II. Philosophical work

II. PHILOSOPHICAL WORK

Weil wrote essays, notes, plays, poems and letters sufficient to fill over a dozen posthumously published volumes. Most of this material is philosophical in content but little of it has made its way into the main stream of philosophy. Weil’s major works are available in English language editions. Lectures on Philosophy, a translation of Madame Anne Reynaud-Guerithault’s notes from Weil’s course in philosophy at the 1усёе in Roanne 1933-4 provides an excellent introduction. Although the notes are schematic, philosophers will recognize the originality in the course. The Iliad or The Poem of Force provides an example of Weil’s philosophical approach to literature and is a good balance to Lectures. Her Notebooks provide the reader with a view of her wide ranging and incisive scholarship while works such as The Need for Roots shows her social/political analysis.

Weil’s work appears unsystematic. She composed most of her essays for small, left-wing French publications and these essays address a variety of specific issues. Her notebooks, lectures and longer essays incorporate traditional philosophy, literature, mathematics and science in ways which can be dizzying to more narrowly trained thinkers. When one reads her work as a whole, however, one finds a pattern of fundamental elements which is evoked and reworked in numerous settings. Central to Weil’s philosophy are three elements: form, a grasp of the lived experience of oppressed human beings, and attention.

All Weil’s writings reveal a highly contemplative mind which is attracted by essential forms of aesthetics, mathematics, morals and science. At the same time her works articulate, analyze and explain the lived experience of those “at the bottom” of the social order. These antithetical orientations form a tension in her work but it is a tension of balanced harmonies rather than opposing struggles. “Attention”, the practice that Weil so often advocates, seems to be the nucleus which keeps these opposing and highly charged elements in balance.

1. Forms

Weil’s writings are permeated by a concern for the formal, structural relationships among things. She talks a great deal about mathematics but in each instance she knows an interest in mathematical relations or the form of mathematical work. A comment from her Notebooks is 

revealing, “If contradiction is what pulls, draws the soul towards the light, contemplation of the first principles (hypotheses) of geometry and kindred sciences should be a contemplation of the contradictions.”21 A discussion of mathematical reasoning is highlighted by, “Let us look for the general characteristics of straight lines, of geometrical figures. Why would one not use the branches of a cedar tree to do geometry?”22

Weil’s reflections on literature go to the “core” of each work to locate the essential form(s) of human relations it embodies. Although Weil is sensitive to language she never engages in merely syntactical literary criticism. Neither does she engage in the social determinism criticism common to Marxists. Even in her “communist” phase Weil avoids the mantle of dialectical materialism.

The Iliad or The Poem of Force is an excellent example of her approach to literature. She goes beyond the mere “wrath of Achilles” and unmasks basic forms of human relations embodied in the work and thus reveals an entire culture’s relation to force. The essay is both literary and anthropological. It is also deeply moral. The whole discussion springs from a fundamental stance about right relations. Weil begins the last chapter with a comment on relations:

The relations between destiny and the human soul, the extent to which each soul creates its own destiny, the question of what elements in the soul are transformed by merciless necessity as it tailors the soul to fit the requirements of shifting fate, and of what elements can on the other hand be preserved, through the exercise of virtue and through grace - the whole question is fraught with temptations to falsehood, temptations that are positively enhanced by pride, by shame, by hatred, contempt, indifference, by the will to oblition or to ignorance.23

The chapter closes with Weil’s enconium:

But nothing the peoples of Europe have produced is worth the first known poem that appeared among them. Perhaps they will yet redis-cover the epic genius, when they learn that there is no refuge from fate, learn not to admire force, not to hate the enemy, nor to scorn the unfortunate.24

All Weil’s moral discussions are permeated by an emphasis on forms, on reality and on human relations. Consider, for example: 

The beautiful: that which we do not want to change it, in fact (non-intervention). The true: not to want to change it in one’s mind (by means of illusion).

