Simone Weil

Weil was born in her parents' apartment in Paris on 3 February 1909, the daughter of Bernard Weil (1872–1955), a medical doctor from an agnostic Alsatian Jewish background, who moved to Paris after the German annexation of Alsace–Lorraine and Salomea "Selma" Reinherz (1879–1965), who was born into a Jewish family in Rostov-on-Don and raised in Belgium. According to Osmo Pekonen, "the family name Weil came to be when many Levis in the Napoleonic era changed their names this way, by anagram." Weil was a healthy baby for her first six months, but then suffered a severe attack of appendicitis; thereafter, she struggled with poor health throughout her life. Weil's parents were fairly affluent and raised their children in an attentive and supportive atmosphere. She was the younger of her parents' two children. Her brother was the mathematician André Weil (1906–1998), with whom she would always enjoy a close relationship. Weil was distressed by her father having to leave home for several years after being drafted to serve in the First World War. Eva Fogelman, Robert Coles and several other scholars believe that this experience may have contributed to the exceptionally strong altruism which Weil displayed throughout her life. For example, a young Weil sent her share of sugar and chocolate to soldiers fighting at the front. When Weil was 10 she joined striking workers chanting L'Internationale marching on the street below her apartment. When visiting a resort with her family and learning of the wages of the workers she encouraged the workers to unionize. From her childhood home, Weil acquired an obsession with cleanliness; in her later life she would sometimes speak of her "disgustingness" and think that others would see her this way, even though in her youth she had been considered highly attractive. Weil was generally highly affectionate, but she almost always avoided any form of physical contact, even with female friends. According to her friend and biographer, the philosopher Simone Pétrement, Weil decided early in life that she would need to adopt masculine qualities and sacrifice opportunities for love affairs in order to fully pursue her vocation to improve social conditions for the disadvantaged. From her late teenage years, Weil would generally disguise her "fragile beauty" by adopting a masculine appearance, hardly ever using makeup and often wearing men's clothes. ==Academic studies==

Weil was a precocious student and was proficient in Ancient Greek by age 12, as she and her brother André had taught themselves Ancient Greek and used it to speak to each other when they did not want their parents to understand what they were saying. She later learned Sanskrit so that she could read the Bhagavad Gita in the original. As a teenager, Weil studied at the Lycée Henri IV under the tutelage of her admired teacher Émile Chartier, more commonly known as "Alain". Weil attracted much attention at the Lycée Henri IV with her radical opinions and actions such as organising against the military draft. For these reasons she was called the "Red Virgin", and even "The Martian" by her mentor. Weil gained a reputation for her strict devotion to ethics, with classmates referring to her as the "categorical imperative in skirts". Officials at the school were outraged by her indifference to clothing, her refusal to participate in their traditions, and her ignoring a rule banning women from smoking with male students, for which she was suspended. At ENS, Weil briefly met Simone de Beauvoir, and their meeting led to disagreement. Weil stated that, "one thing alone mattered in the world today: the revolution that would feed all people on earth", with a young Beauvoir replying that the point of life was to find meaning, not happiness. Weil cut her off, stating that, "it's easy to see you've never gone hungry". Weil finished first in the exam for the certificate of "General Philosophy and Logic" with Simone de Beauvoir finishing second, ahead of the 28 other students, all male. She received her agrégation that same year. ==Work and political activism==

, for whom Weil arranged a period of residence at her parents' apartment in Paris in December 1933. Weil was one of the rare few who appeared to hold her own with the Red Army founder. Weil participated in the French general strike of 1933, called to protest against unemployment and wage cuts. The following year, she took a 12-month leave of absence from her teaching position to work incognito as a labourer in two factories, one owned by Alstom and one by Renault, believing that this experience would allow her to connect with the working class. In 1935, she began teaching in Bourges and started Entre Nous, a journal that was produced and written by factory workers. and sought out the anti-fascist commander Julián Gorkin, asking to be sent on a mission as a covert agent to rescue the prisoner Joaquín Maurín. Gorkin refused, saying Weil would be sacrificing herself for nothing, since it was highly unlikely that she could pass as a Spaniard. Weil replied that she had "every