Simone Weil (1909-1943) was a defining figure of the twentieth century; a philosopher, Christian, resistance fighter, anarchist, feminist, Labour activist and teacher. She was described by T. S. Eliot as 'a woman of genius, of a kind of genius akin to that of the saints', and by Albert Camus as 'the only great spirit of our time'. Originally published posthumously in two volumes, these newly reissued notebooks, are among the very few unedited personal writings of Weil's that still survive today. Containing her thoughts on art, love, science, God and the meaning of life, they give context and meaning to Weil's famous works, revealing an unique philosophy in development and offering a rare private glimpse of her singular personality.
Although trained as a philosopher, Simone Weil (1909–43) contributed to a wide range of subjects, resulting in a rich field of interdisciplinary Weil studies. Yet those coming to her work from such disciplines as sociology, history, political science, religious studies, French studies, and women’s studies are often ignorant of or baffled by her philosophical investigations. In Simone Weil: Late Philosophical Writings, Eric O. Springsted presents a unique collection of Weil’s writings, one concentrating on her explicitly philosophical thinking. The essays are drawn chiefly from the time Weil spent in Marseille in 1940-42, as well as one written from London; most have been out of print for some time; three appear for the first time; all are newly translated. Beyond making important texts available, this selection provides the context for understanding Weil's thought as a whole. This volume is important not only for those with a general interest in Weil; it also specifically presents Weil as a philosopher, chiefly one interested in questions of the nature of value, moral thought, and the relation of faith and reason. What also appears through this judicious selection is an important confirmation that on many issues respecting the nature of philosophy, Weil, Wittgenstein, and Kierkegaard shared a great deal.
Simone Weil (1909-1943) was a philosopher, theologian, political activist, and mystic whose work endures among the greatest spiritual thinking in human history. Born and educated in Paris, she was devoted to advocating for disenfranchised citizens around the world. Called the 'saint of all outsiders' by Andre Gide, Weil's compassion for the plight of the working class and the armed forces fueled her enlightened treatises and existential inquiries.
Simone Weil is one of the most profound and thought-provoking thinkers of the 20th century. A teacher, factory and farm labourer, a political activist at home and abroad, a loving friend, daughter and sister—all these manifest a life devoted to the good in its many forms. Her writings explore the good open to us and the various routes to it, spanning philosophy, politics, science and spirituality. While she saw her vocation primarily as a philosopher—examining questions concerning human faculties, action and thought, the limits of language and our need of mediation, suffering and beauty for contact with reality—her startlingly original thought is often obscured by her having been too readily categorized as a Christian mystic. Simone Weil: Basic Writings is an expertly edited anthology of Weil’s most important writings, presenting her philosophy as it relates to the architecture of human nature, politics, work, necessity, beauty, goodness and God. Working from the definitive French edition of Weil’s complete writings, D. K. Levy and Marina Barabas have translated the essays anew or for the first time, adding important notes and references absent from existing English language editions of Weil’s work. Following an extensive introduction that gives an overview of Weil's life and thought, each part opens with a short preface situating the selected essays within Weil’s oeuvre. Simone Weil: Basic Writings provides an excellent entry point to Weil’s philosophy, as well as a reference for students and scholars of Weil's thought in philosophy and related disciplines.
Introducing the Selected Works of Simone Weil Throughout her life, Simone Weil was a constant letter writer and Seventy Letters contains a fair and important selection of them. Many of them are biographically important, as they are written to friends and to her family, especially to her brother, Andre. But they also give many important clues to Weil's own thinking on social and philosophical matters. In her later letters, her urgent concerns about her project for a frontline corps of nurses is obvious. In earlier ones, she not only shows her deep concern for social issues, but also raises issues about intellectual matters. These letters and others are particularly important for understanding her thinking on intellectual culture, philosophy, and science. SELECTED WORKS: First and Last Notebooks: Supernatural Knowledge / ISBN 978-1-4982-3919-6 Seventy Letters: Personal and Intellectual Windows on a Thinker / ISBN 978-1-4982-3920-2 Selected Essays, 1934-1943: Historical, Political and Moral Writings / ISBN 978-1-4982-3921-9
You cannot get far in these essays without sensing yourself in the presence of a writer of immense intellectual power and fierce independence of mind.' - Janet Soskice, from the Introduction to the Routledge Classics edition Simone Weil (1909–1943) is one of the most brilliant and unorthodox religious and philosophical thinkers of the twentieth century. She was also a political activist who worked in the Renault car factory in France in the 1930s and fought briefly as an anarchist in the Spanish Civil War. Hailed by Albert Camus as 'the only great spirit of our times,' her work spans an astonishing variety of subjects, from ancient Greek philosophy and Christianity to oppression, political freedom and French national identity. Waiting for God is one of her most remarkable books, full of piercing spiritual and moral insight. The first part comprises letters she wrote in 1942 to Jean-Marie Perrin, a Dominican priest, and demonstrate the intense inner conflict Weil experienced as she wrestled with the demands of Christian belief and commitment. She then explores the 'just balance' of the world, arguing that we should regard God as providing two forms of guidance: our ability as human beings to think for ourselves; and our need for both physical and emotional 'matter.' She also argues for the concept of a 'sacred longing'; that humanity's search for beauty, both in the world and within each other, is driven by our underlying desire for a tangible god. Eloquent and inspiring, Waiting for God asks profound questions about the nature of faith, doubt and morality that continue to resonate today. This Routledge Classics edition includes a new Introduction by Janet Soskice and retains the Foreword to the 1979 edition by Malcolm Muggeridge.
