Subversive Simone Weil: A Life in Five Ideas

"Simone Weil is one of the most challenging and yet beguiling thinkers of the twentieth century. There is a highly charged mystical current that runs through her life and works that seems almost timeless. And yet Weil was a keen observer of the modern condition, coming of age as she did during the 1930s. Amid the recurrent indignities and inhumanities of modern life, she wondered what is to become of the precious space we have for grace, for friendship, and for truth? One of our most astute historians ofexistentialism, Robert Zaretsky shifts his attention to the utterly original Simone Weil with this new book. Taking up the central elements of her philosophy-affliction, attention, resistance, roots, and spirituality-he explores how they animated her life, and how they might animate ours"--
Known as the &;patron saint of all outsiders,&; Simone Weil (1909&;43) was one of the twentieth century&;s most remarkable thinkers, a philosopher who truly lived by her political and ethical ideals. In a short life framed by the two world wars, Weil taught philosophy to lycée students and organized union workers, fought alongside anarchists during the Spanish Civil War and labored alongside workers on assembly lines, joined the Free French movement in London and died in despair because she was not sent to France to help the Resistance. Though Weil published little during her life, after her death, thanks largely to the efforts of Albert Camus, hundreds of pages of her manuscripts were published to critical and popular acclaim. While many seekers have been attracted to Weil&;s religious thought, Robert Zaretsky gives us a different Weil, exploring her insights into politics and ethics, and showing us a new side of Weil that balances her contradictions&;the rigorous rationalist who also had her own brand of Catholic mysticism; the revolutionary with a soft spot for anarchism yet who believed in the hierarchy of labor; and the humanitarian who emphasized human needs and obligations over human rights. Reflecting on the relationship between thought and action in Weil&;s life, The Subversive Simone Weil honors the complexity of Weil&;s thought and speaks to why it matters and continues to fascinate readers today.