right" Weil was deeply concerned by the intoxication of war, where humans learn they can kill without punishment, stating "I was horrified, but not surprised by the war crimes. I felt the possibility of doing the same - and it's precisely because I felt I had that potential that I was horrified." Marseille After the rise of Nazi Germany, Weil renounced pacifism. She said that, "non-violence is good only if it's effective," and she became committed to fighting the Nazi regime, even if it required force. Weil began the risky work of delivering the Cahiers du témoignage, a resistance paper. The resistance group of which Weil was part was infiltrated by informants, and Weil was questioned by the police. When the police threatened to jail her "with the whores" if she did not give them information, Weil stated she would welcome the invitation to be jailed. a Dominican Friar. Weil met the French Catholic author Gustave Thibon, who owned a farm in the Ardèche region where Weil would later work the grape harvest. Weil encouraged her parents to buy a farm in the Ardèche where they could sustain themselves and work, but Weil's family thought it safer to plan to move to the United States. ==Encounters with mysticism==

in Assisi where Simone had one of three spiritual "encounters that really counted", leading to her conversion to Christianity Weil was born into a secular household and raised in "complete agnosticism". As a teenager, she considered the existence of God for herself and decided nothing could be known either way. In her Spiritual Autobiography, however, Weil records that she always had a Christian outlook, taking to heart from her earliest childhood the idea of loving one's neighbour. Weil was attracted to the Christian faith beginning in 1935, when she had the first of three pivotal religious experiences: being moved by the beauty of villagers singing hymns in a procession she stumbled across while on holiday to Portugal (in Póvoa de Varzim). Weil later wrote "the conviction was suddenly borne in upon her that Christianity is pre-eminently the religion of slaves, that slaves cannot help belonging to it, and she among others." Weil had a third, more powerful, revelation a year later while reciting George Herbert's poem Love III, after which "Christ himself came down and took possession of me", and, from 1938 on, her writings became more mystical and spiritual, while retaining their focus on social and political issues. In 1938 Weil visited the Benedictine Solesmes Abbey and, though suffering from headaches, she found such pure joy in Gregorian chant that she felt the "possibility of living divine love in the midst of affliction". While deeply religious, Weil was skeptical of the Church as an institution, and its dogma, writing, "I have not the slightest love for the Church in the strict sense of the word". She was appalled by the concept of Anathema Sit, as she refused to separate herself from unbelievers. Weil felt that humility is incompatible with belonging to a social group "chosen by God", whether that group is a nation or a Church. Weil also condemns the state of contemporary Christianity, arguing that it had become a social convention entangled with the interests of those who exploit others. While Roman civilization replaced love with pride, earlier traditions upheld perfect obedience, which the Greeks honored through their reverence for science. and that the universe's blind material forces are not sovereign, but obey limits set by God out of love. For Weil, this idea was present in pre-Roman Christianity and echoed in the wisdom of the Pythagoreans, Lao Tzu, Hinduism, and fragments of Egyptian thought. Weil describes a spiritual impurity, a lack of the "spirit of truth" in the modern church and in modern science. In response, she calls for a total and unconditional giving of oneself to God. writing: Greece, Egypt, ancient India, the beauty of the world, the pure and authentic reflection of this beauty in art and science...these things have done as much as the visibly Christian ones to deliver me into Christ's hands as his captive. I think I might even say more. Nevertheless, Weil was opposed to religious syncretism, claiming that it effaced the particularity of the individual traditions:Each religion is alone true, that is to say, that at the moment we are thinking of it we must bring as much attention to bear on it as if there were nothing else ... A "synthesis" of religion implies a lower quality of attention.Weil accepts the truth of Christ's miracles but asserts that the miracles of Tibetan and Hindu traditions are also real. She sees authentic Christian inspiration as preserved in mysticism, and she criticizes a conception of God as a master to be worshipped in the manner of slaves or pagans honoring an emperor, calling this idolatrous. Instead, she defines divine providence as the organizing principle of the cosmos. ==London period ==

