
How to Read Simone Weil, Part 1: The Mystic / Eric O. Springsted
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & Culture
Intro
This chapter explores Simone Weil's insights on the moral implications of attention, highlighting the importance of genuinely perceiving others, particularly those in suffering. It calls for an openness to engage with discomfort in order to foster a deeper understanding of humanity.
This episode is the first of a short series exploring How to Read Simone Weil. The author of Gravity and Grace, The Need for Roots, and Waiting for Godβamong many other essays, letters, and notes, Weil has been an inspiration to philosophers, poets, priests, and politicians for the last centuryβalmost all of it after her untimely death.
She understood, perhaps more than many other armchair philosophers from the same period, the risk of philosophyβthe demands it made on a human life.
In this series, weβll feature three guests who look at this magnificent and mysterious thinker in interesting and refreshing, and theologically and morally challenging ways.
Weβll look at Simone Weil the Mystic, Simone Weil the Activist, Simone Weil the Existentialist.
First weβll be hearing from Eric Springsted, a co-founder of the American Weil Society and its long-time presidentβwho wrote Simone Weil: Late Philosophical Writings and Simone Weil for the Twenty-First Century.
In this conversation, Eric O. Springsted and Evan Rosa discuss Simone Weilβs personal biography, intellectual life, and the nature of her spiritual and religious and moral ideas; pursuing philosophy as a way of life; her encounter with Christ, affliction, and mystery; her views on attention and prayer; her concept of the void, and the call to self-emptying; and much more.
About Simone Weil
Simone Weil (1909β1943) was a French philosopher, mystic, and political activist. Sheβs the author of Gravity and Grace, The Need for Roots, and Waiting for Godβamong many other essays, letters, and notes.
About Eric O. Springsted
Eric O. Springsted is the co-founder of the American Weil Society and served as its president for thirty-three years. After a career as a teacher, scholar, and pastor, he is retired and lives in Santa Fe, NM. He is the author and editor of a dozen previous books, including Simone Weil: Late Philosophical Writings and Simone Weil for the Twenty-First Century.
Show Notes
- Eric O. Springstedβs Simone Weil for the Twenty-First Century
- How to get hooked on Simone Weil
- βAll poets are exiles.β
- Andre Weil
- Emile Chartier
- Taking ideas seriously enough to impact your life
- Weilβs critique of Marxism: βReflections on the Cause of Liberty and Social Oppressionβ: ββan attempt to try and figure out how there can be freedom and dignity in human labor and actionβ
- βUnfortunately she found affliction.β
- Ludwig Wittgenstein: βPhilosophy is a matter of working on yourself.β
- Philosophy βisnβt simply objective. Itβs a matter of personal morality as well.β
- βNot only is the unexamined life not worth living, but virtue and intellect go hand in hand. Yeah. You don't have one without the other.β
- An experiment in how work and labor is done
- The demeaning and inherently degrading nature of factory work
- Christianity as βthe religion of slaves.β
- Christianity canβt take away suffering; but it can take away the meaninglessness.
- George Herbert: βLove bade me welcome / But my soul drew back guilty of dust and sinβ
- Weilβs vision/visit of Christ during Holy Week in Solemn, France: βIt was like the smile on a beloved face.β
- The role of mystery
- Weilβs definition of mystery: ββWhat she felt mystery was, and she gets a definition of it, it's when two necessary lines of thought cross and are irreconcilable, yet if you suppress one of them, somehow light is lost.β
- Her point is that whatever good comes out of this personal contact with Christ, does not erase the evil of the suffering.
- What is βinvolvement in contradictionβ
- βShe thought contradiction was an inescapable mark of truth.β
- Contradictions that shed light on life.
- Why mysticism is important for Weil: βThe universe cannot be put into a box with techniques or tricks or our own scientific methods or philosophical methods. β¦ Mystery instills humility and it takes the question of the knowing ego out of the picture. β¦ And it challenges modern society to resist the idea that faith could be reduced to a dogmatic system.β
- βFaith is not a matter of the intellect.β
- βIntellect is not the highest faculty. Love is.β
- βThe Right Use of School Studiesβ
- βMuscular effort of attentionβ
- She wanted to convert her Dominican priest friend into the universality of graceβthat Plato was a pre-Chrisitan.β (e.g., her essay, ββIntimations of Christianity Among the Ancient Greeksβ)
- βGrace is universal.β
- How school studies contribute to the love of God
- Prayer as attention
- Weil on Attention: βAttention consists of suspending our thought, leaving it detached, empty, and ready to be penetrated by the object. It means holding in our minds within the reach of this thought, but on the 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 that is to penetrate it.β
- Not βdetached,β but βavailable and ready for useβ
- Making space for the afflicted other by βattendingβ to them
- Love that isnβt compensatory
- βThe void as a space where love can goβ
- What is prayer for Simone Weil?
- Prayer as listening all night long
- βVoiding oneself of secondary desires and letting oneself be spoken to.β
- Is Simone Weil ββa self-abnegating, melancholy revolutionaryβ (Leon Trotsky)
- Humility in Simone Weil
- βThe Terrible Prayerβ
- Was Simone Weil anorexic?
- Refusing comfort on the grounds of solidarity
- Self-emptying and grace
- Accepting the entire creation as Godβs will
- Simone Weil on patience and waiting
- βWith time, attention blooms into waiting.β
- βSheβs resistant to the Church, but drawing from Christβs self-emptying.β
- Godβs withdrawal from the world (which is not deism)
- βA sacramental view of the worldβ
- ββThe very creation of the world is by this withdrawal and simultaneous crucifixion of the sun in time and space.β
- (Obsessive) pursuit of purity in morals and thought
- Iris Murdochβs The Nice and the Good
- βNothing productive needs to come from this effort.β
- ββShe put her finger on what's really the heart of Christian spirituality. β¦ We live by the Word β¦ by our being open to listening to the Word and having that transformed into Godβs word.β
Production Notes
- This podcast featured Eric O. Springsted
- Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
- Hosted by Evan Rosa
- Production Assistance by Emily Brookfield, Alexa Rollow, ZoΓ« Halaban, & Kacie Barrett
- A Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/about
- Support For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give