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Love in the Void: Where God Finds Us
Simone Weil, the great mystic and philosopher for our age, shows where anyone can find God.
Why is it that Simone Weil, with her short, troubled life and confounding insights into faith and doubt, continues to speak to today’s spiritual seekers? Was it her social radicalism, which led her to renounce privilege? Her ambivalence toward institutional religion? Her combination of philosophical rigor with the ardor of a mystic?
Albert Camus called Simone Weil “the only great spirit of our time.” André Gide found her “the most truly spiritual writer of this century.” Her intense life and profound writings have influenced people as diverse as T. S. Eliot, Charles De Gaulle, Pope Paul VI, and Adrienne Rich.
The body of work she left—most of it published posthumously—is the fruit of an anguished but ultimately luminous spiritual journey.
After her untimely death at age thirty-four, Simone Weil quickly achieved legendary status among a whole generation of thinkers. Her radical idealism offered a corrective to consumer culture. But more importantly, she pointed the way, especially for those outside institutional religion, to encounter the love of God – in love to neighbor, love of beauty, and even in suffering.
Why is it that Simone Weil, with her short, troubled life and confounding insights into faith and doubt, continues to speak to today’s spiritual seekers? Was it her social radicalism, which led her to renounce privilege? Her ambivalence toward institutional religion? Her combination of philosophical rigor with the ardor of a mystic?
Albert Camus called Simone Weil “the only great spirit of our time.” André Gide found her “the most truly spiritual writer of this century.” Her intense life and profound writings have influenced people as diverse as T. S. Eliot, Charles De Gaulle, Pope Paul VI, and Adrienne Rich.
The body of work she left—most of it published posthumously—is the fruit of an anguished but ultimately luminous spiritual journey.
After her untimely death at age thirty-four, Simone Weil quickly achieved legendary status among a whole generation of thinkers. Her radical idealism offered a corrective to consumer culture. But more importantly, she pointed the way, especially for those outside institutional religion, to encounter the love of God – in love to neighbor, love of beauty, and even in suffering.
137 pages, Kindle Edition
First published May 4, 2018
About the author
Simone Weil
379 books2,003 followersSimone 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".
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 86 reviews
March 27, 2025
I get a warm and fuzzy feeling that this incredible little book is apocryphral.
After Weil died a saint, in my opinion the advent of the quick-sell book trade in the sixties - considering her still-extant cornucopia of aphorisms - spawned a cottage industry around her words.
Small wonder. This book is dynamite. Every aphorism is frame-worthy.
And each one secretes a Roman candle with a lit wick under the derriere of many an unsuspecting dour presbyter.
I knew a few at my Anglican church in 1969.
They, like so many around us, symbolized prudence and probity - for they were "guardians of the faith, the army of Unalterable Law" - as a young T.S. Eliot waspishly observed prior to his conversion.
But it took a green agnostic like me to notice that the fireworks were about to commence for me as well, in September of 1969! I was commencing my class selections for the Fall Term.
Let me explain: I am neurodivergent.
Being that way, my emotions can be all over the map - but my relationships always focus them. Being in a crowd confuses me, while relationships with folks like my wife inspire close compassionate listening and attention. Relationships such as that fuse mind and heart together.
It was similar with Simone Weil. Her primary relationship was with God. She saw God as being eminently worthy of her full attention. Being a mathematician, she saw a complex symmetry in His actions, and her relationship with Him focused on the Second Person of the Trinity.
Jesus fused her brilliant mind and sorrowful heart together.
For her His Love is the modern remedy for the random, aporetic Void in our Hearts which our fast pace of life creates. Yet He was intimate with the Void. The times in the Gospel when Christ found His most godly comfort were found in the Wilderness.
In September 1969, I found myself in the wilderness of an amoral crowd, and consequently knew myself for the first time as bleakly “left-handed, lost.”
The Best place to find God is in the Void! And I was already there.
When we see ourselves, we start to know ourselves as we are.
The past 70 years have seen my self-portrait starting to flesh itself out...
I know now that the neurodivergent way of dealing with life that I chose as a toddler was illogical…
And that the greater Love of the Gospel was a Model of Heavenly Logic!
Yet, for me, too, Jesus has found a way to fuse their duality in my heart, mind and soul.
After Weil died a saint, in my opinion the advent of the quick-sell book trade in the sixties - considering her still-extant cornucopia of aphorisms - spawned a cottage industry around her words.
Small wonder. This book is dynamite. Every aphorism is frame-worthy.
And each one secretes a Roman candle with a lit wick under the derriere of many an unsuspecting dour presbyter.
I knew a few at my Anglican church in 1969.
They, like so many around us, symbolized prudence and probity - for they were "guardians of the faith, the army of Unalterable Law" - as a young T.S. Eliot waspishly observed prior to his conversion.
But it took a green agnostic like me to notice that the fireworks were about to commence for me as well, in September of 1969! I was commencing my class selections for the Fall Term.
Let me explain: I am neurodivergent.
Being that way, my emotions can be all over the map - but my relationships always focus them. Being in a crowd confuses me, while relationships with folks like my wife inspire close compassionate listening and attention. Relationships such as that fuse mind and heart together.
It was similar with Simone Weil. Her primary relationship was with God. She saw God as being eminently worthy of her full attention. Being a mathematician, she saw a complex symmetry in His actions, and her relationship with Him focused on the Second Person of the Trinity.
Jesus fused her brilliant mind and sorrowful heart together.
For her His Love is the modern remedy for the random, aporetic Void in our Hearts which our fast pace of life creates. Yet He was intimate with the Void. The times in the Gospel when Christ found His most godly comfort were found in the Wilderness.
In September 1969, I found myself in the wilderness of an amoral crowd, and consequently knew myself for the first time as bleakly “left-handed, lost.”
The Best place to find God is in the Void! And I was already there.
When we see ourselves, we start to know ourselves as we are.
The past 70 years have seen my self-portrait starting to flesh itself out...
I know now that the neurodivergent way of dealing with life that I chose as a toddler was illogical…
And that the greater Love of the Gospel was a Model of Heavenly Logic!
Yet, for me, too, Jesus has found a way to fuse their duality in my heart, mind and soul.
April 3, 2026
This was hard for me to rate. I didn't really like it but found it interesting, thus the 3 stars. I knew nothing of Simone Weil (who died in 1943 at the age of 34) and the introduction by Laura Gagne about her life and philosophy was fascinating. The rest of this small book is a collection of essays pulled from her journals, all published in the late 1940's and into the 1950's after her death.
A spiritual mystic, I found some of the essays very accessible but others quite esoteric for me. Gagne's distillation of the key themes that headed each essay was very helpful. I did not agree with everything she proposes but much did align with my values. This collection is only 105pp long, but it took me 3 weeks to finish it as I tried to comprehend all that she was saying and reflect on her message. I did take copious notes.
I was reminded of the writings of St. Augustine and the life of Mother Teresa. If either of them speak to you then you may find this collection a worthwhile time of reflection on the search for understanding the love of God.
A spiritual mystic, I found some of the essays very accessible but others quite esoteric for me. Gagne's distillation of the key themes that headed each essay was very helpful. I did not agree with everything she proposes but much did align with my values. This collection is only 105pp long, but it took me 3 weeks to finish it as I tried to comprehend all that she was saying and reflect on her message. I did take copious notes.
