The Simone Weil reader

Abstract

Simone Weil (1909-1943) was a teacher, classical scholar, philosopher, political activist and seeker after truth. She confronted the rootlessness of modern life and the death of the spirit in an age of materialism. Her writing was visionary and her vision, radical. She wrote conditions of modern life destroy the mind-body equilibrium in everything, in thought and in action - in all actions: in work, in fighting...and in love, which is now a luxurious sensation and a game...In its aspect, the civilization we live in overwhelms the human body. Mind and body have become strangers to one another. Contact has been lost. Born in France, a contemporary of Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, Weil inspired T.S. Eliot to say of her, We must simply expose ourselves to the personality of a woman of genius, of a kind of genius akin to that of a saint. Today, nearly sixty years after her death, her work has, perhaps, an even greater immediacy and relevance. This book is a collection of the best of her writings from The Notebooks of Simone Weil, Oppression and Liberty and Gravity and Grace. Now presented in a beautifully re-designed edition, The Simone Weil Reader is a source of inspiration; it reflects a towering faith and the ultimate triumph of the spirit.

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