Articles read more
Written

The Dimensions of Miracle: An Ethics of Mediation in Simone Weil, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Virginia Woolf

Collin (Lin) Michael Pritchard read

This project is concerned with the ethics of mediation, as might allow us to see the existence of the world as miraculous. To contextualize these terms, as involve the constraints of personal autonomy and understanding, this first chapter of this inquiry is a comparison of Simone Weil and Ludwig Wittgenstein’s philosophies; from this comparison comes a recognition of the importance of ‘mediation’ in one’s understanding of value, of an “absence that is felt,” which argues for a form of attention constituted by one’s relation to the world and to others. The second chapter introduces how Weil’s concept of ‘reading’—that is, her conception of how one ‘reads’ meaning in the world—has both an ethical and theological dimension, as well as introducing Virginia Woolf’s fiction as exemplary of how this ‘reading’ is a principle of literature; through a comparison with Wittgenstein’s notion of ‘aspect-perception’, it argues for a kind of affective proprioception, which would place one’s actions in relation to a dimension both aesthetic and ethical. The third chapter is a study of Woolf’s ‘To the Lighthouse’, which demonstrates the comparative ethics of literature, as a valuation of characters’ ‘reading’ of others and the world is both implicit and explicit in Woolf’s narration; this study profiles four characters—Lily Briscoe, Mr. Ramsay, Charles Tansley, and Mrs. Ramsay—and centers Lily Briscoe’s painting as a technique of mediation expressive of Woolf’s narrative style, and of certain ethics. This project ends on the question of miracle—and gestures to a gratuitous world.

Bard Digital Commons, Spring 2019.
Written

Simone Weil’s Radical Ontology of Rootedness: Natural and Supernatural Justices

Alexandre Andrade Martins read

This paper argues that Simone Weil developed an anthropology of the human condition that is a radical ontology of the human spirit rooted in reality. Weil begins her account from the real, but this real is not only the historical or social reality. It is also what is true about the human person as a created being in connection with the transcendent reality. She believes that affliction reveals the human condition and provides an openness to transcendence in which the individual finds the meaning of the human operation of the spirit. Therefore, Weil’s radical ontology is based on a philosophy of the human being as an agent rooted in the world. In order to be rooted, a human being needs decreation (the creation of a new human) and incarnation (cross and love in the world). In her radical ontology derived from attention to the real, Weil argues for an active incarnation in social reality that recognizes others, especially the unfortunates, for the purpose of empowering them and promoting their dignity. Her radical ontology incarnates the human in the world between necessity and good, that is, between the natural and the supernatural.

Considering Emmanuel Gabellieri’s characterization of Simone Weil’s anthropological philosophy as a radical ontology, I examine Weil’s account on natural and supernatural justices. According to Gabellieri, Weil’s ontology is radical because it is “a metaphysics of the human spirit oriented towards a full contact with reality.” Full contact with the reality of the world is the starting point of Simone Weil’s philosophy. This contact is radical because the supernatural is present in reality, and a deep experience of reality opens the individual for the illumination of the supernatural, an experience of grace that reveals the truth of human existence and condition in the world. Therefore, Simone Weil develops an anthropology of the human condition that is a “radical ontology” of the human spirit rooted in the reality of the world. The experience of rootedness occurs in reality, but it is the supernatural that roots the human being.

Weil suggests an anthropology of radical ontology following the Platonic tradition of a transcendental spirit that contemplates the nous. This generates a noetic knowledge that impacts reality. It is in this mediation between reality and the supernatural that the need for justice occurs, as a natural reality illuminated and guided by supernatural justice. In this account, she is also inside the Christian mystic tradition, in which the experience of grace impacts the ethical life leading to seek for justice. To understand Weil’s radical ontology, this paper will discuss three points of her account: her starting point from the real, the movement of decreation and openness of the working of grace, and the supernatural justice that illuminates the natural justice in a rooted people.  {full text in “Read” link above}

Theology Faculty Research and Publications, Marquette University (Spring, 2019)
Written

Simone Weil’s Christian Approach to Education

Jessica Hooten Wilson read

“When I question students at my Christian college about how their faith affects their learning practices, they stare blankly at me or scribble a note about being motivated by the true, good, and beautiful. But studying (and education) for Christians should look different than a secular approach, though many students cannot articulate these differences.

To clarify the connections between their beliefs and education, I teach Simone Weil’s “Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God” (1942), a great essay with an unwieldy title.

Weil, born in Paris in 1909, taught for a number of years in the 1930s in France, where she also participated in the French resistance to Nazi occupation. A series of mystical experiences led her to affirm the truth of Christianity. Her reflections on school studies are directed to the Dominican Father Joseph-Marie Perrin in Marseille, intended for the benefit of the Catholic students whom he served.

Considering the context of World War II, Weil’s comments echo C.S. Lewis’ 1939 admonition to Oxford students, “Learning in War-Time.” To a church filled with young men ready to leave their studies and join the fight, Lewis insisted on learning as “advancing to the vision of God” and cultivating humility in the student. Like Lewis, Weil directs students’ vision toward the higher ends of education. . . .”

Jessica Hooten Wilson is a Louise Cowan Scholar in Residence, Humanities and Classical Education at the University of Dallas.
Written

‘The question in each and every thing’: Nietzsche and Weil on affirmation

Stuart Jesson read

Abstract: This paper identifies and offers commentary upon a previously un-remarked consonance between Nietzsche and Weil when it comes to the idea of a universal love of the world (‘affirmation’ in Nietzsche’s terms, or ‘consent to necessity’ in Weil’s). The discussion focuses on five features of the Nietzschean account of affirmation, which are as follows: 1) that the possibility of affirmation has the form of a fundamental question at the heart of human life, which (2) has an all-or-nothing character (it is universal in scope and pervasive in influence); that (3) genuine affirmation is rare, difficult or traumatic in an existentially revealing way, primarily because (4) affirmation means facing up to the lack of finality in the world and in particular the problem of meaningless suffering, which means that (5) affirmation is tied up with a fundamental revaluation. The first half of the paper outlines the parallels between Nietzschean affirmation and Weilian ‘consent to necessity’ in relation to the first three of these, which are also the most general. The second half of the paper explores the fourth and fifth, so as to suggest a way of reading the underlying similarity between these two projects: both are attempts to rediscover the possibility of an all-embracing affirmation of reality in the absence of any existential teleology, and when eschatology has been presumed to be impossible. In other words, both Nietzsche and Weil are compelled to find a way of achieving a transfigured perspective on ‘the whole’ in the absence of any transformation of ‘the whole’.

International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, vol. 86, no.2 (2019) pp. 131-155.
Written

Simone Weil’s Philosophy of History

Bennett Gilbert read

The philosophical and religious ideas of Simone Weil bear on the theory of history and historiography in ways not previously explored. They amount to a view of history as a consequence of the original creation, but they also generally exclude theodicy. By examining these ideas we see some of the ways in which to develop a theory of history centered on a conception of moral understanding that is impartialist and universal. For Weil such understanding is both inside of and outside of history. This leads to an approach to human history that centers on the moral dilemmas and choices of historical actors and that matches the force of compassion with that of power. Under an approach inspired by Weil’s ideas, the historian’s work of understanding can be an experience of moral growth.

Journal of the Philosophy of History, vol. 13, no. 1, 2019, pp. 66-85.