Simone Weil as we knew her

by Joseph-Marie Perrin, Gustave Thibon

Simone Weil (1909-1943) was a defining figure of the twentieth century; a philosopher, Christian (although never baptised), resistance fighter, Labour activist and teacher, described by Albert Camus as 'the only great spirit of our time'. In 1941 Weil was introduced to Father Joseph-Marie Perrin, a Dominican priest whose friendship became a key influence on her life. When Weil asked Perrin for work as a farm hand he sent her to Gustave Thibon, a farmer and Christian philosopher. Weil stayed with the Thibon family, working in the fields and writing the notebooks which became Gravity and Grace and other posthumous works.
Perrin and Thibon met Weil at a time when her spiritual life and creative genius were at their height. During the short but deep period of their acquaintance with her, they came to know her as she actually was. First published in English in 1953, and now introduced by J.P. Little, this unique portrait depicts Weil through the eyes of her friends, not as a strange and unaccountable genius but as an ardent and human person in search of truth and knowledge.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction

184 pages, Hardcover

First published October 9, 2003

Reviews

[Ray Yi]

A quick note but I felt compelled to log this because this wasn’t an easy book for me at all (frustration peaked in Thibon’s chapter on Vertigo of the Absolute)! Then again, Weil was an enigma even to those closest to her (hi ry). Anyways, what I appreciated most was how the authors took to studying her and her insistence on staying at the threshold of the Church - never holding back on criticism yet always on God’s terms of love. See:

“Should we therefore lay aside our Catholicism in studying Simone Weil? That is neither possible nor desirable. Simone Weil does not ask us to deny our own beliefs in order to achieve that scientific objectivity which views all things from outside, but to become more deeply ourselves, that is to say more deeply Catholic in the etymological sense of the word, so that we may achieve the supreme objectivity which loves all things from within. In so far as we approach this ideal - which is, alas, so much beyond us - our Catholicism, instead of cramping our faculties of understanding and sympathy, infinitely widens our vision and dilates our heart; we have no need of those instruments - as complicated as they are inexact - by which human wisdom tries to measure out truth and falsehood, good and evil; all that is good and true comes to us spontaneously, and the rest disappears of itself, like mist in the sunshine or dust swept by the wind.”

“Simone Weil was not a Catholic and we should not look to her for lessons in orthodoxy. What she brings us is an impetus, a call and also the account of an interior route towards pure good, towards the God whom we so lightly name our God and who, even when we know all that human speech can reveal of him, still remains the unknown God. Simone Weil offers us 'a fountain of water springing up into life everlasting'. As for the channels through which it is to flow, it is for us to provide them and we shall find them without difficulty in the dogmatic and moral system of the Church. Her work swarms with heresies no doubt, but we have the equipment to rectify them. And besides, do we measure the value and fruitfulness of religious inspiration solely in terms of strict orthodoxy? We have to raise the level of our discussion and to stop considering Simone Weil only from the point of view of her relations with Catholicism and her failure to become a convert. We have to consider her rather in the timeless setting where her supreme inspiration belongs.”

[Santiago Iturbide]

Simone Weil had a keen realisation that the beauty if the world can only be revealed to those who have understood its complete and limited character...