Simone Weil

:''Simone Weil should not be confused with Simone Veil, a French politician.'' Simone Weil (February 3, 1909–August 24, 1943) was a France philosopher and mystic. ==Life== Born in Paris, the younger sister of mathematician Andr� Weil. Her ancestry was Jewish, but Simone and Andr� were raised agnostic. Weil excelled from a young age, proficient at Greek language at 12. She came second in her class at the �cole Normale Sup�rieure, ahead of Simone de Beauvoir in third place. (First class honours went to a young woman who pursued an undistinguished career in the French public service and was never heard of again.) In 1931 Weil became a school teacher, a profession she practiced in between punishing stints at factories and farms designed to increase empathy with the working class. Though she considered herself a pacifist, in 1936 she joined the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War. However, her clumsiness repeatedly put her corps at risk; finally she suffered serious burns which caused her to leave Spain and travel to Assisi to recuperate. Here Weil experienced a series of mystical encounters with Jesus. She was attracted to Roman Catholicism but refused baptism, fearing that the consolations of organised religion would impair her faith. During World War II, she lived for a time in Marseille, receiving spiritual direction from a Dominican Order friar. In 1942, she travelled to the United States and afterwards to the United Kingdom. In London, she became a French Resistance worker. Her health had always been frail, and the punishing work regime she assumed for the Resistance soon took its toll. In 1943 she was diagnosed with tuberculosis and instructed to rest and maintain a generous diet. However, the idealism which had always informed Weil's political activism and material detachment did not permit her to accept special treatment. In 1915, when she was only six years old, she swore off sugar in solidarity with the troops entrenched along the Western Front. Twenty-eight years later, Weil limited herself to the rations she imagined her compatriots were subjected to in the occupied territories of France. Her condition quickly deteriorated, and she was moved to a sanatorium in Ashford, Kent, England. She died in August 1943, surrounded by a few devoted friends. Most of her work was published posthumously. ==Thought== Weil's philosophy can be ''roughly'' divided between her secular thinking and her spiritual thinking. This is a rough division because, for Weil, the world is the stage both for spirituality and for politics, but it must still be recognized, because Weil's spiritual drive is an essentially personal one, while her public philosophy emphasizes relationships that hold between groups and individuals, and is interested in healing social rifts and providing for physical and psychological needs of the mass of humanity. ===Weil's critique of secular metaphysics in ''Lectures on Philosophy''=== In ''Lectures on Philosophy'' (hereafter LP), Weil attempts, among other things, to set forth for her lyc�e students a coherent version of the materialism philosophical project. (She might say: "What a coherent materialism ''would'' look like, if it existed.") It is sometimes difficult to discern what methods are operating, and particularly what her truth- or validity-criteria are, and whence she derived authority for her varied claims. This is, in fact, a concern throughout her work. Implicitly, her method seems to be something like that of William James, in that she deals with truth not so much logic or science but psychology or phenomenology--she is concerned in LP with disclosing what she believes to be the conditions necessary for an ''experience'' of truth or reality to emerge for the human subject, or for an object, concept, etc. to emerge as reality within human experience. However, she does not argue, as does James, for a general theory of human truth-production justified by recourse to empirical observation; for her, the problem of truth is always a deeply personal one, to be approached through introspection. She is caught between her own yearning for traditional, idealism philosophy and her own appreciation of the limits of foundationalism. Thus we find statements like:

Any proof of the syllogism would be absurd. The syllogism is, to put it briefly, nothing but a rule of language to avoid contradiction: at bottom the principle of non-contradiction is a principle of grammar.--LP, p. 78

and

We are forced to accept the postulates and axioms precisely because we are unable to give an account of them. What one can do is try to explain why they seem obvious to us.

alongside the most strident and unforgiving proclamations of this or that specific truth. When pressed, her final appeals take forms like, "It's based on what is beautiful, and if it's beautiful, it must be true." This is not quite a child's na�ve clinging to fancy or an absurd extension of the Keatsian Ode on a Grecian Urn, though it is kin to both; it is expression of how personally Weil took truth: she counted as true not that which she could prove but that upon which she dependend, that which she could not do without. In LP she tells us:

One can never really give a proof of the reality of anything; reality is not something open to proof, it is something established. It is established just because proof is not enough. It is this characteristic of language, at once indispensable and inadequate, which shows the reality of the external world. Most people hardly ever realize this, because it is rare that the very same man thinks and puts his thought into action...--LP, 72-3

