Simone Weil: An Anthology (Penguin Modern Classics)

Breathtaking intelligence and beautifully written. If you are interested in Philosophy and Metaphsics this book is a must read. She began life as a left wing intellectual with a sharp insight into Greek mythology, and somehow she seemed to have read everything in the western canon and beyond when she was in her twenties. However, she was not content with the life of a teacher and intellectual she wanted to live her ideals. As a result she forced herself to live a life of poverty working in a factory in order to know what it felt to be afflicted. The experience almost killed her but led to a series of spiritual experiences which brought her to the door of Christianity. She never actually entered the Church and her analysis of why she couldn't is profound. Her essay on Homer is outstanding and illuminates why power always corrupts, this was the basis for her demolition of Communism as a panacea for the ills of her day. There are so many insights in this book it is hard to do it justice. We still live in a world on the brink of chaos and she is as relevant now as she was 70 years ago, everyone should read some Simone Weil and this is a very good place to start.

This is an excellent introduction to Simone Weil - that bizarre but wonderful mix of social engineer, radical philosopher and Christian mystic. There are 5 complete essays and 12 extracts from longer works, mostly Gravity and Grace. The introduction and notes from the editors are very well chosen.The subject matter is mostly speculation on the soul, human nature and on how society can be ordered so that everyone can live fulfilled and meaningful lives with oppression of the weak being avoided. 'The Illiad or the poem of force' stood out as one of the most remarkable short essays Ive ever read and transformed my understanding of Homers tragedy.Simone is very drawn to psychology, not in a (psudo) scientific way but the sort of understanding you can only get from life or from the great writers like Shakespeare - and she shares her thoughts in a very straightforward way. She has a very rare gift to write about difficult topics with clarity and without over simplifying or distorting the meaning.

I started reading Simone Weil to write a paper comparing her understanding of atheism to that of Emma Goldman. Weil was a pioneer of post-modern spirituality and apophatic theology within the Catholic tradition. Through her own suffering and her reflections on the suffering of those most alienated by the world Weil helps us face our most frightening questions about meaning and being.For activists this book will ground you in a subversive spirituality. For mystics this book will remind you of the radical implications of your mystical being.  Seeking Justice: The Radical Compassion of Jesus

The book has a lengthy introduction which I bypassed as I wanted to read Weil's work (for the first time) without too many preconceptions.I found her essays on the human personality and the soul very insightful and quite moving - clearly an extraordinary woman. Recommended.

An excellent anthology with a very good introduction to the thought of Simone Weil.

An impressive thinker, new to me and quite inspiring.

A very representative selection. The long introduction is very helpful and illuminating.

Dr Springsted’s introduction is excellent and I love the organization of Weil’s thinking. Culling from many different works under different themes and topics. This provides meat, tastes and glimmers, enticing the reader to explore more. Thank you.

Contiene una buena introducción, quizá un poco extensa comparada con el material que publica de la propia Simone, pero igualmente útil por la continua referencia a cartas que explican su visión. El conjunto de artículos de Simone constituyen una buena antología. Apasionada y divergente, anticipó el siglo.

“A nihilist is not one who believes in nothing, but one who does not believe in what exists.” ~ Albert CamusWhen she died of heart failure early at the age of 34 by August 1943, the coroner’s report concluded that she “did kill and slay herself by refusing to eat whilst the balance of her mind was disturbed.”Camus got to find the manuscripts of Weil around 1948 and it deeply influenced his ways of thinking and writing ever since until his own untimely death. His Essay Rebel (1951) felt, in a personal way, more like answering to Weil's argument on the existence of absurdity, Justice and Freedom, Oppression, Revolt and Rebellion while reading her essays. He called her, 'the only great spirit of our time.' Many of her writings were indeed copied in his personal notebooks.She studied with Beauvoir and other french intellectuals and later, taught geometry and philosophy to Uni students, and Greek tragedy to industrial workers. She organized French pacifist movements but also carried a gun alongside republicans during the Spanish Civil War. Despite her rich scholarly knowledge in Greek, Latin, English and German, she toiled herself in the assembly line factories until her death. I feel that to try to genuinely understand Weil in her own way, one has to see the presence of two realities, similar to Plato's conception, material world and mystical world dominated respectively by science, geometry, and her own ground of metaphysical affliction and suffering, the beauty of justice. This particular anthology has almost half of his contents from Gravity and Grace (1947), selected excerpts from The Need for Roots (1949) and other political and metaphysical essays. As much as I enjoyed reading it, I would've enjoyed it better taking up one of her original works since the collections are anachronistically picked and felt a bit harder to reconcile.Simone Weil is a enigmatic powerful force I write it with a heightened awareness grateful for the enormous expansion in the possibilities of being in these times despite the contradictions. They say to be whole is to be full of contradictions.

Nice collection of essays on almost all topics that Simone Weil wrote about that span from her entire adult life.

Simone Weil was, among other things,a mystic,philospher,worker,intellectual and, in an odd way, a martyr. Her philosophy is dense,often lending itself to repeated readings. Her concepts are difficult,though worthwhile to say the very least. Simone Weil writings in this volume,which are very well edited by Eric O. Springsted{the president of the simone weil society},are from the later period of her life. She lived only until her thirities, though, like most saints and genius",she left an inordinate amount for those of us to follow. He philospohy here dpeneds heavily on what she calls the necessary or necessity{sort of natural cause and effect,as it were} though then which is far from an uncaring God or watchmaker who began the universe then sits idly by. This is the core of her philosophy and is quite obtuse at times. The writings on the Need of suffering are illuminating,her statement on what a jst society should be is vital and fresh. Simone Weil understood that modern technology had rendered many poeples lifelong way of life obsolete, therefore denying them of not only a right livelihood, but also their spiritual well being. The well oiled mechanism that is [was] capitalism was at that momet[along with its equally vaccuous counterpart Marxism] laying waste to the soul of Europe{and by proxy, the West}. Weil offered suggestions,and possible solutions,by her life. She lived the life she worte about as well as she was able. A truly extraordinary human being,and one to whom I will always be in debt. This is a superb introduction to the life and work of the truly astonishing woman.