifism; war is presented as an inevitable symptom of the human condition. Thus, in the Iliad and in Weil’s essay, warriors must inevitably conclude that destroying the enemy is the only solution available for maintaining the integrity of their agency. Thus, kleos is implicitly accounted for: one must kill one’s enemies in order to prevent oneself from being consumed by the power of force. Excellence in this regard is praised as a form of war-glory; those who achieve kleos are remembered and admired for their ability to maintain their subjectivity in the face of all-enslaving force.

My treatment of the issues here is not conclusive by any means, but I hope to have at least provoked some thought as to how Weil’s essay might be better reconciled with its source text.