Simone Adolphine Weil (; French: [simɔn vɛj]
(listen); 3 February 1909 – 24 August 1943)
was a French philosopher, mystic, and political
activist. The mathematician Andre Weil was
her brother.After her graduation from formal
education, Weil became a teacher. She taught
intermittently throughout the 1930s, taking
several breaks due to poor health and to devote
herself to political activism, work that would
see her assisting in the trade union movement,
taking the side of the Anarchists known as
the Durruti Column in the Spanish Civil War,
and spending more than a year working as a
labourer, mostly in auto factories, so she
could better understand the working class.
Taking a path that was unusual among twentieth-century
left-leaning intellectuals, she became more
religious and inclined towards mysticism as
her life progressed. Weil wrote throughout
her life, though most of her writings did
not attract much attention until after her
death. In the 1950s and 1960s, her work became
famous in continental Europe and throughout
the English-speaking world. Her thought has
continued to be the subject of extensive scholarship
across a wide range of fields. A meta study
from the University of Calgary found that
between 1995 and 2012 over 2,500 new scholarly
works had been published about her.Albert
Camus described her as "the only great spirit
of our times".
== Biography ==
=== Early life ===
Weil was born in her parents' apartment in
Paris on 3 February 1909. Her mother was Saolomea
Weil and her father Bernard was a medical
doctor. Both were Alsatian Jews who had moved
to Paris after the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine
by Germany. Weil was a healthy baby for her
first six months, until she had a severe attack
of appendicitis—thereafter she struggled
with poor health throughout her life. She
was the second of her parents' two children;
her older brother was mathematician André
Weil, with whom she would always enjoy a close
relationship. Their parents were agnostic
and fairly affluent, raising their children
in an attentive and supportive atmosphere.Weil
suffered some distress due to her father's
having to leave home for several years after
being drafted in World War I. According to
several Weil scholars, including Eva Fogelman
and Robert Coles, this experience may have
been related to the exceptionally strong altruism
displayed throughout her life.
Weil acquired from her family home an obsession
with cleanliness; in her later life she would
sometimes speak of her "disgustingness" and
think that others would see her this way,
despite the fact that in her youth she was
considered highly attractive. Despite the
fact that Weil was generally highly affectionate,
she almost always avoided any form of physical
contact, even with female friends.According
to her friend and biographer, Simone Pétrement,
Weil decided early in life that she would
need to adopt masculine qualities and sacrifice
opportunities to have love affairs in order
to fully pursue her vocation to improve social
conditions for the disadvantaged. From her
late teenage years, Weil would generally disguise
her "fragile beauty" by adopting a masculine
appearance, hardly ever using makeup and often
wearing men's clothes.
=== Intellectual life ===
Weil was a precocious student, proficient
in Ancient Greek by age 12. She later learned
Sanskrit after reading the Bhagavad Gita.
Like the Renaissance thinker Pico della Mirandola,
her interests in other religions were universal
and she attempted to understand each religious
tradition as an expression of transcendent
wisdom.
As a teenager, Weil studied at the Lycée
Henri IV under the tutelage of her admired
teacher Émile Chartier, more commonly known
as "Alain". Her first attempt at the entrance
examination for the École Normale Supérieure
in June 1927 ended in failure, due to her
low marks in history. In 1928 she was successful
in gaining admission. She finished first in
the exam for the certificate of "General Philosophy
and Logic"; Simone de Beauvoir finished second.
During these years, Weil attracted much attention
with her radical opinions. She was called
the "Red virgin", and even "The Martian" by
her admired mentor.At the École Normale Supérieure,
she studied philosophy, earning her DES (diplôme
d'études supérieures, roughly equivalent
to an MA) in 1931 with a thesis under the
title "Science et perfection dans Descartes"
("Science and Perfection in Descartes"). She
received her agrégation that same year. Weil
taught philosophy at a secondary school for
girls in Le Puy and teaching was her primary
employment during her short life.
Weil's most famous works were published posthumously.
