Snip #1: Simone Weil

I came upon Simone Weil quite late in my perambulations. I had heard of her but, until about a year ago, I had not understood what an extraordinary woman she was. Her intellect was formidable, (at 6 years old, she could quote passages of Racine by heart) but more importantly for me was her courage and intellectual honesty.

Reading her made me want to start my philosophical endeavours from afresh, from a new position. But one cannot undo the start of something - there is never any ‘starting again’.

Two things woke me up to her.

The first was her essay ‘Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God’ - a entreaty to think of education in terms of the cultivation of attention.

‘The soul empties itself of all its own contents in order to receive into itself the being it is looking at , just as he is, in all his truth’. (my emphasis)

The second was her reading of the metaphysical poets (something that I share), and in particular the effect on her of George Herbert’s ‘Love’, which accompanied her in her mystical union.

This idea of attention, in her sense, ‘without force or haste’, seems to underpin that distinction between empathy and sympathy - but more on this in a future post.