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Attending: An Ethical Art

Warren Heiti read

“Attending addresses a significant gap in the literature on attention. The way Heiti places important twentieth-century authors in conversation with each other is original and well done. This is a very rich and beautiful book.” Sophie Bourgault, University of Ottawa and co-editor of Simone Weil, Beyond Ideology?

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Attending – patient contemplation focused on a particular being – is a central ethical activity that has not been recognized by any of the main moral systems in the European philosophical tradition. That tradition has imagined that the moral agent is primarily a problem solver and world changer when what might be needed most is a witness.

Moral theory has been agonized by dualism – motivation is analyzed into beliefs and desires, descriptions of facts and dissatisfactions with them, while action is represented as an effort to lessen dissatisfaction by altering the empirical world. In Attending Warren Heiti traces an alternative genealogy of ethics, drawing from the Platonism recovered by Simone Weil and developed in the work of Iris Murdoch, John McDowell, and Jan Zwicky. According to Weil, virtue is knowledge, knowledge is embodied, and the knower is nested in an ecosystem of relationships. Instead of analyzing and solving theoretical problems, Heiti aims to clarify the terrain by setting up objects of attention from more than one discipline, including not only philosophy but also literature, psychology, film, and visual art.

The traditional picture captures one important type of ethical activity: faced with a moral problem, one looks to a general rule to furnish the solution. But not all problems conform to this model. Heiti offers an alternative: to see what is needed, one attends to the particular being.

Warren Heiti is a professor of philosophy and liberal studies at Vancouver Island University.

McGill-Queen’s University Press (2021)
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Iris Murdoch and the Others: A Writer in Dialogue with Theology

Paul S. Fiddes read

The “others” examined by Fiddes are mainly those with whom Murdoch entered into explicit dialogue in her novels and philosophical writing-including Immanuel Kant, Simone Weil, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Rudolph Bultmann, Paul Tillich, Don Cupitt, Donald Mackinnon, and Jacques Derrida. This “historic” dialogue is, however, placed within a wider dialogue between literature and theology being conducted by the author, and “others” are brought into relation with Murdoch in order to illuminate this more extensive conversation-notably the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins and the feminist philosopher Julia Kristeva.

The book demonstrates that characteristic themes in Murdoch’s novels and philosophy-the love of the Good, the death of the ego, illusory consolations, the death of God, the modifying of the will by “waiting”, the sublime and the beautiful, and attention to other things and persons-all take on a greater meaning when placed in the context of her life-long conversation with theology. The exploration of this context is deepened in this volume by reference to annotations and notes that Murdoch made in a number of theological books in her personal library.

Paul S. Fiddes is Professor of Systematic Theology at the University of Oxford and is Director of Research at Regent’s Park College, Oxford, UK.
Publisher: ‏ T&T Clark (December 2, 2021)
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Homer: The Very Idea

James L. Porter read

Homer, the great poet of the Iliad and the Odyssey, is revered as a cultural icon of antiquity and a figure of lasting influence. But his identity is shrouded in questions about who he was, when he lived, and whether he was an actual person, a myth, or merely a shared idea. Rather than attempting to solve the mystery of this character, James I. Porter explores the sources of Homer’s mystique and their impact since the first recorded mentions of Homer in ancient Greece.

Homer: The Very Idea considers Homer not as a man, but as a cultural invention nearly as distinctive and important as the poems attributed to him, following the cultural history of an idea and of the obsession that is reborn every time Homer is imagined. Offering novel readings of texts and objects, the book follows the very idea of Homer from his earliest mentions to his most recent imaginings in literature, criticism, philosophy, visual art, and classical archaeology.

University of Chicago Press, October 25, 2021
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The Subversive Simone Weil: A Life in Five Ideas

Robert Zaretsky read

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.

Robert Zaretsky is the author of Boswell’s Enlightenment; A Life Worth Living: Albert Camus and the Quest for Meaning; and Catherine & Diderot: The Empress, the Philosopher, and the Fate of the Enlightenment, among other books. A frequent contributor to the New York Times, the Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, the Times Literary Supplement, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and the Chronicle of Higher Education, he lives in Houston with his wife, children, and assorted pets.

Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2021
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When Fiction & Philosophy Meet: A Conversation with Flannery O’Connor and Simone Weil

E. Jane Doering & Ruthann Knechel Johansen read

An innovative book, WHEN FICTION AND PHILOSOPHY MEET explores the intersection between the philosophy of Simone Weil from Paris, France, and the fiction of Flannery O’Connor from the Southern state of Georgia, USA. In an era of war, of unprecedented human displacements, and of ethnic, racial, and religious fears the ideas of these two intellectuals bear on our present condition. Both women keenly desired to perceive the realities of good and evil inherent in human existence and to bring this truth to the consciousness of their contemporaries. Embracing their belief that truth is eternal but must be transposed and translated, generation after generation, in language appropriate to each age, the authors acquaint O’Connor readers with concepts in Weil’s religious philosophy as seen in O’Connor’s stories. Doering and Johansen simultaneously illustrate how Weil’s philosophy, when embodied in fiction, reveals the lived realities of the human condition across time and space.

Simone Weil and Flannery O’Connor were audacious thinkers with inquiring minds who held clear and firm religious convictions. Each applied her understandings of enduring spiritual truths to the challenges of nihilism and social oppression as seen in the spreading totalitarianism and the distressing legacy of slavery throughout human history. Both Weil and O’Connor crossed disciplinary boundaries and influenced their respective fields with innovative ideas and artistic expressions.

