This is a collection of essays examining the life and words of
Simone Weil, the late French activist, philosopher, and mystic. In
the early 1940s, Simone Weil (1909-1943) wrote that 'the glossy
surface' of her civilization hid 'a real intellectual decadence'.
There is also good reason to think that the 21st century has
ushered in new extremes of intellectual and aesthetic
impoverishment. 2009 will mark the centennial of the birth of this
late French activist, philosopher, and mystic, and her life and
words are arguably more urgent now than ever before. While Weil's
ideas are impossible to separate from her praxis, the first section
of the book will analyze the 'radical orientation' suggested in her
writings. Contributors in this section will address the relevance
of her religious ideas, the 'irrelevant', the posture of
attentiveness and 'looking', and the roles of erotic exemplarity
and mystery. The second section will examine the 'radical world'
that follows from the orientation described and will consider
themes like violence, power, resistance, responsibility, feminism,
liberation theology, science, technology, propaganda, and political
hegemony. Through the revolutionary insights of this remarkable
woman, then, the contributors propose a framework for understanding
and creating a more just world, one that challenges Western
philosophy's metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical assumptions
which have led to pervasive forms of uprootedness, or what Weil
calls deracinement. This framework centres on a notion of absolute
selflessness and humility, and is radical both in the sense of
being 'unconventional' and in the sense of the Latin radicalis,
'returning to essential roots'. Becoming rooted in reality and
centred in what is essential, especially in our context
characterized by over-consumption and 'virtual reality', is
unconventional. How much more, then, is the radical absolutely
relevant and Simone Weil the paradigm for effective socio-political
redress.
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