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Reality and Recurrence: Reflections on Nietzsche and Weil

Stuart Jesson read

Although Simone Weil’s thought is, in some respects, the epitome of all that Friedrich Nietzsche rejected and opposed, there are nevertheless some deep and significant parallels between the two. This chapter considers one aspect of this intriguing resemblance, through consideration of Nietzsche’s conception of the eternal recurrence, and in dialogue with Weil’s aspiration to love all things “because they are real”. Both thinkers have a deep sense of what it means to contemplate and value one’s life without the lens of a possible teleological fulfillment, and in the absence of any eschatological hope for “the life of the world to come”. Just as Weil claims that “to love all facts is nothing else than to read God in them”, it seems that Nietzsche’s idea of eternal recurrence could be well expressed in a similar idiom: “to love all facts is to read eternal recurrence in them”.

“Reality and Recurrence: Reflections on Nietzsche and Weil,” Stuart Jesson, in Death, Immortality and Eternal Life, T. Ryan Byerly, ed., 2021, pp. 149-164.

Simone Weil: Waiting for God (parts 1 and 2)–The God Frequency

Abi Doukhan watch

Abi Doukhan is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Queens College of the City University of New York (CUNY), and holds the Pearl and Nathan Halegua Family Initiative in Ethics and Tolerance. She holds a Masters in philosophy from the Sorbonne and a Ph.D in philosophy from the University of Nanterre, Paris, France. Her recent publications include Emmanuel Levinas: A Philosophy of Exile (Bloomsbury, October 2012), and Biblical Portraits of Exile (Routledge, June 2016).

YouTube class lecture (May 13, 2o22)

The Intimacy and Resilience of Invisible Friendship: Marie-Magdeleine Davy and Simone Weil

Brenna Moore read

The title comes from chapter 4 of Brenna Moore’s new book, Kindred Spirits: Friendship and Resistance at the Edges of Modern Catholicism, Chicago: University of Chicago Press (2021) pp. 145-171. In it, Moore focuses on the bond between French medievalist Marie Magdeleine Davy (1903-1998) and Simone Weil. Davy and Weil were acquaintances, but after Weil’s death, Davy dedicated significant scholarly attention to Weil’s thought and life. She authored one of the first books on Weil in 1951, lifting her up as a model for a new kind of sanctity in the modern world. In the late 1950s and ’60s, Davy’s projects were animated by what Moore calls an “invisible friendship” with Weil. Spurred on by memories of Weil, in 1962 Davy created an experimental utopian community for international students in rural France, the Maison Simone Weil, in her friend’s honor. As Moore puts it, “Simone Weil, more than anyone else, was Marie-Magdeleine Davy’s invisible friend, her inner guide, and her saint.” The story uncovers one of the many fascinating afterlives of Simone Weil, one that has not yet been told to English-speaking readers.

The Bloomsbury Handbook of Simone Weil

Lissa McCullough, editor read

Lissa McCullough, editor, The Bloomsbury Handbook of Simone Weil (2024):

Exploring the philosophical writings of Simone Weil, this unparalleled reference work documents the key thinkers who influenced her political, philosophical and religious outlook. It also offers a critical analysis of her wide-ranging philosophical concepts through short, accessible essays, showing how they connect throughout her writings to form an organic whole.

After outlining her biography, Part I explores Weil’s boundary-crossing interests in radical politics, science, mathematics, history, and religious phenomena. Part II traces the intellectual history of Weil’s own writings by mapping her most important philosophical influences including Plato, Descartes, Spinoza, Rousseau, Kant, and Marx. The rich landscape of Weil’s philosophy receives critical consideration in Part III through the distinctive defining terms that tie her body of thinking together: terms such as amor fati, attention, beauty, force, gravity and grace, receive full explication alongside important themes of justice, obedience, compassion, and method as they figure in her work.

A reliable scholarly framework guides readers through Weil’s expansive oeuvre, including bibliographic help with locating Weil’s writings in French and English, alongside an overview of the critical literature. For students, scholars, and lay readers who seek clarifying and comprehensive coverage of Weil’s ideas and writings, this text is an indispensable research tool.

About the Editor

Lissa McCullough is Lecturer in Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy at California State University. Dr. McCullough’s research centers on modern philosophy of religion and interpretations of modernity. She has taught philosophy at CSUDH since fall 2014, and has previously taught religious studies at Muhlenberg College, Hanover College, and New York University. She completed her PhD at the University of Chicago, master’s degree at Harvard University, and bachelor at University of California Santa Cruz. She is author of The Religious Philosophy of Simone Weil (I.B. Tauris, 2014), editor of The Call to Radical Theology by Thomas J. J. Altizer (SUNY, 2012) and Conversations with Paolo Soleri (Princeton Architectural Press, 2012); and coeditor, with Brian Schroeder, of Thinking Through the Death of God (SUNY, 2004). In 2008 she was a visiting research fellow at the Institute for Humanities Research at Arizona State University. She is also guest editor of a special issue on Thomas J. J. Altizer for the peer-reviewed online Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory, Winter 2019