Simone Weil: Late Philosophical Writings

by Simone Weil, Eric O. Springsted (Editor), Lawrence E. Schmidt (Translation)

Although trained as a philosopher, Simone Weil (1909–43) contributed to a wide range of subjects, resulting in a rich field of interdisciplinary Weil studies. Yet those coming to her work from such disciplines as sociology, history, political science, religious studies, French studies, and women’s studies are often ignorant of or baffled by her philosophical investigations. In Simone Late Philosophical Writings , Eric O. Springsted presents a unique collection of Weil’s writings, one concentrating on her explicitly philosophical thinking. The essays are drawn chiefly from the time Weil spent in Marseille in 1940-42, as well as one written from London; most have been out of print for some time; three appear for the first time; all are newly translated. Beyond making important texts available, this selection provides the context for understanding Weil's thought as a whole. This volume is important not only for those with a general interest in Weil; it also specifically presents Weil as a philosopher, chiefly one interested in questions of the nature of value, moral thought, and the relation of faith and reason. What also appears through this judicious selection is an important confirmation that on many issues respecting the nature of philosophy, Weil, Wittgenstein, and Kierkegaard shared a great deal.

Genres: Philosophy

214 pages, Paperback

First published September 15, 2015

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

[a]

I think this is the Weil book to get if you are only going to get one. The short introduction avoids both the pitfalls of Weil study, one of which is simply agreeing with everything she says, and the other of which is thinking you can boil her writing down to propositions that can be argued point by point. Rather than extracting points of belief from Weil’s work and comparing them to propositions argued by other philosophers, Springsted attempts in the introduction to compare Weil’s attitudes and worldview with those of other thinkers. So you end up with a pretty good sense of how Weil thought and why. The essays collected in this volume are some of her most important—and one of them, here translated as “what is sacred in human beings?” is arguably her most important piece, period.

[Marcela · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Essay on the Concept of Reading",
"What is Sacred in Every Human Being?" (also translated as "Human Personality"(1),
"Literature and Morals",
are all a-must. Truly insightful.


--
(1) To be read alongside this article by Agnes Callard.

[Christina · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Truth, beauty, justice, compassion are always good, everywhere.”

“We do not enter into the truth without having passed through our own nothingness; without having sojourned for a long time in a state of total and extreme humiliation.”

An eclectic, but not unconnected, selection of essays. Whatever her views, the frequent complexity of them, her writing is deeply affecting. Compelling. Challenging. Sometimes awe inspiring. Sometimes convoluted. Agreement with her is not necessary to respect her. Really, each essay deserves a full review, which I am not going to do here. But if you're looking for a good framework for Weil's thinking, her philosophy and theology, this book is great. This book includes her views on philosophy (what it is and isn't), literature, art, science, social justice, much more. God, of course, is throughout.

In brief: For Weil, real philosophy is a practice, not theory, a system or a building of a position. It is a way to wisdom, transcending knowledge. It requires detachment from personal ideas about value. Reflection. Not knowledge but transformation. A devoted Platonist for whom philosophy is turning towards truth (& salvation). Contradictions are at the center of philosophy & human life; exposing, not eliminating, these contradictions is progress. Philosophy is eternal, renewed. It doesn’t prescribe.

"All human knowledge is hypothetical.”
“Philosophy does not consist in accumulating knowledge, as science does, but in changing the whole soul.”

The essay "What Is Sacred In Every Human Being" is really extraordinary and if you focus on one essay here, this should probably be it. Some ideas from it: What is sacred is impersonal, anonymous, like Truth & Beauty. It requires attention, solitude, silence, humility. It is not “I,” the cult of self, of personality, nor is it “us,” drowning in a collectivity. Intelligence is related to opinion & language, which only allows us to move in a closed space. You have to admit this captivity, metaphorically bang your head against a wall repeatedly until you can grasp inexpressible thoughts & go beyond the limits of intelligence to wisdom.

“Extremely brilliant people of intelligence can be born, live, and die in falsity and error.”
"An intelligent man who is proud of his intelligence is like a prisoner who is proud of having a big cell.”

This is a book that requires focus and time (and likely lots of notes). To try to rush through this looking for key arguments is pointless. But it is a very rewarding read, a book you can return to to either study Weil specifically or to deepen your thinking on certain topics, or your thinking in general.

[justin]

partly read. the last essay, "at the price of an infinite error", i decided to to not touch yet, i'm not well-versed to the movement of scientific developments early 20th century and i was lost in the first few paragraphs of it, but i will get to it some point in the future, if i have to envoke weil's reflection on her contemporary science development and how she attunes it to greek traditions.

overall, i'm a little enamored with weil—maybe less of her ideas but more of her as a person. the way she views mundane gesture in the way she does, the way we read or value cosmopolitan literature like magazines (this one, i'm a little reserved with how she writes them in the ninth essay), reminds me of the way sontag writes. things we assume rudimentary until she knocks it back on the back of our head, realigning, again, why words work they way they do, and instances when they do not.

god in plato is my favorite one; i fished a few lines that could help my academic writing path. her essay on literatures and morals keeps eluding me. i'm not a devout catholic, nor do i think i associate moral relativism in my principles, especially that built on catholicism, so i'm not very quick to agree on her discourses (literatures being inherently good or evil made me scratch my head, underline the sentences with my pencil, and doggy-ear the page). i'm still eager to read the rest of her works and see why carson, camus, and my other favorite writers can't seem to stop invoking her. i can feel the provocativeness in her ideas, but i'm not quite there.

[Tiago Nunes · Rating 3 out of 5]

I dont fully understand the point of the final essay. It felt like a summary of the history of classical physics with some criticisms about the fact that approximations always commit some infinitesimal error.

This, by itself, felt like an unnecessary critique of physics.

[simone · Rating 5 out of 5]

"𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐥𝐝 𝐢𝐬 𝐣𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐚𝐧 𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐮𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧"

"Sophie put on her glasses. Everything around her turned red. The light colors became light red and the dark ones dark red.

- What are you seeing?
- Same as before, only red.
- The explanation for this is that the lenses of the glasses determine the way you perceive reality. Everything you see is part of the world outside yourself; but how you see all this is also determined by the lens of the glasses. You cannot say that the world is red, even though it looks red right now." ーSophie's world