Decreation: The Unity of Action and Contemplation in Simone Weil
Loading...
Authors
Henderson, Julia
Issue Date
2024-05
Type
Thesis
Language
en
Keywords
Alternative Title
Decreation
Abstract
"As described above, any introduction to Simone Weil that foregrounds the events of her extraordinary life at the expense of her ideas is, in my view, insufficient. That is not to say, however, that her personal experiences ought to be ignored. In fact, it would be unwise to attempt to divide her personhood from her philosophical and mystical ideas. According to Marie-Magdeleine Davy, Weil is “essentially paradoxical, even contradictory” but she “nevertheless presented in herself a perfect unity.” This unity is not merely true in the sense that apparent contradictions in philosophy can be reconciled, but also in that the apparent political and mystical division of her life and commitments are bound together. In Davy’s description, “from whatever angle you look at her, from the intellectual, the religious or social, she is entirely a whole.” Despite this, scholarship on Weil often approaches her from one of two directions: either the socio-political or the mystical and religious. Seminal texts like A Truer Liberty: Simone Weil and Marxism partition her thought into categories like “Liberty,” “Oppression,” and “Power,” and minimally engage with her mystical theology. This kind of categorization is not without its uses; for one, it allows scholars to engage with individual concepts in depth while leaving behind the aspects of her thought more peripheral to their concerns, but partitioning the mystical and political into distinct categories can too easily allow scholars to disregard their interconnectivity."
Description
Master's thesis
Citation
Henderson, Julia. "Decreation: The Unity of Action and Contemplation in Simone Weil " MA (Philosophy) Institute for Christian Studies, 2024.
Publisher
Institute for Christian Studies