The Hungarian border village helping Ukraine’s refugees: ’Humans are all the same’
The Guardian (March 18, 2022)
Keywords
Ukraine-Russia Latest: Update, March 20, 2022
Black Sun: A Letter to a Brother
From Valery Panyushkin, a Russian writer, posted on YouTub. It’s beautiful and heartbreaking, and I very much regret that so little of its power comes through without the rhyme and meter of the language.
Still, here is a highly imperfect translation (adapted from one by Arik Kruglyak). Even if it doesn’t work for you, please forward the YouTube link to any Russian speakers you know; I hope they were as affected by it as I was. — Eugene Volokh
Simone answers her letters
Inside Issue 5: New and Forthcoming
A Philosophy “written for everyone”: From Alain to Simone Weil
How many Ukrainians have fled their homes and where have they gone?
BBC News (March 23, 2022)
Can Israel cope with the immigrant wave from Russia’s war on Ukraine, Jews and non-Jews alike?
Haaretz, March 21, 2022
Patriotism as Compassion: Simone Weil and the alternative to pride
Excerpt: ” . . . So if liberal patriotism is not just pride in secular futurity, as Rorty would have it, or loyalty to a shared ethos, as Smith thinks, can it be anything at all? I think so, but it seems to me that the best writer on the question is, oddly enough, the French religious writer and social theorist Simone Weil. Weil’s L’Enracinement, or in English, The Need for Roots, written in 1943 while she was working on behalf of the Free French in London during the height of World War II, articulates a totally novel theory of patriotism that lies at the opposite extreme of national pride and does not rely on idealistic notions of a common outlook or way of life. For Weil, in short, patriotism is not national pride, but rather national compassion. . . .”
Source: The Point (Feb. 12, 2022)
Author: Sam Gee is a contributing editor to The Point
A Study of Character: Simone Weil’s Psychological and Ethical Attention
Abstract: In the later, ethically oriented writings of the philosopher Simone Weil, she develops her concept of attention. This involves using the body to train the mind and thus the soul, into an open, receptive state. This state is the first condition for any ethical action to take place. This article explores how Weil’s account of attention can provide a new perspective in philosophical and theological engagement with psychology, first in terms of moral psychology and virtue ethics, and second in statements on the malleability or plasticity of human nature. As Weil sees that human nature’s stress on activity tends to lead to suffering rather than ethical action, she proposes not ethical action per se, but an ethical attitude of attention instead. Habit-formation and character development can thus be approached differently as cultivating a state of openness rather than of particular virtues. This article will therefore explore the relationship of theology and psychology in terms of human nature as irremediably situated but also psychologically receptive for restoration.
TheoLogica (An International Journal for Philosophy of Religion and Philosophical Theology) (February 07, 2022)
The Author: Deborah Casewell holds a Humboldt Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship in the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Bonn.
