This text, dedicated to the thought of Simone Weil, aims to show how misfortune and the experience of horror are the extreme consequence of an immoderate exercise of force, understood as one mode of the natural necessity. The purpose of Simone Weil’s reflections on human distress is to show that misfortune, by sharpening our faculty of attention, opens the way of its own excess.
Internet (n.d.).
Trajectories of Mysticism in Theory and Literature, (n.d.) pp. 72-93
“Alain’s career was closely connected with the educational system in France, since he served as professor of rhetoric at the Lycée Henri IV from 1909 until 1933, and bad a profound influence on the thinking of a generation of French intellectuals. In his essays he often adopted a professorial position, providing insights and stimulating thought in a concise, meditative prose style. As with so many French essayists, Alain was a philosopher in the style of Montaigne rather than of Descartes. He did not leave a systematic philosophy, nor a major opus, but a large and disparate collection of personal observations that are both penetrating and amusing. The substance of his thought, however, was profoundly influenced by rigorous Cartesian logic. . . .”
United Architects On Andre Weil
Waseda University, Japan.
S. Weil’s relationship to Marxism is paradoxical because it unveils a loyalty to Marx in spite of ruptures and renunciations of the Marxist theory. S. Weil’s ties to Marxism seem discontinuous because after having adopted certain revolutionary ideas during her first years of political activism she criticizes Marx in the 30’s and ends up seemingly abandoning him in the last part of her life. This path, however, far from revealing the slow and inexorable disappearance of Marx’s concepts, rather, demonstrates the persistence and metamorphoses in S. Weil’s philosophy. We suggest then, that a criticism of the revolution followed by a kind of Christianity developed in the wake of a year spent in the factory, constitute S. Weil’s own special manner of being Marxist, even though Marxism seems to have become useless to her.
Les Etudes Philosophiques, vol. 82, no. 3, pp. 207-222
Catholic Outlook, Diocese of Parramatta, Australia.
This essay argues that Simone Weil’s writings suggest a phenomenological method of particular relevance to investigating ethical questions. It begins by presenting evidence that although Weil does not mention phenomenology explicitly, she thinks about ethics in a phenomenological manner. Subsequent sections outline a “phenomenological ethics” derived from Weil’s notion of attention and her hermeneutics of ‘reading’ the world. Since attention sets aside the self and its personal world, this allows for an ethics of self-abdication (decreation) relatively free of influence by the forces of domination. David Rousset’s term “concentrationary universe” is introduced to describe the claim, argued by Hannah Arendt, Giorgio Agamben, and others, that present-day societies show evidence of an increasing reliance on ways of thinking derived from the Nazi concentration camps. Examples are given of applications of Weil’s phenomenological method to the problem of how to recognize signs of potential domination in a concentrationary universe.
Macrina Magazine, no. 6, (December 5, 2020)
The paper investigates the question if Simone Weil’s thought is unitary or fragmentary, if one can speak of a “system” concerning her theoretical approach, and if her works are still current. The paper suggests a re-reading of Weil’s reflections to find in them an educative aim.
“A pilgrim of thought
When one approaches the greatness of Weilian philosophy, one is inevitably taken by very conflicting emotions: this woman of genius inspires strong passions.
Simone Weil, an ascetic, uncontrollable, overpowering woman, literally fed herself either on the words of peasants and workers or on reading her classic works, forgetting to eat.
She refused all obliging solutions in order to be always ready to confront herself with the innovation and variety of situations, without examining them through the reassuring methods of memberships.
A double misrepresentation of the figure of Simone Weil emerges from the critics’ interpretations: the first one, based on hagiographic criteria, makes
her a separate, singular case, by distinguishing the years of her political commitment from the last years, which are characterized by a mystical and religious experience, and the second one, which attempts to equate her, in all ways, with the other intellectuals of her time.
From this interpretative hodgepodge, therefore, the image of Simone Weil emerges as that of a sensitive, lucid, and committed intellectual who moves from civil rejection to contemplative acceptance of the fracture between manual and intellectual work, from a complaint of the factory regime to the dream of a domestic industry, and from the condemnation of the Soviet-style State to the proposal for a Constitutional Act that prohibits parties. . . . “
This paper is based on the report presented in English at the XVII Congreso Internacional del Grupo.
Daniela De Leo: Professore Aggregato di Filosofia Teoretica – Università del Salento.
Journal of Dharma, vol. 45, no. 4 (Oct-Dec 2020) pp. 529-544.
