Recommended

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.

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.