Weil Simone (1909–43), French religious philosopher and writer. Born in Paris, Weil was one of the first women to graduate from the École Normale Supérieure, having earlier studied under the philosopher Alain. While teaching in various French lycées Weil became involved in radical leftist politics, and her early works concern social problems and labor. They also show an attempt to work out a theory of action as fundamental to human knowing. This is seen first in her diploma essay, ‘Science and Perception in Descartes,’ and later in her critique of Marx, capitalism, and technocracy in ‘Reflections concerning the Causes of Social Oppression and Liberty.’ Believing that humans cannot escape certain basic harsh necessities of embodied life, Weil sought to find a way by which freedom and dignity could be achieved by organizing labor in such a way that the mind could understand that necessity and thereby come to consent to it. After a year of testing her theories by working in three factories in 1934–35, Weil’s early optimism was shattered by the discovery of what she called ‘affliction’ (malheur), a destruction of the human person to which one cannot consent. Three important religious experiences, however, caused her to attempt to put the problem into a larger context. By arguing that necessity obeys a transcendent goodness and then by using a kenotic model of Christ’s incarnation and crucifixion, she tried to show that affliction can have a purpose and be morally enlightening. The key is the renunciation of any ultimate possession of power as well as the social personality constituted by that power. This is a process of ‘attention’ and ‘decreation’ by which one sheds the veil that otherwise separates one from appreciating goodness in anything but oneself, but most especially from God. She understands God as a goodness that is revealed in self-emptying and in incarnation, and creation as an act of renunciation and not power.
During her last months, while working for the Free French in London, Weil’s social and religious interests came together, especially in The Need for Roots. Beginning with a critique of social rights and replacing it with obligations, Weil sought to show, on the one hand, how modern societies had illegitimately become the focus of value, and on the other hand, how cultures could be reconstructed so that they would root humans in something more ultimate than themselves. Returning to her earlier themes, Weil argued that in order for this rootedness to occur, physical labor must become the spiritual core of culture. Weil died of tuberculosis while this book was in progress.
Often regarded as mystical and syncretistic, Weil’s philosophy owes much to an original reading of Plato (e.g., in Intimations of Christianity Among the Ancient Greeks) as well as to Marx, Alain, and Christianity. Recent studies, however, have also seen her as significantly contributing to social, moral, and religious philosophy. Her concern with problems of action and persons is not dissimilar to Wittgenstein’s.
See also MARX, PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGIO. E.O.S.