The Need for Roots: prelude towards a declaration of duties towards mankind (French: L'Enracinement, prélude à une déclaration des devoirs envers l'être humain) is a book by Simone Weil.

The work diagnoses the causes of the social, cultural and spiritual malaise which Weil saw as afflicting 20th century civilisation, particularly Europe but also the rest of the world.

Weil specifies the requirements that must be met so that peoples can once again feel rooted, in a cultural and spiritual sense, to their environment and to both the past and to expectations for the future.

The book discusses the political, cultural and spiritual currents that ought to be nurtured so that people have access to sources of energy which will help them lead fulfilling, joyful and morally good lives.

Its initial form was a report which Weil had been asked to write for the Free French Resistance movement concerning the possibilities for effecting a regeneration in France once the Germans had been driven back.

According to biographer Richard Rees, her whole life's work can be viewed as an attempt to elucidate the concept, which she saw as the one great original idea of the West.

Weil backs up her ideas on the needs of the soul by mentioning that Christian, ancient Egyptian and other traditions have held similar moral views throughout history, particularly on the obligation to help those suffering from hunger.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Uprootedness has many causes, with two of the most potent being conquest of a nation by foreigners and the growing influence of money which tends to corrode most other forms of motivation.

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.

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.

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.

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.

[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] 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.

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.

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 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] 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.

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.

As an example she discussed the habit of mathematicians who deliberately obscure proofs for their discoveries, showing that they were motivated by competitive instincts and the desire to be recognised above their peers.

[38] Weil's first English biographer Richard Rees has written that Need for Roots can be described as an investigation into the causes of unhappiness and proposals for its cure.

[39] According to Dr Stephen Plant, writing in 1996, Need for Roots remains just as relevant today as it was in the 1940s when the majority of European workers were employed by heavy industry.

[41] The Times Literary Supplement wrote that the book is about politics in the "widest Aristotelian understanding of the term" and that is displayed "exceptional originality and breath of human sympathy".

[43] Albert Camus was so taken with the work he wrote it seemed to him "impossible to imagine the rebirth of Europe without taking into consideration the suggestions outlined in it by Simone Weil.

[45] Poet and critic Kenneth Rexroth took a negative view of the book, writing in 1957 that it "was a collection of egregious nonsense" and "a weird, embarrassing relic of a too immediate past.