Weil is pointing here to the disjunction between planning and execution which is brought about by the division of labor between designer (architect, for example) and worker (bricklayer, for example), a division which holds the place almost of original sin for both Weil and for John Dewey, and which also reflects Weil's encounters with the philosophy of Karl Marx. That connection becomes even stronger when we read,

What marks off the ‘self’ is method; it has no other source than ourselves: it is when we really employ method that we really begin to exist. As long as one employs method only on symbols one remains within the limits of a sort of game. In action that has method about it, we ourselves act, since it is we ourselves who found the method; we ''really'' act because what is unforeseen presents itself to us.--LP, p. 72-3

In other words, for Weil, both self and world are constituted precisely in and only through informed action upon the world. This resembles pragmatic arguments forwarded by Dewey and James about the key role of observation and above all ''experimentation'' in creating human knowledge. ===Weil's mystical theology in ''Gravity and Grace'', etc.=== Weil's theology is interesting and complex both in itself and in the factors which encouraged its genesis in her psyche. Some have suggested that she should be regarded as a modern-day Marcion, due to her virtually wholesale rejection of the Old Testament and her overall distaste for the Judaism which was technically hers by birth; others have identified her as a gnostic for similar reasons, and also for her mystical theologization of geometry, Platonism philosophy, and so forth. However, it has been pointed out that this analysis falls apart when it comes to the creation (theology) of the world, for Weil does not regard the world as a debased creation of a demiurge, but as a direct expression of God's love--despite the fact that she *also* recognizes it as a place of evil, affliction, and the brutal mixture of chance and necessity. This juxtaposition leads her to produce an unusual form of Christianity theodicy. It is difficult to speak conclusively of Weil's theology, since it exists only in the form of scattered aphoristic scribblings in her notebooks and as an influence on her more secular writings that were intended for publication, and also in a few letters. None of these formats provides a very direct path to understanding her beliefs, since the first is only semi-formed, the second only enables us to see the secondary effects, and the third is subject to being skewed according to Weil's desire to present herself differently to different interlocutors. However, it is possible to make certain generalizations. ====Absence==== Absence is the key image for her metaphysics, cosmology, cosmogeny, 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 fulness, a perfect being, no creature could exist except where he was not. Thus creation occurred only when God withdrew a part of himself. This is, for Weil, an original kenosis ''preceding'' the corrective kenosis of Christ's incarnation. (One might compare this with Christology like that of Athanasius, which emphasize the incarnation as a natural extension of creation rather than as a break from the original created order.) 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. 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 evil 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." More specifically, affliction drives us to what Weil referred to as "decreation"--which is not death, but rather closer to "extinction" (nirvana) in the Buddhist tradition--the willed dissolution of the subjective ego in attaining realization of the true nature of the universe. (Of course, Weil's concept of that true nature was a Platonistic or Vedanta one of metaphysical fulness, while the Buddhist concept is one of metaphysical emptiness, but the soteriological strategies and metaphors suffer considerable overlap.) ====Affliction==== Weil's concept of affliction 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 was a sort of suffering plus, which inclusively transcended both the body and mind; they were physical and mental anguish that went beyond to scourge the very soul. War and oppression were the most intense cases of affliction; to experience it she turned to the life of a factory worker, while to understand it she turned to Homer's ''Iliad''. Affliction was associated both with necessity and with chance--it was fraught with necessity because it was hardwired 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. (''Gravity and Grace'')

====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 body, are 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." For Weil, 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. Beauty also served a soteriology 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 (literally), beauty sneaks in and topples the empire of the self from within. ===World religions=== While Weil's primary religious identification was Christian, she did not limit herself to the Christian religious tradition. She was keenly interested in other traditions—especially the Greek mythology and Egyptian Mystery religion, Hinduism (especially the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita), and Mahayana Buddhism. She believed that all these and others were valid paths to God, and much of her reluctance to join the Catholic Church can be ascribed to that body's reluctance to recognize non-Christian traditions. However, she was 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.

Weil was an avid classicist, schooled in Greek language and, after discovering the Gita, in Sanskrit. ==Works== *''La Pesanteur et la Grace'' (''Gravity and Grace'') (1947) *''L'Enracinement'' (''The Need for Roots'') (1949) *''Attente de Dieu'' (''Waiting on God'') (1950) *''Oppression et Libert�'' (''Oppression and Liberty'') (1955) ==Further reading== *McLellan, David. ''Utopian Pessimist.'' New York: Poseidon Press, 1990 ==External links== *[http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/20/mar02/weil.htm "Simone Weil: A saint for our time?"] article in ''The New Criterion'' *[http://www.nd.edu/~weilaws/ The American Weil Society] American branch of ''Association pour l'�tude de la pens�e de Simone Weil'' 1909 births 1943 deaths 20th Century philosophers French philosophers Alumni of the �cole Normale Sup�rieure