I was reminded of the writings of St. Augustine and the life of Mother Teresa. If either of them speak to you then you may find this collection a worthwhile time of reflection on the search for understanding the love of God.
August 21, 2018
How does one begin to approach such a modern mystic, such a pure spirit as Simone Weil? She was described Nobel Prize winner Albert Camus as "the only great spirit of our time." I first encountered her work years ago, back when I was in undergraduate school when I came across a copy of her Waiting For God. It was my love for the novels of Fyodor Dostoevsky that I had been reading obsessively that caused me to begin a further studying into Existentialism and had begun reading everyone from Kierkegaard and Nietzsche to Camus and Sartre. It was Albert Camus statement that made me pick up a paperback of Waiting for God from the shelf of the bookshop where I was working and purchase it so that I could begin reading it on my break. What I would soon discover is that I became so engrossed in her writing that I completely forgot to eat my lunch.
I had never read anyone like her.
"Attention," she wrote, "consists of suspending our thought, leaving it detached, empty, and ready to be penetrated by the object; it means holding in our minds, within reach of that thought, but on a lower level and not in contact with, the diverse knowledge we have acquired, which we are forced to make use of. Our thought should be in relation to all particular and already formulated thoughts, as a man on a mountain, who, as he looks forward, sees also below him, without actually looking at them, a great many forests and plains. Above all our thought should be empty, waiting, not seeking anything, but ready to receive its naked truth the object that it is to penetrate."
Reading Weil, made me, for the first time, stop and consider what I gave my "attention" to. For her thinking is a form of attention and attention is one of the deepest forms of generosity or love that one can give another, even God. As she wrote, "Absolute unmixed attention is prayer." Attention for her is active and not passive. Prayer then is a form of active receptivity or, as she puts it, "The highest ecstasy is the attention at its fullest." It is a focusing on reality. It is giving a deep attention to reality. Listening as a way of understanding, of forming thought, of comprehending (whether it's listening to another person or to God). "The poet produces the beautiful," she believed, "by fixing his attention on something real."
The moral landscape within her works shattered my notion of what was and wasn't Christian. She was certainly a counter-cultural figure whose ideas on consumerism certainly ran against the grain of modern American Christianity and its consistent focus on self. Susan Sontag wrote of Weil's works that they helped us to "acknowledge the presence of mystery in the world."
Despite dying at the young age of forty-three, Simone Weil's writing is filled with a spiritual maturity lacking in much theology and philosophy. Even when I do not agree with her ideas, I cannot help but admire that they sprang from someone who is not driven by ego but the desire for transcendence in the soul. She pursued the truth, pursued God with such a fevered intensity that one cannot read her words without seeing the deepest desires of her heart.
In Love in the Void: Where God Finds Us, we get a glimpse of a woman who often thought of prayer not as expression of our needs and wants but that it is "a frame of mind that leads to illumination. We pray not to change our circumstances, but to change ourselves, specifically, to increase our capacity for loving attention . . ."
Prayer is a kind of waiting on God. It is a focusing of all one's attention not on the self but on the Creator, in all that one's soul is capable of. "Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity," she wrote in Gravity and Grace. Weil believed that "It is the highest part of the attention only which makes contact with God, when prayer is intense and pure enough for such a contact to be established; but the whole attention is turned toward God."
Attention is a focusing of our direction solely on God. This is the true substance of prayer. "Attention consists of suspending our thought, leaving it detached, empty, and ready to be penetrated by the object . . ." We empty ourselves of ourselves in order that we might be filled by that which we most ardently desire: God.
The lucidity of Weil's mind in this text is rich as it addresses love, beauty, injustice and inequality, suffering, idolatry, and virtue. These meditations are more than mere instruction but a sublime wrestling of spiritual and intellectual honesty. She grasps that, "Generosity and compassion are inseparable, and both have their model in God, that is to say, in creation and in the Passion. Christ taught us that the supernatural love of our neighbor is the exchange of compassion and gratitude . . ." which happens only when one "turns his attention toward it."
Simone Weil offers no easy or simplistic answers. Yet for those who have never read her, this book is a great introduction.
I had never read anyone like her.
"Attention," she wrote, "consists of suspending our thought, leaving it detached, empty, and ready to be penetrated by the object; it means holding in our minds, within reach of that thought, but on a lower level and not in contact with, the diverse knowledge we have acquired, which we are forced to make use of. Our thought should be in relation to all particular and already formulated thoughts, as a man on a mountain, who, as he looks forward, sees also below him, without actually looking at them, a great many forests and plains. Above all our thought should be empty, waiting, not seeking anything, but ready to receive its naked truth the object that it is to penetrate."
Reading Weil, made me, for the first time, stop and consider what I gave my "attention" to. For her thinking is a form of attention and attention is one of the deepest forms of generosity or love that one can give another, even God. As she wrote, "Absolute unmixed attention is prayer." Attention for her is active and not passive. Prayer then is a form of active receptivity or, as she puts it, "The highest ecstasy is the attention at its fullest." It is a focusing on reality. It is giving a deep attention to reality. Listening as a way of understanding, of forming thought, of comprehending (whether it's listening to another person or to God). "The poet produces the beautiful," she believed, "by fixing his attention on something real."
The moral landscape within her works shattered my notion of what was and wasn't Christian. She was certainly a counter-cultural figure whose ideas on consumerism certainly ran against the grain of modern American Christianity and its consistent focus on self. Susan Sontag wrote of Weil's works that they helped us to "acknowledge the presence of mystery in the world."
Despite dying at the young age of forty-three, Simone Weil's writing is filled with a spiritual maturity lacking in much theology and philosophy. Even when I do not agree with her ideas, I cannot help but admire that they sprang from someone who is not driven by ego but the desire for transcendence in the soul. She pursued the truth, pursued God with such a fevered intensity that one cannot read her words without seeing the deepest desires of her heart.
In Love in the Void: Where God Finds Us, we get a glimpse of a woman who often thought of prayer not as expression of our needs and wants but that it is "a frame of mind that leads to illumination. We pray not to change our circumstances, but to change ourselves, specifically, to increase our capacity for loving attention . . ."
Prayer is a kind of waiting on God. It is a focusing of all one's attention not on the self but on the Creator, in all that one's soul is capable of. "Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity," she wrote in Gravity and Grace. Weil believed that "It is the highest part of the attention only which makes contact with God, when prayer is intense and pure enough for such a contact to be established; but the whole attention is turned toward God."
Attention is a focusing of our direction solely on God. This is the true substance of prayer. "Attention consists of suspending our thought, leaving it detached, empty, and ready to be penetrated by the object . . ." We empty ourselves of ourselves in order that we might be filled by that which we most ardently desire: God.
The lucidity of Weil's mind in this text is rich as it addresses love, beauty, injustice and inequality, suffering, idolatry, and virtue. These meditations are more than mere instruction but a sublime wrestling of spiritual and intellectual honesty. She grasps that, "Generosity and compassion are inseparable, and both have their model in God, that is to say, in creation and in the Passion. Christ taught us that the supernatural love of our neighbor is the exchange of compassion and gratitude . . ." which happens only when one "turns his attention toward it."
