War
The philosopher who warned us about loneliness and totalitarianism
Sean Illing interviewing Lyndsey Stonebridge, a humanities professor at the University of Birmingham.
Excerpt:
Professor Stonewridge: “Karl Marx will talk about alienation. Max Weber will talk about disenchantment. Simone Weil, another brilliant woman thinker who doesn’t get nearly enough attention, will also talk about uprootedness in the same way as Hannah Arendt. But [Arendt] talks about loneliness as a distinct modern problem.”
Vox (May 8, 2022)
Inside Issue 6: New and Forthcoming 
Ukraine: Apparent War Crimes in Russia-Controlled Areas
Excerpt: “(Warsaw) – Human Rights Watch has documented several cases of Russianmilitary forces committing laws-of-war violations against civilians in occupied areas of the Chernihiv, Kharkiv, and Kyiv regions of Ukraine. These include a case of repeated rape; two cases of summary execution, one of six men, the other of one man; and other cases of unlawful violence and threats against civilians between February 27 and March 14, 2022. Soldiers were also implicated in looting civilian property, including food, clothing, and firewood. Those who carried out these abuses are responsible for war crimes. . . .”
Human Rights Watch (April 2, 2022)
2022 Ukrainian refugee crisis
Except: “An ongoing refugee crisis began in Europe in late February 2022 after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. More than 4.3 million refugees have since left Ukraine (as of 5 April 2022), while an estimated 6.5 million people have been displaced within the country (as of 18 March 2022). In total, more than ten million people – approximately one-quarter of the country’s total population – had left their homes in Ukraine by 20 March. By March 24, 2022, according to UNICEF, more than half of all children in Ukraine had been forced to leave their homes. The invasion has caused Europe’s largest refugee crisis since World War II and its aftermath,[6] the first of its kind in Europe since the Yugoslav Wars in the 1990s, and one of the largest refugee crises in the world in the 21st century, with the highest refugee flight rate in the world . . . .” {notes ommitted}
Date visited: 5 April 2022
Black Sun: A Letter to a Brother
From Valery Panyushkin, a Russian writer, posted on YouTub. It’s beautiful and heartbreaking, and I very much regret that so little of its power comes through without the rhyme and meter of the language.
Still, here is a highly imperfect translation (adapted from one by Arik Kruglyak). Even if it doesn’t work for you, please forward the YouTube link to any Russian speakers you know; I hope they were as affected by it as I was. — Eugene Volokh
Nursing in Wartime: Edith Stein and Simone Weil on Empathic Attention
Abstract: Edith Stein and Simone Weil both trained as Red Cross nurses for wartime service. For both philosophers, the activity of a nurse demands empathic attention to the afflicted. Stein envisions herself as an attendant nurse in her memoirs; Weil similarly casts herself in a nurse’s role in her proposal for an elite, sacrificial nurses’ corps. This essay examines the practice of wartime nursing as a school for, and an expression of, their complementary philosophies of human beings seen in their physical, epistemological, and spiritual interrelatedness.
Journal of Continental Philosophy (Feb. 23, 2022)
Ann W. Astell is a professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame.
The mysticism of the ordeal of the absence of God in the context of the Second World War. The case of Simone Weil and Etty Hillesum
Based on the study of the writings of Simone Weil and Etty Hillesum during the Second World War, this article intends to identify the characteristics of an unprecedented moment in the history of mysticism where the experience of God’s presence is irreducibly associated with the ordeal of his absence in the events of this world. If this link between the experience of absence and that of presence echoes the classic image of John of the Cross’s “dark night”, its conceptualisation in both Simone Weil and Etty Hillesum reveals two emerging features that break with the earlier mystical tradition. On the one hand, the ordeal of absence is no longer experienced as a purifying punishment inflicted by God himself, but rather as the ordeal of contemporary reality where God is recognised as the Absent One “par excellence”. On the other hand, the experience of presence does not put an end to that of absence, so that one can speak of the concomitance of the absence and the presence of God in the mystical experience of the 20th century.
Dans Études théologiques et religieuses 2022/1 (Tome 97), pages 49 à 65
The Actor & Scholar in Conversation: Simona Giurgea and E. Jane Doering on Simone Weil
Simone Weil’s “The Iliad or the Poem of Force” is a profound exploration of the power of force and the hubris of mankind in attempting to control it to our advantage. Force is inherently destructive, and we risk it overwhelming us when we unleash it upon ourselves. This two-part essay, published in the Cahiers du Sud in 1940 – 41, is every bit as relevant today in all human interactions, from the interpersonal to the geopolitical.
Join us for a discussion of this piece by Professor Emeritus of the University of Notre Dame and renowned Weil scholar Dr. E. Jane Doering and Simona Girugea, Senior Lecturer in of the University Theatre at Colgate University, who adapted this writing into a compelling one-woman dramatization (performed at the library on Friday, October 15). Hosted by Ron Collins, Senior Editor of ATTENTION. The discussion will probe this compelling essay in depth. The conversation will be followed by a reception sponsored ATTENTION.
E. Jane Doering is professor emerita of the College of Arts and Letters at Notre Dame University. She received her Ph.D. from Northwestern University in 19th and 20th-century French literature and culture. She also holds a Masters of Education from Goucher College and an M.A. in French Literature from the University of Notre Dame, along with a Diplôme d’études from La Sorbonne, Paris. She received the Notre Dame Kaneb Teaching Award for excellence in teaching. Her books include When Fiction and Philosophy Meet: A Conversation with Flannery O’Connor and Simone Weil (2019), Simone Weil and the Specter of Self-perpetuating Force (2010), and The Christian Platonism of Simone Weil (2014). She has authored over three dozen articles in English, French, and Italian on the multi-dimensional thought of Simone Weil, and delivered numerous talks in the USA, Canada, France, Italy, and Israel. Her professional responsibilities include being a longstanding member in an advisory capacity of the American Weil Society and of the international Association pour l’étude de la pensée de Simone Weil. She is also on the board of advisors of ATTENTION.
Lewes Public Library, October 16, 2021
NOTE: this session is available to attend in-person or through Zoom. You MUST REGISTER and indicate which you prefer.
The Actor & Scholar in Conversation: Simona Giurgea and E. Jane Doering on Simone Weil
Lewes Public Library, Lewes (Delaware, US)