=== Political activism ===
She often became involved in political action
out of sympathy with the working class. In
1915, when she was only six years old, she
refused sugar in solidarity with the troops
entrenched along the Western Front. In 1919,
at 10 years of age, she declared herself a
Bolshevik. In her late teens, she became involved
in the workers' movement. She wrote political
tracts, marched in demonstrations, and advocated
workers' rights. At this time, she was a Marxist,
pacifist, and trade unionist. While teaching
in Le Puy, she became involved in local political
activity, supporting the unemployed and striking
workers despite criticism. Weil had never
formally joined the Communist party, and in
her twenties she became increasingly critical
of Marxism. According to Pétrement, she was
one of the first to identify a new form of
oppression not anticipated by Marx, where
élite bureaucrats could make life just as
miserable for ordinary people as did the most
exploitative capitalists.In 1932, Weil visited
Germany to help Marxist activists who were
at the time considered to be the strongest
and best organised communists in Western Europe,
but Weil considered them no match for the
then up-and-coming fascists. When she returned
to France, her political friends in France
dismissed her fears, thinking Germany would
continue to be controlled by the centrists
or those to the left. After Hitler rose to
power in 1933, Weil spent much of her time
trying to help German communists fleeing his
regime. Weil would sometimes publish articles
about social and economic issues, including
"Oppression and Liberty" and numerous short
articles for trade union journals. This work
criticised popular Marxist thought and gave
a pessimistic account of the limits of both
capitalism and socialism. Trotsky himself
personally responded to several of her articles,
attacking both her ideas and her as a person.
However, according to Pétrement, he was influenced
by some of Weil's ideas.Weil participated
in the French general strike of 1933, called
to protest against unemployment and wage cuts.
The following year, she took a 12-month leave
of absence from her teaching position to work
incognito as a labourer in two factories,
one owned by Renault, believing that this
experience would allow her to connect with
the working class. In 1935, she resumed teaching
and donated most of her income to political
causes and charitable endeavours.
In 1936, despite her professed pacifism, she
travelled to the Spanish Civil War on the
Republican side, and joined the anarchist
columns of Buenaventura Durruti. She even
took a rifle, but was expelled from combat
line by her comrades, as she was extremely
short-sighted, and they feared Simone shooting
one of them. She hit a pot of boiling liquid
because of her short-sightedness, had noticeable
burns, and her family came to Spain to bring
her back home. During her stay in the Aragon
front, she sent some chronicles to the French
publication: 'Le Libertaire'. She identified
herself as an anarchist, and upon arriving
in Spain, sought out the anti-fascist commander
Julián Gorkin, asking to be sent on a mission
as a covert agent, to rescue the prisoner
Joaquín Maurín. Gorkin refused, saying she
would almost certainly be sacrificing herself
for nothing, as it would be most unlikely
she could pass as a Spaniard. Weil replied
that she had "every right" to sacrifice herself
if she chose, but after arguing for more than
an hour, she was unable to convince Gorkin
to give her the assignment. Instead she joined
a unit of the Sébastien Faure Century, which
specialised in high-risk "commando"-style
engagements.
The unit was part of the French-speaking section
of the anarchist militia. From seeing her
practice on makeshift shooting ranges, her
comrades saw she was a very poor shot and
tried to avoid taking her on missions, though
she did sometimes insist. Her only direct
participation in combat was to shoot with
her rifle at a bomber during an air raid;
in a second raid, she tried to man the group's
heavy machine gun, but her comrades prevented
her, as they thought it would be best for
someone less clumsy and short-sighted to use
the weapon. After being with the group for
a few weeks, she burnt herself over a cooking
fire. She was forced to leave the unit, and
was met by her parents who had followed her
to Spain. They helped her leave the country,
to recuperate in Assisi. About a month after
her departure, Weil's unit was nearly wiped
out at an engagement in Perdiguera in October
1936, with every woman in the group being
killed. On returning to Paris, Weil continued
to write essays on labour, on management,
war and peace.
=== Encounter with mysticism ===
Weil was born into a secular household and
raised in "complete agnosticism".
As a teenager, she considered the existence
of God for herself and decided nothing could
be known either way. In her Spiritual Autobiography
however, Weil records that she always had
a Christian outlook, taking to heart from
her earliest childhood the idea of loving
one's neighbour. Weil became attracted to
the Christian faith beginning in 1935, the
first of three pivotal experiences for her
being when she was moved by the beauty of
villagers singing hymns during an outdoor
service that she stumbled across during a
holiday to Portugal.