Simone Weil offers no easy or simplistic answers. Yet for those who have never read her, this book is a great introduction.
June 4, 2018
Won in a Goodreads giveaway. This is not a book to read cover to cover; rather it is a book to revisit and inhale and meditate upon. As a lover of biography Simone Weil's brief but unique life interests to say the least. From non-believer to a true philosopher upon how we reach God, Weil felt a magnificent kinship with soldiers on the front in World War I, to the starving in Asia, and to the factory workers with whom she chose to share a monotonous life. Willing to return to France to fight Nazism, who ethnic looks and eventual fatal illness halted those plans. Her words on loss and grace and the obfuscating presence of materialism in human lives-certainly truer now that 75 years ago-are as valuable today as then. Again, as a work of meditative spirituality this is not to be gobbled up in a fast read, but it is meant to be reflected upon, and prayed upon, and in a radical call acted upon. As I today here candidates for state office toss out their self proclaimed Christianity for votes, the life and words of Weil humbly remind us of the necessary emptiness to know and proclaim Christ in the world.
March 20, 2024
I was simply fist bumping the air as I read this book, because Weil knocks it out of the park. This barely 100 paged book packs Simon Weil’s brilliant thoughts into a compact, dense work of art. If you like bell hooks, this book delivers the same effect, albeit a more Christian-centric philosophy.
Not only is this book definitely in my top ten for this year, but also in my need to reread every year pile! I borrowed the copy I read from a friend and after the first couple chapters bought my own copy. That’s love, baby.
“I also am other than what I imagine myself to be.” (Pg 73)
I love every sentence from the introduction to the acknowledgements. The intro taught me so much of Weil’s life that were helpful in understanding her mysticism. I resonated with her outlook on complex issues around Christianity like being a “Christian” vs being a follower of Christ.
“It is only necessary to know that love is a direction and not a state of the soul. If one is unaware of this, one falls into despair at the first onslaught of affliction.” (Pg 105)
Even though it is short, this collection is chock-full of wisdom. Weil is articulating very complex arguments, writing them in a way which makes you slow down and understand each sentence and idea before moving on. I enjoyed the slow pace because it reset my reading habits, since I usually skim or speed read through novels, missing tedious detail to move forward in the plot. You can’t do that in this book. Weil makes you sit with each word before progressing, something so rare and difficult in todays distracting landscape. We all need a gentle reminder like this to slow down, sit in something, muse.
“We seem to fear that we will lack significance or cease to exist if we let go of the thing that we think define us. Only when detachment removes the veil can we relate authentically to the people and things around us and become our real selves.” (Pg 77)
My favorite chapter was “Detachment”. In addition, I loved her idea of the Void. She explains it in multiple chapters but it is an astounding theory, one that attempts to answer the hardships of being alive while not writing off pain and suffering as a lot of my evangelical upbringing did.
If you’re a Christian wanting to get a little mystic, this is a fantastic tool. If you’re not, this book is still a good read, because the spiritual aspects may still resonate, but it does rely on Christian texts and thought so some of the stories, verses, terms, etc may need a Google.
No one who comes to this book will leave wanting.
Not only is this book definitely in my top ten for this year, but also in my need to reread every year pile! I borrowed the copy I read from a friend and after the first couple chapters bought my own copy. That’s love, baby.
“I also am other than what I imagine myself to be.” (Pg 73)
I love every sentence from the introduction to the acknowledgements. The intro taught me so much of Weil’s life that were helpful in understanding her mysticism. I resonated with her outlook on complex issues around Christianity like being a “Christian” vs being a follower of Christ.
“It is only necessary to know that love is a direction and not a state of the soul. If one is unaware of this, one falls into despair at the first onslaught of affliction.” (Pg 105)
Even though it is short, this collection is chock-full of wisdom. Weil is articulating very complex arguments, writing them in a way which makes you slow down and understand each sentence and idea before moving on. I enjoyed the slow pace because it reset my reading habits, since I usually skim or speed read through novels, missing tedious detail to move forward in the plot. You can’t do that in this book. Weil makes you sit with each word before progressing, something so rare and difficult in todays distracting landscape. We all need a gentle reminder like this to slow down, sit in something, muse.
“We seem to fear that we will lack significance or cease to exist if we let go of the thing that we think define us. Only when detachment removes the veil can we relate authentically to the people and things around us and become our real selves.” (Pg 77)
My favorite chapter was “Detachment”. In addition, I loved her idea of the Void. She explains it in multiple chapters but it is an astounding theory, one that attempts to answer the hardships of being alive while not writing off pain and suffering as a lot of my evangelical upbringing did.
If you’re a Christian wanting to get a little mystic, this is a fantastic tool. If you’re not, this book is still a good read, because the spiritual aspects may still resonate, but it does rely on Christian texts and thought so some of the stories, verses, terms, etc may need a Google.
No one who comes to this book will leave wanting.
February 2, 2019
I really loved this book. It definitely helped to get an idea or perspective of who Simone Weil was and what she believed, even though at times I thought, what are you talking about, or no...I don't think that's what that means... I agreed with so much of what she said and I was able to make amends for what I didn't understand or disagreed with due to the fact that she's French and this was in the 30s/40s, when taking that into consideration it makes a lot of sense. Also to the fact that, so much of her thought process or beliefs are in direct relationship with her experience. And when she says things so profound and true, she nails it on the head. There were so many moments where I thought, YES! Possibly equal to the moments of my confusion.
Anyway, I think this is a great book if you've been curious about who she is and her work. This is my second Plough Spiritual Guides publications and I think they are brilliant. What I got out of this small work is how she sees the Cross as not only the access and reality of Truth, the only truth but also the only access to real love and beauty.
Anyway, I think this is a great book if you've been curious about who she is and her work. This is my second Plough Spiritual Guides publications and I think they are brilliant. What I got out of this small work is how she sees the Cross as not only the access and reality of Truth, the only truth but also the only access to real love and beauty.
July 13, 2024
Insightful and applicable; Weil discusses Christianity philosophies in a mostly unobtrusive manner; a proper analysis of empathy and devotion that even skeptics can appreciate. Slightly fell off at the second half; as she discusses problems with the powers of God, or injustice in the world and fails to give a satisfying ending (to me (selfishly), a devout atheist). Whatever still rocked, 4.5
June 27, 2024
Weil. ♥️
“Men owe us what we imagine they will give us. We must forgive them this debt. To accept the fact that they are other than the creatures of our imagination is to imitate the renunciation of God. I also am other than what I imagine myself to be. To know this is forgiveness.”
I AM also other than what I imagine myself to be. To know this IS forgiveness. ♥️
“Men owe us what we imagine they will give us. We must forgive them this debt. To accept the fact that they are other than the creatures of our imagination is to imitate the renunciation of God. I also am other than what I imagine myself to be. To know this is forgiveness.”
I AM also other than what I imagine myself to be. To know this IS forgiveness. ♥️
December 20, 2024
“But through all the horror he can continue to want to love…For the greatest suffering, so long as it does not cause the soul to faint, does not touch the acquiescent part of the soul, consenting to a right direction.”
December 31, 2019
Poetic, brilliant, but ultimately suicidal in an extreme fetishization of pain and suffering.
