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The Continuing Legacy of Simone Weil analyzes the core work of Simone Weil and her views on the nature of the human condition, humanity’s relationship with God, and the objective state of our world. David Pollard argues that though much of Weil’s work was focused on particular conditions operating in Europe prior to and including the period of the Second World War, much of it is as relevant today as it was then.
Albert Camus called her "the only great spirit of our time." She was one of the most prominent French political thinkers of this century. She was a brilliant social activist, a vigilant and critical Marxist. Her religious and philosophical writings are remarkable in their originality. And yet Simone Weil died without ever writing a complete book and without ever formulating a major intellectual testament. In this study of her life and thought, John Hellman synthesizes insights drawn from her varied, fragmentary writings--notebooks, essays, and letters--into a single, highly original view of the world. This fascinating book reinforces the belief that Simone Weil remains one of the most imaginative and out-of-the-ordinary forces in twentieth-century political thought and social activism.
Known as the “patron saint of all outsiders,” Simone Weil (1909–43) was one of the twentieth century’s most remarkable thinkers, a philosopher who truly lived by her political and ethical ideals. In a short life framed by the two world wars, Weil taught philosophy to lycée students and organized union workers, fought alongside anarchists during the Spanish Civil War and labored alongside workers on assembly lines, joined the Free French movement in London and died in despair because she was not sent to France to help the Resistance. Though Weil published little during her life, after her death, thanks largely to the efforts of Albert Camus, hundreds of pages of her manuscripts were published to critical and popular acclaim. While many seekers have been attracted to Weil’s religious thought, Robert Zaretsky gives us a different Weil, exploring her insights into politics and ethics, and showing us a new side of Weil that balances her contradictions—the rigorous rationalist who also had her own brand of Catholic mysticism; the revolutionary with a soft spot for anarchism yet who believed in the hierarchy of labor; and the humanitarian who emphasized human needs and obligations over human rights. Reflecting on the relationship between thought and action in Weil’s life, The Subversive Simone Weil honors the complexity of Weil’s thought and speaks to why it matters and continues to fascinate readers today.
In the last decade, interest in the writings of French philosopher Simone Weil (1909-1943) has surged. Weil is admired for her militant syndicalism, her factory experience and participation in the French resistance, but it is above all the eclectic and rich character of her work that has increasingly attracted scholarly attention. Weil reflected on subjects as diverse as quantum physics, Greek tragedy, bankruptcy, colonialism, technology, education, and religious metaphysics, but perhaps most interesting is the way that her work seems to defy any clear ideological labelling: Marxist, anarchist, liberal, conservative and republican all seem to fall short in describing the complexity of Weil’s thinking. Adding to the interpretive difficulty is the fact that Weil often expressed biting criticisms of most things political. What this edited volume argues is that it is precisely Weil’s unclassifiable nature, combined with her sharp and sometimes ambivalent criticisms of politics, that make her work a most timely and fascinating object of study for contemporary political philosophy. It proposes a two-pronged approach to her thought: first, via a series of conversations set up between Weil and key authors in modern and contemporary political theory (e.g. Sandel, Rawls, Ahmed, Agamben, Orwell); and secondly, via a close study of Weil’s reflections on various ideologies. The goal of this book is not to position Simone Weil squarely within a single ideological tradition but rather to propose that her thought might allow us to critically engage with various ideologies in the history of political ideas.
This in-depth study examines the social, religious, and philosophical thought of Simone Weil. Simone Weil for the Twenty-First Century presents a comprehensive analysis of Weil’s interdisciplinary thought, focusing especially on the depth of its challenge to contemporary philosophical and religious studies. In a world where little is seen to have real meaning, Eric O. Springsted presents a critique of the unfocused nature of postmodern philosophy and argues that Weil’s thought is more significant than ever in showing how the world in which we live is, in fact, a world of mysteries. Springsted brings into focus the challenges of Weil’s original (and sometimes surprising) starting points, such as an Augustinian priority of goodness and love over being and intellect, and the importance of the Crucifixion. Springsted demonstrates how the mystical and spiritual aspects of Weil’s writings influence her social thought. For Weil, social and political questions cannot be separated from the supernatural. For her, rather, the world has a sacramental quality, such that life in the world is always a matter of life in God—and life in God, necessarily a way of life in the world. Simone Weil for the Twenty-First Century is not simply a guide or introduction to Simone Weil. Rather, it is above all an argument for the importance of Weil’s thought in the contemporary world, showing how she helps us to understand the nature of our belonging to God (sometimes in very strange and unexpected ways), the importance of attention and love as the root of both the love of God and neighbor, the importance of being rooted in culture (and culture’s service to the soul in rooting it in the universe), and the need for human beings to understand themselves as communal beings, not as isolated thinkers or willers. It will be essential reading for scholars of Weil, and will also be of interest to philosophers and theologians.