While in Assisi in the spring of 1937, Weil
experienced a religious ecstasy in the Basilica
of Santa Maria degli Angeli—the same church
in which Saint Francis of Assisi had prayed.
She was led to pray for the first time in
her life as Cunningham (2004: p. 118) relates:
Below the town is the beautiful church and
convent of San Damiano where Saint Clare once
lived. Near that spot is the place purported
to be where Saint Francis composed the larger
part of his "Canticle of Brother Sun". Below
the town in the valley is the ugliest church
in the entire environs: the massive baroque
basilica of Saint Mary of the Angels, finished
in the seventeenth century and rebuilt in
the nineteenth century, which houses a rare
treasure: a tiny Romanesque chapel that stood
in the days of Saint Francis—the "Little
Portion" where he would gather his brethren.
It was in that tiny chapel that the great
mystic Simone Weil first felt compelled to
kneel down and pray.
She had another, more powerful, revelation
a year later while reciting George Herbert's
poem Love III, after which "Christ himself
came down and took possession of me", and,
from 1938 on, her writings became more mystical
and spiritual, while retaining their focus
on social and political issues. She was attracted
to Roman Catholicism, but declined to be baptized,
preferring to remain outside due to "the love
of those things that are outside Christianity".
During World War II, she lived for a time
in Marseille, receiving spiritual direction
from a Dominican Friar. Around this time,
she met the French Catholic author Gustave
Thibon, who later edited some of her work.
Weil did not limit her curiosity to Christianity.
She was keenly interested in other religious
traditions—especially the Greek and Egyptian
mysteries; Hinduism (especially the Upanishads
and the Bhagavad Gita); and Mahayana Buddhism.
She believed that all these and other traditions
contained elements of genuine revelation,
writing that:
Greece, Egypt, ancient India, the beauty of
the world, the pure and authentic reflection
of this beauty in art and science...these
things have done as much as the visibly Christian
ones to deliver me into Christ's hands as
his captive. I think I might even say more.
She was, nevertheless, opposed to religious
syncretism, claiming that it effaced the particularity
of the individual traditions:
Each religion is alone true, that is to say,
that at the moment we are thinking of it we
must bring as much attention to bear on it
as if there were nothing else ... A "synthesis"
of religion implies a lower quality of attention.
=== Last years ===
In 1942, Weil traveled to the United States
of America with her family. She had been reluctant
to leave France, but agreed to do so as she
wanted to see her parents to safety and knew
they would not leave without her. She was
also encouraged by the fact that it would
be relatively easy for her to reach Britain
from the United States, where she could join
the French Resistance. She had hopes of being
sent back to France as a covert agent.Older
biographies suggest Weil made no further progress
in achieving her desire to return to France
as an agent—she was limited to desk work
in London, although this did give her time
to write one of her largest and best known
works: The Need for Roots.
Yet there is now evidence that Weil was recruited
by the Special Operations Executive, with
a view to sending her back to France as a
clandestine wireless operator. In May 1943,
plans were underway to send her to Thame Park
in Oxfordshire for training, but were cancelled
soon after, as her failing health became known.
The punishing work-régime she assumed soon
took a heavy toll; in 1943, she was diagnosed
with tuberculosis and instructed to rest and
eat well. However, she refused special treatment
because of her long-standing political idealism
and her detachment from material things. Instead,
she limited her food intake to what she believed
residents of German-occupied France ate. She
most likely ate even less, as she refused
food on most occasions. Her condition quickly
deteriorated, and she was moved to a sanatorium
in Ashford, Kent, England.After a lifetime
of battling illness and frailty, Weil died
in August 1943 from cardiac failure at the
age of 34. The coroner's report said that
"the deceased did kill and slay herself by
refusing to eat whilst the balance of her
mind was disturbed".The exact cause of her
death remains a subject of debate. Some claim
that her refusal to eat came from her desire
to express some form of solidarity toward
the victims of the war. Others think that
Weil's self-starvation occurred after her
study of Schopenhauer. (In his chapters on
Christian saintly asceticism and salvation,
Schopenhauer had described self-starvation
as a preferred method of self-denial). However,
Simone Pétrement, one of Weil's first and
most significant biographers, regards the
coroner's report as simply mistaken. Basing
her opinion on letters written by the personnel
of the sanatorium at which Simone Weil was
treated, Pétrement affirms that Weil asked
for food on different occasions while she
was hospitalized and even ate a little bit
a few days before her death; according to
her, it is in fact Weil's poor health condition
that eventually made her unable to eat.Weil's
first English biographer, Richard Rees, offers
several possible explanations for her death,
citing her compassion for the suffering of
her countrymen in Occupied France and her
love for and close imitation of Christ. Rees
sums up by saying: "As for her death, whatever
explanation one may give of it will amount
in the end to saying that she died of love".
