'Time and again she pierces the veil of complacency and brings the reader face to face with the deepest levels of existence.' - Church Times

'At the twilight of a century whose accelerated history has led to the rise and fall of so many idols, this book increasingly appears like a message from eternity.' - Gustave Thibon

'One of the most profound religious thinkers of modern times.' - The Twentieth Century, 1961

'We must simply expose ourselves to the personality of a woman of genius, of a kind of genius akin to that of the saints.' - T. S. Eliot

'The light Simone shines makes everything seem, at once, reasurringly recognizable and so luminous as to be heavenly.' - Malcom Muggeridge

'In France she is ranked with Pascal by some, condemned as a dangerous heretic by others, and recognized as a genius by all.' - New York Times Book Review

'The best spiritual writer of this century ... she said it was her vocation to stand at the intersection of Christians and non-Christians. She thus becomes the patron saint of all "outsiders".' - André Gide

Simone Weil (1909–1943) is one of the most brilliant and unorthodox religious and philosophical minds of the twentieth century. She was also a political activist, worked in the Renault car factory in France in the 1930s and fought briefly as an anarchist in the Spanish Civil War, before her tragic early death in England at the age of thirty-four. Her work spans an astonishing variety of subjects, from ancient Greek philosophy and Christianity to oppression, political freedom and French national identity. Intimations of Christianity Among the Ancient Greeks sees Weil apply her unique and piercing intellect to early Greek thought, where she finds fundamental precursors to Christian religious ideas. She argues, provocatively, that concepts fundamental to Christianity such as incarnation, redemption, suffering and resurrection are Greek as well as Christian and that there is much we can learn, spiritually and philosophically, from their entwinement. This Routledge Classics edition includes a new Foreword by Christopher Hamilton.

Emerging from the thought-provoking discussions and correspondence Simone Weil had with the Reverend Father Perrin, this classic collection of essays contains the renowned philosopher and social activist's most profound meditations on the relationship of human life to the realm of the transcendent. An enduring masterwork and "one of the most neglected resources of our century" (Adrienne Rich), "Waiting for God" will continue to influence spiritual and political thought for centuries to come.

'There are certain words which possess, in themselves, when properly used, a virtue which illumines and lifts up towards the good' The philosopher and activist Simone Weil was one of the most courageous thinkers of the twentieth century. Here she writes, with honesty and moral clarity, about the manipulation of language by the powerful, the obligations of individuals to one another and the needs - for order, equality, liberty and truth - that make us human. One of twenty new books in the bestselling Penguin Great Ideas series. This new selection showcases a diverse list of thinkers who have helped shape our world today, from anarchists to stoics, feminists to prophets, satirists to Zen Buddhists.

This volume, first published in English in 1987 makes available an important part of Weil's early writings. Although primarily known as a religious thinker, she devoted enormous energy in her formative years to her work as a political activist and as a philosopher/teacher. This book reveals these other sides of Weil and demonstrates the lines of continuity underlying her whole thought. Written between 1929 and 1941 the book covers a crucial and transitional period in Weil's life. Taken together they represent invaluable primary source material on the evolution of Weil's life and on her chosen method of abstracting elements from her personal experience and transmuting that experience into considered thought. Even when highly theoretical, her writing was always concerned with the application of her intelligence to concrete problems of human existence.

Hailed by Albert Camus as 'the only great spirit of our times', Simone Weil was one of great essayists and activists of the twentieth century. Her writings on the nature of religious faith and spirituality have inspired many subsequent thinkers. Wrestling with the moral dilemmas entailed by commitment to the Catholic Church, Letter to a Priest is a brilliant meditation on the perennial battle between faith and doubt and resonates today as much as when it was first written. This edition also includes one of her most inspiring and celebrated essays, 'Human Personality', where Weil offers a moving and unorthodox account of the preciousness of human beings. With a new foreword by Raimond Gaita.

