Attention

Weaving the World: Simone Weil on Science, Mathematics, and Love

Vance Morgan read

Weaving the World uses Simone Weil’s philosophy of science and mathematics as an introduction to the thought of one of the most powerful philosophical and theological minds of the twentieth century. Weil held that, for the ancient Greeks, the ultimate purpose of science and mathematics was the knowledge and love of the divine. Her creative assimilation of this vision led her to a conception of science and mathematics that connects the human person with not only the physical world but also the spiritual and aesthetic aspects of human existence. Vance G. Morgan investigates Weil’s earliest texts on science, in which she lays the foundation for a conception of science rooted in basic human concerns and activities. He then tracks Weil’s analysis of the development of science, particularly of the mathematics and science of the ancient Greeks.

Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005

Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Simone Weil: A Study in Christian Responsiveness

Vivienne Blackburn read

The book is the first major study to bring together the two early twentieth-century theologians Dietrich Bonhoeffer, German Lutheran pastor, and Simone Weil, French philosopher, and convert to Christianity. Both were victims of Nazi oppression, and neither survived the war. The book explores the two theologians’ reflections on Christian responsiveness to God and neighbour, being the interdependence of the two great commandments of the Jewish Law reiterated by Jesus. It sets out the common ground and the differing emphases in their interpretations. For Bonhoeffer, responsiveness was the transformation of the whole person affected by faith (Gestaltung), and the responsibility (Verantwortung) for one’s actions which it implies. For Weil, responsiveness was the hope and expectation of grace (attente) reflected in attention, the capacity to listen to, understand, and help others. Both Bonhoeffer and Weil faced a world dominated by aggression and horrendous suffering. Both endeavoured to articulate their responses, as Christians, to that world. The relevance of their thought to the twenty-first century is explored, in relation to perspectives on grace and freedom, on aggression, suffering, and forgiveness, and on the role of the church in society. Conclusions are illustrated by reference to contemporary theologians including Rowan Williams, Daniel Hardy, Frances Young and David Tracy.

Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang, 2004

“Interpreting Simone Weil: Presence and Absence in Attention”

Ann Pirrucello

Philosophy East & West, vol. 45, no.1, pp. 61-72

The Theme of Mediation in the Writings of Simone Weil

Janet Patricia Little read

A study of the theme of mediation necessarily involves a consideration of the two poles between which mediation takes place. This study therefore begins with an investigation of what Simone Weil saw to be man’s exile in this world, and his desire for the Good which is God. Since God is unknown and unknowable, this desire cannot be focussed on any particular object, and the soul must experience a void in which there is no compensation for spiritual energy expended. This process is unnatural, however, and painful to man, and he is frequently tempted to focus his desire for the Good on some earthly object; society, by creating the illusion of being greater than the individual, often fulfills this role, and becomes the object of man’s idolatry. If man refuses this idolatry and is willing to hold the contradiction posed by his dual nature he will find that all earthly creatures and objects can be mediators between himself and the God  he desires. In this way exile becomes a fulfilment, and the whole natural realm can speak to man of his supernat1;.ral home. All mediation-themes reach their culmination in Christ, whose suffering is seen as a perpetual cosmic process reconciling the universe with its creator. The study is therefore presented in three sections: dualism, idolatry (false mediation), and mediation proper. These are fully illustrated by reference to the whole sphere of Simone Weil’s meditations, religious, political and philosophical.

Durham University, PhD dissertation, 1970

‘Waiting on God’: A Radio Talk on Simone Weil

Iris Murdoch read

Excerpt: ” . . . . For Simone Weil the main fact of human life, and the fact which we must not flinch from if we are to find out any truth about it,8 is the fact of affliction. Le Malheur. For her, the centre of Christianity is the passion and the central moment of the passion is the cry of dereliction. The greatness of Christianity, Simone Weil says, lies in its seeking not a supernatural remedy for suffering but a supernatural use for the suffering. Let us see how she conceives this use. Her thought, although we have it in this scattered aphoristic form, is curiously systematic.

Two things strike one immediately about her ‘system’. That it is very austerely dualistic, and that it enunciates with a strange sort of confidence a view of the physical and of the spiritual universe which one might call ‘mechanical.’ The dualism is between La Pesanteur and La Grâce – gravity, this is gravitational force, and grace. All natural phenomena, including psychological phenomena, are subject to ‘gravity’, by which she means that they are subject to ‘natural law’ in the scientific sense. This realm of natural necessity is purposeless; things have causes but not ends. The only sort of finality which we can detect in it is the purposeless finality of the total ordering of natural things. . . . ”

Iris Murdoch Review, (2017), pp. 9-16, preface by Justin Broackes, (BBC broadcast, Oct.18, 1951, 7.40 p.m. on the Third Programme)

Related

— Paul S. Fiddes, Iris Murdoch and the Others: A Writer in Dialogue with Theology, T&T Clark (December 2, 2021) (Chapter 6: “The Void and the Passion: A Dialogue with Simone Weil” & “Coda: With and Beyond Simone Weil: Between Murdoch and Theology”), pp. 155-204.

— Justin Broackes “Iris Murdoch and Simone Weil,” Royal Institute of Philosophy (2018), YouTube.

— Silvia Panizza, “The Importance of Attention in Morality: An Exploration of Iris Murdoch’s Philosophy,” Ph.D. dissertation (2015)