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The Bloomsbury Handbook of Simone Weil

Lissa McCullough, editor read

Lissa McCullough, editor, The Bloomsbury Handbook of Simone Weil (2024):

Exploring the philosophical writings of Simone Weil, this unparalleled reference work documents the key thinkers who influenced her political, philosophical and religious outlook. It also offers a critical analysis of her wide-ranging philosophical concepts through short, accessible essays, showing how they connect throughout her writings to form an organic whole.

After outlining her biography, Part I explores Weil’s boundary-crossing interests in radical politics, science, mathematics, history, and religious phenomena. Part II traces the intellectual history of Weil’s own writings by mapping her most important philosophical influences including Plato, Descartes, Spinoza, Rousseau, Kant, and Marx. The rich landscape of Weil’s philosophy receives critical consideration in Part III through the distinctive defining terms that tie her body of thinking together: terms such as amor fati, attention, beauty, force, gravity and grace, receive full explication alongside important themes of justice, obedience, compassion, and method as they figure in her work.

A reliable scholarly framework guides readers through Weil’s expansive oeuvre, including bibliographic help with locating Weil’s writings in French and English, alongside an overview of the critical literature. For students, scholars, and lay readers who seek clarifying and comprehensive coverage of Weil’s ideas and writings, this text is an indispensable research tool.

About the Editor

Lissa McCullough is Lecturer in Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy at California State University. Dr. McCullough’s research centers on modern philosophy of religion and interpretations of modernity. She has taught philosophy at CSUDH since fall 2014, and has previously taught religious studies at Muhlenberg College, Hanover College, and New York University. She completed her PhD at the University of Chicago, master’s degree at Harvard University, and bachelor at University of California Santa Cruz. She is author of The Religious Philosophy of Simone Weil (I.B. Tauris, 2014), editor of The Call to Radical Theology by Thomas J. J. Altizer (SUNY, 2012) and Conversations with Paolo Soleri (Princeton Architectural Press, 2012); and coeditor, with Brian Schroeder, of Thinking Through the Death of God (SUNY, 2004). In 2008 she was a visiting research fellow at the Institute for Humanities Research at Arizona State University. She is also guest editor of a special issue on Thomas J. J. Altizer for the peer-reviewed online Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory, Winter 2019

 
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Inside Issue 12: Remembering Jane

Ronald K.L. Collins read