“Between Wittgenstein and Weil: Comparisons in Philosophy, Religion, and Ethics” (excerpt)
Inside Issue 10: New and Forthcoming
Emily King on Weil’s Notebooks
American Weil Society’s 2024 Colloquy: “The Politics and Ethics of Labor”
Robert Meagher on Camus and Weil
Mystical Experience: Women’s Pathway to Knowledge
Abstract: The mystical experience is generally understood as an affective one, made of love and union. The history of Christianity has been marked by this type of experience and owes to it some of its most luminous milestones and highlights. Christian mystics have been great founders, bright intellectuals, and paradigmatic figures in raising new issues for Theology and Philosophy theology, philosophy, social justice, and politics. In this article we wish to reflect and write about two issues in the vast area of mystical studies, focusing specifically on Christian mysticism:
(1) The link between mystical experience and knowledge; and
(2) Mystical experiences lived through by women as a pathway to and from knowledge. We will briefly highlight a few women mystics in order to set the stage for the topic to be further developed below.
Firstly, we will attempt to circumscribe the concept of mysticism by retrieving some of the main thoughts of scholars who have studied the mystical phenomenon and writings of individuals who experienced it. For this purpose, we will apply some elements from philosophy, but mostly from theology.
Secondly, we will pursue our reflection with the aid of thoughts by philosophers and theologians who thought and argued that mystical experience is and contains knowledge and bears not only affective and spiritual, but also intellectual, fruit. Thirdly, we will attempt to show how a significant group of women were the specific protagonists of this synthesis between experience and knowledge and how this allowed them to bring original contributions to their context and historical time.
We conclude with a detailed commentary and reflection on the French 20th-century mystic Simone Weil who, as both an intellectual and a mystic, was a pioneer in bringing a prophetic vision on some issues that would inspire society, the Church, and spiritual life many decades after her death. As such, she became a paradigmatic figure who demonstrated that intellectual ability does not entail only rational thinking, but consists in a great level of spiritual sensitivity, which brings altogether an enormous responsibility in leading humanity towards fulfilling its vocation to live fully. Our conclusions will be based on the countercultural benefits that mystical experience, as lived through by women, can bring to contemporary times.”
- Religions, vol. 14, no.2 (Jan. 2023), p. 230.
Maria Clara Bingemer (PhD, Pontifical Gregorian University, Rome) is a noted Brazilian theologian. A full professor at Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro (PUC), she focuses her research on systematic theology, mysticism, and in particular on Latin American and liberation theology. Bingemer’s current research project is on Mysticism and Testimony: a study of knowledge, language and praxis in contemporary mysticism.
God as the other within: Simone Weil on God, the self and love
Abstract
Simone Weil (1909-1943) is a French philosopher who is also a prominent figure in the tradition of Christian mysticism. In her early philosophical writings and lectures, she describes her understanding of the aim of philosophy as “the Search for the Good”. Very much influenced by Plato, Descartes and Kant, Weil states that God as the absolute Good is beyond known truths and can only be reached through Love. This treatment of love as a destructive power whereby the Self effaces itself in order to get closer to God, echoes a somewhat mystical scheme. Weil believes that the only way to reach such knowledge and therefore God, which in her view is the sole purpose of life and should also be the purpose of philosophy. This dissertation focuses on the grounds that bring her to such conclusions as well as providing an analysis of whether Weil’s philosophical approach as an alternative to metaphysical and ethical problems in philosophy is able to stand firm on its own.
Excerpt
With that in mind, the first chapter of this dissertation is on the nature of the self or what we refer to as the ‘I’ which is a good starting point because anything that an individual contemplates begins with either an explicit or an implicit ‘I’ which is inevitable by any being that would be classified as human. This is perhaps, in a way, our curse as Weil later notes, because we are able to contemplate our very own being as well as the only beings who are also aware of the implications of affliction that we face in our lives. This is not true for other beings, either animals who feel pain but do not contemplate the metaphysics of pain, or God and other supernatural beings who are said to not feel pain. As this is a dissertation of philosophy, it is vital that I must try to keep an open mind regarding definitions and beliefs of supernatural entities insofar as Weil engages with the concepts as such, however it is also important that I try and present an analysis of the way they are defined. This is the reason why the first two chapters include all the major religious and philosophical influences that Weil shares with us in her work. In this way, we will be able to not only revisit and examine but also compare those thoughts and ideas fresh in our minds. It is perhaps one of the most important aspects of a philosophical investigation that we must try and capture the essence of a problem before embarking on a journey where that problem presents other problems with it in its natural habitat.
The nature of self is, thus, first examined in the light of Plato’s works and how Plato presents a concept of the ‘I’ or rather what he understands from this concept. Plato’s understanding of the self is characterized in three parts, the λογιστικόν, the θυμοειδές and the ἐπιθυμητικόν, or the parts related to reason, to spirit and to desire, which make up the tripartite soul. The tripartite soul is the foundation for further investigation regarding the self and consciousness. Through examination of these ideas within Plato’s relevant body of work, a deeper understanding of Weil’s influence of Plato’s concept of the self will be reached. The aim is to look at primary sources but then compare these ideas with Weil’sinterpretation of them in her esoteric view.
DOCTORAL THESİS (Philosophy Department)
Philosophy Doctoral Programme
Thesis Advisor: Prof. Dr. Fatma Hülya Şimga
İstanbul / T.C. Maltepe University Graduate Institute (May, 2023)
The Objectification of the Worker: Simone Weil and her Influence on Contemporary Thought
Abstract: “The French philosopher, Simone Weil (1909-1943) elaborated a thought on work, on its organization and its conditions. Having experienced the mechanization of companies, she was able to describe the process of the objectification of the worker. His reflection on the instrumentalization of the worker and that of work always nourishes great contemporary thinkers, such as Alain. This reflection is all the more current at the dawn of new realities, such as digitalization and the Internet revolution, which, supposed to liberate man, are factors of an even deeper objectification of the employee.
This article, therefore, aims to unveil the mechanisms of objectification as Simone Weil described them and to propose some ways to transcend them, faced with the risk of their persistence in an upset work environment.”
Excerpt: :The thirties in France were marked by the great economic depression and political instability: small entrepreneurs suffered, unemployment increased and workers’ strikes multiplied. Weil does not remain indifferent to the social and political events of her time. As a young teacher in the early thirties, she is already working as a trade unionist. She then apprehends the phenomenon of the alienation of the worker through the works of Karl Marx, but it is their objectification that she will confront for several months (from December 1934 to August 1935) while working in the Renault and Alsthom factories. From this period she leaves us her Factory Diary which highlights her own internal conflicts but which also describes the daily life of the workers of the 1930s, daily life often limited to the ‘working time’ factor. In it, she describes their situation, their uprooting and their alienation. . . .”
- Nelli Sołonko, “The Objectification of the Worker: Simone Weil and her Influence on Contemporary Thought,” French Studies Bulletin, vol. 44, no. 166 (Summer 2023), pp. 12–16 {L’Objectification du Travailleur: Simone Weil et son Influence Sur la Pensée Contemporaine} [Yandex Translate]