Background In her short life, Simone Weil (1909-1943) fought in the Spanish Civil War, worked as a machine operator and farm laborer, debated Trotsky, taught high school students and union members, and was part of the French Resistance. From an early age growing up in a secular Jewish household, she demonstrated a keen sense of empathy for the suffering of others. This was matched only by her penetrating intelligence and powers of attention. At nineteen, she entered the prestigious Ecole Normale -- the only woman in her class and the top scorer on the entrance exam. Throughout her life, she advocated for the poor and disenfranchised in France and for colonized people around the world, bravely organizing and writing on their behalf. A consummate outsider, who never lost her distrust of ideologies of any kind, at 34, Simone Weil left behind a body of work that fills fifteen volumes and establishes her as a brilliant political, social, and spiritual thinker. In her writings, she analyzed power and its dehumanizing effects, outlined a doctrine of attention and empathy for human suffering, argued for the importance of universal education, and critiqued Stalinism long before most of the French left-wing. She was a revolutionary who questioned the value of revolutions. She believed intellectual work should be combined with physical work, and that theories should evolve from close observation and direct experience. And, after three mystical experiences, she began grappling with religious faith, its role in human history, and the shortcomings of organized religion. Her best known works, all published posthumously, are Gravity & Grace, Oppression & Liberty, Waiting for God, and The Need for Roots, the last of which was a plan for post-war France written in 1943 for the Free French government. Her ideas have influenced countless individuals, including Susan Sontag, Alfred Kazin, and Czeslaw Milosz. The New York Times has described her as “one of the most brilliant and original minds of twentieth-century France.” But without a doubt her biggest advocate was Albert Camus who played a major role in getting her work published after the war. He even made a pilgrimage to her writing room before leaving for Stockholm to receive the 1957 Nobel Prize in Literature. Yet, despite these luminary supporters, Simone Weil is a little-known figure, practically forgotten in her native France, and rarely taught in the United States or elsewhere. Very slowly, however, that is starting to change. The noted author Francine du Plessix Gray recently published a biography of her. And Columbia University held a Weil conference not long ago that looked at her work from a number of new angles.
|
Home |