January 12, 2025
“Beauty is the only finality here below. As Kant said very aptly, it is a finality which involves no objective. A beautiful thing involves no good except itself, in its totality, as it appears to us. We are drawn toward without knowing what to ask of it. It offers us its own existence. We do not desire anything else, we possess it, and yet we still desire something. We do not in the least know what it is.”
This was my first exposure to Weil. I read cover-to-cover, which was almost certainly a mistake. Weil’s writing merits reflection over time, reading and re-reading. Never before has such a short volume given rise to so many “eureka” moments.
This was my first exposure to Weil. I read cover-to-cover, which was almost certainly a mistake. Weil’s writing merits reflection over time, reading and re-reading. Never before has such a short volume given rise to so many “eureka” moments.
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February 13, 2025It’s hard to review this book. Even though I got to the last page, I don’t feel finished with the text. Simone Weil’s writings feel thick with contemplation and profound realizations, even if the wording is simple and concise.
I am so drawn to the reflections of someone who is averse to organized religion and yet has had intimate contact with God. Her personal life history and dedication to Truth in such an ultimate sense is really potent in itself.
I think at some point I have to sit down and read the bible.
I am so drawn to the reflections of someone who is averse to organized religion and yet has had intimate contact with God. Her personal life history and dedication to Truth in such an ultimate sense is really potent in itself.
I think at some point I have to sit down and read the bible.
May 7, 2026
There are some really startlingly beautiful insights in this slim book. There were also many gnomic utterances too obscure for me.
But on the whole, this was invigorating!
🔑 key concepts 🔑
- Attention
- Affliction
- The Void
-Gravity vs Grace
- God's restraint and renunciation
- love of neighbor, love of beauty, and love of ritual as preludes to a direct encounter with God
Weil was deeply interested in what she called "affliction." Affliction does not 🟰suffering, and it does not 🟰pain. Affliction exists at the totally demoralizing nexus of "physical pain, distress of soul, and social degradation." It is God's silence. It is the demoralizing and dehumanizing consequence of oppression and humiliation. It is the hopeless condition of the slave. Weil was confident that affliction was a double-edged sword which could make a person bitter, callous, and blind-- or else it could be the place where God is waiting.
When we love the afflicted, we imitate Christ's creation, incarnation, and atonement. The afflicted have been demoted from the dignity of personhood to objects -- mere matter-- to be manipulated, exploited, and used. But, when we treat the afflicted as equals and persons, it is as if we we breathe the breath of life into inert clay, making persons as God made Adam from the dust of the earth. When we empathize with the afflicted, we enter into them, and become them, just as Christ united himself to matter in the incarnation. When we treat the afflicted as persons, we enact for them a rebirth, a baptism, a resurrection.
A sample of representative quotes:
On Attention
“Love for our neighbor, being made of creative attention, is analogous to genius.
Creative attention means really giving our attention to what does not exist. Humanity does not exist in the anonymous flesh lying inert by the roadside. The Samaritan who stops and looks gives his attention all the same to this absent humanity, and the actions which follow prove that it is a question of real attention."
⸻
“Something in our soul has a far more violent repugnance for true attention than the flesh has for bodily fatigue. This something is much more closely connected with evil than is the flesh. That is why every time that we really concentrate our attention, we destroy the evil in ourselves. If we concentrate with this intention, a quarter of an hour of attention is better than a great many good works.”
⸻
On Beauty
“The soul seeks nothing so much as contact with the beauty of the world, or at a still higher level, with God; but at the same time it flies from it. When the soul flies from anything it is always trying to get away, either from the horror of ugliness, or contact with what is truly pure.
This is because all mediocrity flies from the light; and in all souls, except those which are near perfection, there is a great part which is mediocre. This part is seized with panic every time that a little pure beauty or pure goodness appears; it hides behind the flesh, it uses it as a veil.”
⸻
“The beauty of the world is the mouth of a labyrinth. The unwary individual who on entering takes a few steps is soon unable to find the opening. Worn out, with nothing to eat or drink, in the dark, separated from his dear ones, and from everything he loves and is accustomed to, he walks on without knowing anything or hoping anything, incapable even of discovering whether he is really going forward or merely turning round on the same spot.
But this affliction is as nothing compared with the danger threatening him. For if he does not lose courage, if he goes on walking, it is absolutely certain that he will finally arrive at the center of the labyrinth. And there God is waiting to eat him. Later he will go out again, but he will be changed, he will have become different, after being eaten and digested by God.”
⸻
On Affliction
“As for those who have been struck by one of those blows that leave a being struggling on the ground like a half-crushed worm, they have no words to express what is happening to them. Among the people they meet, those who have never had contact with affliction in its true sense can have no idea of what it is, even though they may have suffered a great deal.
And as for those who have themselves been mutilated by affliction, they are in no state to help anyone at all, and they are almost incapable of even wishing to do so. Thus compassion for the afflicted is an impossibility. When it is really found, we have a more astounding miracle than walking on water, healing the sick, or even raising the dead.”
⸻
On the Natural Man ("Gravity")
“The tendency to spread evil beyond oneself: I still have it! Beings and things are not sacred enough to me. May I never sully anything even though I be utterly transformed into mud. To sully nothing, even in thought.
Even in my worst moments I would not destroy a Greek statue or a fresco by Giotto. Why anything else then? Why, for example, a moment in the life of a human being who could have been happy for that moment?”
⸻
On Joy in Academic Study
“Will power, the kind that, if need be, makes us set our teeth and endure suffering, is the principal weapon of the apprentice engaged in manual work. But contrary to the usual belief it has practically no place in study.
The intelligence can only be led by desire. For there to be desire, there must be pleasure and joy in the work. The intelligence only grows and bears fruit in joy. The joy of learning is as indispensable in study as breathing is in running. Where it is lacking there are no real students, but only poor caricatures of apprentices…”
But on the whole, this was invigorating!
🔑 key concepts 🔑
- Attention
- Affliction
- The Void
-Gravity vs Grace
- God's restraint and renunciation
- love of neighbor, love of beauty, and love of ritual as preludes to a direct encounter with God
Weil was deeply interested in what she called "affliction." Affliction does not 🟰suffering, and it does not 🟰pain. Affliction exists at the totally demoralizing nexus of "physical pain, distress of soul, and social degradation." It is God's silence. It is the demoralizing and dehumanizing consequence of oppression and humiliation. It is the hopeless condition of the slave. Weil was confident that affliction was a double-edged sword which could make a person bitter, callous, and blind-- or else it could be the place where God is waiting.
When we love the afflicted, we imitate Christ's creation, incarnation, and atonement. The afflicted have been demoted from the dignity of personhood to objects -- mere matter-- to be manipulated, exploited, and used. But, when we treat the afflicted as equals and persons, it is as if we we breathe the breath of life into inert clay, making persons as God made Adam from the dust of the earth. When we empathize with the afflicted, we enter into them, and become them, just as Christ united himself to matter in the incarnation. When we treat the afflicted as persons, we enact for them a rebirth, a baptism, a resurrection.
A sample of representative quotes:
On Attention
“Love for our neighbor, being made of creative attention, is analogous to genius.
Creative attention means really giving our attention to what does not exist. Humanity does not exist in the anonymous flesh lying inert by the roadside. The Samaritan who stops and looks gives his attention all the same to this absent humanity, and the actions which follow prove that it is a question of real attention."