in New York City where Weil lived in 1942 In 1942, Weil travelled to the United States with her family. She had been reluctant to leave France, but agreed to do so as she wanted to see her parents to safety and knew they would not leave without her. She was also encouraged by the fact that it would be relatively easy for her to reach Britain from the United States, where she could join the French Resistance. She had hopes of being sent back to France as a covert agent. Weil was introduced to André Philip, Minister of the Interior under De Gaulle, by Maurice Schumann, a fellow student of Alain. Phillip wrote to Weil, saying he read her work before the war and respected her. During this time Weil also rapidly wrote many other texts, including Draft for a Statement of Human Obligations and Note on the General Suppression of Political Parties, translations of sections of the Upanishads, What is Sacred in Every Human Being?, Are We Fighting for Justice?, and Essential Ideas for a New Constitution, and Concerning the Colonial Problem in its Relation to the Destiny of the French People. , Kent, August 2012The rigorous work routine she assumed soon took a heavy toll. Weil was found slumped on the floor of her apartment, emaciated and exhausted. In 1943, Weil was diagnosed with tuberculosis and instructed to rest and eat well. However, she refused special treatment because of her long-standing political idealism and her detachment from material things. Instead, she limited her intake to what she believed residents of German-occupied France ate. She most likely ate even less, as she refused on most occasions. It is possible that she was baptized during this period. Her condition quickly deteriorated and she was moved to a sanatorium at Grosvenor Hall in Ashford, Kent. ==Death==

After a lifetime of battling illness and frailty, Weil died in August 1943 from cardiac failure at the age of 34. The coroner's report said that "the deceased did kill and slay herself by refusing to eat whilst the balance of her mind was disturbed". The exact cause of her death remains a subject of debate. Some claim that her refusal to eat came from her desire to express some form of solidarity toward the victims of the war. Others think that Weil's self-starvation occurred after her study of Arthur Schopenhauer. In his chapters on Christian saintly asceticism and salvation, Schopenhauer had described self-starvation as a preferred method of self-denial. However, Simone Pétrement, one of Weil's first and most significant biographers, regards the coroner's report as simply mistaken. Basing her opinion on letters written by the personnel of the sanatorium at which Simone Weil was treated, Pétrement affirms that Weil asked for food on different occasions while she was hospitalized and even ate a little bit a few days before her death; according to her, it was, in fact, Weil's poor health condition that eventually made her unable to eat. Weil's first English biographer, Richard Rees, offers several possible explanations for her death, citing her compassion for the suffering of her countrymen in occupied France and her love for and close imitation of Christ. Rees sums up by saying: "As for her death, whatever explanation one may give of it will amount in the end to saying that she died of love." ==Philosophy==

Absence Absence is the key image for her metaphysics, cosmology, cosmogony, and theodicy. She believed that God created by an act of self-delimitation—in other words, she argued that because God is conceived as utter fullness, a perfect being, no creature can exist except where God is not. Thus, creation occurred only when God withdrew in part. This idea mirrors tzimtzum, a central notion in the Jewish Kabbalah creation narrative. This is, for Weil, an original kenosis ("emptiness") preceding the corrective kenosis of Christ's incarnation. Thus, according to her, humans are born in a damned position, not because of original sin, but because to be created at all they must be what God is not; in other words, they must be inherently "unholy" in some sense. This idea fits more broadly into apophatic theology. This notion of creation is a cornerstone of her theodicy, for if creation is conceived this wayas necessarily entailing evilthen there is no problem of the entrance of evil into a perfect world. Nor does the presence of evil constitute a limitation of God's omnipotence under Weil's notion; according to her, evil is present not because God could not create a perfect world, but because the act of "creation" in its very essence implies the impossibility of perfection. However, this explanation of the essentiality of evil does not imply that humans are simply, originally, and continually doomed; on the contrary, Weil claims that "evil is the form which God's mercy takes in this world". Weil believed that evil, and its consequent affliction, serve the role of driving humans towards God, writing, "The extreme affliction which overtakes human beings does not create human misery, it merely reveals it." Affliction Weil developed the concept of "affliction" () while working in factories with workers reduced to a machine-like existence where they could not consider real thought or rebellion with