== Philosophy ==
=== Mysticism in Gravity and Grace ===
While Gravity and Grace (French: La Pesanteur
et la grâce) is one of the books most associated
with Simone Weil, the work was not one she
wrote to be published as a book. Rather, the
work consists of various passages selected
from Weil's notebooks and arranged topically
by Gustave Thibon, who knew and befriended
her. Weil had in fact given to Thibon some
of her notebooks, written before May 1942,
but not with any idea or request to publish
them. Hence, the resulting work, in its selections,
organization and editing, is much influenced
by Mr. Thibon, a devout Catholic. (See Thibon's
Introduction to Gravity and Grace (Routledge
& Kegan Paul, 1952).)
T. S. Eliot's preface to The Need for Roots
suggests that Weil might be regarded as a
modern-day Marcionite, due to her virtually
wholesale rejection of the Old Testament and
her overall distaste for the Judaism that
was technically hers by birth. Her niece,
Sylvie Weil, and biographer Thomas R. Nevin
have sought, on the contrary, to demonstrate
that Weil did not reject Judaism and was heavily
influenced by its precepts.
==== Absence ====
Absence is the key image for her metaphysics,
cosmology, cosmogony, and theodicy. She believed
that God created by an act of self-delimitation—in
other words, because God is conceived as a
kind of utter fullness, a perfect being, no
creature could exist except where God was
not. Thus creation occurred only when God
withdrew in part. Similar ideas occur in Jewish
mysticism.
This is, for Weil, an original kenosis ("emptiness")
preceding the corrective kenosis of Christ's
incarnation (cf. Athanasius). We are thus
born in a sort of damned position not owing
to original sin as such, but because to be
created at all we had to be precisely what
God is not, i.e., we had to be the opposite
of what is holy. (See Apophatic theology.)
This notion of creation is a cornerstone of
her theodicy, for if creation is conceived
this way (as necessarily containing evil within
itself), then there is no problem of the entrance
of evil into a perfect world. Nor does this
constitute a delimitation of God's omnipotence,
if it is not that God could not create a perfect
world, but that the act which we refer towards
by saying "create" in its very essence implies
the impossibility of perfection.
However, this notion of the necessity of evil
does not mean that we are simply, originally,
and continually doomed; on the contrary, Weil
tells us that "Evil is the form which God's
mercy takes in this world". Weil believed
that evil, and its consequence, affliction,
served the role of driving us out of ourselves
and towards God—"The extreme affliction
which overtakes human beings does not create
human misery, it merely reveals it."
==== Affliction ====
Weil's concept of affliction (malheur) goes
beyond simple suffering, though it certainly
includes it. Only some souls are capable of
truly experiencing affliction; these are precisely
those souls which are least deserving of it—that
are most prone or open to spiritual realization.
Affliction is a sort of suffering "plus",
which transcends both body and mind; such
physical and mental anguish scourges the very
soul.War and oppression were the most intense
cases of affliction within her reach; to experience
it, she turned to the life of a factory worker,
while to understand it she turned to Homer's
Iliad. (Her essay "The Iliad or the Poem of
Force", first translated by Mary McCarthy,
is a piece of Homeric literary criticism.)
Affliction was associated both with necessity
and with chance—it was fraught with necessity
because it was hard-wired into existence itself,
and thus imposed itself upon the sufferer
with the full force of the inescapable, but
it was also subject to chance inasmuch as
chance, too, is an inescapable part of the
nature of existence. The element of chance
was essential to the unjust character of affliction;
in other words, my affliction should not usually—let
alone always—follow from my sin, as per
traditional Christian theodicy, but should
be visited upon me for no special reason.