⸻
“Something in our soul has a far more violent repugnance for true attention than the flesh has for bodily fatigue. This something is much more closely connected with evil than is the flesh. That is why every time that we really concentrate our attention, we destroy the evil in ourselves. If we concentrate with this intention, a quarter of an hour of attention is better than a great many good works.”
⸻
On Beauty
“The soul seeks nothing so much as contact with the beauty of the world, or at a still higher level, with God; but at the same time it flies from it. When the soul flies from anything it is always trying to get away, either from the horror of ugliness, or contact with what is truly pure.
This is because all mediocrity flies from the light; and in all souls, except those which are near perfection, there is a great part which is mediocre. This part is seized with panic every time that a little pure beauty or pure goodness appears; it hides behind the flesh, it uses it as a veil.”
⸻
“The beauty of the world is the mouth of a labyrinth. The unwary individual who on entering takes a few steps is soon unable to find the opening. Worn out, with nothing to eat or drink, in the dark, separated from his dear ones, and from everything he loves and is accustomed to, he walks on without knowing anything or hoping anything, incapable even of discovering whether he is really going forward or merely turning round on the same spot.
But this affliction is as nothing compared with the danger threatening him. For if he does not lose courage, if he goes on walking, it is absolutely certain that he will finally arrive at the center of the labyrinth. And there God is waiting to eat him. Later he will go out again, but he will be changed, he will have become different, after being eaten and digested by God.”
⸻
On Affliction
“As for those who have been struck by one of those blows that leave a being struggling on the ground like a half-crushed worm, they have no words to express what is happening to them. Among the people they meet, those who have never had contact with affliction in its true sense can have no idea of what it is, even though they may have suffered a great deal.
And as for those who have themselves been mutilated by affliction, they are in no state to help anyone at all, and they are almost incapable of even wishing to do so. Thus compassion for the afflicted is an impossibility. When it is really found, we have a more astounding miracle than walking on water, healing the sick, or even raising the dead.”
⸻
On the Natural Man ("Gravity")
“The tendency to spread evil beyond oneself: I still have it! Beings and things are not sacred enough to me. May I never sully anything even though I be utterly transformed into mud. To sully nothing, even in thought.
Even in my worst moments I would not destroy a Greek statue or a fresco by Giotto. Why anything else then? Why, for example, a moment in the life of a human being who could have been happy for that moment?”
⸻
On Joy in Academic Study
“Will power, the kind that, if need be, makes us set our teeth and endure suffering, is the principal weapon of the apprentice engaged in manual work. But contrary to the usual belief it has practically no place in study.
The intelligence can only be led by desire. For there to be desire, there must be pleasure and joy in the work. The intelligence only grows and bears fruit in joy. The joy of learning is as indispensable in study as breathing is in running. Where it is lacking there are no real students, but only poor caricatures of apprentices…”
September 28, 2020
It's so great to exist in the same reality as Simone Weil.
Though this book is, in my opinion, a little less radical than Gravity and Grace (and a lot harder to read atheistically), it does carry the seed of what draws me so much to her work. Although first and foremost a Christian mystic, Simone Weil is also a brilliant philosopher (you can see how her intuitions about God and the world fit perfectly at the side of many theories of ontology, ethics and metaphysics) and, most importantly, a warrior; someone who not only talked strength and virtue but lived them to their last consequences.
Though this book is, in my opinion, a little less radical than Gravity and Grace (and a lot harder to read atheistically), it does carry the seed of what draws me so much to her work. Although first and foremost a Christian mystic, Simone Weil is also a brilliant philosopher (you can see how her intuitions about God and the world fit perfectly at the side of many theories of ontology, ethics and metaphysics) and, most importantly, a warrior; someone who not only talked strength and virtue but lived them to their last consequences.
July 23, 2021
“A day comes when the soul belongs to God, when it not only consents to love but when truly and effectively it loves. Then in its turn it must cross the universe to go to God. The soul does not love like a creature with created love. The love within it is divine, uncreated; for it is the love of God for God that is passing through it. God alone is capable of loving God. We can only consent to give up our own feelings so as to allow free passage in our soul for this love. That is the meaning of denying oneself. We are created for this consent, and for this alone.”
August 8, 2018
Simone Weil has given us some insight to encounter the love of God. Love is God and we all need Love to keep us going forward. Love your neighbor is one of the most given commandment you need to fulfil with beauty and grace. This book is a good example of the love we should have for one another.
November 25, 2024
please someone talk to me about this.
i really do wish i could commit more to the ideas about the “void,” imagination, and affliction more. i know it would be truly joyful to embrace the universe as it comes. it might be more of a spiritual problem for me, knowing that the principles explained here seem to be a separation from human desire. it’s hard for anyone to put that away and make room for something greater!
also it makes sense to me that camus was into weil’s works. i immediately want to read the stranger after putting this one down.
here are some passages i enjoyed.
“grace fills empty spaces, but it can only enter where there is a void to receive it, and it is grace itself which makes this void”
“man only escapes from the laws of this world in lightning flashes. instants when everything stands still, instants of contemplation, of pure intuition, of mental void, of acceptance of the moral void. it is through such instants that he is capable of the supernatural.”
“we must continually suspend the work of the imagination in filling the void within ourselves. if we accept no matter what void, what stroke of fate can prevent us from loving the universe? we have the assurance that, come what may, the universe is full”
i really do wish i could commit more to the ideas about the “void,” imagination, and affliction more. i know it would be truly joyful to embrace the universe as it comes. it might be more of a spiritual problem for me, knowing that the principles explained here seem to be a separation from human desire. it’s hard for anyone to put that away and make room for something greater!
also it makes sense to me that camus was into weil’s works. i immediately want to read the stranger after putting this one down.
here are some passages i enjoyed.
“grace fills empty spaces, but it can only enter where there is a void to receive it, and it is grace itself which makes this void”
“man only escapes from the laws of this world in lightning flashes. instants when everything stands still, instants of contemplation, of pure intuition, of mental void, of acceptance of the moral void. it is through such instants that he is capable of the supernatural.”
“we must continually suspend the work of the imagination in filling the void within ourselves. if we accept no matter what void, what stroke of fate can prevent us from loving the universe? we have the assurance that, come what may, the universe is full”
January 19, 2025
"We live in a world of unreality and dreams.
To give up our imaginary position as the center, to renounce it, not only intellectually but in the imaginative part of our soul, that means to awaken to what is real and eternal, to see the true light and hear the true silence.
A transformation then takes place at the very roots of our sensibility, in our immediate reception of sense impressions and psychological impressions. It is a transformation analogous to that which takes place in the dusk of evening on a road, where we suddenly discern as a tree what we had at first seen as a stooping man; or where we suddenly recognize as a rustling of leaves what we thought at first was whispering voices. We see the same colors; we hear the same sounds, but not in the same way."
To give up our imaginary position as the center, to renounce it, not only intellectually but in the imaginative part of our soul, that means to awaken to what is real and eternal, to see the true light and hear the true silence.
