Simone Weil was a philosopher, theologian, critic, sociologist, & political activist. I have been randomly assigned to present on her in my summer course "Armies of God: The Spanish Conquest of the Americas," and I feel fortunate because as I read her works her words speak directly to many of the philosophies I myself have embraced or attempted to explore.Simone Weil (pron. "Vey") was born in Paris on February 5, 1909 and died at the age of 34 of heart failure in an English sanitorium on August 24, 1943.
Let me just say that as any person who believes in something bigger than myself, in the context of Weil's work when she speaks of "God" I don't necessarily perceive it as a God of a religious orthodoxy, in fact, Weil was never baptised although spiritual and related to religion. For me "God" is whoever you feel in you "Allah, Muhommad, God, Dios, Buddah, etc." Its the force and in no way is this blog restricted to one form of God for I feel to do so would to be to put that feeling in the Cave of unenlightenment.
Weil on Attention
"Attention consists of suspending our thought, leaving it detached, empty and ready to be penetrated by the object. It means holding in our minds, within reach of this thought, but on a lower level and not in contact with it, the diverse knowledge we have acquired which we are forced to make use of. Above all our thought should be empty, waiting, not seeking anything, but ready to receive in its naked truth the object which is to penetrate it. All wrong translations, all absurdities in geometry problems, all clumsiness of style and all faulty connection of ideas... all such things are due to the fact that thought has seized upon some idea too hastily and being thus prematurely blocked, is not open to truth. The cause is always that we have wanted to be too active; we have wanted to carry out a search."
"Absolute unmixed attention is prayer. "
Morality ... Internal
"Where as the desire for gold is not gold, the desire for good is itself a good -- our only task is to desire the good."
The Great Beast
"The Great Beast is the only object of idolatry, the only ersatz of God, the only imitation of something which is infinitely far from me and which is I myself. If we could be egoistical it would be very pleasant. It would be a rest. But literally we cannot.
It is impossible for me to take myself as an end or, in consequence, my fellow man as an end, since he is my fellow. Nor can I take any material thing, because matter is still less capable of having finality conferred upon it that human beings are.
Only one thing can be taken as an end, for in relation to the human person it possesses a kind of transcendence: this is the collective. The collective is the object of all idolatry, this it is which chains us to the earth. In the case of avarice: gold is of the social order. In the case of ambition; power is of the social order. Science and art are full of the social element also. And love? Love is more or less of an exception: that is why we can go to God through love, not through avarice or ambition. Yet the social element is not absent from love (passions excited by princes, celebrated people, all those who have prestige...)
War and "The Illiad or the Poem of Force""It is the most powerful argument 'not to admire force not to hate the enemy and not to scorn the unfortunate. Once the experience of war makes visible the possibility of death that lies locked up in moment, our thoughts cannot travel from one day to the next without meeting death's face. The mind is then stung up to a pitch it can stand for only a short time; but each new dawn renitroduces each one of these days the soul suffers violence. Regularly, every morning, the soul castrates itself of aspiration, for thought cannot journey through time without meeting death on the way. Thus war effaces all conceptions of purpose or goal, including even its own 'war aims.' It effaces the very notion of war's being brought to an end. "
