Weil & Other Thinkers

Nihilism and Transcendence in Samuel Beckett and Simone Weil

Maroof Shah read

The problems of nihilism and absurdism as presented in the works of Samuel Beckett which presuppose a bleak view of the world without transcendence are effectively solved by turning to Simone Weil’s philosophy which appropriates key absurdist premises in its transcendence-centered interpretation of knowledge and experience. Weil’s rereading of religion appropriates important criticisms from existentialist-absurdist writers like Beckett and critics of traditional religion. It is possible to transcend the absurdist impasse by turning to Weil. Notebooks of Weil are here read as providing important insights to answer absurdist nihilist pessimist vision.

Teresian Journal of English Studies, vol. 3, no. 1 (2011), pp. 21-27

 

The Concept of Mystery and the Value of Philosophy in the Later Wittgenstein

Eric Springsted read

Alasdair MacIntyre has urged a project for philosophers of faith to do philosophy in such a way as to address the deeper human concerns underlying philosophy’s basic questions. This essay examines where Wittgenstein’s later philosophy makes a contribution to that sort of project. It notes the importance of his doctrine of “meaning as use” for thinking philosophically about religion; it is centered in the life-world of religious people. But it also deals with issues arising from Wittgenstein’s view that philosophy should be a sort of conceptual therapy that undoes confusion and leaves everything as it is, i.e., his defactoism. It argues that there is an underlying sense of value. This changes from the Tractatus to the Philosophical Investigations. In the latter, he ultimately shows a commitment to a philosophical value of openness and willingness to transform one’s mind by the discovery of what is given.

American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, 85.4 (Fall, 2011) 547-563.

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.

Decreation, Art, and a Passage of Diasporic Soul: Reading Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Pomegranate Offering with Simone Weil

Min-Ah Cho read

Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Religion, vol. 1, no. 9, pp. 1-24

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).