 Weil’s concept of “roots” is crucial to her late political thought. With connotations of both vitality and vulnerability, “roots” conceptualizes human society as dynamic and living while attesting to the necessity of stability and security if growth and flourishing are to occur on the level of the individual. Beyond the organic metaphor on the level of the natural, her concept of roots serves as a kind of bridge between the reality of society and the ideal of supernatural justice. Roots do this by manifesting human subjection to material and historical conditions, including the need to participate in the life of a community, to feel a sense of connection to a place, and to maintain temporal links, e.g., to cultural history and to hopes for the future. In turn, a rooted community allows for the development of the individual with a view toward God or eternal values. As such, and contra her early and middle maintenance of a critical distance from any collectivity (or Great Beast, to use the Platonic metaphor she frequently employs), in her late thought Weil sees roots as allowing for a “new patriotism” based on compassion. The establishing of roots (l’enracinement) enables multiple relations to the world (e.g., on the level of the nation, the organically developing community, the school) that at once nourish the individual and the community.