Simone Weil

Copied from Wikipedia:Reference desk: I just read the article on Simone Weil. I added a line saying that the claim that Weil committed suicide is countermanded by Simone Pretrement in her biography, Simone Weil, A Life [the definitive bio.] But I think that there are a number of other erros in the article: It says that Simone Weil sought afflicition by going to work in the factory while Weil says that she sought the job because anyone who was to write about econmics/social philosophy should experience it before writing and because she sought to learn the special knowledge that workers possessed [epistemological priviledge]. The current artilce says that Weil's mehtod is like that of James. But James in a pragmatist. Weil is a Platonist -something that James criticized. I do not know what to do about the article. I do not feel right just taking out someone elses work and yet, I think the article needs correction. Katel :Well, hopefully you'll find your way here from the reference desk. I do want to second the responses you got there--you should feel absolutely free to edit the article, because that's how Wikipedia works. :That said, perhaps I can help clarify some of the stuff that's there. First off, I had qualms about the suicide thing, though it's definitely a common interpertation. A statement that Petrement rejected the hypothesis that Weil's death was suicidal would be sufficient. :Also, while I grant that the Petrement biography is ''canonical'', I'm not sure I'd say it's definitive; some scholars feel Petrement was too close to Weil to get a proper feel for her. :As to the affliction bit, ''I'' think it's pretty clear that she was gunning for affliction when she went to the factory; I think that the experience of affliction in fact ''comprises'' the epistemological privilege you mention. However, I would not be averse to a change in wording; I'd be happy with "she found affliction in the life of a factory worker," or, "she encountered affliction," etc. :Now, as to the question of pragmatism and platonism...it's important to differentiate Weil's values and ends, which are utterly Platonic, from her methods, which are not necessarily so. Weil was a foundationalist by choice, belief, and identification, but her methods were not foundationalistic. :The comparison to pragmatism is actually Weil's, and not mine; she says, "One might say, with the pragmatists, that all science reduces itself to a process of action on nature, but it is necessary to add the word methodical.--LP, p. 111" Now, this shows that she does not identify as a pragmatism (obviously), but consider the differentiation she makes--she implies that she what stands between her and pragmatism is methodicity, and this is obviously a misconception of Weil's, since the pragmatists all place enormous emphasis on method. In any case, it is not at all out of line to say that Weil, at the very least at the stage of the LP, is, while not a pragmatist, in some sense going about a ''related'' project. And I stand by the actual content of my statement, which is that Weil's ''functional'' attitudes towards truth (her uses of it, rather than her beliefs about it) are, indeed, closely akin to James's concept of the function of truth. :(It's also simplistic to say that James's analysis of truth is a pragmatic one; he considered truth as it occurs in human life, whether pragmatic or no; he simply happens to have favored pragmatism on the basis of his own reflections.) :Perhaps these comments help somewhat to exonerate my statements; if not, please press your concerns, and help make the article more clear, concise, and informative. Also, if you can help contribute to aspects of Weil's life and thought that are not well-represented in the article (e.g., her politics, which were central, are something I don't feel comfortable elaborating without having ''The Need for Roots'' in front of me.), that would be marvelous. Happy wiki-ing, User:Kukkurovaca 22:49, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC) Um, oops! I just hacked into your section on Weil's life, and only thought to read these comments after the crime. Sorry! :o( I threw in an anecdote about her early education to liven things up, and also mentioned the ill fate of her Spanish expedition. I added some detail about Weil's mystical experiences, and expanded her byline to read "French philosopher and mystic" because I think it is an integral part of who she is. Finally, I unwittingly weighed into the already waging "suicide" debate. I've read a few biographies, none of which seriously contend that her final actions amounted to suicide. I don't personally believe Weil can be described as a martyr, but it certainly highlights the controversy of her official cause of death. I restrained myself by not editing the other sections. I should really be working on my honours thesis, which is on Weil's political philsophy. :op Hythloday. :Your changes look very good. Thanks. Good luck with the thesis.User:Kukkurovaca Katel here again. Thanks for your comments and explanations. I want to go back to the suicide thing here...not in the article. When Weil was still nursing her mother had some bouts with appendix...you know they used to "ice" them and hope for the best since there were no antibiotics and surgery was really dangerous. Anyhow Simone became deathly ill...apparently was beign poisoned by her mother's milk. They thought she would die, but she recovered but ever after had difficulty with food/digestion....and the war time diet in England was tough. I assume we all agree that she was a most independent woman...a forminable discussant [she scared Simone de Beauvoir by unmasking bourgeois tendencies according to Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter]. So, how does this fit the end