The man who has known pure joy, if only for
a moment ... is the only man for whom affliction
is something devastating. At the same time
he is the only man who has not deserved the
punishment. But, after all, for him it is
no punishment; it is God holding his hand
and pressing rather hard. For, if he remains
constant, what he will discover buried deep
under the sound of his own lamentations is
the pearl of the silence of God.
==== Metaxu: "Every separation is a link"
====
The concept of metaxu, which Weil borrowed
from Plato, is that which both separates and
connects (e.g., as a wall separates two prisoners
but can be used to tap messages). This idea
of connecting distance was of the first importance
for Weil's understanding of the created realm.
The world as a whole, along with any of its
components, including our physical bodies,
is to be regarded as serving the same function
for us in relation to God that a blind man's
stick serves for him in relation to the world
about him. They do not afford direct insight,
but can be used experimentally to bring the
mind into practical contact with reality.
This metaphor allows any absence to be interpreted
as a presence, and is a further component
in Weil's theodicy.
==== Beauty ====
For Weil, "The beautiful is the experimental
proof that the incarnation is possible". The
beauty which is inherent in the form of the
world (this inherency is proven, for her,
in geometry, and expressed in all good art)
is the proof that the world points to something
beyond itself; it establishes the essentially
telic character of all that exists. Her concept
of beauty extends throughout the universe:
"we must have faith that the universe is beautiful
on all levels...and that it has a fullness
of beauty in relation to the bodily and psychic
structure of each of the thinking beings that
actually do exist and of all those that are
possible. It is this very agreement of an
infinity of perfect beauties that gives a
transcendent character to the beauty of the
world...He (Christ) is really present in the
universal beauty. The love of this beauty
proceeds from God dwelling in our souls and
goes out to God present in the universe".
She also wrote that "The beauty of this world
is Christ's tender smile coming to us through
matter".Beauty also served a soteriological
function for Weil: "Beauty captivates the
flesh in order to obtain permission to pass
right to the soul." It constitutes, then,
another way in which the divine reality behind
the world invades our lives. Where affliction
conquers us with brute force, beauty sneaks
in and topples the empire of the self from
within.
== Works ==
In the decades since her death, her writings
have been assembled, annotated, criticized,
discussed, disputed, and praised. Along with
some twenty volumes of her works, publishers
have issued more than thirty biographies,
including Simone Weil: A Modern Pilgrimage
by Robert Coles, Harvard's Pulitzer-winning
professor, who calls Weil 'a giant of reflection.'
=== The Need for Roots ===
Weil's book The Need for Roots was written
in early 1943, immediately before her death
later that year. She was in London working
for the French Resistance and trying to convince
its leader, Charles de Gaulle, to form a contingent
of nurses who would serve at the front lines.
The Need for Roots has an ambitious plan.
It sets out to address the past and to set
out a road map for the future of France after
World War II. She painstakingly analyzes the
spiritual and ethical milieu that led to France's
defeat by the German army, and then addresses
these issues with the prospect of eventual
French victory.
== Legacy ==
During her lifetime, Weil was only known to
relatively narrow circles; even in France,
her essays were mostly read only by those
interested in radical politics. Yet during
the first decade after her death, Weil rapidly
became famous, attracting attention throughout
the West. For the 3rd quarter of the twentieth
century, she was widely regarded as the most
influential person in the world on new work
concerning religious and spiritual matters.
Her philosophical, social and political thought
also became popular, although not to the same
degree as her religious work.As well as influencing
fields of study, Weil deeply affected the
personal lives of numerous individuals; Pope
Paul VI, for example, said that Weil was one
of his three greatest influences. Weil's popularity
began to decline in the late sixties and seventies.
However more of her work was gradually published,
leading to many thousands of new secondary
works by Weil scholars; some of whom focused
on achieving a deeper understanding of her
religious, philosophical and political work.
Others broadened the scope of Weil scholarship
to investigate her applicability to fields
like classical studies, cultural studies,
education and even technical fields like ergonomics.
In 2010, Julia Haslett released the film An
encounter with Simone Weil; she noted that
Weil had become "a little-known figure, practically
forgotten in her native France, and rarely
taught in universities or secondary schools".
