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Simone Weil (1909-1943). KATE LINDEMANN. I. BIOGRAPHY

13. Simone Weil (1909-1943)

KATE LINDEMANN

Few who knew Simone Weil remained neutral towards her. Simone de Beauvoir avoided her; her philosophy students revered her.1 The coroner claimed she starved herself to death; those who tended her found the claim absurd.2 De Gaulle thought her “crazy” and gave her a “make work” task; scholars find the result of that “make work” a profound piece of social-political philosophy.3 Some commentators call her “saintly”; others find her behavior merely maladaptive. These counter claims create a perennial interest in Weil’s personal life and many commentators fashion her in mythic rather than descriptive terms.

I. BIOGRAPHY

Simone Adolphe Weil was born to Selma and Bernard Weil on February 3, 1909. At six months her mother suffered appendicitis and this affected Simone who was being breast fed. By the end of her first year, Simone was very ill. She recovered but remained sickly, susceptible to infections and unable to eat normally. Various illnesses and physical indispositions were to plague her through out her life.4

Simone’s nuclear family included an older brother, Andrё, and her maternal grandmother. Many aunts and uncles lived in the region and there was a profusion of cousins during family visits. Her father’s family had come from Alsace and most of the men were successful businessmen or merchants. Her mother’s family came from Galacia, lived a while in Russia, and finally went to Belgium where Simone’s grandfather developed a leading import-export firm. Both families were Jewish but Mme Weil’s was not observant. Dr Weil’s parents were religious but he professed to be an agnostic. The children were raised without training in the Jewish religion. Simone is said to have learned the meaning of Jew

A History of Women Philosophers/Volume 4, ed. by Mary Ellen Waithe, 287-297.

© 1995 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

and Gentile in school at the age of ten. Later, like many others, she and her family were classified Jews by the Nazi’s and she lost her job under the laws proscribing employment for Jews. The Weil’s emigrated to America but Simone left for England where she joined the exiled com-munity of Free French.5

Simone resembled her father both in physical and emotional charac-teristics. Dr Bernard Weil, was small, thin and quite handsome. He was taciturn and although he liked to joke he also was inclined to become overwrought and nervous about small things. He was very frank, often more so than the conventions of the day. In his youth he had been sym-pathetic to anarchist views but later gave his sympathies to the Radical party.6

Simone’s mother was intelligent, ardent, generous and had a real capacity for happiness. In her youth she had wanted to become a doctor but her father would not allow it. As an adult she found the narrow, fashionable life of the bourgeoisie inane and brought her children up in ways not usual in middle class Parisian families. This was particularly true of Simone who she raised more in accord with the norms of young boys than the restricted role of little girls.7

As a child Simone’s brother Andr6 became her ideal. Mme Weil wrote:

Simone has developed in an incredible fashion. She follows Andre everywhere, takes an interest in everything he does, and feels, like him, that the days are too short they have and excellent influence on each other; he protects her, helps her crawl over the difficult spots, and often gives way to her, while she, at his side from morning to night, has become livelier, gayer, more enterprising. Whenever the weather permits, we spend our days with them on the large open fields surrounded by pine trees...8

Andre was a mathematical genius who later advanced mathematical research and problem solving. This special mathematical gift was apparent even in childhood when he taught himself to solve equations of the first and second order without formal study.9 His intelligence sparked Simone on. He taught her to read (the newspaper) as a surprise for their father; together they explored literature memorizing the plays of Racine at age 5, reading Cyrano, Balzac etc.10

Nothing was spared in the education of the Weil children. Weil studied at the Lycee Montaigne, the Laval and Lycee F6nelon. She spent 1925-28 at Henry IV and 1928-31 at Ecole Normale where she was known for 

her brilliance, her tenacity in argument and her social/political concerns. In Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter Simone de Beauvoir speaks of being intimidated by Weil during a political discussion and subsequently avoiding the intense, brilliant student.11 Weil took a first in the competitive examinations. She wanted to engage in factory work after graduation but the economic situation did not allow it so she requested a teaching position. She was assigned to Le Puy where her support for local factory workers led to trouble with her employers and the local mayor.12

The greatest intellectual influence on Weil, outside her family, was Alain (Emile Chartier) her philosophy teacher at Henri IV. Petrement states, “I believe that Simone’s philosophy was built at the start on Alain’s and extends it, even when it appears to be opposed to it.”13 Those schooled in the Anglo-American tradition need to understand Chartier’s content and method if they wish to understand the methodology and interests of Weil. Her incorporation of literature into philosophical work, her notion of “reading situations”, her approach to the oppressed are all influenced by Alain.14

Weil had a penchant for experiential knowledge. She visited Germany in 1932 to investigate “what was really happening” and in 1934 Weil obtained employment at the Renault factory. In 1936 she left for the Republican Front in Barcelona and in 1938, the year anti-Jewish laws were passed in Italy, she visited Italy and Portugal.15

In 1940 she was dismissed from her teaching position because of the antisemitic laws and in 1941 she met Father Perrin, an important figure in Weil’s last years. They corresponded; it is clear he wanted to “convert” her. He also arranged for Gustave Thibon to employ her on his farm at A^che.16 Without Perrin we would not have her powerful Spiritual Autobiography which articulates her need for complete freedom to pursue truth and her identification with “outsiders” which kept her form joining any Church or party.17 This need to pursue truth widely, coupled with her contemplative rather than speculative orientation, may explain her serious pursuit of Hindu and Buddhist thought long before such pursuit became popular in Europe.18 Her profession of a need for freedom from dogma illuminates not only her refusal of baptism but her critiques of Capitalism, Communism and Fascism.19 She died at Grovsvenor Sanatorium on August 24, 1943.20 


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