“A Hermeneutic of Providence amid Affliction: Contributions by Luther and Weil to a Cruciform Doctrine of Providence”
Pro Ecclesia: A Journal of Catholic and Evangelical Theology, XVI, no. 3: 44-64
Keywords
God May Strike You Thisaway’ — Flannery O’Connor and Simone Weil on Affliction and Joy
Renascence, vol. 59, no. 3, pp. 179-193
Two slices from the same loaf? Weil and Levinas on the demand of social Justice
Ethical Perspectives: Journal of the European Ethics Network, vol. 14, no. 2, pp. 117-138
Imagination and Attention: Simone Weil translating the Iliad
Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics
Third Series, Vol. 15, No. 2 (Fall, 2007), pp. 29-36 (8 pages)
The Practice of Attention: Simone Weil’s Performance of Impersonality
Philosophers have long debated the subjects of person and personhood. Sharon Cameron ushers this debate into the literary realm by considering impersonality in the works of major American writers and figures of international modernism—writers for whom personal identity is inconsequential and even imaginary. In essays on William Empson, Jonathan Edwards, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Herman Melville, T. S. Eliot, and Simone Weil, Cameron examines the impulse to hollow out the core of human distinctiveness, to construct a voice that is no one’s voice, to fashion a character without meaningful attributes, a being that is virtually anonymous.
“To consent to being anonymous,” Weil wrote, “is to bear witness to the truth. But how is this compatible with social life and its labels?” Throughout these essays Cameron examines the friction, even violence, set in motion from such incompatibility—from a “truth” that has no social foundation. Impersonality investigates the uncompromising nature of writing that suspends, eclipses, and even destroys the person as a social, political, or individual entity, of writing that engages with personal identity at the moment when its usual markers vanish or dissolve.
in Cameron, Impersonality: Seven Essays, Chicago: University of Chicago press, 2007, p. 108-143. Previously published: “The Practice of Attention: Simone Weil’s Performance of Impersonality,” Critical Inquiry, vol. 29 (Winter 2003), pp. 216-252
Weil, Truth and Life: Simone Weil’s pedagogy as auto-philosophical therapy of soul
Contemporary philosophers, wary of the vaulted metaphysical systems proposed by Enlightenment thinkers, have explored alternative avenues of doing philosophy. Unfortunately, these “new” philosophical systems often neglect their roots in ancient philosophical practice. The purpose of this thesis is to textually ascertain the ancient concept of philosophy as a way of life in the contemporary philosophical work of Simone Weil. This connection is demonstrated in two distinct yet related ways. The practical pedagogy demonstrated through biographical work and student lecture notes provide a distinct vision of her life’s bent toward practical philosophy. In addition, her Notebooks, read in light of Pierre Hadot’s interpretation of Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, demonstrate the pervasiveness of this way of life in her personal textual engagement. In Weil, therefore, we find an important contemporary instance of continuing and reinterpreting the ancient philosophical practice where she finds her philosophical origin.
A thesis submitted to the faculty of the Institute for Christian Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Philosophy, Toronto, Ontario, July 2007.
Four Propos
The Philosopher
Everything Must Change
Bridgend: Wales, Seren
Simone Weil’s Finished Platonism
Les Etudes Philosophiques, vol. 82, no. 3, pp. 169-182.
Simone Weil’s Apologetic Use of Literature: Her Christological Interpretations of Ancient Greek Texts
New York: Oxford University Press
