Prometheus’ Returns: Notes on Marx, Simone Weil, Rachel Bespaloff

The essay develops a reflection on the phantasmatic (re)emergence of Prometheus in the work of disparate thinkers such as Karl Marx, Simone Weil, and, in the barest concluding mention, Rachel Bespaloff. The philosophical imago of Prometheus has long enjoyed a vast circulation in the discourses of the European human sciences, especially in Germany. However, well beyond Europe and the Western world, it resonates with archaic motives and anthropological constants relating to the fiery and luminous character, to the warmth and openness, of life in human form. Marx is considered especially by reference to his doctoral dissertation, Difference between Democritus’ and Epicurus’ Philosophy of Nature, presented in Jena in spring 1841. The analysis of Weil’s thought focuses on the essay “L’Iliade, ou le poème de la force,” published between December 1940 and January 1941, but includes as well a broad range of notebook entries and posthumously published essays such as “Concerning the Pythagorean Doctrine.”