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Simone Weil: A Sense of God

J. Ranilo B. Hermida read

There is one thread of thought no serious reader of Simone Weil can possibly miss from the variegated tapestry of her thinking. And that is her sense of God, which is almost naturally embedded therein. She unfailingly elevates her every insight to a level that is at once metaphysical or theological. Indeed, Weil considers all human concerns always “situated in the context of our relation to God.” She excludes nothing for she believes that even those practices not readily recognized as religious contribute to our spiritual development and prepare us for loving God. . . .

Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture, vol, 9, no. 1, Winter 2006, pp. 127-144
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Homer and Simone Weil: The Iliad sub specie violentiae

James P. Holoka read

Simone Weil’s varied writings are chapters in an autobiography of the mind, best understood in light of the zeal with which she lived life and expressed her thoughts. Although only thirty years old in 1939/40 when she wrote “The Iliad, or The Poem of Force,” she had already confronted a wide range of fundamental issues on a philosophical plane and carried over that struggle into her personal life. The ardor she brought to her intellectual pursuits and to the particular causes to which she devoted her time and energies makes Weil an attractive subject for biographers, as the spate of works on her life and career in the last thirty years attests.

Related

James P. Holoka, Simone Weil’s The Iliad or the Poem of Force: A Critical Edition, Peter Lang Inc. (2006).
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War, Suffering, and Detachment: Reading the Bhagavad Gītā with Simone Weil

Maria Clara Bingemer read

Maria Clara Bingemer states she desires to do two things in her essay: “trace the personal and intellectual background against which Weil came to read the Gita” and “discuss some of the main themes which surface in her critical engagement with the text.”  To this end, she begins with a brief biographical overview focusing on Weil’s encounter with the Gita. She then turns to a general discussion of how the Gita served as a source of inspiration for Weil, especially in the sense of contradiction giving rise to a spiritual crisis, which can lead to religious transformation through the vehicle of grace. The next section focuses on incarnation and salvation noting similarities and differences between Hinduism and Christianity in the understanding of these. A discussion of the distinction between force and violence in Weil’s work comes next followed by an in-depth discussion of necessity, detachment, and enlightenment. The chapter concludes with a thoughtful consideration of Weil’s critique of the Gita.

The essay appears in Catherine Cornille, ed., Song Divine : Christian Commentaries on the Bhagavad Gita, Leuven, Peeters (2006), pp. 69-89

ht: Simone Weil Bibliography
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“Decreation, or Saying Yes,”

William Robert read

Epoché: The University of California Journal for the Study of Religion, Vol. 23, no. 1, pp. 59-85.
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A 1940 Letter of André Weil [to Simone Weil] on Analogy in Mathematics

Andre Weil read

Notices of the American Mathematical Society, vol. 52, no. 3, 334-341