The Subversive Simone Weil

200 pages

English language

Published Feb. 27, 2021 by University of Chicago Press.

ISBN:: 978-0-226-54933-0
OCLC Number:: 1195816144

(1 review)

Known as the “patron saint of all outsiders,” Simone Weil (1909–43) was one of the twentieth century’s most remarkable thinkers, a philosopher who truly lived by her political and ethical ideals. In a short life framed by the two world wars, Weil taught philosophy to lycée students and organized union workers, fought alongside anarchists during the Spanish Civil War and labored alongside workers on assembly lines, joined the Free French movement in London and died in despair because she was not sent to France to help the Resistance.

Though Weil published little during her life, after her death, thanks largely to the efforts of Albert Camus, hundreds of pages of her manuscripts were published to critical and popular acclaim. While many seekers have been attracted to Weil’s religious thought, Robert Zaretsky gives us a different Weil, exploring her insights into politics and ethics, and showing us a new side of …

Known as the “patron saint of all outsiders,” Simone Weil (1909–43) was one of the twentieth century’s most remarkable thinkers, a philosopher who truly lived by her political and ethical ideals. In a short life framed by the two world wars, Weil taught philosophy to lycée students and organized union workers, fought alongside anarchists during the Spanish Civil War and labored alongside workers on assembly lines, joined the Free French movement in London and died in despair because she was not sent to France to help the Resistance.

Though Weil published little during her life, after her death, thanks largely to the efforts of Albert Camus, hundreds of pages of her manuscripts were published to critical and popular acclaim. While many seekers have been attracted to Weil’s religious thought, Robert Zaretsky gives us a different Weil, exploring her insights into politics and ethics, and showing us a new side of Weil that balances her contradictions—the rigorous rationalist who also had her own brand of Catholic mysticism; the revolutionary with a soft spot for anarchism yet who believed in the hierarchy of labor; and the humanitarian who emphasized human needs and obligations over human rights. Reflecting on the relationship between thought and action in Weil’s life, The Subversive Simone Weil honors the complexity of Weil’s thought and speaks to why it matters and continues to fascinate readers today.

2 editions

possm reviewed The Subversive Simone Weil by Robert Zaretsky

Good subject matter, bad biographer

3 stars

Good: the structure (a life in five ideas) makes sense and is easy to follow. Bad: the biographer makes himself way too visible. I do not care about his judgments on the practicability of Weil's ideas, even less about his strange downplaying of French and British colonialism, and less still about his bizarre asides about Donald Trump or smartphones. Those are the worst! Did his editor tell him he can only write about Weil if he ties her to contemporary issues somehow? It's so bad.

Simone Weil is a great figure to write a biography about. I think less of her now, than I did before reading this. My commie brain is telling me that she was just a bourgeois reactionary who only got more openly right-wing with age. In a way, she was the traditional stereotype of what commies imagine all anarchists are like. Fortunately I don't just think …

Good: the structure (a life in five ideas) makes sense and is easy to follow. Bad: the biographer makes himself way too visible. I do not care about his judgments on the practicability of Weil's ideas, even less about his strange downplaying of French and British colonialism, and less still about his bizarre asides about Donald Trump or smartphones. Those are the worst! Did his editor tell him he can only write about Weil if he ties her to contemporary issues somehow? It's so bad.

Simone Weil is a great figure to write a biography about. I think less of her now, than I did before reading this. My commie brain is telling me that she was just a bourgeois reactionary who only got more openly right-wing with age. In a way, she was the traditional stereotype of what commies imagine all anarchists are like. Fortunately I don't just think with my commie brain and am able to see her as a complex and nuanced figure. I do feel like many intellectuals are probably sympathetic to Weil out of class solidarity. They regard her as a uniquely strong willed and uncompromising figure because she was also a bourgeois intellectual, and disregard all the other militants who have done far better work than her while leading lives just as raw and uncompromising - if not more so, since she could, and did, always go back to her rich parents after any of her failed life experiments (e.g. trying to work in a factory or to fight in the Spanish civil war). But I've been following this train of thought while reading and have decided to not come down too harshly on Weil for being, well, privileged. That would be a simplistic lens to view her life through.

This book made me want to learn more about other militant figures of Weil's time.

Subjects

Philosophy