How can we seek a politics that truly aims at the common good?

The liberal world order is unravelling. We need to re-think fundamental ideas and institutions.

The Simone Weil Center exists to foster dialogue, diplomacy and debate about the future of the political at the national and the international levels. At home, we argue for a domestic politics which understands that the common good is not some optional ‘extra’, but is instead something crucial to our personal and mutual flourishing. Internationally, we promote an order in which the highest achievements of varied cultures, and spiritual traditions, are maintained, thereby allowing for a diverse and plural community of nations, states and peoples.

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"So, let us not be blind to our differences—but let us also direct attention to our common interests and the means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s futures. And we are all mortal."

- John F. Kennedy

The problem

The Western world has become uprooted from the sources of its own health. And as Simone Weil predicted, it has therefore long been in the business of uprooting others. For decades, the Western model of corporate liberal democracy has been forced on countries through advertisements, regime change and everything in between. This has been in the name of “modernization” and “development,” but the result has often been to force people to relinquish local tradition to become consumers and laborers for international corporations.

Our approach

The neoliberal world order is tottering. What will come after it?

How can we, as post-liberals, hold on to what is of permanent value in the liberal political order?

Can we refuse to allow all local cultures and customs and forms of government to be remade in the image of the liberal West, without falling prey to a relativism about all questions of political order?

These are the questions the Simone Weil Center is dedicated to answering.

What we do

1. We engage in discussions with scholars, journalists, politicians and public intellectuals from various nations, cultures and civilisations, drawn from both the Western tradition as well others from across the globe.

2. We promote these discussions by creating a central, multilingual website for the exchange of substantive scholarly writings among the participants and the wider public.

3. We work with policymakers and those involved in civic, educational and economic projects at the local and international levels to bring these ideas to bear on the concrete circumstances of the present day