Weil stating "thought flies from affliction as promptly and irresistibly as an animal flees from death". Weil found this force too inhumane stating "affliction constrains a man to ask continually 'why' - the question to which there is essentially no reply" and nothing in the world can rob us of the power to say 'I' except for extreme affliction". Simone Weil's concept of affliction is an exploration of human suffering that extends beyond mere physical or emotional pain. She characterizes affliction as a multifaceted experience encompassing physical torment, psychological distress, and social degradation, which collectively uproot an individual's life and identity. Weil distinguishes affliction from general suffering by emphasizing its capacity to isolate individuals from others and from themselves. Affliction imposes a sense of guilt and self-loathing on the innocent, effectively branding the soul with a mark akin to slavery. This branding leads to a loss of personal significance and a feeling of worthlessness, as the afflicted person internalizes scorn and revulsion that logically should be directed at the perpetrator of injustice. According to Weil, souls may experience different levels of affliction with affliction worse for the same souls that are also most able to experience spiritual joy. Weil's notion of affliction is a sort of "suffering plus" which transcends both body and mind, a physical and mental anguish that scourges the very soul. Beauty Simone Weil's concept of beauty is not an isolated aesthetic category, but a deeply moral and spiritual principle that interweaves with nearly every facet of her thought, including affliction, attention, justice, God, and the pursuit of truth. In Gravity and Grace, she writes: "The love of the beauty of the world is the only pure love. It is the love that enables us to look at things without trying to appropriate them." She reiterates this in a related line: "The beautiful is that which we desire without wishing to eat it. We desire that it be." She also wrote that "The beauty of this world is Christ's tender smile coming to us through matter". All the natural movements of the soul are controlled by laws similar to gravity, except grace. While gravity is the work of creation, the work of grace consists of decreation.Simone Weil argues that our perception of reality is clouded by attachment—attachments born from the self, projected onto the world. We do not see things as they are, but as they relate to our desires, values, and imagined needs. The self, or "I," fabricates a world driven by illusions: imagined debts others owe us, rewards we fantasize receiving from kings or gods. These imaginary constructs become the primary motivators of human behavior because, unlike real rewards, they are limitless. Weil emphasized the moral responsibility of language. She connected its proper use to her concept of attention, which she described as the disciplined focus on the reality of others and the world. In The Need for Roots, she criticized the reliance on rhetorical ideals such as "rights" and "freedom" when those concepts are separated from concrete obligations and the basic needs of individuals and communities. She argued that such language often obscures the real conditions of justice rather than clarifying them. Weil felt that in our moral culture centered on individual rights, it's as though we constantly turn away from others' suffering because we lack the moral strength to confront its most extreme expressions. Weil felt that "all human beings are bound by identical obligations, although they are performed in different ways according to particular circumstances" and that "duty to the human being as such - that alone is eternal." Weil differentiates between rights and obligations, viewing the two as subject and object. "The actual relationship between the two is as between object and subject. A man, considered in isolation, only has duties, amongst which are certain duties towards himself. Other men, seen from his point of view, only have rights. He, in his turn, has rights, when seen from the point of view of other men, who recognize that they have obligations towards him. A man left alone in the universe would have no rights whatever, but he would have obligations." Weil elaborates, supporting the idea that obligations alone are independent, stating, "rights are always found to be related to certain conditions. Obligations alone remain independent of conditions," with obligations being a universal condition: "All human beings are bound by identical obligations, although these are performed in different ways according to particular circumstances," whereas rights are conditional: "...a right is not effectual by itself, but only in relation to the obligation to which it corresponds". Rootedness In The Need for Roots Weil argues that rootedness is a spiritual need which involves their real, active, and natural participation in the life of a collectivity that keeps alive the treasures of the past and the aspirations of the future. Weil believes this rootedness is