The good - not to want to change what? My place, my importance in the world, limited by my body and by the existence of other souls, my equals.25

Duty, right, virtue and right action are second order moral concepts which follow from the form of relations present in a situation.

The good is not to want (desire, impulse, imagination, passion) to change that which we do not want (metaphysically) about my place, my importance, my limit. Thus ethics involves “reading” each situation; reading the situation to see if it embodies those human relations that are wanted because they express the reality of the appropriate forms; co-existence, co-value and co-limit. Injustice is the absence of these forms:

Human relations. All those which have something infinite about them are unjust. Now, although everything connected with man is finite and measurable, nevertheless, after reaching a certain degree, the infinite comes into play.

e.g. if all the food two men have per day is in the one case 1 lb. of bread and in the other case 18 oz., the difference is finite; if one of them has 1/4 lb. and the other one 6 lb. the difference is infinite, for what is everything for one is negligible for the other.26

The arts are also present in Weil’s work, especially the plastic arts. These, too, center on grasping essential forms and their mutual relations. Because much of Weil’s use of the arts is illustrative or parenthetical one is tempted to view them as merely incidental. If, however, one takes the aesthetic as foundational to Weil’s thought much of what appears dichotomous and disordered takes on both order and meaning.

2. Limit, Space, Time, Attention

Taking the aesthetic as foundational in Weil’s work, also explains the centrality she gives to certain themes; limit, space, time, necessity, attention.

Every artist confronts limit. To find the bounds on one medium and 

one’s own powers within that medium is a necessary condition for art. The artist must grow and experiment but not to accept limit is to create disorder. With such an explanation as background, Weil’s statements take on new significance. Consider again:

The beautiful: that which we do not want to change. The good: not to want to change it, in fact (non-intervention). The true: not to want to change it in one’s mind (by means of illusion).

The good - not to want to change what? My place, my importance, limited by my body and the existence of other souls, my equals.27

Taking the aesthetic as foundational in her work also makes sense of her repeated non-cosmological reflections about time, space and matter. As the artistic stance gives rise to the exploration of limit, the exploration of limit gives rise to reflections about time, space and matter. Finally, her discussions of necessity become natural in this context.

There are two senses of necessity. In the first, necessity is like limit: it is the boundary which one can not transgress and Weil evokes this notion in her discussions of matter. However the artist is also aware of a second aspect of necessity. When contemplating a work of art one is struck by the necessity apparent in the relations between and among the parts. To alter a single relation is to change the work and if it is a great work, such alteration destroys its greatness. This second notion of necessity permeates Weil’s philosophy, especially her reflections on right action.

Recognizing this second kind of necessity requires contemplation rather than speculative thought, hence Weil’s advocation of “attention”. Grasping this second form of necessity in things, in situations is, as some popular psychologies would say a “right brain rather than left brain” activity. Artists often speak of cutting away the unnecessary to reveal the innate form of things and Weil does also. For Weil, non-intervention amidst necessary forms or the removal of that which interferes with true necessity is at the heart of all real work. But understanding the necessary forms requires contemplative attention.

Although people seem unaware of it today, the development of the faculty of attention forms the real object and almost sole interest of studies... If we have no aptitude or natural taste for geometry, this does not mean that our faculty for attention will not be developed 

by wrestling with a problem or studying a theorem; it does not even matter whether we succeed in finding the solution or understanding the proof, although it is important to try really hard to do so. Never in any case whatever is a genuine effort of the attention wasted.28

Such attention also requires an enormous dedication to honesty.

We have to bring into the light of open day the monsters within us; and not be afraid of looking them straight in the face.... We are com-pletely responsible for the degree of clarity there is in our thoughts; we do not always make the necessary effort to be fully aware of them, but we always have the ability to become so.29

But such attention is, for Weil, the only source of truth... and goodness.