A transformation then takes place at the very roots of our sensibility, in our immediate reception of sense impressions and psychological impressions. It is a transformation analogous to that which takes place in the dusk of evening on a road, where we suddenly discern as a tree what we had at first seen as a stooping man; or where we suddenly recognize as a rustling of leaves what we thought at first was whispering voices. We see the same colors; we hear the same sounds, but not in the same way."
Read
January 28, 2025There is still no greater challenge to me than reading and understanding a philosophy book. I know I would have to go through this one a couple more times to fully grasp it in its entirety but this first run through was enjoyable even when tough.
"The tendency to spread evil beyond oneself: I still have it! Beings and things are not sacred enough to me. May I never sully anything even though I be utterly transformed into mud. To sully nothing, even in thought. Even in my worst moments I would not destroy a Greek statue or a fresco by Giotto. Why anything else then? Why, for example, a moment in the life of a human being who could have been happy for that moment?"
"The tendency to spread evil beyond oneself: I still have it! Beings and things are not sacred enough to me. May I never sully anything even though I be utterly transformed into mud. To sully nothing, even in thought. Even in my worst moments I would not destroy a Greek statue or a fresco by Giotto. Why anything else then? Why, for example, a moment in the life of a human being who could have been happy for that moment?"
December 28, 2024
3.5 stars.
I just…sigh. There are bits and pieces of Weil’s writing that really resonate, and she makes me think. But I don’t love her style. It feels like she drops random ideas at the end of paragraphs and says things with an almost haughty authority that I don’t appreciate. But then she says something so profound and beautiful that I feel bad for disliking the rest of it!!! So idk. Maybe she’s just not for me. But I see what she’s doing and I appreciate it.
I just…sigh. There are bits and pieces of Weil’s writing that really resonate, and she makes me think. But I don’t love her style. It feels like she drops random ideas at the end of paragraphs and says things with an almost haughty authority that I don’t appreciate. But then she says something so profound and beautiful that I feel bad for disliking the rest of it!!! So idk. Maybe she’s just not for me. But I see what she’s doing and I appreciate it.
November 5, 2020
Albert Camus called her "the only great spirit of our time". Weil was a young french mystic, intellectual and activist. She writes about our human yearning for God and how he reaches out to us and finds us through love. Our love of nature, our love of truth and beauty and our love of the spiritual life are really manifestations of our desire for God to fill a void in our lives.
June 2, 2023
My first introduction to Simone Weil, and reading through the content it is filled with acute existential knowledge, though I feel the composition of the book and it’s organization failed to capture me. Some arguments fell flat but nonetheless, I hope to read more and understand more of her terminology.
April 22, 2026
The philanthropy of the rich is no act of virtue when decoupled from mutual suffering with the poor: "It is not surprising that a man who has bread should give a piece to someone who is starving. What is surprising is that he should be capable of doing so with so different a gesture from that with which we buy an object. Almsgiving when it is not supernatural is like a sort of purchase. It buys the sufferer."
And to the wanderer in the labyrinth of beauty: "There God is waiting to eat him. Later he will go out again, but he will be changed, he will have become different, after being eaten and digested by God.
Afterward he will stay near the entrance so that he can gently push all those who come near into the opening."
And to the wanderer in the labyrinth of beauty: "There God is waiting to eat him. Later he will go out again, but he will be changed, he will have become different, after being eaten and digested by God.
Afterward he will stay near the entrance so that he can gently push all those who come near into the opening."
January 26, 2019
This is one of those books that transcends time and space, hitting on truths my brain couldn’t cobble together but faintly knew. I recommend this to anyone who is agnostic like Simone Weil was.
May 7, 2026
Like Augustine, Simone Weil believed that we first love God through things in the world. For her, the heart’s leap in response to a beautiful sight, to a neighbor in distress, or to a religious ceremony (she spent many hours in the Benedictine Abbey of Solesmes near Paris) was a real, if indirect, experience of the love of God. The mystic may eventually learn to love God in an unmediated way, but everyone can be a friend of God through his various disguises.
“The implicit love of God can have only three immediate objects, the only three things here below in which God is really though secretly present. These are religious ceremonies, the beauty of the world, and our neighbor. Accordingly there are three loves.”
In her account of the beauty of the world as sacramental, Weil harbingers a spirituality that animates many participants in the environmental movements of our time. With their selfless efforts to preserve the natural world, Weil would say, even many an avowedly secular activist is in fact loving God unawares.
“It is true that there is little mention of the beauty of the world in the Gospel. But in so short a text, which, as Saint John says, is very far from containing all that Christ taught, the disciples no doubt thought it unnecessary to put anything so generally accepted.
It does, however, come up on two occasions. Once Christ tells us to contemplate and imitate the lilies of the field and the birds of the air, in their indifference as to the future and their docile acceptance of destiny; and another time he invites us to contemplate and imitate the indiscriminate distribution of rain and sunlight.”
“We feel ourselves to be outsiders, uprooted, in exile here below. We are like Ulysses who had been carried away during his sleep by sailors and woke in a strange land, longing for Ithaca with a longing that rent his soul. Suddenly Athena opened his eyes and he saw that he was in Ithaca. In the same way every man who longs indefatigably for his country, who is distracted from his desire neither by Calypso nor by the Sirens, will one day suddenly find that he is there.”
“The imitation of the beauty of the world, that which corresponds to the absence of finality, intention, and discrimination in it, is the absence of intention in ourselves, that is to say the renunciation of our own will. To be perfectly obedient is to be perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect.”
“We all know that there is no true good here below, that everything that appears to be good in this world is finite, limited, wears out, and once worn out, leaves necessity exposed in all its nakedness. We have all probably had some lucid moments in our lives when we have definitely acknowledged to ourselves that there is no final good here below. But as soon as we have seen this truth we cover it up with lies. Many people even take pleasure in proclaiming it, seeking a morbid joy in their sadness, without ever having been able to bear facing it for a second. People feel that there is a mortal danger in facing this truth squarely for any length of time. That is true. Such knowledge strikes more surely than a sword; it inflicts a death more frightening than that of the body. After a time it kills everything within us that constitutes our ego. In order to bear it we have to love truth more than life itself. Those who do this turn away from the fleeting things of time with all their souls, to use the expression of Plato.”
How suffering can lead to hate…
“Whoever suffers tries to communicate his suffering (either by ill-treating someone or calling forth his pity) in order to reduce it, and he does really reduce it in this way. In the case of a man in the uttermost depths, whom no one pities, who is without power to ill-treat anyone (if he has no child or being who loves him), the suffering remains within and poisons him.
This is imperative, like gravity. How can one gain deliverance? How can one gain deliverance from a force which is like gravity?”
“The tendency to spread the suffering beyond ourselves. If through excessive weakness we can neither call forth pity nor do harm to others, we attack what the universe itself represents for us. Then every good or beautiful thing is like an insult.”
Love in the void (how humility leads to love)…
Like other mystics, Simone Weil warns against the hindrance of imaginary consolations on the spiritual path. When faced with affliction, it is natural for us to picture ourselves as heroic or saintly. But this keeps us trapped in an egocentric universe. To attain to the real, we must allow nothing to falsify our experience of affliction, for once we embrace it, it uproots the ego and allows for a pure exchange of love between God in us and God in the world.
“The imagination is continually at work filling up all the fissures through which grace might pass.”
