Keywords

Simone Weil’s Philosophy of History

Bennett Gilbert read

The philosophical and religious ideas of Simone Weil bear on the theory of history and historiography in ways not previously explored. They amount to a view of history as a consequence of the original creation, but they also generally exclude theodicy. By examining these ideas we see some of the ways in which to develop a theory of history centered on a conception of moral understanding that is impartialist and universal. For Weil such understanding is both inside of and outside of history. This leads to an approach to human history that centers on the moral dilemmas and choices of historical actors and that matches the force of compassion with that of power. Under an approach inspired by Weil’s ideas, the historian’s work of understanding can be an experience of moral growth.

Journal of the Philosophy of History, vol. 13, no. 1, 2019, pp. 66-85.

Venice Saved

Simone Weil, ed. & trans by Silvia Panizza & Philip Wilson read

Towards the end of her life, the French philosopher and mystic Simone Weil (1909-43) was working on a tragedy, Venice Saved. Appearing here in English for the first time, this play explores the realisation of Weil’s own thoughts on tragedy. A figure of affliction, a central theme in Weil’s religious metaphysics, the central character offers a unique insight into Weil’s broader philosophical interest in truth and justice, and provides a fresh perspective on the wider conception of tragedy itself.

The play depicts the plot by a group of Spanish mercenaries to sack Venice in 1618 and how it fails when one conspirator, Jaffier, betrays them to the Venetian authorities, because he feels compassion for the city’s beauty.

The edition includes notes on the play by the translators as well as introductory material on: the life of Weil; the genesis and purport of the play; Weil and the tragic; the issues raised by translating Venice Saved. With additional suggestions for further reading, the volume opens up an area of interest and research: the literary Weil.

New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019

Reviewed

Ronald Collins, “The Play’s the Thing: On Simone Weil’s Venice Saved,” Los Angeles Review of Books, Aug. 28, 2019

Sacrifice Between West and East: René Girard, Simone Weil and Mahatma Gandhi on Violence and Non-Violence

Wolfgang Palaver read

Wolfgang Palaver In this chapter, Wolfgang Palaver looks at developments in Rene Girard’s later work, in particular, at Girard’s assessment that he had earlier unfairly “scapegoated” sacrifice in an effort to rid humanity of violence. In recognition of the need to address — not erase — the violence that is with us, Girard developed his thinking in at least two ways. The first is his growing interest in how an “ontology of peace,” which Girard held undergirds all faith traditions, is expressed in non-Christian faiths. Second is his insight that Jesus’s death on the cross tells us not only about the evils of sacrifice-as-murder but also about the productive possibilities of sacrifice-of-self, giving for the sake of others. To explore what such donative sacrifice consists in, Palaver investigates the theories of oppression, resistance, and sacrifice in the works of Simone Weil and Mahatma Gandhi.

in in Marcia Pally, ed., Mimesis and Sacrifice Applying Girard’s Mimetic Theory Across the Disciplines, Bloomsbury (2019), pp. 37-50

‘The question in each and every thing’: Nietzsche and Weil on affirmation

Stuart Jesson read

Abstract: This paper identifies and offers commentary upon a previously un-remarked consonance between Nietzsche and Weil when it comes to the idea of a universal love of the world (‘affirmation’ in Nietzsche’s terms, or ‘consent to necessity’ in Weil’s). The discussion focuses on five features of the Nietzschean account of affirmation, which are as follows: 1) that the possibility of affirmation has the form of a fundamental question at the heart of human life, which (2) has an all-or-nothing character (it is universal in scope and pervasive in influence); that (3) genuine affirmation is rare, difficult or traumatic in an existentially revealing way, primarily because (4) affirmation means facing up to the lack of finality in the world and in particular the problem of meaningless suffering, which means that (5) affirmation is tied up with a fundamental revaluation. The first half of the paper outlines the parallels between Nietzschean affirmation and Weilian ‘consent to necessity’ in relation to the first three of these, which are also the most general. The second half of the paper explores the fourth and fifth, so as to suggest a way of reading the underlying similarity between these two projects: both are attempts to rediscover the possibility of an all-embracing affirmation of reality in the absence of any existential teleology, and when eschatology has been presumed to be impossible. In other words, both Nietzsche and Weil are compelled to find a way of achieving a transfigured perspective on ‘the whole’ in the absence of any transformation of ‘the whole’.

International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, vol. 86, no.2 (2019) pp. 131-155.

The Red Virgin: A Novel Inspired by the Life of Simone Weil

Clark McCann read

The Red Virgin, by Clark McCann, reimagines the life of the French philosopher, Simone Weil (1909-1943) through the character of Sabine Arnaud. Weil acquired the pejorative nickname, “red virgin,” at the Sorbonne because of her radical politics, mannish clothes, and asexual nature. During her short life, Weil frustrated all those who might claim her for their own. She was a Christian who refused baptism, a Jew who denied her heritage, a Marxist who denounced communism, and a towering intellect who condemned the intelligentsia for their social privilege and moral cowardice. Perhaps most telling, she was a prophet of love who shrank from the touch of man or woman. The Red Virgin brings the mind and spirit of this fascinating woman to life in a philosophical novel with a plot worthy of a thriller.

The story opens in Los Angeles in 1976. Craig Martin, a jaded sitcom writer, discovers clues among his mother’s effects that a long-dead French philosopher, Sabine Arnaud, might be his birth mother. Arnaud, a refugee from Occupied France, had been a neighbor of his mother in New York in 1942, the year of his birth. Arnaud then left for London, where she hoped to join de Gaulle’s Free French Forces, only to fall ill and die of tuberculosis before realizing her dream of fighting the Nazis.  Martin sets off for Europe in search of Arnaud’s past and stumbles on a wartime secret that puts his life in danger. Arnaud’s death may have been faked by British Intelligence before sending her on a mission to Occupied France. As the mystery shrouding Arnaud’s life and death unfolds, Martin follows her trail, a step ahead of those who would silence them both. Alternating between the 1970s and World War II Europe, we follow Martin and Arnaud on their separate journeys, across three continents, until Martin finds the answers he seeks in the remote mountains of Ethiopia.

Issaquah, WA: Solesmes Press, 2019