Taking their cues from these writers, Doering and Johansen bring these two remarkable women into a four-voiced dialogue–Simone Weil and Flannery O’Connor with Doering and Johansen–by engaging each writer in the forms of her own genre and inviting readers to enter a dialogue of courage with Weil and O’Connor in the postmodern and post-Christian world.

Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2021
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Simone Weil Bibliography

Saundra Lipton read

Although Simone Weil died very young at age 34, her essays and notebooks have been the topic of a significant volume of scholarship from a wide variety of disciplines including Religion, Philosophy, Literature, Nursing, Political Science, History, Psychology, Education, and Business.  However, the last comprehensive bibliography of critical works on Simone Weil compiled by J.P. Little, dates back to 1973 with a supplement in 1979 and a small update in 1995.  The diversity and range of this ongoing scholarship make an updated comprehensive bibliography critically important for those writing on Weil and her work.

Saundra Lipton, University of Calgary, and Debra Jensen, Mount Royal University have been active collaborators (till Debra’s untimely death July 15, 2012) in the compilation of a comprehensive bibliography of scholarly works on Simone Weil.  The goal of this project is to provide a valuable service to scholars and students in many fields by facilitating access to Weilian resources across disciplinary, geographic, and linguistic divides.  Publications worldwide have been surveyed. Over 5500 works have been discovered.  This online version of the bibliography currently lists more than 5000 book, essays, journal articles, and theses.

I dedicate my continuing efforts on this project to the memory of my dear friend and colleague Debra Jensen.

University of Calgary online library of resources
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Passage & Presence (Passage et présence de Simone Weil, état des lieux)

Jean-Marc Ghitti read

Jean-Marc Ghitti has long been interested in the philosopher Simone Weil. He already dedicated a book to her in 2009, on the occasion of the centenary of his birth. Since then, the scholarly Ponot has continued his research while giving lectures. It took him three more years of work to complete Simone Weil’s book Passage and Presence.
The author did not want to make a simple biography of the philosopher who left her name as a heritage to the old high school for young girls in Le Puy. Nor did he want to do a university study.

“I wanted to present the thought of Simone Weil from the places where she passed”.

Tracing the intellectual and spiritual path of the woman of letters, by traversing the places which marked her life, was not an easy task. This course covers nearly 340 pages. It begins in Puy-en-Velay, where Simone Weil, a very young professor of philosophy, arrives in September 1931 (for a school year), and ends in London in 1943. A woman’s life, who died at the age of 34 years, from tuberculosis and starvation.
Jean-Marc Ghitti divides his work into 14 chapters. Le Puy, Auxerre, Roanne, Saint-Étienne, Bourges, Spain, Italy, Marseille, Ardèche, London, but also the sea or the factory are all places through which the philosopher has passed and where she didn’t leave her mark. “Like the water that opens and closes after the passage of a boat,” illustrates the author Ponot. With her, each place is a mental moment. “
Simone Weil’s professional career, like Jean-Marc Ghitti’s book, begins in Le Puy. A place where she will put her thoughts into practice. This is the start of his engagement. She is an educated young Parisian woman who comes into contact with working-class realities that hurt her.

She meets social life at its most difficult. This experience in Le Puy was marked by scandal.

The young teacher, assigned to her first post in the high school for young girls in Place Michelet (since relocated), will meet “needy unemployed people who do public utility work to earn a few cents. Their work consists in breaking up rubble ”. Committed to union life, Simone Weil, who regularly takes the train to Saint-Étienne to educate minors, will defend the unemployed in Place Michelet. She accompanies them to the municipal council. Which will fuel a local scandal.
“The life of Simone Weil is an intellectual success based on a succession of failures,” summarizes the author of the book sold in all bookstores in France since October 17. She failed most of the things she did. Her professional career is lackluster, her involvement in the Spanish Civil War was ineffective, and neglect of her own body quickly led to the loss of her life. “
But her thought made her a great 20th-century philosophical figure.

KIME; 1st edition (September 17, 2021)

Jean-Marc Ghitti is an associate professor and doctor of philosophy. He has authored various philosophical and literary works. In 2007, in the city where he taught, he created an association, Présence Philosophique au Puy, to bring the spirit of Simone Weil to life.
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Simone Weil, une Juive antisémite ? (French edition)

Robert Chenavier read

Abstract: A persistent controversy pursues the memory of Simone Weil about the alleged “anti-Semitism” in some of her writings. It is a fact that, within the framework of the spiritual evolution that led Simone Weil to approach Christianity, she made some harsh remarks on the religion of the Hebrews, since her project was to purge the Christian religion of its Jewish imprint  in favor of its Greek component. Can such anti-Hebraism be equated with anti-Semitism? The question continues to surface on a regular basis. Robert Chenavier, who edited the last published volumes of the Works of Simone Weil, methodically takes up the matter, on the basis of his intimate knowledge of the author’s thought, in order to dispel once and for all the fallacies and interpretations that fuel this accusation. He examines, in particular, the text of Simone Weil considered to be the most “anti-Semitic,” which she wrote while in London, this in connection with her work for the Free French. This book will be the definitive work on the subject. {translation adapted from Intelligent Translator app}