The strange and contentious life of Simone Weil

What are we to make of the life and writings of Simone Weil? Born in Paris in 1909 to an acculturated Jewish family, her older brother a mathematical prodigy and genius, she graduated from the École Normale Supérieure first in her class, just ahead of Simone de Beauvior. But her post graduation life was devoted to political agitation – she quit teaching to work in a car factory, participated in the French general strike of 1933, went to Spain and joined the anarchist Durruti column. In 1937 she had what she described a mystical experience in the church where St Francis of Assisi had prayed. She embraced Christianity but was never baptized. Escaping France with her family ahead of the Nazi occupation, she then returned to London and sought to join the French resistance. Charles de Gaulle thought her mad (Churchill sometimes thought the same of de Gaulle). She died in 1943 of tuberculosis and cardiac failure, aggravated by her frequent fasting and refusing to eat more than those still in occupied France.

Her major writings are The Need for Roots, Gravity and Grace, and The Iliad or the Poem of Force – a small portion of which we have posted below. Critics, writers and philosophers remain deeply divided over her life and work. Camus described her as one of the great spirits of our age. Before leaving for Stockholm to collect his Nobel Prize for Literature he stopped and spent an hour of silence in the last room where Weil had lived in Paris. Other critics find her philosophy obscure and unintelligible and see self loathing where others see commitment and empathy.

This is an author we will return to!