However Weil's work has continued to be the
subject of ongoing scholarship, with a metastudy
finding that over 2500 new scholarly works
had been published about her between 1995
and 2012.Many commentators who have assessed
Weil as a person were highly positive; many
described her as a saint, some even as the
greatest saint of the twentieth century, including
T. S. Eliot, Dwight Macdonald, Leslie Fiedler,
and Robert Coles. Weil biographer Gabriella
Fiori writes that Weil was "a moral genius
in the orbit of ethics, a genius of immense
revolutionary range." In 1951 Albert Camus
wrote that she was "the only great spirit
of our times." Foolish though she may have
appeared at times—dropping a suitcase full
of French resistance papers all over the sidewalk
and scrambling to gather them up—her deep
engagement with both the theory and practice
of caritas, in all its myriad forms, functions
as the unifying force of her life and thought.
Gustave Thibon, the French philosopher and
close friend, recounts their last meeting,
not long before her death: "I will only say
that I had the impression of being in the
presence of an absolutely transparent soul
which was ready to be reabsorbed into original
light".Weil has however been criticised even
by those who otherwise deeply admired her,
such as Eliot, for being excessively prone
to divide the world into good and evil, and
for her sometimes intemperate judgments. Weil
was a harsh critic of the influence of Judaism
on Western civilisation, and an even harsher
critic of the Roman empire, in which she refused
to see any value at all. On the other hand,
according to Eliot, she held up the Cathars
as exemplars of goodness, despite there being
in his view little concrete evidence on which
to base such an assessment. According to Pétrement
she idolised Lawrence of Arabia, considering
him to be a Saint. A few critics have taken
an overall negative view: several Jewish writers,
including Susan Sontag, accused her of anti-Semitism,
though this was far from a universal shared
perspective. A small minority of commentators
have judged her to be psychologically unbalanced
or sexually obsessed. General Charles de Gaulle,
her ultimate boss while she worked for the
French Resistance, considered her "insane",
though even he was influenced by her and repeated
some of her sayings for years after her death.
== Bibliography ==
=== Primary sources ===
==== Works in French ====
Simone Weil, Œuvres complètes. (Paris: Gallimard,
1989–2006, 6 vols.)
Réflexions sur la guerre (La Critique sociale,
no. 10, November 1933)
Chronicles from the Spanish Civil War, in:
'Le Libertaire', an anarchistic magazine,
1936
La Pesanteur et la grâce (1947)
L'Enracinement (1949)
Attente de Dieu (1950)
Lettre à un religieux (1951)
Les Intuitions pré-chrétiennes (Paris: Les
Editions de la Colombe, 1951)
La Source grecque (Paris: Gallimard, 1952)
Oppression et liberté (1955)
Note sur la suppression générale des partis
politiques (Paris: Editions Gallimard, 1957
- Climats, 2006)
==== Works in English translation ====
Awaiting God: A New Translation of Attente
de Dieu and Lettre a un Religieux. Introduction
by Sylvie Weil. Translation by Bradley Jersak.
Fresh Wind Press, 2012. ISBN 978-1-927512-03-6.
Formative Writings: 1929–1941. (1987). Dorothy
Tuck McFarland & Wilhelmina Van Ness, eds.
University of Massachusetts Press.
The Iliad or the Poem of Force. Pendle Hill
Pamphlet. Mary McCarthy trans.
Intimations of Christianity Among the Greeks.
Routledge Kegan Paul, 1957. Elisabeth Chas
Geissbuhler trans.
Letter to a Priest. G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1954.
The Need for Roots. Routledge Kegan Paul,
1952. Arthur Wills trans., preface by T.S.
Eliot
Gravity and Grace. Routledge & Kegan Paul,
1952. [Routledge Classics 2002. ISBN 978-0-415-29001-2]
The Notebooks of Simone Weil. Routledge paperback,
1984. ISBN 0-7100-8522-2 [Routledge 2004.
ISBN 978-0-415-32771-8]
On Science, Necessity, & The Love of God.
London: Oxford University Press, 1968. Richard
Rees trans.
Oppression and Liberty. Routledge Kegan Paul,
1958.
Simone Weil's The Iliad or Poem of Force:
A Critical Edition. James P. Holoka, ed. & trans.