A new translation of Simone Weil's best-known work: a political, philosophical and spiritual treatise on what human life could be What do humans require to be truly nourished? Simone Weil, one of the foremost philosophers of the last century, envisaged us all as being bound by unconditional, eternal obligations towards every other human being. In The Need for Roots, her most famous work, she argued that our greatest need was to be rooted: in a community, a place, a shared past and collective future hopes. Written for the Free French movement while she was exiled in London during the Second World War, Weil's visionary combination of philosophy, politics and mysticism is her answer to the question of what life without occupation - and oppression - might be. 'The patron saint of all outsiders' Andre Gide 'The only great spirit of our time' Albert Camus Translated by Ros Schwartz, with an introduction by Kate Kirkpatrick.
Twentieth-century French philosopher Simone Weil's complete writings on colonialism are collected and translated into English in this volume. Visit our website for sample chapters!
This volume, first published in English in 1987 makes available an important part of Weil’s early writings. Although primarily known as a religious thinker, she devoted enormous energy in her formative years to her work as a political activist and as a philosopher/teacher. This book reveals these other sides of Weil and demonstrates the lines of continuity underlying her whole thought. Written between 1929 and 1941 the book covers a crucial and transitional period in Weil’s life. Taken together they represent invaluable primary source material on the evolution of Weil’s life and on her chosen method of abstracting elements from her personal experience and transmuting that experience into considered thought. Even when highly theoretical, her writing was always concerned with the application of her intelligence to concrete problems of human existence.
Introducing the Selected Works of Simone Weil Weil's many essays written over her short life cover a very wide range of topics. This important collection contains several that have been long unavailable. There is deep integrity in this diverse collection. Many are directed to social and political topics, written in Weil's distinctive way of commenting on contemporary issues through historical writing. Weil wrote in her great work The Need for Roots that humans beings need roots in the universe; this rootedness comes through their lived history. Often Weil is treated as if she were constantly trying to posit timeless truths, but as these essays make evident, Weil offers to her readers a sense of truth as we discover it and live with it in our concrete historical circumstances. This analogical and historical thinking is particularly clear in the several essays that come from her last days while working for the Free French in London, during which she meditated on the philosophical renewal of France after the war. SELECTED WORKS: First and Last Notebooks: Supernatural Knowledge / ISBN 978-1-4982-3919-6 Seventy Letters: Personal and Intellectual Windows on a Thinker / ISBN 978-1-4982-3920-2 Selected Essays, 1934-1943: Historical, Political and Moral Writings / ISBN 978-1-4982-3921-9
Derived from Weil's lectures, the collection presents a general introduction to philosophy, ranging widely over problems about perception, mind, language, and reasoning, as well as problems in moral and political philosophy.
The inspiring letters of philosopher, mystic, and freedom fighter Simone Weil to her family, presented for the first time in English. Now in the pantheon of great thinkers, Simone Weil (1909–1943) lived largely in the shadows, searching for her spiritual home while bearing witness to the violence that devastated Europe twice in her brief lifetime. The letters she wrote to her parents and brother from childhood onward chart her intellectual range as well as her itinerancy and ever-shifting preoccupations, revealing the singular personality at the heart of her brilliant essays. The first complete collection of Weil’s missives to her family, A Life in Letters offers new insight into her personal relationships and experiences. The letters abound with vivid illustrations of a life marked by wisdom as much as seeking. The daughter of a bourgeois Parisian Jewish family, Weil was a troublemaking idealist who preferred the company of miners and Russian exiles to that of her peers. An extraordinary scholar of history and politics, she ultimately found a home in Christian mysticism. Weil paired teaching with poetry and even dabbled in mathematics, as evidenced by her correspondence with her brother, André, who won the Kyoto Prize in 1994 for the famed Weil Conjectures. A Life in Letters depicts Simone Weil’s thought taking shape amid political turmoil, as she describes her participation in the Spanish struggle against fascism and in the transatlantic resistance to the Nazis. An introduction and notes by Robert Chenavier contextualize the letters historically and intellectually, relating Weil’s letters to her general body of writing. This book is an ideal entryway into Weil’s philosophical insights, one for both neophytes and acolytes to treasure.
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.
On the fiftieth anniversary of the first English edition, this Routledge Classics edition offers the English reader the complete text of this landmark work for the first time ever.
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.
The commentary draws on recent interpretations of the Iliad and examines the parallels between Weil's version of Homer's warriors and the experiences of modern soldiers."--Jacket.
Hailed by Andre Gide as the patron saint of all outsiders, Simone Weil's short life was ample testimony to her beliefs. In 1942 she fled France along with her family, going firstly to America. She then moved back to London in order to work with de Gaulle. Published posthumously The Need for Roots was a direct result of this collaboration. Its purpose was to help rebuild France after the war. In this, her most famous book, Weil reflects on the importance of religious and political social structures in the life of the individual. She wrote that one of the basic obligations we have as human beings is to not let another suffer from hunger. Equally as important, however, is our duty towards our community: we may have declared various human rights, but we have overlooked the obligations and this has left us self-righteous and rootless. She could easily have been issuing a direct warning to us today, the citizens of Century 21.
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