Philosophy
Ecological Ethics and the Philosophy of Simone Weil: Decreation for the Anthropocene
Ecological Ethics and the Philosophy of Simone Weil (Routledge, 2024) places the philosophy of Simone Weil into conversation with contemporary environmental concerns in the Anthropocene.
The book offers a systematic interpretation of Simone Weil, making her ethical philosophy more accessible to non-Weil scholars. Weil’s work has been influential in many fields, including politically and theologically-based critiques of social inequalities and suffering, but rarely linked to ecology.
Kathryn Lawson argues that Weil’s work can be understood as offering a coherent approach with potentially widespread appeal applicable to our ethical relations to much more than just other human beings. She suggests that the process of “decreation” in Weil is an expansion of the self which might also come to include the surrounding earth and a vast assemblage of others. This allows readers to consider what it means to be human in this time and place, and to contemplate our ethical responsibilities both to other humans and also to the more-than-human world. Ultimately, the book uses Weil’s thought to decenter the human being by cultivating human actions towards an ecological ethics.
This book will be useful for Simone Weil scholars and academics, as well as students and researchers interested in environmental ethics in departments of comparative literature, theory and criticism, philosophy, and environmental studies.
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Table of Contents
Introduction: Finding Simone Weil in an Ecological Void
Part I: Growing Roots: A Reading of Simone Weil
1. Mapping an Ethics of Decreation
2. The Faculties
3. The Power of Force
4. Attention and Mediation
5. Decreation and Action
Part II: Plato and the Environment
6. Contemporary Dualist Ecological Readings of Plato’s Phaedrus
7. A Non-dual Reading of Plato via Metaxu (μεταξύ)
Part III: Decreation for the Anthropocene
8. Weil and Anthropocene Ethics
9. A Weilian-Inspired Ecological Ethics
10. Action in the Anthropocene
About the Author
Kathryn Lawson is a lecturer of philosophy at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. She is co-editor of Hannah Arendt and Simone Weil: Unprecedented Conversations (2024) and Breached Horizons: The Philosophy of Jean-Luc Marion(2017) and author of a number of peer-reviewed journal articles and chapters.
Related
Kathryn Lawson & Joshua Livingstone, eds., Hannah Arendt and Simone Weil: Unprecedented Conversations (Bloomsbury Academic, 2024)
Attentive Pedagogy: Essays on Simone Weil’s “Reflections on the Good Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God”
From desiring to inquiring:“setting the stage for attention” through philosophical dialogue
Inside Issue 11: New and Forthcoming
Simone Weil: A Very Short Introduction
Simone Weil: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, May 2024)
This Very Short Introduction provides an overview of the intriguing and provocative life and ideas of twentieth-century French philosopher, mystic, and social activist Simone Weil. Weil was not a typical, systematic philosopher. Despite her short life, Weil’s philosophy has much to offer us in our times of personal, communal, political, and environmental crises, both in the breath and poignancy of her philosophy, and the topics it covers.
In keeping with Weil’s spirit to consider and address laypeople, Rozelle-Stone takes readers, including those who have had little or no previous exposure to Weil or philosophy, on an accessible journey of Weil’s major philosophical impacts. This exploration consists of seven chapters highlighting: her life and manner of death, both characterized by attention; the influence of ancient Greek ideas on her philosophy; her thoughts on labour and politics; her unique and ecumenical religious inspirations, stemming from Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism; her ethical philosophy centred on a specific notion of attentiveness; her understanding of beauty as connected to fragility but also eternity; and finally, her legacy and influence on contemporary writers and issues, particularly as she may help us navigate and critically assess the growing convergence between religious fervour, late capitalist and corporate values, and authoritarian politics.
Related
Weil: Basic Writings (Routledge, 2024) edited by D. K. Levy and Marina Barabas.
