The essays are drawn chiefly from the time Weil spent in Marseille in , 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 was one of the foremost thinkers of the twentieth century: a philosopher, theologian, critic, sociologist and political activist. This anthology spans the wide range of her thought, and includes an extract from her best-known work 'The Need for Roots', exploring the ways in which modern society fails the human soul; her thoughts on the misuse of language by those in power; and the essay 'Human Personality', a late, beautiful reflection on the rights and responsibilities of every individual.
All are marked by the unique combination of literary eloquence and moral perspicacity that characterised Weil's ideas and inspired a generation of thinkers and writers both in and outside her native France. Simone Weil, legendary French philosopher, political activist, and mystic, died in at a sanatorium in Kent, England, at the age of thirty-four. During her brief lifetime, Weil was a paradox of asceticism and reclusive introversion who also maintained a teaching career and an active participation in politics.
Born in Paris to a cultivated Jewish-French family, Weil excelled at philosophy, and her empathetic political conscience channeled itself into political engagement and activism on behalf of the working class. Dissecting the dynamic of power and propaganda caused by party spirit, the increasing disregard for truth in favor of opinion, and the consequent corruption of education, journalism, and art, Weil forcefully makes the case that a true politics can only begin where party spirit ends.
Her profound meditation on the nature of violence provides a remarkably vivid and accessible testament of the Greek epic's continuing relevance to our lives. This celebrated work appears here for the first time in a bilingual version, based on the text of the authoritative edition of the author's complete writings. An introduction discusses the significance of the essay both in the evolution of Weil's thought and as a distinctively iconoclastic contribution to Homeric studies.
The commentary draws on recent interpretations of the Iliad and examines the parallels between Weil's vision of Homer's warriors and the experiences of modern soldiers. Simone Weil was one of the most original philosophers and political thinkers of the twentieth century.
Weil was born in to non-practicing Jewish parents and was an agnostic until her late twenties when she became a Christian. She had a refreshing creativity and a rare ability to confront theological complacencies. As well as writing on suffering she also wrote about the nature of God, the nature of work and the importance of improving conditions for factory workers, and about our duty towards our community.
She could get to the heart of some key philosophical, theological and ethical issues, many of which are as important today as they were in her own time.
Here, Stephen Plant makes Weil's often complex and challenging thought accessible to a wide audience. He sketches a few of the central themes of Weil's thought, gives the reader a feeling for the breadth of her work and provides short extracts from her writings. This revised and expanded edition is an ideal introduction to Weil for both students and the general reader. 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! Obliged to live and to die very far from the homeland, and like the Greeks before Troy, having, like the Troyans, lost their cities, they saw their likeness in the victors, who were their fathers, and also in the vanquished, whose sufferings resembled their own The points in common between Christianity and the Greek classics are to be found deep, so deep that interpretations become blurry and may collude.
That's the quality of classics. They allow, through their inscrutable depth, to be compared with other sublime texts of any other date and place. The author does more for the Greek texts by finding transcendent meaning there, than for the Biblical texts by only using them as the measuring stick against the Greek classics. All in all, due to the sheer power and depth of her statements, the book is well worth the read, if only for the parts mentioned above.
Simone Weil was one of the transcendent geniuses of our time. A brilliant comet of a being, coursing luminously through the profanity and darkness of the mid-twentieth century to an early end, mercilessly, intensely engaged in the vortex of social change, yet seen by her contemporaries only from a distance - she died at a mere 34!
This book is a compilation of Weil's papers on Greek Philosophy. The papers were published separately, are here collated to follow the development of her conception that many of the dominant themes in Greek philosophy, myth, and tragedy prefigure the major motifs in Christianity: divine love for humanity, universal love, altruistic sacrifice, humility, harmony, egalitarianism, etc.
While numerous studies have examined the accepted fact that Greek thought, especially Platonism, formed the matrix for the emergence of Christianity, Weil's trenchant insights elevate the discourse and are of the greatest relevance to the human situation.
The book begins with an examination of these ideas in Greek Myth and Tragedy. She then discusses the works surrounding the figure of Prometheus whom she perceives as Christ-like, proceeds to a discussion of major themes in Plato, primarily referencing the Republic and the Symposium.
The book ends with an extended discussion of what Weil identifies as the Pythagorean Doctrine, and a brief historical sketch of Greek Science. Weil read the originals in Attic Greek, in which she was proficient.
We know that she had contemplated a translation of the Iliad and perhaps more. As we near a half-century since her unfortunate death, Weil's prose has garnered universal regard.
But, for the brief span of her maturity, the Nazis were ever at her heels, limiting her output. The works assembled in this slender volume represent the culmination of her thinking in the field of classical thought and piece together her signal vision which, in my opinion, is the first to accurately locate the meaning of the grand theme of eros in the project of Greek philosophy.
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. Filaments arranges its subjects in rough chronological order, from choices in ancient theology, such as Augustine, through the likes of William of St.
The goal-posts keep changing. This study guide will equip theology students to understand the culture-shaping beliefs that are driving the kinds of questions it brings to faith.
It will be an historical overview of the key stages in the history of Western philosophy with each section carefully tracing the genealogical line of ideas and the Christian responses to them, right up to the present day. These two issues have often been treated separately; in Simone Weil: Attention to the Real, however, Robert Chenavier explores the work of Simone Weil and demonstrates how she brought them together in a single movement of thought.
Her experience as a militant and the call of the divine nurtured in her writing an intense and unwavering defense of this new civilization, backed by her personal sense of intellectual, moral, and political responsibility. Originally published in French in , Simone Weil: Attention to the Real leads the reader through her earliest writing as a perceptive social critic to her work on spirituality and materialism, and finally to her extraordinary concept of decreation, produced before her death at the age of thirty-four.
He is especially concerned with Weil's philosophical writings on the concept of work, which remain relevant today, and which provide an important key to her thinking throughout her life. Bernard Doering's superb translation brings to English readers Chenavier's succinct account of Simone Weil's life and an illuminating introduction to her philosophical thought.
It provides an excellent English introduction to the social philosophy of Simone Weil, with due attention to her understanding of the importance of work in learning to attend to the real. Doering's translation will be of interest to both a religious and secular readership, both inside and outside the academy.
0コメント