People

Simon Weil 1909-1943 France 

"What a country calls its vital economic interests are not the things which enable its citizens to live, but the things which enable it to make war. Gasoline is much more likely than wheat to be a cause of international conflict." (from The Need for Roots, 1949)

Encyclopedia Entries

Simone Weil	Oxford Companion to Philosophy
Simone Weil	Encyclopedia Britannica
Simone Weil	Encarta
Simone Weil	Columbia Encyclopedia
Simone Weil	BIO

 

Questions of 

French philosopher and mystic; author of Waiting for God , Gravity and Grace , and Leçons de Philosophie (Lectures on Philosophy . Following her conversion to Christianity in 1938, Weil argued in Intimations of Christianity Among the Ancient Greeks that its central theological themes could be discerned by a careful reader in the philosophical works of Plato and other Greek sages. In Oppression et liberté (Oppression and Liberty) (1955) Weil argued that individuals can overcome the alienation characteristic of modern society only through their engagement in meaningful work.

Reading

Writing available on the net

Also

• LA PESANTEUR ET LA GRÂCE, 1947 - Gravity and Grace - Painovoima ja armo
• L'ENRACINEMENT, 1949 - The Need for Roots
• L'ATTENTE DE DIEU, 1950 - Waiting for God
• LA CONNAISSANCE SURNATURELLE, 1950 - First and Last Notebooks
• CAHIERS, 1951-56 (3 vols.) - The Notebooks of Simone Weil
• INTUITIONS PRÉ-CHRÉTIENNES, 1951 - Intimations of Christianity among the Ancient Greeks
• LA CONDITION OUVRIÈRE, 1951
• LETTRE À UN RELIGIEUX, 1951 - Letter to a Priest
• LA SOURCE GRECQUE, 1953
• OPPRESSION ET LIBERTÉ, 1955 (ed. by Albert Camus) - Oppression and Liberty
• The Iliad, or, The Poem of Force, transl. by Mary McCarthy, 1956
• ÈCRITS DE LONDRES ET DERNIÈRES LETTRES, 1957
• LEÇON DE PHILOSOPHIE, 1959 - Lectures on Philosophy
• ÈCRITS HISTORIQUES ET POLITIQUES, 1960
• PENSÉES SANS ORDRE CONCERNANT L'AMOUR DE DIEU, 1962
• Selected Essays, 1934-43, 1962
• Seventy Letters, 1965
• SUR LA SCIENCE, 1966
• On Science, Necessity, and the Love of God, 1968
• First and Last Notebooks, 1970
• Gateway to God, 1974
• The Simone Weil Reader, 1977
• RÈFLEXIONS SUR LES CAUSES DE LA LIBERTÉ ET LE L'OPPRESSION SOCIALE, 1980
• Two Moral Essays, 1981
• Simone Weil, An Anthology, 1986
• Formative Writings, 1929-41, 1987
• ŒUVRES COMPLETES, 1989-1994 (six vols.)

The Need for Roots : Prelude to a Declaration of Duties Toward Mankind by Simone Weil, T. S. Eliot

Simone Weil: An Anthology, ed. by Sian Miles (Grove Press, 2000)

The Simone Weil Reader, ed. by George A. Panichas (Moyer Bell, 1985)

Francine Du Plessix Gray, Simone Weil: A Penguin Life (Viking, 2001)

Stephen Plant and Peter Vardy, Simone Weil (Liguori, 1997)

Miklos Veto, The Religious Metaphysics of Simone Weil, tr. by Joan Dargan (SUNY, 1994)

Diogenes Allen and Eric O. Springsted, Spirit, Nature, and Community: Issues in the Thought of Simone Weil (SUNY, 1994) 

Commentaries

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Quotations

''The word 'revolution' is a word for which you kill, for which you die, for which you send the labouring masses to their death, but which does not possess any content.''
[Oppression and Liberation]

Simone Weil
''There is one, and only one, thing in modern society more hideous than crime - namely, repressive justice''
[Human Personality]

Simone Weil
''What a country calls its vital economic interests are not the things which enable its citizens to live, but the things which enable it to make war. Gasoline is much more likely than wheat to be a cause of international conflict.''
[The Need for Roots]

Simone Weil
''Who were the fools who spread the story that brute force cannot kill ideas? Nothing is easier. And once they are dead they are no more than corpses.''
[Selected Essays]