Simone Weil
Pure attention to others, especially those in deep affliction, is the heart of ethics – and obligations to people come before rights.
Placement
Philosopher, factory worker and mystic: attention, affliction and the “needs of the soul” at the heart of a radical ethics of obligation.
Key ideas
- Attention
- Affliction (malheur)
- Obligations before rights
- Rootedness
Influence
Influenced by 2
René Descartes
influenced by
Weil’s diploma thesis read Descartes as a philosopher of methodical work, for whom perception and knowledge arise from action on the world (Science et perception dans Descartes, 1930). S. Weil, Science et perception dans Descartes (diplôme d’études supérieures, 1930), in Œuvres complètes I (1988)
Evidence: AI draft
René Descartes › 1596–1650
Influenced 2
Albert Camus
influenced
Camus published Weil’s posthumous The Need for Roots (1949) in his Espoir series at Gallimard, holding that no renewal of Europe could ignore its demands. S. Weil, L’Enracinement (1949), coll. Espoir, ed. A. Camus; SEP “Simone Weil”
Evidence: also in InPhO · InPhO
Albert Camus › 1913–1960
Iris Murdoch
influenced
Murdoch borrowed Weil’s word ‘attention’ for ‘a just and loving gaze directed upon an individual reality’, the core of moral life (The Sovereignty of Good, 1970). I. Murdoch, The Sovereignty of Good (1970); S. Weil, “Réflexions sur le bon usage des études scolaires” (1942), in Attente de Dieu (1950); SEP “Iris Murdoch”; SEP “Simone Weil”
Evidence: also in InPhO · InPhO
Iris Murdoch › 1919–1999
Criticism
Criticizes 1
Karl Marx
criticised
Weil called Marx’s faith in productive forces a myth: oppression stems from how labour is organised (Réflexions sur les causes de la liberté et de l’oppression sociale, 1934). S. Weil, Réflexions sur les causes de la liberté et de l’oppression sociale (1934; publ. in Oppression et liberté, 1955); SEP “Simone Weil”
Evidence: AI draft
Karl Marx › 1818–1883
Works
Aphorisms from her notebooks: the soul is pulled down by gravity, and only grace raises it.
Obligations precede rights: the needs of the soul and the uprootedness of modern people.
Position
Weil’s thought moves between politics and mysticism. Her factory year taught her what “affliction” (malheur) means: a suffering that crushes the soul and makes the person invisible. Against it she set attention, a patient, self-forgetting openness to reality and to the other, which she considered the core of both prayer and justice. In The Need for Roots, written for a liberated France, she argued that obligations come before rights and listed the “needs of the soul,” such as order, freedom and rootedness. Almost all her works appeared posthumously and influenced thinkers from Albert Camus to Iris Murdoch.
Life & context
Simone Weil was born in Paris in 1909 into an agnostic Jewish family; her brother André became a mathematician. She studied at the École normale supérieure and taught philosophy at girls’ schools. In 1934–35 she worked in factories, and in 1936 briefly joined the anarchists in the Spanish Civil War. In 1942 she reached London to work for the Free French; she died in England in 1943, aged 34.
Further main works
- Waiting for God (1950)
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