“Every void (not accepted) produces hatred, sourness, bitterness, spite. The evil we wish for that which we hate, and which we imagine, restores the balance.”
“In no matter what circumstances, if the imagination is stopped from pouring itself out, we have a void (the poor in spirit).”
“In no matter what circumstances (but sometimes at the price of how great a degradation!) imagination can fill the void. This is why average human beings can become prisoners, slaves, prostitutes and pass through no matter what suffering without being purified.”
“We must continually suspend the work of the imagination in filling the void within ourselves.
If we accept no matter what void, what stroke of fate can prevent us from loving the universe?
We have the assurance that, come what may, the universe is full.”
“…when two beings who are not friends are near each other there is no meeting, and when friends are far apart there is no separation.”
“For those who love, separation, although painful, is a good, because it is love. Even the distress of the abandoned Christ is a good. There cannot be a greater good for us on earth than to share in it. God can never be perfectly present to us here below on account of our flesh. But he can be almost perfectly absent from us in extreme affliction. This is the only possibility of perfection for us on earth. That is why the cross is our only hope.”
“The implicit love of God can have only three immediate objects, the only three things here below in which God is really though secretly present. These are religious ceremonies, the beauty of the world, and our neighbor. Accordingly there are three loves.”
In her account of the beauty of the world as sacramental, Weil harbingers a spirituality that animates many participants in the environmental movements of our time. With their selfless efforts to preserve the natural world, Weil would say, even many an avowedly secular activist is in fact loving God unawares.
“It is true that there is little mention of the beauty of the world in the Gospel. But in so short a text, which, as Saint John says, is very far from containing all that Christ taught, the disciples no doubt thought it unnecessary to put anything so generally accepted.
It does, however, come up on two occasions. Once Christ tells us to contemplate and imitate the lilies of the field and the birds of the air, in their indifference as to the future and their docile acceptance of destiny; and another time he invites us to contemplate and imitate the indiscriminate distribution of rain and sunlight.”
“We feel ourselves to be outsiders, uprooted, in exile here below. We are like Ulysses who had been carried away during his sleep by sailors and woke in a strange land, longing for Ithaca with a longing that rent his soul. Suddenly Athena opened his eyes and he saw that he was in Ithaca. In the same way every man who longs indefatigably for his country, who is distracted from his desire neither by Calypso nor by the Sirens, will one day suddenly find that he is there.”
“The imitation of the beauty of the world, that which corresponds to the absence of finality, intention, and discrimination in it, is the absence of intention in ourselves, that is to say the renunciation of our own will. To be perfectly obedient is to be perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect.”
“We all know that there is no true good here below, that everything that appears to be good in this world is finite, limited, wears out, and once worn out, leaves necessity exposed in all its nakedness. We have all probably had some lucid moments in our lives when we have definitely acknowledged to ourselves that there is no final good here below. But as soon as we have seen this truth we cover it up with lies. Many people even take pleasure in proclaiming it, seeking a morbid joy in their sadness, without ever having been able to bear facing it for a second. People feel that there is a mortal danger in facing this truth squarely for any length of time. That is true. Such knowledge strikes more surely than a sword; it inflicts a death more frightening than that of the body. After a time it kills everything within us that constitutes our ego. In order to bear it we have to love truth more than life itself. Those who do this turn away from the fleeting things of time with all their souls, to use the expression of Plato.”
How suffering can lead to hate…
“Whoever suffers tries to communicate his suffering (either by ill-treating someone or calling forth his pity) in order to reduce it, and he does really reduce it in this way. In the case of a man in the uttermost depths, whom no one pities, who is without power to ill-treat anyone (if he has no child or being who loves him), the suffering remains within and poisons him.
This is imperative, like gravity. How can one gain deliverance? How can one gain deliverance from a force which is like gravity?”
“The tendency to spread the suffering beyond ourselves. If through excessive weakness we can neither call forth pity nor do harm to others, we attack what the universe itself represents for us. Then every good or beautiful thing is like an insult.”
Love in the void (how humility leads to love)…
Like other mystics, Simone Weil warns against the hindrance of imaginary consolations on the spiritual path. When faced with affliction, it is natural for us to picture ourselves as heroic or saintly. But this keeps us trapped in an egocentric universe. To attain to the real, we must allow nothing to falsify our experience of affliction, for once we embrace it, it uproots the ego and allows for a pure exchange of love between God in us and God in the world.
“The imagination is continually at work filling up all the fissures through which grace might pass.”
“Every void (not accepted) produces hatred, sourness, bitterness, spite. The evil we wish for that which we hate, and which we imagine, restores the balance.”
“In no matter what circumstances, if the imagination is stopped from pouring itself out, we have a void (the poor in spirit).”
“In no matter what circumstances (but sometimes at the price of how great a degradation!) imagination can fill the void. This is why average human beings can become prisoners, slaves, prostitutes and pass through no matter what suffering without being purified.”
“We must continually suspend the work of the imagination in filling the void within ourselves.
If we accept no matter what void, what stroke of fate can prevent us from loving the universe?
We have the assurance that, come what may, the universe is full.”
“…when two beings who are not friends are near each other there is no meeting, and when friends are far apart there is no separation.”
“For those who love, separation, although painful, is a good, because it is love. Even the distress of the abandoned Christ is a good. There cannot be a greater good for us on earth than to share in it. God can never be perfectly present to us here below on account of our flesh. But he can be almost perfectly absent from us in extreme affliction. This is the only possibility of perfection for us on earth. That is why the cross is our only hope.”
December 17, 2018
I only read about a third of this over several weeks (as devotions) and then returned it to the library. At times, I found Weil's prose a bit dense, but well worth rereading to discover the nugget of truth that blew my brain apart. For example, I was greatly moved by her description of attention as an act of faith and holy inspiration. Definitely something I need to find in a physical copy.
September 12, 2019
All reviews I have seen say that this is a great book of writings of a great mystic ... and I do not doubt any of this; but I did not find it compelling. Much of it I did not understand; some parts I simply did not find convincing. Having said this, I am assuming that so many people could not be wrong, and accepting that I was not competent to get value from the book.
May 21, 2018
An interesting story and a good read.
March 9, 2026
This is not a separate title by Weil but rather a "best hits" anthology put together by an editor. That's really not too much of a problem, but I would have preferred more reasoning for why certain essays and passages were included over others. Without that rationale clearly put forward, it seems like the main push is for using this as devotional reading.
Weil did live a hard life, and an interesting life. She was a brilliant thinker, especially for a person who died so young.
The first half of essays had me more interested and engaged. These focused on beauty and truth as universal absolutes. The second half is more about "the void" and Simone's mystic fascination with the Trinity. Weil seems to be arguing that "affliction" is a necessary path to the divine love of God (her God, a specific idea of the Christian Trinity). It is this second half where my interest really fell off. I was able to finish it. Be advised that there is no clear narrative hear. We get background information about Weil tied into each essay section, however we don't hear 1st hand from Weil how her life story impacted each section. We are encouraged to read in her life experiences at various points.
