What centrally motivates Simone Weil as a political philosopher is well captured in the title of Part 1 of The Need for Roots: the soul, what the soul needs, and what politics can contribute toward meeting the needs of the soul. The Need for Roots (written in early 1943 and first published as L’Enracinement in 1949) was composed as a set of reflections, commissioned by the Free French headquartered in London, on a desirable reconstruction of French social and political life, in anticipation of the eventual expulsion of the fascists who were then in command of France. For all the idiosyncrasies and even perversities of the text, Iris Murdoch was right to describe the book as “one of the very few profound and original political treatises of our time.” Weil’s project is to give an account of what constitutes a truly well-ordered soul, and then, on the basis of that account, to offer proposals about how France, subsequent to its liberation, could be set on a suitable cultural, economic, political, and (especially) spiritual foundation. Something truly essential about her vision of politics is conveyed when she writes on page 213 that “the true mission of the French movement in London is, by reason even of the military and political circumstances, a spiritual mission before being a military and political one.” If political philosophy in the grandest sense is aimed at the articulation of a comprehensive conception of the good, Weil’s practice of political philosophy easily meets that standard.