Commentaries
Simone Weil Bibliography
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
The Weil Conjectures: On Math and the Pursuit of the Unknown
New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux
The Continuing Legacy of Simone Weil
Lanham, MD: Hamilton Books
Mystic of Passion and Compassion
Karen M. Kraft, trans., foreword by Tomeu Estelrich, Eugene, OR: Cascade Books
From Ecclesiastes to Simone Weil: Varieties of Philosophical Spirituality
Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield
Simone Weil and Theology
New York: Bloomsbury
Attention to the Real
Bernard E. Doering, trans., Notre Dame, IND: University of Notre Dame Press
A Truer Liberty: Simone Weil and Marxism
Simone Weil ― philosopher, trade union militant, factory worker ― developed a penetrating critique of Marxism and a powerful political philosophy which serves an alternative both to liberalism and to Marxism. In A Truer Liberty, originally published in 1989, Blum and Seidler show how Simone Weil’s philosophy sought to place political action on a firmly moral basis. The dignity of the manual worker became the standard for political institutions and movements. Weil criticized Marxism for its confidence in progress and revolution and its attendant illusory belief that history is on the side of the proletariat.
Blum and Seidler relate Weil’s work to influential trends in political philosophy today, from analytic Marxism to central traditions within liberal thought. The authors stress the importance of Weil’s work for understanding liberation theology, Catholic radicalism, and, more generally, social movements against oppression which are closely tied to religion and spirituality.
New York: Routledge Revivals, 2010
Simone Weil and the Notion of Authority
Lanham, MD: Lexington Books
