Recommended
An Interview with Lenora Champagne
What Becomes of Agency in a More-Than-Human World?
This session explores alternative accounts of agency in stories that borrow their warp from dependency rather than autonomy and their weft from receptivity and passivity rather than effort and power-over. It is from this perspective that we greet the promise — but also the problem — of mysticism and new materialism. We think with those practices through which feelings of self-sufficiency are abandoned and what is experienced is a state of openness to the more-than-human: spiritual and divine, but also animal, vegetable, and mineral.
Hosted by Simone Weil denkkollektiv {by invitation only}
Jane Bennett is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in Humanities at Johns Hopkins University
Simone Kotva is on the Faculty of Divinity at the University of Cambridge.
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.
The Actor & Scholar in Conversation: Simona Giurgea and E. Jane Doering on Simone Weil
Lewes Public Library, Lewes (Delaware, US)
Prerequisite to Dignity of Labour
Reproduced in online version (free) of Siân Miles, ed., Simone Weil: An Anthology (Penguin), pp. 264-276.
Theatre as Creative Failure: Simone Weil’s Venise sauvée Revisited
Platform, vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 17-30
Inside Issue 2: New and Forthcoming
70 Years Later – Still Waiting for God: A Few Thoughts on a New Edition of a Weil Classic
Draft for a Statement of Human Obligations
Richard Rees, trans., used by permission from Pendle Hill Publications.
