Weil e Maritain: l’impensato del personalismo

The article considers the critical relationship between Simone Weil and Jacques Maritain, starting from the essay Human Personality (La personne et le sacré), where Weil questions the bond between the sacredness of the human being and the natural law developed in The Rights of Man and Natural Law. The main point of the critique is found in the radical assumption of human vulnerability, that Weil declines starting from the concept of affliction (malheur). The exposure to suffering, reflecting the desiring structure of the subject, conceived by Weil as “a central need for the good,” lead the Author to emphasize not just the sacredness of the person, but of the possibility of a “passage from the person to the impersonal.” In this article it is claimed that around this threshold lies the unforeseen of Maritain’s personalism and the topical element of the broader anthropology outlined by Weil.