Widely regarded as one of Weil's best books and ideal for those coming to her work for the first time An impassioned but beautifully clear and engaging reflection on many of the themes that recur throughout Weil's work: her strong religious impulse but ambivalence about religion; the nature of love, friendship, duty, the role of attention in Christian belief and her engagement with Stoic philosophy Includes a new foreword by Janet Soskice, placing Weil life's and the book in context

Simone Weil (1909-1943) was a defining figure of the twentieth century; a philosopher, Christian, resistance fighter, anarchist, feminist, Labour activist and teacher. She was described by T. S. Eliot as 'a woman of genius, of a kind of genius akin to that of the saints', and by Albert Camus as 'the only great spirit of our time'. Originally published posthumously in two volumes, these newly reissued notebooks, are among the very few unedited personal writings of Weil's that still survive today. Containing her thoughts on art, love, science, God and the meaning of life, they give context and meaning to Weil's famous works, revealing an unique philosophy in development and offering a rare private glimpse of her singular personality.

A new translation of Simone Weil's best-known work: a political, philosophical and spiritual treatise An icon of twentieth-century French philosophy, Simone Weil was described by André Gide as 'the patron saint of all outsiders' and by Albert Camus as 'the only great spirit of our time'. In this, one of her last and best-known works, she offers a vision of what human life could be - where the needs of our bodies are met and the needs of the soul, too, are better known and nurtured. Written in 1943, when France was occupied and Weil was working in the offices of the Free France in London, The Need for Roots responds to a plea both timely and timeless: what can satisfy the cry of our hearts for justice? In the same decade that saw the UN Declaration of Human Rights, Weil argues that rights alone are inadequate to the task - and encourages her contemporaries not to repeat the mistakes of the French Revolution and the malaise of modern life. The alternative she offers has intrigued and inspired generations of readers since. Translated by Ros Schwartz, with an introduction by Kate Kirkpatrick.

Hailed by Albert Camus as 'the only great spirit of our times', Simone Weil was one of great essayists and activists of the twentieth century. Her writings on the nature of religious faith and spirituality have inspired many subsequent thinkers. Wrestling with the moral dilemmas entailed by commitment to the Catholic Church, Letter to a Priest is a brilliant meditation on the perennial battle between faith and doubt and resonates today as much as when it was first written. This edition also includes one of her most inspiring and celebrated essays, 'Human Personality', where Weil offers a moving and unorthodox account of the preciousness of human beings. With a new foreword by Raimond Gaita.

Simone Weil, the great mystic and philosopher for our age, shows where anyone can find God. Why is it that Simone Weil, with her short, troubled life and confounding insights into faith and doubt, continues to speak to today’s spiritual seekers? Was it her social radicalism, which led her to renounce privilege? Her ambivalence toward institutional religion? Her combination of philosophical rigor with the ardor of a mystic? Albert Camus called Simone Weil “the only great spirit of our time.� André Gide found her “the most truly spiritual writer of this century.� Her intense life and profound writings have influenced people as diverse as T. S. Eliot, Charles De Gaulle, Pope Paul VI, and Adrienne Rich. The body of work she left—most of it published posthumously—is the fruit of an anguished but ultimately luminous spiritual journey. After her untimely death at age thirty-four, Simone Weil quickly achieved legendary status among a whole generation of thinkers. Her radical idealism offered a corrective to consumer culture. But more importantly, she pointed the way, especially for those outside institutional religion, to encounter the love of God – in love to neighbor, love of beauty, and even in suffering.

This volume, first published in English in 1987 makes available an important part of Weila (TM)s early writings. Although primarily known as a religious thinker, she devoted enormous energy in her formative years to her work as a political activist and as a philosopher/teacher. This book reveals these other sides of Weil and demonstrates the lines of continuity underlying her whole thought.

Written between 1929 and 1941 the book covers a crucial and transitional period in Weila (TM)s life. Taken together they represent invaluable primary source material on the evolution of Weila (TM)s life and on her chosen method of abstracting elements from her personal experience and transmuting that experience into considered thought. Even when highly theoretical, her writing was always concerned with the application of her intelligence to concrete problems of human existence.

