Order

Order is introduced as a preeminent need. Weil defines order as an arrangement of society which minimises the situations one encounters where a choice has to be made between incompatible obligations.

Liberty

Liberty is described as the ability to make meaningful choices. It is recognized that societies must inevitably have rules for the common good which restrict freedom to a certain degree. Weil argues that these rules do not truly diminish one's liberty if they meet certain conditions; if their purpose is easily grasped and there aren't too many, then mature individuals of good will should not find the rules oppressive. This is illustrated by describing the habit of "not eating disgusting or dangerous things" as not being an infringement of liberty. The only people who would feel restricted by such rules are characterized as childlike.

Obedience

Obedience is defined as an essential need of the soul as long as it's the sort of obedience that arises from freely given consent to obey a given set of rules or the commands of a leader. Obedience motivated by a fear of penalties or a desire for reward is mere servility and of no value. The author writes that it's important that the social structure has a common goal, the essence of which can be grasped by all, so people can appreciate the purpose of the rules and orders.

Responsibility

Weil says that everyone has a need to feel useful and even essential to others. They should ideally make at least some decisions and have opportunity to show initiative as well as carrying out work. She says the unemployed person is starved of this need. Weil advises that for people of a fairly strong character this need extends to a requirement to take a leadership role for at least part of their lives, and that a flourishing community life will provide sufficient opportunities for all to have their turn commanding others.

Equality

Equality is an essential need when defined as a recognition that everyone is entitled to an equal amount of respect as a human being, regardless of any differences. Weil advises that an ideal society ought to involve a balance of equality and inequality. While there should be social mobility both up and down, if children have a truly equal chance for self-advancement based purely on their own abilities, everyone who ends up in a low grade job will be seen as being there due to their own shortcomings. Weil says an ideal social organisation would involve holding those who enjoy power and privilege to a higher standard of conduct than those who don't; in particular a crime from an employer and against employees should be punished much more severely than a crime from an employee against his or her employer.

Hierarchism

Weil writes of the importance of a system of hierarchy in which one feels devotion towards superiors, not as individuals, but as symbols. Hierarchism represents the order of the heavenly realm, and it helps one to fit into one's moral place.

Honour

Honour is the need for a special sort of respect over and above the respect automatically due to every human being. An individual's honour relates to how well their conduct measures up to certain criteria, which vary according to the social milieu inhabited by the individual. The need for honour is best satisfied when people are able to participate in a shared noble tradition. For a profession to satisfy this need, it should have an association able to "keep alive the memory of all the store of nobility, heroism, probity, generosity and genius spent in the exercise of that profession".

Punishment

Two sorts of necessary punishment are discussed. Disciplinary punishments help to reinforce an individual's good conscience, by providing external support in the battle against falling into vice. The second and most essential sort of punishment is the punitive. Weil considers that in a sense the commission of a crime puts the individual outside of the chain of obligations that form the good society, and that punishment is essential to re-integrate the individual into lawful society.

Freedom of Opinion

Weil says it's essential for people to be free to express any opinion or idea. However she advises that very harmful views should not be expressed in the part of the media that is responsible for shaping public opinion.

Security

Security is described as freedom from fear and terror, except under brief and exceptional circumstances. She says that permanent fear causes a "semi-paralysis of the soul".

Risk

Weil argues that risk, in the right amount, can be enough to protect one from a detrimental type of boredom and teach one how to appropriately deal with fear, but not be so much that one is overcome with fear.

Personal Property

Weil writes that the soul suffers feelings of isolation if deprived of objects to call its own, which can serve as extensions of the body. She advises that where possible people should be able to own their own homes and the tools of their trade.

Collective Property

The need for collective property is satisfied when people, from the richest to the poorest, feel a shared sense of ownership as well as enjoyment of public buildings, land and events.

Truth

Weil asserts the need for truth is the most sacred of all needs. It is compromised when people don't have access to reliable and accurate sources of information. Because working people often lack the time to verify what they read in books and the mass media, writers who introduce avoidable errors should be held accountable. Propaganda should be banned and people who deliberately lie in the media should be liable to severe penalties.