The present book reflects on the life, work, and legacy of an exceptional and enigmatic woman: the philosopher and French Jewish mystic Simone Weil. It constitutes a testimony so unique that it is impossible to ignore. In a Europe where authoritarian regimes were dominant and heading, in a sinister manner, toward WWII, this woman of fragile health but indomitable spirit denounced the contradictions of the capitalist system, the brutality of Nazism, and the paradox of bourgeois thought. At the same time, her spiritual journey was one of zeal and sorrow - that of a true mystic - but her radical intransigence and passion for freedom kept her from actually approaching the institutional church. Curious and insatiable, she wanted to experience, in the flesh, the suffering of society's least fortunate and the truths of other religions. The reader will need to develop a discerning empathy for Simone Weil's sensibility, beyond her particular passion and zeal, in order to appreciate her in depth. But undeniable are this truly singular woman's authenticity, her capacity to suffer, her identification with the other, her inner passion, her almost magical perception of the depths of the human spirit. And that is why her story merits being toldas one of the great witnesses of our age.
Long before postmodern or deconstructionist ideas became current, Simone Weil was concerned with recognizing the absence of consistency and the continual presence of reversals and contradictions in life. She was someone for whom the task of clarifying her perceptions of reality and meaning was an ongoing one. She challenged contemporary views on such complex issues as human nature, good and evil, divinity and truth. Weil's work offers a voice for those segments of society that are generally under-represented, misrepresented or totally silent in conventional historical and philosophical writings. In this introduction to Simone Weil's ideas, and the political and intellectual circumstances of her work, the authors make Weil's complex and at times elusive ideas accessible to readers. They delineate how her ideas evolved, and provide compelling excerpts from her writings to let her speak for herself. In addition, the authors provide their own interpretation of Weil's work.
Simone Weil, legendary French philosopher, political activist, and mystic, died in 1943 at a sanatorium in Kent, England, at the age of thirty-four. During her brief lifetime, Weil was a paradox of asceticism and reclusive introversion who also maintained a teaching career and an active participation in politics. In this concise biography, Palle Yourgrau outlines Weil’s influential life and work and demonstrates how she tried to apply philosophy to everyday life. Born in Paris to a cultivated Jewish-French family, Weil excelled at philosophy, and her empathetic political conscience channeled itself into political engagement and activism on behalf of the working class. Yourgrau assesses Weil’s controversial critique of Judaism as well as her radical re-imagination of Christianity—following a powerful religious experience in 1937—in light of Plato’s philosophy as a bridge between human suffering and divine perfection. In Simone Weil, Yourgrau provides careful, concise readings of Weil’s work while exploring how Weil has come to be seen as both a modern saint and a bête noir, a Jew accused of having abandoned her own people in their hour of greatest need.
Offering new insight into the pertinence of Simone Weil’s thought, this volume situates her in the Continental discourses which constituted her philosophical background, her milieu, and which frequently reflected her departures from her contemporaries.
An NYRB Classics Original Simone Weil—philosopher, activist, mystic—is one of the most uncompromising of modern spiritual masters. In “On the Abolition of All Political Parties” she challenges the foundation of the modern liberal political order, making an argument that has particular resonance today, when the apathy and anger of the people and the self-serving partisanship of the political class present a threat to democracies all over the world. Dissecting the dynamic of power and propaganda caused by party spirit, the increasing disregard for truth in favor of opinion, and the consequent corruption of education, journalism, and art, Weil forcefully makes the case that a true politics can only begin where party spirit ends. This volume also includes an admiring portrait of Weil by the great poet Czeslaw Milosz and an essay about Weil’s friendship with Albert Camus by the translator Simon Leys.