A letter to Simone Weil
Catholic Outlook, Diocese of Parramatta, Australia.
Biographical
Against Religious Fellow-Traveling
This essay argues that Simone Weil’s writings suggest a phenomenological method of particular relevance to investigating ethical questions. It begins by presenting evidence that although Weil does not mention phenomenology explicitly, she thinks about ethics in a phenomenological manner. Subsequent sections outline a “phenomenological ethics” derived from Weil’s notion of attention and her hermeneutics of ‘reading’ the world. Since attention sets aside the self and its personal world, this allows for an ethics of self-abdication (decreation) relatively free of influence by the forces of domination. David Rousset’s term “concentrationary universe” is introduced to describe the claim, argued by Hannah Arendt, Giorgio Agamben, and others, that present-day societies show evidence of an increasing reliance on ways of thinking derived from the Nazi concentration camps. Examples are given of applications of Weil’s phenomenological method to the problem of how to recognize signs of potential domination in a concentrationary universe.
Macrina Magazine, no. 6, (December 5, 2020)
The Weil Conjectures
Washington Independent Review of Books
On Simone and André Weil: An Exchange with Karen Olsson
Los Angeles Review of Books (February 1, 2020).
Having an Inner Life
Philosophical Investigations, vol. 43, nos. 1-2, pp. 142-157.
On the Differences Between Rush Rhees and Simone Weil
Rhees seems unaware that Simone Weil differed from him both in her conception of philosophy and of its relation to religion. She differed also in her view of the relation between religion and science. On her view, the aim of science is to find the laws which will allow us to apply deductive reasoning to nature. The necessities revealed had for her a religious significance. But this can be understood only given her view of the relation between God and the world. On her view, the creation of the world did not involve an extension of God’s power. It involved a withdrawal of his power, so that there could be an existence independent of himself. God does not interfere in the details of the world but sustains it through a network of necessities. For this reason, these necessities can serve as a sign of God.
Philosophical Investigations, vol. 43, nos. 1-2, pp. 71-75.
Remembering Simone Weil: The Price and the Purpose of Philosophy
Los Angeles Review of Books
Who Was Simone Weil?
Plough Quarterly
Simone Weil
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, The Metaphysics Research Lab, Center for the Study of Language and Information (CSLI), Stanford University.
My Father André Weil
Excerpt:
Almost twenty years have passed since my father’s death on August 6th, 1998, yet he still sometimes calls me: “Sylvie, get me out of here, I’m bored.” (The French word he uses is not so polite.)
I am sure that, following Jewish tradition, André was assigned a study companion for all eternity. I had once asked him who this companion would be. “Euler,” he answered, and smiled. So when he calls me to tell me he is bored, I ask: “What about Euler? Is he bored, too?”
Nothing horrified my father more than being bored or wasting time. Every moment needed to be usefully or pleasantly employed. I still have my father’s letters to me when I was a teenager. He recommended extraordinary programs: evenings were given to reading Euripides and Sophocles, Thursdays at the Louvre or the Comédie Française, Sunday afternoons at the Salle Pleyel to hear Beethoven…. The idealism of these letters makes me smile, but reactivates the terrible guilt I felt because, at fifteen, I just wanted to have a good time.
Communication, vol. 65, no. 1, Jan. 2018, pp. 54-57
