Simone Weil

Description

Simone Weil, legendary French philosopher, political activist and mystic, died in 1943 at a sanatoriumin Kent at the age of 34. During her brief lifetime, Weil was a paradox of asceticism and introversion, yet with a teaching career and active participation in politics. She was a contemporary of Simone de Beauvoir and admired by writers such as Albert Camus. Palle Yourgrau outlines Weil's life and work, and demonstrates how she tried to apply philosophy to everyday life. Her preoccupation with the worldwide oppression of the working class found expression in what she once called her magnum opus, On Oppression and Liberty. Following a powerful religious experience in 1937, Weil's writings took a mystic turn and her fascination for world religions became more explicit in her work. Simone Weil offers an engaging presentation of the human drama of Weil's life and philosophy.

Palle Yourgrau is the Harry A. Wolfson Professor of Philosophy at Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts. His books include A World Without Time: The Forgotten Legacy of Godel and Einstein (2005).

"A comprehensive philosophical reading--to my mind, the first--of Weil's work. . . . Yourgrau is a master at tracing the hyper-sanity within dense philosophical systems that appear, to the untrained, as madness. . . . Paying this great philosopher the compliment of discussing her work in its own terms, Yourgrau has, for the first time, given the breadth of Weil's thought the expansive frame it deserves."-- "Los Angeles Review of Books" "Weil's moral absolutism remains a reproach to Jews who believe they can appropriate Israel's ethnicity (and perhaps its ethics) but dispense with its holiness code, and to Christians who seek redemption in their own ethnic roots rather than through adoption into the People of God. Al though her reasoning led to tragic re sults, Weil nonetheless did the world a service, and Yourgrau has done a service by explaining her."-- "First Things"