I thought this would be an interesting look at an agnostic turned spiritual. However, the more I learned about Weil I find it hard to call her an agnostic. Yes, she was raised in a Jewish household and adopted materialistic, agnostic views on the universe at a young age. But, as the preface of this book makes clear, it wasn't long into her adulthood before she showed intense interest in Christianity, specifically Roman Catholicism with it's grand architecture and resplendent artwork. So really she is more of a firm convert to Christianity, rather than a naive spiritual seeker, by the time that she starts writing the essays in this book. She has obvious disdain for people with secular values. She very loosely cites the teachings of a few other religions while also making it clear that devotion to the Trinitarian God is the only correct path. In general I am highly skeptical of Trinitarians as I believe they don't take seriously the last two centuries of historical and textual criticism which put so many holes into their worldview. Not to mention the hand-waving about how Jesus is supposedly God and that he somehow sacrificed himself to himself...a belief which simply does not exist in the first three gospels but was developed over time and refined into specific Trinitarian doctrinal formulas over a century later. Weil takes much of her religious backstory for granted and the essays in this book seem to assume a largely Christian audience. I wonder how she might have responded to serious criticism from outside of that milieu.
I may read more about her conversion experience in the future, as that aspect was intriguing to me.
Weil did live a hard life, and an interesting life. She was a brilliant thinker, especially for a person who died so young.
The first half of essays had me more interested and engaged. These focused on beauty and truth as universal absolutes. The second half is more about "the void" and Simone's mystic fascination with the Trinity. Weil seems to be arguing that "affliction" is a necessary path to the divine love of God (her God, a specific idea of the Christian Trinity). It is this second half where my interest really fell off. I was able to finish it. Be advised that there is no clear narrative hear. We get background information about Weil tied into each essay section, however we don't hear 1st hand from Weil how her life story impacted each section. We are encouraged to read in her life experiences at various points.
I thought this would be an interesting look at an agnostic turned spiritual. However, the more I learned about Weil I find it hard to call her an agnostic. Yes, she was raised in a Jewish household and adopted materialistic, agnostic views on the universe at a young age. But, as the preface of this book makes clear, it wasn't long into her adulthood before she showed intense interest in Christianity, specifically Roman Catholicism with it's grand architecture and resplendent artwork. So really she is more of a firm convert to Christianity, rather than a naive spiritual seeker, by the time that she starts writing the essays in this book. She has obvious disdain for people with secular values. She very loosely cites the teachings of a few other religions while also making it clear that devotion to the Trinitarian God is the only correct path. In general I am highly skeptical of Trinitarians as I believe they don't take seriously the last two centuries of historical and textual criticism which put so many holes into their worldview. Not to mention the hand-waving about how Jesus is supposedly God and that he somehow sacrificed himself to himself...a belief which simply does not exist in the first three gospels but was developed over time and refined into specific Trinitarian doctrinal formulas over a century later. Weil takes much of her religious backstory for granted and the essays in this book seem to assume a largely Christian audience. I wonder how she might have responded to serious criticism from outside of that milieu.
I may read more about her conversion experience in the future, as that aspect was intriguing to me.
September 18, 2021
‘’We live in a world of unreality and dreams. To give up our imaginary position as the centre, to renounce it, not only intellectually but in the imaginative part of our soul, that means to awaken to what is real and eternal, to see the true light and hear the true silence. A transformation then takes place at the very roots of our sensibility, in our immediate reception of sense impressions and psychological impressions (...)’’
Trots ett kortvarigt liv hann Weil lämna efter sig en mängd betydande texter till eftervärlden. Denna bok består av elva essäer som alla berör hennes strävan efter sanningen i livet. Hennes liv var kantat av både tvivel och tro på något större, men med åren kom hon att allt mer luta sig mot mystiken. Och på det viset kanske komma att förenas med det översinnliga. Sanningen gör sig bara synlig när individen följer hjärtats innersta önskningar, och det kan se olika ut för varje enskild individ. Men det är nödvändigt att besitta en inre stillhet och tystnad. Det är just ett arbete med det inre livet som är det viktiga. Att hitta till sin egen kärna, och omforma sig själv snarare än det man har runtomkring sig. En acceptans kring de ting man ej kan förändra är nödvändigt, då man annars förgiftar sitt förstånd. Hon skriver även en hel del om vikten att erfara både lidande och förlust i livet, och den tomhet som uppstår därifrån. Det hela är nödvändigt för att få nya perspektiv och erfarenheter som kan leda en till något större om man bara accepterar det. Det kan såklart vara svårt, och om man är oaktsam kan man försvinna ner i en spiral av mörker. Även dagdrömmeriet, som är så mänskligt, ser Weil som en förströelse och något som hämmar vägen mot sanningen. Om man inte accepterar tomrummet, och bara försöker fly därifrån så kommer det enbart att resultera i att lidandet får agera fritt inom en. Och så småningom mynnar det ut i en växande bitterhet, hat och illvilja mot omvärlden och sig själv. Människan behöver erfara olika ting, utmanas och utvecklas. Därför är det också av vikt att bryta sig loss från sådant (man tror) definierar en. Människan är mån om att knyta sig an till ting för att skapa en identitet. Men är det verkligen de vi är? Att bryta sig loss och känna efter, kan vara nyttigt för att få oss att se vad som är äkta och inte. Det är så människan kommer i kontakt med sig själv. Mmm, tyckte himla mycket om denna bok! Vill genast läsa mer av Weil. Superintressant person.
Trots ett kortvarigt liv hann Weil lämna efter sig en mängd betydande texter till eftervärlden. Denna bok består av elva essäer som alla berör hennes strävan efter sanningen i livet. Hennes liv var kantat av både tvivel och tro på något större, men med åren kom hon att allt mer luta sig mot mystiken. Och på det viset kanske komma att förenas med det översinnliga. Sanningen gör sig bara synlig när individen följer hjärtats innersta önskningar, och det kan se olika ut för varje enskild individ. Men det är nödvändigt att besitta en inre stillhet och tystnad. Det är just ett arbete med det inre livet som är det viktiga. Att hitta till sin egen kärna, och omforma sig själv snarare än det man har runtomkring sig. En acceptans kring de ting man ej kan förändra är nödvändigt, då man annars förgiftar sitt förstånd. Hon skriver även en hel del om vikten att erfara både lidande och förlust i livet, och den tomhet som uppstår därifrån. Det hela är nödvändigt för att få nya perspektiv och erfarenheter som kan leda en till något större om man bara accepterar det. Det kan såklart vara svårt, och om man är oaktsam kan man försvinna ner i en spiral av mörker. Även dagdrömmeriet, som är så mänskligt, ser Weil som en förströelse och något som hämmar vägen mot sanningen. Om man inte accepterar tomrummet, och bara försöker fly därifrån så kommer det enbart att resultera i att lidandet får agera fritt inom en. Och så småningom mynnar det ut i en växande bitterhet, hat och illvilja mot omvärlden och sig själv. Människan behöver erfara olika ting, utmanas och utvecklas. Därför är det också av vikt att bryta sig loss från sådant (man tror) definierar en. Människan är mån om att knyta sig an till ting för att skapa en identitet. Men är det verkligen de vi är? Att bryta sig loss och känna efter, kan vara nyttigt för att få oss att se vad som är äkta och inte. Det är så människan kommer i kontakt med sig själv. Mmm, tyckte himla mycket om denna bok! Vill genast läsa mer av Weil. Superintressant person.
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