Peter Lang, 2005.
Simone Weil: An Anthology. Sian Miles, editor.
Virago Press, 1986.
Simone Weil: First and Last Notebooks. London:
Oxford University Press, 1970. Richard Rees
trans.
Simone Weil: Lectures on Philosophy. Cambridge
University Press, 1978. Intro. by Peter Winch,
trans. by Hugh Price.
The Simone Weil Reader: A Legendary Spiritual
Odyssey of Our Time. George A. Panichas, editor.
David McKay Co., 1981.
Simone Weil—Selected Essays: 1934–1943.
London: Oxford University Press, 1962. Richard
Rees trans.
Simone Weil: Seventy Letters. London: Oxford
University Press, 1965. Richard Rees trans.
Two Moral Essays by Simone Weil—Draft for
a Statement of Human Obligations & Human Personality.
Ronald Hathaway, ed. Pendle Hill Pamphlet.
Richard Rhees trans.
Waiting on God. Routledge Kegan Paul, 1951.
Emma Craufurd trans.
Waiting For God. Harper Torchbooks, 1973.
Emma Craufurd trans., with an introduction
by Leslie A. Fiedler. ISBN 978-0-06-131903-7.
Waiting for God. Harper Perennial Modern Classics
2009 Emma Craufurd, with an introduction by
Leslie A. Fiedler. 978-0-06-171896-0
On the Abolition of All Political Parties,
Simon Leys trans., Melbourne: Black Inc.,
2013. ISBN 9781921870903
=== Works in Arabic translation ===
Mukhtarat of Simone Weil (Simone Weil, Anthology),
Maaber Publisher, Damascus, 2009, translated
by Mohamed Ali Abdel Jalil;
Al Tajazzur (The Need for Roots or L'Enracinement),
Maaber Publisher, Damascus, 2010, translated
by Mohamed Ali Abdel Jalil;
=== Secondary sources ===
Allen, Diogenes. (2006) Three Outsiders: Pascal,
Kierkegaard, Simone Weil. Eugene, OR: Wipf
and Stock.
Bell, Richard H. (1998) Simone Weil. Rowman
& Littlefield.
———, editor. (1993) Simone Weil's Philosophy
of Culture: Readings Toward a Divine Humanity.
Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-43263-4
Chenavier, Robert. (2012) Simone Weil: Attention
to the Real, trans. Bernard E. Doering. Notre
Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame.
Davies, Grahame. (2007) Everything Must Change.
Seren. ISBN 9781854114518
Dietz, Mary. (1988). Between the Human and
the Divine: The Political Thought of Simone
Weil. Rowman & Littlefield.
Doering, E. Jane. (2010) Simone Weil and the
Specter of Self-Perpetuating Force. University
of Notre Dame Press.
Doering, E. Jane, and Eric O. Springsted,
eds. (2004) The Christian Platonism of Simone
Weil. University of Notre Dame Press.
Finch, Henry Leroy. (1999) Simone Weil and
the Intellect of Grace, ed. Martin Andic.
Continuum International.
Gabellieri, Emmanuel. (2003) Etre et don:
L'unite et l'enjeu de la pensée de Simone
Weil. Paris: Peeters.
Goldschläger, Alain. (1982) Simone Weil et
Spinoza: Essai d'interprétation. Québec:
Naaman.
Irwin, Alexander. (2002) Saints of the Impossible:
Bataille, Weil, and the Politics of the Sacred.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
McCullough, Lissa. (2014) The Religious Philosophy
of Simone Weil. London: I. B. Tauris. ISBN
978-1780767963
Morgan, Vance G. (2005) Weaving the World:
Simone Weil on Science, Mathematics, and Love.
University of Notre Dame Press. ISBN 0-268-03486-9
Athanasios Moulakis (1998) Simone Weil and
the Politics of Self-Denial, trans. Ruth Hein.
University of Missouri Press. ISBN 978-0-8262-1162-0
Plant, Stephen. (2007) Simone Weil: A Brief
Introduction, Orbis, ISBN 978-1-57075-753-2
———. (2007) The SPCK Introduction to
Simone Weil, SPCK, ISBN 978-0-281-05938-6
Radzins, Inese Astra (2006) Thinking Nothing:
Simone Weil's Cosmology. ProQuest/UMI.