Uprootedness in Towns

Weil asserts that in 20th century France and elsewhere the condition of uprootedness is most advanced in towns, especially among the lower paid workers who have a total dependence on money. Weil writes their uprootedness is so severe it's effectively as though they had been banished from their own country and then temporally reinstated on sufferance, forced by oppressive employers to have almost their entire attention taken up with drudgery and piecework. For the urban poor without work it's even worse, unemployment is described as "uprootedness squared."^[14]

The gulf between high culture from the mass of the people that has been widening since the renaissance is another factor contributing to up rootedness.^[14] Education now has only limited effect in helping to create roots as academic culture has lost its connection both with this world and the next. Many academics have become obsessed with learning not for a desire for knowledge for its own sake but due to the utility it offers for attaining social prestige.

Weil discussed how uprootedness is a self-propagating condition, giving the example of the Romans and Germans after World War I as uprooted people who set about uprooting others. Whoever is rooted doesn't uproot others – Weil opines that the worst examples of misconduct by the Spanish and English during the colonial age were from adventurers who lacked deep connections with the life of their own countries. Both the left and right include activists who want the working class to be rooted again, but on the left there is sizeable contingent who merely want everyone to be reduced to the same level of unrootedness as the proletariats, and on the right a section who want the workers to remain unrooted the better to be able to exploit them. Disunity prevents good intentioned activists from having much effect.

Another factor hampering reform efforts is the tendency of human nature not to pay attention to misfortune – she discusses how unions often spend most of their energies looking out for relatively well off special interests, neglecting the weak who were being most oppressed, such as youth, women and immigrant workers.

Weil proposes various measures to address urban uprootedness. She says little can be done for uprooted adults, but it would be easier to rescue the next generation. One of her first suggestions is to eliminate psychic shock experienced by young workers when they transition from school where authority figures care about their wellbeing to the world of work where they're effectively just a "cog in a machine."^[15] Another ill to remedy is the exclusion of workers from an imaginative share in their companies' strategy.^[14]

Machines should be designed with the needs of the workmen in mind, not just the demands of cost efficient production.^[16] The author suggests that if people have a suitable introduction to work as children, who tend to see the workplace as an intriguing world reserved for adults, then their future experience of work would forever be "lit up by poetry".^[17] Weil also advises that a revival of apprenticeships and the original Tour de France would be of great value.^[18]

Weil says that many of the workers' complaints arise from obsessions created by distress and that the best of way of reacting is not to appease the obsessions but to fix the underlying distress – then all kinds of problems in society just disappear.^[17]

Reforms in education would also be needed. Weil says providing workers with high culture in a form they can suggest is much simpler than objectors expect. There is no need to try and relay large volumes of literature, as a little pure truth lights the soul just as much as a lot of pure truth. The relationships between various educational topics and everyday life as experienced by the workers should be explored. Without watering down high culture, its truths should be expressed in a language "perceptible to the heart".^[19]

Weil says that to abolish urban uprootedness it will be essential to establish forms of industrial production and culture where workers could feel at home, and she discussed various reforms that she advised for France after the war ^[20]

Uprootedness in the Countryside

Weil writes that though uprootedness is not as far advanced in the countryside as in towns, the needs of the peasants should receive equal attention to the need of industrial workers: firstly because it is contrary to nature for the land to be worked by uprooted individuals and secondly as one of the causes of the peasant's distress is the feeling that progressive movements ignore them in favour of industrial workers.^[21]

A peasant's requirements include a strong need to own land, which is important for them to feel rooted. Boredom can be a problem as many peasants do the same work throughout their lives, starting from about age 14. Weil suggests a tradition should be established for peasant youths take a few months out for travel in their late teens, similar to the tour de France that used to exist for apprentice artisans. Those who desire it should also be able to return to education for a year or two.^[22]

