The Religious Basis of Culture

When T. S. Eliot wrote his preface to Simone Weil's The Need for Roots in 1952 his own fame helped launch the book to a prominent place in the Englishspeaking world. The preface despite its warm admiration for Simone Weil, however, says little about the content of the book. What it does do is praise Weil as a balanced thinker who is ‘more truly a lover of order and hierarchy than most of those who call themselves conservative, and more truly a lover of the people than most of those who call themselves Socialist’. Since Eliot's stated intention in the preface was merely to get the reader to hold his prejudices in check and to be patient with those of Weil what he wrote was perhaps sufficient. Yet one wishes that he had said more; not to tease out further comments from one so celebrated but because Eliot himself had spent a certain amount of time thinking and writing on many of the problems which The Need for Roots addresses. His efforts are found in two monographs. The Idea of a Christian Society and Notes Towards the Definition of Culture which have been collected and published as Christianity and Culture

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