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Simone Weil: Utopian Pessimist
Simone Weil's short life was as extraordinary as her writings. Born in 1909, she was a brilliant philosophy student in the Paris of the 1920s and colleague of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. She fought on the anarchist side in the Spanish Civil War and died, at the age of only thirty-four, while serving with de Gaulle and the Free French in London. This life of intense activity was united with a profoundly religious outlook on life. Many consider her the best spiritual writer of our century and a true saint for modern times. Simone Weil published almost nothing during her lifetime. The publication of her complete works is only now beginning in France. They reveal a mind of amazing lucidity and depth. This biography draws on hitherto unpublished material to explain her thought in the context of her life. Its comprehensive coverage at last makes available to the public the most intriguing personality of our age.
336 pages, Paperback
Published June 20, 1991
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About the author
David McLellan
51 books37 followersDavid McLellan (born 10 February 1940) is an English scholar of Karl Marx and Marxism. He was educated at Merchant Taylors' School and St. John's College, Oxford University.
McLellan is currently visiting Professor of Political Theory at Goldsmiths' College, University of London. He was previously Professor of Political Theory at the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Kent.
McLellan has also been Visiting Professor at the State University of New York, Guest Fellow in Politics at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Simla, and has lectured widely in North America and Europe.
McLellan is currently visiting Professor of Political Theory at Goldsmiths' College, University of London. He was previously Professor of Political Theory at the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Kent.
McLellan has also been Visiting Professor at the State University of New York, Guest Fellow in Politics at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Simla, and has lectured widely in North America and Europe.
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January 25, 2024Wiel remains as one touched by injustice to the common worker. She wished to understand and bear that injustice also. She also felt the suffering of France during WWII. She appears to have allowed her own suffering to consume herself. ' For the young Weil God was simply a name for human aspirations." p. 16
Simone's father was a convinced atheist and had a fund of anti-Semitic jokes." p. 4
To Weil, "Marx's contribution was little better than that of the nineteenth -century utopian socialists whom he so bitterly criticized; he was sensitive to injustice without properly understanding its causes." She wrote: "Marx's revolutionary materialism consists in positing, on the one hand, that everything is exclusively regulated by force, and on the other that a day will suddenly come when force will be on the side of the weak." p. 76
Weil's view of the Soviet Union was both uncompromising and incisive. Its bleakness recalls Marcuse's account of "capitalist society in 'One Dimensional Man'. Although the picture of Stalinist Russia that she paints is familiar to us now, it should not be forgotten that, at the time of her writing, such a clear stand was very rare on the left. Weil saw "Force, not need, was the basis of human history." p. 83
Although she preferred Greece as a source for Western civilization over Rome and Israel, but "she continued to think that the contempt of the Greeks for manual labour was a striking gap in their conception of the world." p. 130
She attributed the good parts of the Hebrew Bible to foreign influences. "She found it impossible to accept the credal assertion that the Spirit had spoken through the Prophets." p. 151
"It was one of the several paradoxes of her life, that of Jewish origin herself, it should be her refusal of the Old Testament that kept her out of the Catholic Church."
She did approve of the civilization of the Languedoc, which flourished in the south of France during the 12th century. Its capital Toulouse was only behind Rome and Venice. Its government was a mixture of monarchy and democracy. "...the Languedoc of that time was the centre of the Catharist heresy. Catharism was a different religion from Christianity from which nevertheless it had borrowed some elements: it believed in reincarnation, thought that the world was created by the devil, and held the body to be an obstacle to spiritual perfection."
The author McLellen claims the Gnostics believed that the world was basically evil. He does not classify Weil as a Gnostic.
Simone's father was a convinced atheist and had a fund of anti-Semitic jokes." p. 4
To Weil, "Marx's contribution was little better than that of the nineteenth -century utopian socialists whom he so bitterly criticized; he was sensitive to injustice without properly understanding its causes." She wrote: "Marx's revolutionary materialism consists in positing, on the one hand, that everything is exclusively regulated by force, and on the other that a day will suddenly come when force will be on the side of the weak." p. 76
Weil's view of the Soviet Union was both uncompromising and incisive. Its bleakness recalls Marcuse's account of "capitalist society in 'One Dimensional Man'. Although the picture of Stalinist Russia that she paints is familiar to us now, it should not be forgotten that, at the time of her writing, such a clear stand was very rare on the left. Weil saw "Force, not need, was the basis of human history." p. 83
Although she preferred Greece as a source for Western civilization over Rome and Israel, but "she continued to think that the contempt of the Greeks for manual labour was a striking gap in their conception of the world." p. 130
She attributed the good parts of the Hebrew Bible to foreign influences. "She found it impossible to accept the credal assertion that the Spirit had spoken through the Prophets." p. 151
"It was one of the several paradoxes of her life, that of Jewish origin herself, it should be her refusal of the Old Testament that kept her out of the Catholic Church."
She did approve of the civilization of the Languedoc, which flourished in the south of France during the 12th century. Its capital Toulouse was only behind Rome and Venice. Its government was a mixture of monarchy and democracy. "...the Languedoc of that time was the centre of the Catharist heresy. Catharism was a different religion from Christianity from which nevertheless it had borrowed some elements: it believed in reincarnation, thought that the world was created by the devil, and held the body to be an obstacle to spiritual perfection."
The author McLellen claims the Gnostics believed that the world was basically evil. He does not classify Weil as a Gnostic.
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