natural, coming from place, birth, and occupation with each person needing to have multiple roots and deriving their moral, intellectual, and spiritual life from the environment in which they belong. In her view, justice must begin with the capacity for attention, what she described as a moral act of seeing others in their full humanity, especially in their vulnerability. Weil criticized systems of punishment that seek to balance harm or exact vengeance, contending that true justice does not consist in giving each their due in a symmetrical sense, but in preventing further harm and affirming the dignity of all persons, including wrongdoers. Patriotism of compassion Weil's The Need for Roots discusses the "uprootedness of the nation" and false conceptions of greatness attached to religion and patriotism. Weil was not opposed to patriotism but saw it rooted not in pride but instead in compassion and that this compassion, unlike pride, can be extended to other nations stating compassion is "able, without hindrance, to cross frontiers extend itself over all countries in misfortune, overall countries without exception for all peoples are subjected to the wretchedness of the human condition". She compares the often antagonized and prideful feelings resulting from a patriotism based on grandeur with the warmth of a patriotism based on tender feeling of pity and an awareness of how a country is ultimately fragile and perishable. A patriotism based on compassion allows one to still see the flaws in one's country, while still remaining ever ready to make the ultimate sacrifice if obligated. Spiritual nature of work Weil's The Need for Roots argues for the spiritual nature of work placing labor not merely as an economic necessity but as a moral and metaphysical act relating to attention, affliction, and rootedness. Weil believes urban and rural workers face conditions that create uprootedness. Weil argues for a social model that would be neither capitalist nor socialist, but restore human dignity through a cooperative system where the workplace becomes a site of meaningful engagement, community, and spiritual fulfillment and workers feel at home. Weil further asserts that the return of truth will also reawaken the dignity of physical labor. This attention is not a passive gaze, but an active, ethical engagement, a suspension of self (decreation) so that the reality of the other may come forward in its own truth (reflecting her view of beauty). In her essay Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God, Weil offers one of her clearest formulations of this idea:"The love of our neighbor in all its fullness simply means being able to say to him: 'What are you going through?' It is a recognition that the sufferer exists, not only as a unit in a collection, or a specimen from the social category labeled 'unfortunate,' but as a man, exactly like us, who was one day stamped with a special mark by affliction. For this reason it is enough, but it is indispensable, to know how to look at him in a certain way. This way of looking is first of all attentive. The soul empties itself of all its own contents in order to receive into itself the being it is looking at, just as he is, in all his truth."Weil further equates aspects of attention to love stating "To empty ourselves (French: Se vider) of our false divinity, to deny ourselves, to give up being the center of the world in imagination, to discern that all points in the world are equally centers and that the true center is outside the world, this is to consent to the rule of mechanical necessity in matter and of free choice at the center of each soul. Such consent is love. The face of this love, which is turned toward thinking persons, is the love of our neighbor." Weil also equates attention to justice. In Gravity and Grace, she writes: "Justice consists in seeing that no harm comes to those whom we have noticed as real beings." Weil also states To harm another person is to receive something from him, gaining importance and expanding, filling an emptiness in ourselves by creating one in someone else. Three Forms of the Implicit Love of God In Waiting for God, Weil explains that the three forms of implicit love of God are (1) love of neighbour (2) love of the beauty of the world and (3) love of religious ceremonies. As Weil writes, by loving these three objects (neighbour, world's beauty and religious ceremonies), one indirectly loves God before "God comes in person to take the hand of his future bride," since prior to God's arrival, one's soul cannot yet directly love God as the object. Love of neighbour occurs (i) when the strong treat the weak as equals, (ii) when people give personal attention to those that otherwise seem invisible, anonymous, or non-existent, and (iii) when people look at and listen to the afflicted as they are, without explicitly thinking about God—i.e., Weil writes, when "God in us" loves the afflicted, rather than people loving them in God. Second, Weil explains, love of the world's beauty occurs when humans imitate God's love for the cosmos: just as God creatively renounced his command over the world—letting it be ruled by human autonomy and matter's "blind necessity"—humans give up their imaginary command over the world, seeing the world no longer as if they were the world's center. Finally, Weil explains, love of religious ceremonies occurs as an implicit love of God, when religious practices are pure. Weil writes that purity in religion is seen when "faith and love do not fail", and most absolutely, in the Eucharist. ==Works==