3. Lived Experience of Oppressed Human Beings

Nowhere in the Euro-American philosophical tradition are there such clear, caring statements concerning the actual experience of oppressed human beings. Not Hegel with his incisive but brief insights, not Marx with his analysis of the forces which bring about and sustain oppression, not even the contemporary South American philosopher, Enrique Dussel with his provocation and strong philosophy of liberation, come near to the actual naming of the world of oppression offered by Weil.

Former factory workers come up at the end of a philosophy class and say, “Yes. Yes. She understands what it is like.” Those who have grown up with terror and abuse confide, “She described me on page eight.”

At least a suppliant, once his prayer is answered becomes a human being again, like everybody else. But there are other, more unfortu-nate creatures who have become things for the rest of their lives. Their days hold no pastimes, no free spaces, no room in them for any impulse of their own. It is not that their life is harder than other men’s nor that they occupy a lower place in the social hierarchy; no, they are another human species, a compromise between a man and a corpse. The idea of a person’s being a thing is a logical contradiction. Yet what is impossible in logic becomes true in life... constantly aspiring to be a man or a woman, and never achieving it - here 

surely is death but death strung out over a whole lifetime: here, surely, is life, but life that death congeals before abolishing.30

After reading “The Love of God and Affliction,” others have declared that during their reading they trembled and were in turmoil because here was some one who truly named their own experience; someone who wrote meaningfully about questions and concerns which they had walled up within themselves because no one seemed to address them correctly.

And for those who have never experienced such dehumanization Weil explains, “Those who have never had contact with affliction in its true sense can have no idea of what it is, even though they may have suffered a great deal. Affliction is something specific and impossible to describe in any other terms, as sounds are to anyone who is deaf and dumb.”31 However, she does not leave us without hope. One of the reasons one should study is to acquire the discipline of attention, the attention which makes it possible to leave imagination and desire aside so as to see the world as it really is.32 This ability to attend makes one able to meet the real need of those who are afflicted.

... The capacity to give one’s attention to a sufferer is a very rare and difficult thing; it is almost a miracle; it is a miracle. Nearly all those who think they have this capacity do not possess it. Warmth of heart, impulsiveness, pity are not enough33...

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.34

Weil’s statements about the healing possible through personal rela-tionships should not be construed as an abandonment of the political. Her whole life with its action for and with workers and other dehumanized people attests to her belief in political action.35 She is wary of political parties and political ideologies, however. Ideology leads to abstract solutions and abstract solutions often result in greater oppression for the poor. “One should only advise the oppressed to revolt if it can be successful.”36 

It is at this point in her work that one sees Weil’s move to the formal. Always she joins her real solidarity with the oppressed with her orientation to form. The whole purpose of sociology is to find out which sort of society would be least oppressive in given social conditions.37

Weil’s aesthetic orientation keeps her political philosophy grounded in limit. She is no utopian; change must accept limit and appropriate action must be grounded in the specific conditions of each situation. The likelihood of one being able to read the specific situation aright depends on ones ability to attend to the reality of this situation. The three elements are present to her work; form, the lived experience of the oppressed and attention. They exist in shifting patterns but always it is attention which grounds the other two.

III. CONCLUSIONS

Simone Weil is a complex thinker. She combines several traditions: the mystical, the social-political, the wide scope of the humanities and the philosophical tradition of reason.38 As a person she is multidimensional but is grounded in a simplicity and singleness of orientation. Like many intellectuals her daily habits were not very “down to earth.” Perhaps if she, like Karl Marx, had the benefit of a devoted spouse who insured the practical, nurturing activities were accomplished, Weil would appear less non-conformist. As it was she did not have such a helpmate, only a mother who from time to time arrived to do such tasks as putting the house in order, cooking nourishing meals and encouraging her daughter to take a vacation or not be “robbed blind” by the help. For those readers not blinded by controversies concerning her daily life, Weil provides a wealth of insightful and original material which is particularly useful to 20th century scholars trying to integrate global traditions, rigorous scholarship and social concern.