of her life. She was really sick - TB. They had collapsed the lung and it did not good at all. The dr. wanted to do it again. She refused [what today would be call the 'right to refuse treatment' - especially frutiless treatment. He got mad that she would not just acquiese [like any patient, especially woman was expected to do] and so when she died he signed the death certificate that she died as a result of self starvation. Here is where Pretrement comes in...documents the testimony of her nurse, some friends who would bring food in etc. Even goes to her confessor, 2nd doctor etc. Now, I have had some friends who have died and almost none of them wanted to each anything near the end...cancer, TB etc. there is a natural loss of appetite. So, I do not want to include all that in the encyclopedia article but want to put it out here for consideration. Why did she go into the factory? Well, there were two motivations. part of her inheritance from Alain was that you should go and experience anything if you want to understand it. [eg. When she heard stories of things going bad in Germany..she [a Jew] traveled to Berlin to find out...same thing when Italy started to persecute the Jews... She had always been close to working class people. When she was a kid and the family was in hotels, the family was especially well treated by staff because Simone spent much of her time in the kitchen etc, with them and they loved her for it. She got bounced from her first job because she was helping factory workers get organized etc. She had been in dialogue with factory owner, trying to get him to institute "social justice reforms" - there are letters between them. Also, she had this 19th centruy notion that there is a special knowlege that working people have that no one else can have [you find this idea in some Catholic circles too]. She got the factory job through "pull" - her knoweldge of owners and managers. She went - well, I am tempted to say quixotically - but maybe that is a bit harsh since then her whole life would be "quixotic" and I think she was more area of the reality of oppressions.... She was stunned in some ways by what the experience actually was. She was a klutz...and had some coordination problems so found working the presses really hard....and her factory journal is to me, the evidence that a brilliant mind can be reduced to mere economic calculations [she was never making the piece rate and so would not get paid etc.] In the end she had to leave the great experiment in learning....yes, it filled her with horror...like Dickens and the boot blacking factory...she said ever afterwards that when every anyone spoke to her with respect, she was surprised. And what is interesting, is that she realized that the mechanism of modern production [which she had thought could be made more humane...and she had gone there as an experiment to find out exactly how] was simply oppressive [her piece about Charlie Chaplin as offering a more apt analysis of factory work and its mechanism of necessity] and she stopped trying to get owners to reform. Her work in the vineyard... "migrant worker" style was another one of these joing the workers [ you find this in FRance...it led to the worker priest movement and cathoic social doctrine later] but that was also because the anti-jewish laws meant she could not teach...so someone arranged for her to go to Thibeau's farm. Again, she had not the endurance so instead he and she argued half the nite about social justice etc. This penchant of going where the action is...it permenated her life...whenthe family came to the USA she could not stand it...went to London to work for the free french...asked to be sent as a spy etc. So I find no evidence in her letters or notebooks that she "sought affliction"....some might say that her headaches might have been afflicitons except she said that she learned to think around the pain [havign suffered from migrains for years, that always gave me hope and I tried to do the same so I could teach]...I am not sure that she was afflicted...in part because she had a sense of meaning and she says that true affliciton one has not sense of meaning. Method...I am not sure how to edit the piece to include two aspects of her methodology - First, I agree with what is there that the aesthetic is central to her approach...more central than the ethical. I would like to find a way to talk of her method.... first, the part adopted from Alain of melding the literary AND the experience of the poor, the worker, the outcast in ones philosophizing....that one needs to experience anything that one is going to write about. second, her conviction that you get to truth by holding contradictions in your mind...the tension of opposites [Heraclitus put it that way] and in so holding the contradictions, ones mind suddenly peierces through to True. It is found in some of the mystics too...as well as Heraclitus.... Hmmmm. A long post. I get wound up about her. I still find her On the Right Use of School Studies and Forms of the Implicit love of God and her notebooks astonishing. Her work on attention is clearer than anyone up til her day and not ever Murdoch [who was influenced by W's attention work] makes it any clearer. So, again, I do not want to erase what is there....but I would like to find a way to put some of this in about her methodology and have not figured out how and where you. Katel Interesting stuff Katel. There was one biography I read which suggested that Weil was suffering from anorexia at the end. I forgot all about it until I read your post. I fully agree with you that she was not "seeking" affliction. It's been a while since I read her essay on the subject, but I do remember that she denied anyone could WANT affliction.

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