Weil's most famous works were published posthumously. According to Lissa McCullough, Weil would likely have been "intensely displeased" by the attention paid to her life rather than her works. She believed it was her writings that embodied the best of her, not her actions and definitely not her personality. Weil had similar views about others, saying that if one looks at the lives of great figures in separation from their works, it "necessarily ends up revealing their pettiness above all", as it's in their works that they have put the best of themselves. The Iliad, or The Poem of Force Weil wrote The Iliad, or The Poem of Force (), a 24-page essay, in 1939 in Marseilles. First published in 1940 in Les Cahiers du Sud, the only significant literary magazine available in the French free zone. The essay focuses on the theme that Weil calls 'Force' in the Iliad, which she defines as "that x which turns anyone subjected to it into a thing." In the opening sentences of the essay, she sets out her view of the role of Force in the poem: The true hero, the true subject, the centre of the Iliad, is force. Force employed by man, force that enslaves man, force before which man's flesh shrinks away. In this work, at all times, the human spirit is shown as modified by its relations with force, as swept away, blinded, by the very force it imagined it could handle, as deformed by the weight of the force it submits to. The New York Review of Books has described the essay as one of Weil's most celebrated works, Simone Pétrement, a friend of Weil's, wrote that the essay portrayed the Iliad as an accurate and compassionate depiction of how both victors and victims are harmed by the use of force. The essay contains several extracts from the epic which Weil translated herself from the original Greek; Pétrement records how Weil took over half an hour per line. Waiting for God opens with Simone Weil's 1942 letters to Dominican priest Jean-Marie Perrin, revealing her deep spiritual turmoil as she grapples with the demands of Christian faith. She reflects on the "just balance" of the world, seeing God's guidance in both human reason and our need for physical and emotional fulfillment. Weil introduces the idea of a "sacred longing", the human pursuit of beauty and connection as an expression of yearning for a tangible divine presence. • Reflections on the Causes of Liberty and Social Oppression (1934), a critical analysis of oppression in both capitalist and socialist systems, emphasizing the spiritual value of labor. • The Power of Words (1937) examines how political language and slogans can distort truth and manipulate thought. • Meditation on Obedience and Liberty (1940) explores the relationship between obedience, authority, and personal freedom. • What the Occitan Inspiration Consists Of (1941) discusses the spiritual and poetic legacy of the Occitan tradition. • Human Personality (1943) discusses what constitutes the sacred core in human beings • Draft for a Statement of Human Obligations (1943) proposes a framework of obligations as the foundation for justice, contrasting with rights-based approaches. • Note on the General Suppression of Political Parties (1943) (also known as Essential Ideas for a New Constitution), a radical critique of political parties, arguing they hinder the pursuit of truth and justice. Published posthumously in La Table Ronde in 1950. • What is Sacred in Every Human Being? (1943), composed shortly before her death. It explores the intrinsic value and dignity of every person. • Are We Fighting for Justice? (1943) critiques the moral motivations behind the Allied war effort in World War II, asking whether it is truly being fought for justice or simply for victory • Concerning the Colonial Problem in its Relation to the Destiny of the French People (1943) (originally Note sur la question coloniale); Weil addresses colonialism and its moral and political implications, particularly for France. She advocates for justice and genuine fraternity between peoples. ==Legacy==

