Spirituality

Stephen Plant on Simone Weil: Parts I & II

Stephen Plant watch

Dr. Plant is Dean and Runcie Fellow at Trinity Hall and lectures on Christian theology and on ethics in the Faculty of Divinity. He has written and edited several books including Bonhoeffer (Continuum, 2004), Simone Weil: A Brief Introduction (Orbis Books 2008), Letters to London (SPCK, 2013), and Taking Stock of Bonhoeffer ( Ashgate, 2014). From 2007-13 he edited the influential journal Theology for SPCK/SAGE. His current research includes theology and international development, on which he is writing a book for Bloomsbury Press, and the theology and life of Karl Barth. He is willing to consider doctoral students in 20th century Protestant theology, theology and international development, and political theology.

YouTube, April 22, 2012 // Part 1 here  // Part 2 here

Awaiting God: A New Translation of Attente de Dieu and Lettre a Un Religieux

Bradley Jersak (Translator) with Introduction by Sylvie Weil read

Awaiting God (Fresh Wind Press) combines a fresh translation (by Weil scholar, Brad Jersak) of Simone Weil’s Waiting for God and Letter to a Priest (Attente de Dieu and Lettre un Religieux) in one volume. These works are considered Weil’s primary essays and letters.

In addition, Simone Weil’s niece has contributed an introductory article entitled, Simone Weil and the Rabbi’s: Compassion and Tsedekah, which puts Weil’s relationship with Jewish thought into perspective. She includes source material from the Rabbis that put Weil (however reluctantly) in line with rabbinical thought throughout her major themes.

The book is the ideal English introduction to the works and thought of Simone Weil, including important preface material (by Jersak) on how to read her work, as well as her relationship to Roman Catholicism and Judaism

Table of Contents

 • Translator's Preface
 • Introduction by Sylvie Weil

Part 1 — Essays 
 1. Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies 
 in View of the Love of God 
 2. The Love of God and Affliction 
 3. Forms of the Implicit Love of God 
 a. Love of Neighbor 
 b. Love of the Order of the World 
 c. Love of Religious Practices 
 d. Friendship 
 e. Implicit and Explicit Love
 4. Concerning the Our Father 

Part 2 — Letters 
 • Preface to her letters: Weil on Catholicism and Judaism 
 5. Hesitations Prior to Baptism
 6. Hesitations Prior to Baptism
 7. Departure from France
 8. Spiritual Autobiography
 9. Intellectual Vocation
10. Last Thoughts
11. Letter to a Priest

“Christianity and the Errors of our Time: Simone Weil on Atheism and Idolatry”

Mario Von Der Ruhr

Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement, vol. l. 68, pp. 203 – 227

The Saint & the Hero: Iris Murdoch & Simone Weil

Anne Rowe &  Pamela Osborn

Sofia de Melo Araujo & Fatima Vieira, eds., Iris Murdoch: Philosopher Meets Novelist (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2011), pp. 103-116.

“The Supernatural as a Remedy to Totalitarian Regimes: Simone Weil and the Sanctity of the Eucharist”

Marie Cabaud Meaney

in Rozelle-Stone, A. Rebecca & Stone, Lucian, eds., The Relevance of the Radical: Simone Weil 100 Years Later, New York: Continuum, pp. 38-52

René Girard’s Mimetic Desire as Seen in the Writings of Simone Weil

E. Jane Doering read

Rene Girard’s expansive comments apropos Simone Weil to a French journalist in 1987 give food for exploring intertwining of themes in the thought of Girard and Weil, whom he considered one of the greatest intellects of her time. I plan to expand those concepts of Weil that he admired: mimetic desire, reciprocal violence, collective victimization, Christ as the Truth, and caritas, while testing their limits, and suggest divergences of thought: on historical progress; disdain for the Old Testament, despite her Jewish ancestry; and the Revelation in respect to non-Christian societies.

In the concept of mimetic desire, Girard applauded Simone Weil’s horror of the “Great Beast” mentality, which she found even in the Church. He praises her insights into Christ’s parable of the adulterous woman for its mimetic group behavior but also for its implied concepts of punishment. The mimetic rivalry that holds primacy in her “The Iliad: A Poem of Force,” impelling the Greeks and the Trojans to destroy each other, had a decisive influence on Girard.

Girard prized Simone Weil’s “theory of the human condition,” illuminated by the Gospels: Christ incarnates the Truth; to pursue the Truth implies always going toward Him. Loving God and loving the order of the world are one, and love of neighbor must govern social decisions. Weil selflessly spent her early activist energies on encouraging marginalized workers to improve their inhuman working conditions. Weil’s concept of decreation has its model in Christ, i.e., He is the innocent, pure, victim, a model of selflessness, free consent to God’s love, and total obedience. In the Bhagavad Gita, Weil found corroboration of her ideas for minimizing violence and its contagion.

The two principal Girard texts for my presentation will be: Violence and the Sacred, and Battling to the End: Conversations with Benoît Chantre.

E. Jane Doering, “René Girard’s Mimetic Desire as Seen in the Writings of Simone Weil” at Transforming Violence: Cult, Culture, and Acculturation, (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University, 2010).

 

“The Incarnated: Simone Weil’s Revised Christianity”

Inese Radzins

in Rozelle-Stone, A. Rebecca & Stone, Lucian, eds., The Relevance of the Radical: Simone Weil 100 Years Later, New York: Continuum, pp. 221-239