Rural communities require different teaching methods compared to towns. Religious teaching should be made relevant to the countryside, with emphasis on the pastoral scenes in the Bible. Science should be presented in terms of the great natural cycles, such as the energy from the sun being captured by photosynthesis, being concentrated into seeds and fruit, passing into man and then partly returning to the soil as he expends energy working the land. Weil writes that if peasants have both well tailored scientific and religious ideas at the back of their minds while they work the fields, it will increase their appreciation of beauty and "Permeate their labour with poetry" ^[23]

In the last few pages of this section the author dwells on her central theme – that the great vocation of our times is to create a civilisation which recognises the spiritual nature of work. She draws further parallels between spiritual mechanism and physical mechanism, referring to parables in the Bible concerning seeds and then discussing our scientific understanding about how plants reach the surface by consuming the energy in their seeds and then grow upwards towards the light. Weil suggests similar parallels could be targeted for urban workers. She says if people can have both spiritual and scientific ideas converging in the act of work, then even the fatigue associated with toil can be transformed for good, becoming "the pain that makes the beauty of the world penetrates right into the core of the human body."^[24]

Weil deplores the tendency for education to train workers so they only think intellectually in their leisure hours. She says that while fundamental ideas need not be given conscious attention while workers are busy, they should always be present in the background. Weil presents the case of two women both engaged in sewing; one being a happy expectant mother, the other being a prisoner. While both have their attention occupied by the same technical problems, the pregnant woman never forgets the life growing inside her while the prisoner is always in fear of punishment. Weil says the whole social problem is mirrored in the women's contrasting attitudes. She discusses the two principal forms of greatness, the false greatness based on world conquest ^[25] and true greatness which is spiritual.^[24]

Like any elevated idea, care should be taken when promoting the union of work and spirituality lest it become discredited due to cynicism and suspicion, and thereby impossible to achieve. But Weil suggests it wouldn't need over selling by the authorities as it would be a solution to the problem on everyone's lips concerning the lack of balance created by rapidly developing material science that hasn't been matched with social or spiritual progress. She also suggests the movement towards recognising the spirituality of work could be embraced by all section of society – it would be welcomed by progressives and conservatives alike, with even atheist communists not opposing the idea, as certain quotes from Marx deplored the lack of spirituality in the capitalist world of work – so the movement could create unity.^[24]

Uprootedness and Nationhood

At the start of this section Weil regrets the fact that the nation has become the only collective accessible to most people which is still at least partially rooted. She discusses how institutions both larger and smaller than the nation have been uprooted, such as Christendom, regional and local life, and the family. With regards to the family for example, for most people it has contracted just to the nuclear unit of man, wife and children. Brothers and sisters are already a little bit distant, with very few ever giving the slightest consideration to relatives that died more than 10 years before they were born, or to those who will be born after they have died.

Weil discusses the particular problems affecting the French that result from their unique history: the hatred of kings and distrust of all forms of central authority due to the succession of mostly cruel kings that followed Charles V; the trend instigated by Richelieu which saw the state "sucking out all forms of life" from regional and local institutions; the distrust of religion caused by the Church siding with State; the revival in workers' spirits after the Revolution being undone by the 1871 massacre; the counter reaction that set in after World War I, because during the War the French people had exerted themselves beyond the extent provided for by the limited energies they could draw from their diminished patriotic feelings.^[26][27]

Various problems relating to patriotism are discussed: how some lack any patriotism at all, while for others patriotism is too weak a motivation for the demands of wartime. Yet another problem is that for some patriotism is based on a false conception of greatness, on the success one's nation has had in conquering others – this sort of patriotism can lead people to turning a blind eye to whatever evils their country has committed.^[28] Weil suggests the ideal form of patriotism should be based on compassion.^[29] She compares the often antagonised and prideful feelings resulting from a patriotism based on grandeur with the warmth of a patriotism based on tender feeling of pity and an awareness of how a country is ultimately fragile and perishable. A patriotism based on compassion allows one to still see the flaws in one's country, while still remaining ever ready to make the ultimate sacrifice.^[30]