Weil & Other Thinkers

Elastic Worker: Time‐Sense, Energy and the Paradox of Resilience

A. Rebecca Rozelle-Stone read

This essay considers Simone Weil’s experiences in factories and her social–political reflections on work, time and energy, in conjunction with arguments from theorists Melissa Gregg, Theodor Adorno and Sara Ahmed, to raise questions about supposedly humane interventions, including the cultivation of resilience, in the contemporary workplace. The transition from time-sense in factory work at the turn of the century is examined, along with the growth of corporate time management ideologies and practices in the mid–late 20th century, and finally, the associated forms of disciplining resilience/elasticity in the worker that bring together certain notions of time, space and psychological investments.

Philosophical Investigations, vol. 43, nos. 1-2, pp. 177-196.

On the Differences Between Rush Rhees and Simone Weil

H.O. Mounce read

Rhees seems unaware that Simone Weil differed from him both in her conception of philosophy and of its relation to religion. She differed also in her view of the relation between religion and science. On her view, the aim of science is to find the laws which will allow us to apply deductive reasoning to nature. The necessities revealed had for her a religious significance. But this can be understood only given her view of the relation between God and the world. On her view, the creation of the world did not involve an extension of God’s power. It involved a withdrawal of his power, so that there could be an existence independent of himself. God does not interfere in the details of the world but sustains it through a network of necessities. For this reason, these necessities can serve as a sign of God.

Philosophical Investigations, vol. 43, nos. 1-2, pp. 71-75.

Peter Winch in India 1986 Lecture on Simone Weil

Peter Winch read

This is a talk given by Peter Winch in 1986 when he would have been nearing completion of his Simone Weil:“The just Balance” (1989). The talk was given to a small group in Mahabaleshwar in the Indian state of Maharashtra, and the transcription by Michael Campbell is from a recording made by Prabodh Parikh who, with Probal Dasgupta and Michael McGhee, initiated the Convivium series of meetings between Indian and Western philosophers.

Philosophical Investigations, vol. 43, nos. 1-2, pp. 19-39

Prophetic Voices: Simone Weil and Flannery O’Connor

E. Jane Doering & Ruthann Knechel Johansen read

This study juxtaposes Simone Weil’s exposition of God’s invitation to know and love the good through the divine signature of beauty stamped on the order of the world and Flannery O’Connor’s depiction of a society whose oppressive order allows some characters to oppose outright a divine order or to live under the illusion that the divine invitation is irrelevant because they, in their egoism and materialist values, are the centre of the universe. An examination of O’Connor’s and Weil’s ideas on order and beauty, grace and decreation, within the disorders of their contexts, reveals both writers’ skills in pointing prophetically through disorder to divine order, thus, disclosing bridges of revelation.

PhilosophicalInvestigations, vol. 43, nos. 1-2, pp. 101-114

Weil and Wittgenstein in Winch’s “Reading”: Philosophy as a Way of Life

Francesca R. Recchia Luciani read

Abstract:  Peter Winch’s study Simone Weil: The Just Balance adopts a heuristic method through which Weil’s philosophical and religious thought is illuminated by surprising parallels with some concepts developed independently by Wittgenstein. The comparative analysis illustrates that for both these Socratic philosophers, theory corresponds to daily experience, a real “way of life” which in itself gives rise to an ethical-philosophical pragmatics that informs the most intimate ontological dimensions, encapsulating in their thought the meaning of their whole life.

Michael Campbell & Lynette Reid, eds., Ethics, Society and Politics: Themes from the Philosophy of Peter Winch (2020), pp 149-166.

The Identity of Man – Winch Between Spinoza, Weil, and Wittgenstein

Sarah Trooper read

Throughout his philosophical career, Peter Winch had a particular interest in the philosophy of Spinoza, as is evidenced not only by a variety of references on a diverse range of issues in his works but also by several lectures and seminars he delivered on this thinker. A reconstruction of his interpretation of Spinoza’s system, which unites epistemological, metaphysical, and ethical considerations as mutually dependent, brings to the fore Winch’s interest in the individual not only as an important epistemological but equally as a moral agent, who is embedded in a web of circumstances that shape her view on the world and the possibilities and options she is able to entertain. Moreover, in his reading of Spinoza, the focus on the irreducibility of the individual’s standpoint is also connected to the philosophies of Wittgenstein and Simone Weil, a connection which adds at the same time an emphasis on a fundamental limitation of moral philosophy in general.

Sarah Trooper, “The Identity of Man – Winch Between Spinoza, Weil, and Wittgenstein,” in Michael Campbell & Lynette Reid, eds., Ethics, Society and Politics: Themes from the Philosophy of Peter Winch,  Springer (2020),  pp. 135-148

The Politics of Rootedness: On Simone Weil and George Orwell

Oriol Quintana read

Simone Weil and George Orwell both reflected—at a time when liberalism and Christianity were being challenged—on how to provide rootedness to societies and how to provide a moral anchoring and collective inspiration. The chapter considers the extent to which religion plays an important role in these authors’ politics of rootedness. A comparison between them suggests that rather than worrying first about whether or not we need a religious revival, we should worry about whether individuals have the opportunity to enter into contact with beauty. For both Weil and Orwell, a society is well-rooted when there is a continuity between natural beauty and social life. As such, a politics of rootedness entails, in their view, a genuine search for the recognition of all members of a collectivity and, above all, the search for a way of learning again how to find nourishment in the beauty of the world.

in Sophie Bourgault & Julie Daigle, eds., Simone Weil, Beyond Ideology?, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 103-123.

Simone Weil and theatre: from attention to the descending way

Giuliano Campo read

Theatre artists and philosophers all over the centuries have often pointed out the existence of two levels within every phenomenon; we call this thought “Dualism”. During the last centuries, many have focused on a specific, although the traditional, example of dualism, which envisions a superior, transcendent reality – that is not connected to ours -. The performer can create such a connection, through her work on “verticality”, touching the superior invisible realm, which must then descend back to our everyday dimension. This article analyses one of the main tools used in order to set up a connection between these two dimensions, that is attention, according to in particular to one of the main thinkers of the twentieth century: Simone Weil. In this regard, the author explores the last pedagogical work of French actor and theatre pedagogue Louis Jouvet and the last period of research by Jerzy Grotowski and his pupils, both focused on that “attention” and “descending way”, which works on the same line of what is better known as “Verticality.” In the second part, Campo comments on Weil’s selected passages.

Stanislavski Studies: Practice, Legacy, and Contemporary Theater, vol. 7, no. 2 (2019), pp. 177-200.