Simone Weil: Basic Writings

by Simone Weil, D. K. Levy (Editor), Marina Barabas (Editor)

Simone Weil is one of the most profound and thought-provoking thinkers of the twentieth century. A teacher, factory and farm labourer, a political activist at home and abroad, a loving friend, daughter and sister―all these manifest a life devoted to the good in its many forms. Her writings explore the good open to us and the various routes to it, spanning philosophy, politics, science, and spirituality. While she saw her vocation primarily as a philosopher―examining questions concerning human faculties, action and thought, the limits of language and our need of mediation, suffering and beauty for contact with reality―her startingly original thought is often obscured by her having been too readily categorized as a Christian mystic. Simone Basic Writings is an expertly edited anthology of Weil’s most important writings, presenting her philosophy as it relates to the architecture of human nature, politics, work, necessity, beauty, goodness and God. Working from the definitive French edition of Weil’s complete writings, D. K. Levy and Marina Barabas have translated the essays anew or for the first time, adding important notes and references absent from existing English language editions of Weil’s work. Following an extensive introduction that gives an overview of Weil's life and thought, each section opens with a short introduction situating the selected essays within Weil’s oeuvre. Simone Basic Writings provides an excellent entry point for Weil’s philosophy, as well as a reference for students and scholars of Weil’s thought in philosophy and related disciplines.

Genres: Philosophy

454 pages, Paperback

Published December 22, 2023

About the author

Simone Weil was a French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist. Weil was born in Paris to Alsatian agnostic Jewish parents who fled the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine to Germany. Her brilliance, ascetic lifestyle, introversion, and eccentricity limited her ability to mix with others, but not to teach and participate in political movements of her time. She wrote extensively with both insight and breadth about political movements of which she was a part and later about spiritual mysticism. Weil biographer Gabriella Fiori writes that Weil was "a moral genius in the orbit of ethics, a genius of immense revolutionary range".

Reviews

[Kenny · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is simply the best collection through which to study Simone Weil's ideas.

If one has managed to complete it, they will understand Weil better than most; even if one does not complete it, they will still understand Weil better than most. And this is not just because Weil is a little-known author. It is because of the scrutinising scholarly apparatus which Levy and Barabas bring to bear in their translation and commentary.

It is a little strange to see this being described as Weil's 'Basic Writings.' In truth, with the exception of her essay 'The Iliad, or the Poem of Force,' this collection includes all of her *essential* writings, and many of them are far from basic!