Rhees, Rush. (2000) Discussions of Simone
Weil. State University of New York Press.
Rozelle-Stone, Rebecca A., and Lucian Stone.
(2013) Simone Weil and Theology. New York:
Bloomsbury T & T Clark.
———, eds. (2009) Relevance of the Radical:
Simone Weil 100 Years Later. New York: T & T
Clark.
Veto, Miklos. (1994) The Religious Metaphysics
of Simone Weil, trans. Joan Dargan. State
University of New York Press.
von der Ruhr, Mario. (2006) Simone Weil: An
Apprenticeship in Attention. London: Continuum.
Winch, Peter. (1989) Simone Weil: "The Just
Balance." Cambridge University Press.
Winchell, James. (2000) 'Semantics of the
Unspeakable: Six Sentences by Simone Weil,'
in: "Trajectories of Mysticism in Theory and
Literature", Philip Leonard, ed. London: Macmillan,
72-93. ISBN 0-333-72290-6
=== Biographies ===
Cabaud, Jacques. (1964). Simone Weil. Channel
Press.
Robert Coles (1989) Simone Weil: A Modern
Pilgrimage. Addison-Wesley. 2001 ed., Skylight
Paths Publishing.
Fiori, Gabriella (1989) Simone Weil: An Intellectual
Biography. translated by Joseph R. Berrigan.
University of Georgia Press. ISBN 0-8203-1102-2
———, (1991) Simone Weil. Una donna assoluta,
La Tartaruga; Saggistica. ISBN 88-7738-075-6
———, (1993) Simone Weil. Une Femme Absolue
Diffuseur-SODIS. ISBN 2-86645-148-1
Gray, Francine Du Plessix (2001) Simone Weil.
Viking Press.
McLellan, David (1990) Utopian Pessimist:
The Life and Thought of Simone Weil. New York:
Poseidon Press.
Nevin, Thomas R. (1991). Simone Weil: Portrait
of a Self-Exiled Jew. Chapel Hill.
Perrin, J.B. & Thibon, G. (1953). Simone Weil
as We Knew Her. Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Pétrement, Simone (1976) Simone Weil: A Life.
New York: Schocken Books. 1988 edition.
Rexroth, Kenneth (1957) Simone Weil http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/essays/simone-weil.htm
Risari, Guia (2014) Il taccuino di Simone
Weil, RueBallu 2014, Palermo, ISBN 978-88-95689-15-9
Terry, Megan (1973). Approaching Simone: A
Play. The Feminist Press.
White, George A., ed. (1981). Simone Weil:
Interpretations of a Life. University of Massachusetts
Press.
Yourgrau, Palle. (2011) Simone Weil. Critical
Lives series. London: Reaktion.
Weil, Sylvie. (2010) "At home with André
and Simone Weil. Evanston: Northwestern.
=== Audio recordings ===
Cayley, David (2002). Enlightened by Love:
The Thought of Simone Weil. CBC Audio
BBC Radio 4 2015 — "In Our Time" on Simone
Weil: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01nthz3
== See also ==
Edith Stein
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Simone de Beauvoir
== Notes and references ==
== Further reading ==
Weil, Simone (1952). "Part II: Uprootedness".
The Need for Roots: Prelude to a Declaration
of Duties towards Mankind. London: Routledge
and Kegan Paul. pp. 40–180.
== External links ==
A. Rebecca Rozelle-Stone; Benjamin P. Davis.
"Simone Weil". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Works by or about Simone Weil in libraries
(WorldCat catalog)
O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Weil
family", MacTutor History of Mathematics archive,
University of St Andrews.
American Weil Society and 2009 Colloquy—Website
for 2009 Colloquy at Southern Illinois University
Edwardsville
Simone Weil on Labor — hosted at the Center
for Global Justice
simoneweil.net — biographical notes, photos
& bilingual quotes that illustrate key concepts,
including force, necessity, attention and
"le malheur"
Works by Simone Weil — public domain in
Canada
An Encounter with Simone Weil — Documentary
on Weil by Julia Haslett, premiered in Amsterdam
in November 2010
Radio broadcast on Weil as part of BBC's In
our Time series (2012)
Simone Weil’s texts (Catalan translation)
