The ‘Void’ in Simone Weil and the ‘Broken Middle’ in Gillian Rose: The Genesis of the Search for Salvation,
University of Durham, PhD
Weil & Other Thinkers
Finding Freedom: Simone Weil, Hannah Arendt, and Herbert Marcuse on Post-Totalitarian Politics
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, MA
On work and war: The words and deeds of Dorothy Day and Simone Weil
Simon Fraser University, MA
Horizons of Grace: Marilynne Robinson and Simone Weil
Philosophy and Literature, vol. 29, no. 2, pp. 349-364
Simone Weil and Iris Murdoch: The Possibility of Dialogue
Gender Issues, vol. 22, no. 4 (Fall 2005), pp. 71-78
The Importance of Attention in Morality: An Exploration of Iris Murdoch’s Philosophy
This thesis explores the role of attention in morality as presented by Iris Murdoch. The aim is to offer a clear and detailed understanding of Murdoch’s concept of attention, its metaphysical presuppositions and its implications for morality, and, if Murdoch’s view as developed here is found to be plausible, to suggest how attention can be considered to play an important role in morality. The moral concept of attention presented in this work involves particular epistemic attitudes and faculties that are meant to enable the subject to apprehend moral reality and thus achieve correct moral understanding and moral responses.
The thesis is divided into three parts. The first part (Chapters 1 and 2), clarifies Murdoch’s metaphysical picture on which the idea of attention is grounded. The metaphysics involves a dual commitment to value as both existing in reality and as a transcendental condition. While the two ideas appear incompatible, I suggest a framework against which Murdoch’s claim that an evaluat ive consciousness apprehends a value external to itself might be understood. The second part introduces Murdoch’s moral psychology, and explores how the faculties, attitudes and character traits related to attention are involved in moral understanding (Chapters 3 and 4). The two parts come together in Chapter 5, which focuses on how the exercise of attention can be understood as enabling moral perception. The last part (Chapters 6 and 7) continues the moral psychological exploration of attention, by focusing on the self, viewed both as interference and as indispensable means in attaining moral understanding.
The analysis of Murdoch’s thought is conducted through close readings of her work, discussions of the secondary literature, as well as by clarifying and developing key points through readings of Simone Weil, from whom Murdoch derives the idea of attention.
Ph.D. dissertation, University of East Anglia School of Politics, Philosophy, Language and Communication Studies Department of Philosophy, September 2015
Related:
— Iris Murdoch, “‘Waiting on God’: A Radio Talk on Simone Weil,” Iris Murdoch Review, (2017), pp. 9-16, preface by Justin Broackes, (BBC broadcast, Oct.18, 1951, 7.40 p.m. on the Third Programme)
— Simone Weil, Venice Saved, ed. & trans. by Silvia Panizza & Phillip Wilson, Bloomsbury Academic, 2019
Albert Camus, Simone Weil and the Absurd
According to Camus, it is only in the face of the absurd – and through our unremitting revolt against it – that meaning can be generated. Espousing the Christian faith abnegates the absurd and with it the only possible source of meaning for modem man. This critique can be addressed by engaging with Simone Weil. She develops an original dialectic of divine absence (in the laws of indifferent ’necessity’ and affliction) and presence, which reflects the intra-Trinitarian unity and distance of the divine Persons, and which finds ultimate expression on the Cross of Christ. For her this dialectic does not induce revolt but a sophisticated kind of reconciliation that involves a selfless openness to, and engagement with, this world.
Irish Theological Quarterly, vol. 70, pp. 343-354
Beyond the Personal: Weil’s Critique of Maritain
Harvard Theological Review, vol. 98, no.2, pp. 209-218
Faith, Belief, and Perspective: Peter Winch’s Philosophy of Religion
Peter Winch’s philosophy of religion is controversial, accused of mere “perspectivism” and fideism, and for avoiding discussion of any existential reference for the object of belief. This essay examines what Winch meant by a “perspective.” It first deals with problems of first-person propositions of belief. For Wittgenstein and Winch belief, and the fact it believes, are inextricably bound together. Thus Winch argues that what is said cannot be divorced from the situation of the sayer; understanding requires making shifts in perspective. Finally, I compare Winch’s use of religious language to Augustine’s doctrine of the “inner word,” arguing that there are important parallels in Winch to pre-Lockean theological understandings of faith.
Philosophical Investigations, vol. 27, no. 4 (Oct. 2004) pp. 345-369.
Force or Fragility? Simone Weil and Two Faces of Joan of Arc
“Pirruccello begins the chapter with a discussion of Weil’s search for “skillful models of spirituality.” Following a brief biographical sketch of Weil, she turns to a discussion of Weil’s reflections on Joan of Arc. She first considers Weil’s critical reflections on the view of Joan of Arc in popular culture in wartime France. She then turns to Weil’s comparison of the story of Joan of Arc to that of Arjuna in the Bhagavad-Gita and Weil’s identification of what she feels to be the critical difference between them. Pirruccello goes on to consider Weil’s alternative reading of the story of Joan of Arc and the positive aspects it could contribute to a model of skillful spirituality. In so doing, Pirrucello offers an interesting discussion of Weil’s historical methodology and its contribution to her reflections on France, especially in The Need for Roots.” (Source here).
in Ann W. Astell & Bonnie Wheeler, eds., Joan of Arc and Spirituality, Palgrave Macmillan (2004), pp. 267-281.
