As a thinker, mystic and social critic, Simone Weil is one of the most extraordinary figures of the 20th century. She was a Marxist who experienced the relations of power between producing and ruling classes first hand as a field and factory worker. She was an internationalist who felt that the fall of Paris was a 'great day for Indo-China', and yet she wanted to fight for France. Camus called her social writings 'more penetrating and more prophetic than anything since Marx.' What comes through strongly in this book are Weil's power of analysis and criticism, her love of truth and hunger for justice, her commitment to non-violence, and, most of all, her regard for everyone and everything marginalized or excluded by orthodoxies and establishments, whether colonized people or heresy.
As a thinker, mystic and social critic, Simone Weil is one of the most extraordinary figures of the 20th century. She was a Marxist who experienced the relations of power between producing and ruling classes first hand as a field and factory worker. She was an internationalist who felt that the fall of Paris was a 'great day for Indo-China', and yet she wanted to fight for France. Camus called her social writings 'more penetrating and more prophetic than anything since Marx.' What comes through strongly in this book are Weil's power of analysis and criticism, her love of truth and hunger for justice, her commitment to non-violence, and, most of all, her regard for everyone and everything marginalized or excluded by orthodoxies and establishments, whether colonized people or heresy.
An analysis of the philosophical and religious thought of mystic, thinker and social critic, Simone Weil. Weil was a Marxist who experienced the relations of power between producing and ruling classes firsthand as a factory and field worker. She was an internationalist who felt that the fall of Paris was a "great day for Indo-China" and yet she wanted to fight for France. She was a mystic and self-styled Christian who refused to join the Church because of its intolerance and exclusivism. The scope of her thought is remarkable, and this volume seeks to cover it all: religion, politics, science, history and culture. What comes through strongly are Weil's power of analysis and criticism, her love of truth and hunger for justice, her commitment to nonviolence, and, most of all, her regard for everyone and everything marginalized or excluded by orthodoxies and establishments, whether colonized people or heresy.
This in-depth study examines the social, religious, and philosophical thought of Simone Weil. Simone Weil for the Twenty-First Century presents a comprehensive analysis of Weil’s interdisciplinary thought, focusing especially on the depth of its challenge to contemporary philosophical and religious studies. In a world where little is seen to have real meaning, Eric O. Springsted presents a critique of the unfocused nature of postmodern philosophy and argues that Weil’s thought is more significant than ever in showing how the world in which we live is, in fact, a world of mysteries. Springsted brings into focus the challenges of Weil’s original (and sometimes surprising) starting points, such as an Augustinian priority of goodness and love over being and intellect, and the importance of the Crucifixion. Springsted demonstrates how the mystical and spiritual aspects of Weil’s writings influence her social thought. For Weil, social and political questions cannot be separated from the supernatural. For her, rather, the world has a sacramental quality, such that life in the world is always a matter of life in God—and life in God, necessarily a way of life in the world. Simone Weil for the Twenty-First Century is not simply a guide or introduction to Simone Weil. Rather, it is above all an argument for the importance of Weil’s thought in the contemporary world, showing how she helps us to understand the nature of our belonging to God (sometimes in very strange and unexpected ways), the importance of attention and love as the root of both the love of God and neighbor, the importance of being rooted in culture (and culture’s service to the soul in rooting it in the universe), and the need for human beings to understand themselves as communal beings, not as isolated thinkers or willers. It will be essential reading for scholars of Weil, and will also be of interest to philosophers and theologians.
For three decades, Robert Coles has followed Eliot's invitation. He has studied and reflected upon Simone Weil - as writer, social critic, radical, and mystic - and upon the enigmas of her strange, brief life.
Brings together the thought of liberation theologian Gustavo Gutiérrez and Christian philosopher Simone Weil to present a unique vision that can speak of both the reality of suffering and the desire for mystical experience.
The French philosopher Simone Weil (1909-1943), a contemporary of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre, remains in every way a thinker for our times. She was an outsider, in multiple senses, defying the usual religious categories: at once atheistic and religious; mystic and realist; sceptic and believer. She speaks therefore to the complex sensibilities of a rationalist age. Yet despite her continuing relevance, and the attention she attracts from philosophy, cultural studies, feminist studies, spirituality and beyond, Weil's reflections can still be difficult to grasp, since they were expressed in often inscrutable and fragmentary form. Lissa McCullough here offers a reliable guide to the key concepts of Weil's religious philosophy: good and evil, the void, gravity, grace, beauty, suffering and waiting for God. In addressing such distinctively contemporary concerns as depression, loneliness and isolation, and in writing hauntingly of God's voluntary 'nothingness', Weil's existential paradoxes continue to challenge and provoke. This is the first introductory book to show the essential coherence of her enigmatic but remarkable ideas about religion.
Discussing political and social oppression, its permanent causes, the way it works and its contemporary form, this volume of Simone Weil's writings offers thought-provoking ideas on political theory.
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.