During her lifetime, Weil was known only in relatively narrow circles and even in France, her essays were mostly read only by those interested in radical politics. During the first decade after her death, Weil rapidly became famous, attracting attention throughout the West. For the third quarter of the 20th century, she was widely regarded as the most influential person in the world on new work concerning religious and spiritual matters. Her philosophical, social and political thought also became popular, although not to the same degree as her religious work. Aside from influencing various fields of study, Weil deeply affected the personal lives of numerous individuals. Pope Paul VI said that Weil was one of his three greatest influences. Weil is also cited as an influence by Iris Murdoch, Jacques Derrida, Albert Camus, Franz Fanon, Emmanuel Levinas, George Grant, Adrienne Rich, Jacqueline Rose, and Thomas Merton. Weil's popularity began to decline in the late 1960s and 1970s. However, more of her work was gradually published, leading to many thousands of new secondary works by Weil scholars, some of whom focused on achieving a deeper understanding of her religious, philosophical and political work. Others broadened the scope of Weil scholarship to investigate her applicability to fields like classical studies, cultural studies, education, and even technical fields like ergonomics. After they met at age 18, Simone de Beauvoir wroteː "I envied her for having a heart that could beat right across the world." Maurice Schumann said that since her death there was "hardly a day when the thought of her life did not positively influence his own and serve as a moral guide". In 1951, Albert Camus wrote that she was "the only great spirit of our times". The Routledge edition of Gravity and Grace includes a New York Times Book Review stating "'In France she is ranked with Pascal by some, condemned as a dangerous heretic by others, and recognized as a genius by all." In 2017 President Emmanuel Macron mentioned Weil and her philosophy in a joint address to Parliament stating the need for what Weil calls ''l'effectivité'' (effectivity). image of Simone Weil in Berlin-Kreuzberg Weil has been criticised, however, even by those who otherwise admired her deeply, such as T. S. Eliot, for being excessively prone to divide the world into good and evil, and for her sometimes intemperate judgments. Weil was a harsh critic of the influence of Judaism on Western civilisation. Weil was an even harsher critic of the Roman Empire, in which she refused to see any value. According to Eliot, she held up the Cathars as exemplars of goodness, despite there being in his view little concrete evidence on which to base such an assessment. A small minority of commentators have judged her to be psychologically unbalanced or sexually obsessed. although even he was influenced by her and repeated some of her sayings for years after her death. Together French and English comprise slightly over 50% of the total records collected. In the decades since her death, her writings have been assembled, annotated, criticized, discussed, disputed, and praised. Along with some twenty volumes of her works, publishers have issued more than thirty biographies, including Simone Weil: A Modern Pilgrimage by Robert Coles, Harvard's Pulitzer-winning professor, who calls Weil 'a giant of reflection.' The latest work of 2025 Princess of Asturias Award Laureate Philosopher Byung-Chul Han About God (2025) delves into the thought of Simone Weil to reflect on the relevance of divinity in the current digital culture. == Weil in film, stage, and media ==

"Approaching Simone" is a play created by Megan Terry. Dramatizing the life, philosophy and death of Simone Weil, Terry's play won the 1969/1970 Obie Award for Best Off-Broadway Play. Weil was the subject of a 2010 documentary by Julia Haslett, An encounter with Simone Weil. Haslett noted that Weil had become "a little-known figure, practically forgotten in her native France, and rarely taught in universities or secondary schools". Weil was also the subject of Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho's La Passion de Simone (2008), written with librettist Amin Maalouf. Chris Kraus' 1996 film Gravity and Grace alludes to the posthumous work of Simone Weil. Chris Kraus' 2000 novel Aliens & Anorexia chronicles her experience producing the film while also touching on Kraus' personal study and interaction with Simone Weil's philosophy and life. Weil's work, Venice Saved, was not completed in her lifetime but put together as a play and translated by Silvia Panizza and Philip Wilson. T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden, Czeslaw Milosz, Seamus Heaney, Flannery O'Connor, Susan Sontag, Octavia Bright, Anne Carson, Adrienne Rich, Annie Dillard, Mary Gordon, Maggie Helwig, Stephanie Strickland, Kate Daniels, Sarah Klassen and Lorri Neilsen Glennall cite Weil as an inspiration of their books and literature. Ocean Vuong references Weil in the novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. Weil has been identified as a significant philosophical influence on Rosalía’s album Lux, especially through Weil’s conception of love as “loving the distance between ourselves and the loved object. This notion derives from a well-known passage in Gravity and Grace “To love purely is to consent to distance; it is to adore the distance between ourselves and that which we love” which is central to Weil’s broader reflections on love, beauty, and decreation. The physical version include a quote by Weil "Love is not consolation. It is light." ==Bibliography==