Keywords

The Mystical and Prophetic Thought of Simone Weil and Gustavo Gutierrez

Alexander Nava read

Two Christian thinkers—philosopher Simone Weil and theologian Gustavo Gutiérrez—are brought together here. While very different in background, situation, and in their writings, Weil and Gutiérrez display striking points of contact in their lives and work. Author Alexander Nava finds that together the two provide a philosophical and theological vision that integrates the mystical and the prophetic, two dimensions of the Christian tradition that are often considered mutually exclusive. Exploring the thought of Weil and Gutiérrez, this book shows that both are suspicious of forms of mysticism that minimize the harsh reality of suffering and violence, and that both have a serious mistrust of prophetic traditions that deny the contributions of mystical interpretations, practices, and ways of speaking to and about the Divine mystery. Nava proposes that dialogue between the thought of Weil and Gutiérrez and between the mystical and prophetic traditions can lead to a more authentic understanding of the diversity and creativity of religious thought.

Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001

Simone Weil

Francine Du Plessix Gray read

From Publishers Weekly

Gray, who as novelist and biographer has illuminated the mystery of human suffering (most recently in At Home with the Marquis de Sade, 1998, a Pulitzer Prize finalist), was the perfect pick to write a volume on Simone Weil (1909-1943) for the admirable Penguin Lives series of short, popular biographies. Weil, the Jewish-born but Christ-loving, intermittently blue-collar author of brilliant political essays and breathtaking spiritual aphorisms, was a complex of suffering on all levels. She suffered from a profoundly negative self-image, incapacitating migraines and self-starvation, voluntarily assumed factory labor of the most grueling kind, endured the defeat of France in WWII and distance from God. The paradox in this panoply of ills is that, while superficially humbling, they reveal Weil’s enormous force of personal will. Gray is a wise and compassionate Virgil to the bewildered reader who chances upon this transfixing, even seductive inferno (or purgatory, or heaven the boundaries blur) of largely self-imposed pain. She clarifies the gradual transition in Weil’s life from left-wing political activism to world-renouncing spirituality, and critiques what she sees as “priggish” and “perverse” tendencies in Weil’s moral idealisms, from her Francophile fervors to her gnostic anti-Judaism. In some ways, Weil was simply a “spoiled brat,” Gray notes. Finally, Gray absolves Weil of her excesses by revealing the intense spirituality beneath them and the love and admiration she elicited despite them.
If Gray herself tends to excess, it is in her multiple citings (at least 13) of anorexia as medical cause of her subject’s extremes. But her fine selection of perfectly apposite anecdotes more than compensates. The result is a virtuosic achievement, possibly unique among popular treatments of Weil: a short, measured biography of a short but startlingly unmeasured and unmeasuring life.

New York: Viking, 2001

Simone Weil

Palle Yourgrau

Reaktion Books, UK, reviewed by Marie Cabaud Meaney, French Studies: A Quarterly review, vol. 66, no. 3, (July 2012), pp. 419-420.

“Simone Weil and George Herbert on the Vocations of Writing and Reading”

Michael Vander Weele

Religion & Literature, vol. 32, no. 3, pp. 69-102

Émigré New York: French Intellectuals in Wartime Manhattan, 1940-1944

Jeffrey Mehlman

Baltimore: MD: John Hopkins University Press

Discussions of Simone Weil

Rush Rhees read

The work of Simone Weil has not garnered the attention it deserves in the Anglo-American tradition. In this book, Rhees, the noted thinker trained by Wittgenstein, provides the most sustained critique to date of Weil’s views on science and religion. In this decidedly Wittgensteinian spin on the philosophy of religion, Rhees’ observations on the major themes in Weil’s work–social philosophy, science, ethics, and religion–are presented. The book shows how Rhees wrestled with difficulties he found in the work of Weil, someone he held in the highest regard.

“In the field of Weil studies, this book is a ‘gold mine.'” — Richard H. Bell, author of Simone Weil: The Way of Justice as Compassion

“Weil was a highly original thinker and Discussions of Simone Weil helps bring out that originality. Rhees also makes a contribution to the philosophy of religion, for here we get to see how a genuine Wittgensteinian approach might work in tackling religious questions.” — Eric O. Springsted, coauthor of Spirit, Nature, and Community: Issues in the Thought of Simone Weil

Rush Rhees (1905-1989) taught at the University of Wales, Swansea, for twenty-six years and became Honorary Professor after his retirement. He is the author of Without Answers; Discussions of Wittgenstein; On Religion and Philosophy; Wittgenstein and the Possibility of Discourse; and Moral Questions. D. Z. Phillips is Rush Rhees Research Professor at the University of Wales, Swansea, and Danforth Professor of the Philosophy of Religion at Claremont Graduate University, California. Mario von der Ruhr is Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Wales, Swansea.

D.Z Phillips assisted by Mario von der Ruhr, ed., New York: State University of New York Press, 2000

Simone Weil: Thinking Poetically

Joan Dargan

Albany, New York: State University of New York Press