Category: Weil, Simone
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Weil’s Wager
I In her New York Notebook from 1942, Simone Weil presents an argument which she claims “…is greatly preferable to Pascal’s wager.”[i] One of her commentators agrees, finding her argument “obviously both morally and intellectually” superior to Pascal’s.[ii] I will call this argument “Weil’s Wager.” As far as I know, it has yet to be…
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Simone Weil on False Gods
Despite her infuriating extremism, Simone Weil may well be the purest incarnation of religious sensibility in the twentieth century. "It's not up to us to believe in God, but only not to grant our love to false gods." As Weil understands, essential to genuine religion, though not exhaustive of it, is the realization that nothing…
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Simone Weil and Generic Wretchedness
Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace, tr. Emma Craufurd, Routledge 1995, p. 70: The extreme affliction which overtakes human beings does not create human misery, it merely reveals it. This suggests one of several tests you might apply to yourself to see if you have a religious 'bent' or sensibility, or orientation toward life, or however…
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Kenneth Rexroth on Simone Weil
Kenneth Rexroth's essay Simone Weil first appeared in The Nation in 1957. Rexroth hits upon an image more striking than apt when he describes Weil's "tortured prowling outside the doors of the Catholic Church — like a starving wild animal." Definitely worth reading, but of little value in understanding what is of lasting value in…
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Simone Weil in the Light of Plato, Phaedo 83
To understand Simone Weil, you must understand her beloved master, Plato. So let's interpret a passage from the Phaedo, and then compare it to some statements of Weil. At St. 83 we read, "…the perceptions of the eye, and the ear, and the the senses are full of deceit." The point is presumably not that…
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Excellent Advice on Non-Violence from Simone Weil
Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace, tr. Emma Craufurd, Routledge 1995, p. 77, emphasis added. Non-violence is no good unless it is effective. Hence the young man's question to Ghandi about his sister. The answer should have been: use force unless you are such that you can defend her with as much chance of success without…