'We must simply expose ourselves to the personality of a woman of genius, of a kind of genius akin to that of the saints.' - T.S. Eliot in the Preface

'What is required if men and women are to feel at home in society and are to recover their vitality? Into wrestling with that question, Simone Weil put the very substance of her mind and temperament. The apparently solid edifices of our prepossessions fall down before her onslaught like ninepins, and she is as fertile and forthright in her positive suggestions . . . she can be relied upon to toss aside the superficial and to come to grips with the essential and the profound.' - Time Literary Supplement

Simone Weil was one of the foremost thinkers of the twentieth century: a philosopher, theologian, critic, sociologist and political activist. This anthology spans the wide range of her thought, and includes an extract from her best-known work 'The Need for Roots', exploring the ways in which modern society fails the human soul; her thoughts on the misuse of language by those in power; and the essay 'Human Personality', a late, beautiful reflection on the rights and responsibilities of every individual. All are marked by the unique combination of literary eloquence and moral perspicacity that characterised Weil's ideas and inspired a generation of thinkers and writers both in and outside her native France.

Simone Weil, a brilliant young teacher, philosopher, and social activist, wrote the essay. The 'Iliad' or the Poem of Force at France at the beginning of World War II. Her profound meditation on the nature of violence provides a remarkably vivid and accessible testament of the Greek epic's continuing relevance to our lives. This celebrated work appears here for the first time in a bilingual version, based on the text of the authoritative edition of the author's complete writings. An introduction discusses the significance of the essay both in the evolution of Weil's thought and as a distinctively iconoclastic contribution to Homeric studies. The commentary draws on recent interpretations of the Iliad and examines the parallels between Weil's vision of Homer's warriors and the experiences of modern soldiers.

"War and the Iliad" is a perfect introduction to the range of Homer's art as well as a provocative and rewarding demonstration of the links between literature, philosophy, and questions of life and death.
Simone Weil's "The Iliad, or the Poem of Force" is one of her most celebrated works--an inspired analysis of Homer's epic that presents a nightmare vision of combat as a machine in which all humanity is lost. First published on the eve of war in 1939, the essay has often been read as a pacifist manifesto. Rachel Bespaloff was a French contemporary of Weil's whose work similarly explored the complex relations between literature, religion, and philosophy. She composed her own distinctive discussion of the "Iliad" in the midst of World War II--calling it "her method of facing the war"--and, as Christopher Benfey argues in his introduction, the essay was very probably written in response to Weil. Bespaloff's account of the Iliad brings out Homer's novelistic approach to character and the existential drama of his characters' choices; it is marked, too, by a tragic awareness of how the Iliad speaks to times and places where there is no hope apart from war.
This edition brings together these two influential essays for the first time, accompanied by Benfey's scholarly introduction and an afterword by the great Austrian novelist Hermann Broch.

An NYRB Classics Original
A brilliant woman who was a study in fiercely maintained contradictions, a star student who went to work on a factory line, a Jewish convert to Catholicism who insisted on refusing baptism, Simone Weil is one of the most intransigent and taxing of spiritual masters, always willing to push her thinking--and us--one step beyond the apparently reasonable in pursuit of the one truth, the one good. She asks hard questions and avoids easy answers. In this essay--now in English for the first time--she challenges the foundation of the modern liberal political order, making an argument that will have particular resonance in present-day America. Examining the dynamic of power and propaganda caused by party spirit, the increasing disregard for truth in favor of opinion, and the consequent corruption of education, journalism, and art, Weil proposes that politics can only begin where the party spirit comes to an end.
This volume also reprints an admiring portrait of Weil by the Nobel laureate Czesław Miłosz and an essay about Weil's friendship with Albert Camus by the translator Simon Leys.

'Time and again she pierces the veil of complacency and brings the reader face to face with the deepest levels of existence.' - Church Times

'At the twilight of a century whose accelerated history has led to the rise and fall of so many idols, this book increasingly appears like a message from eternity.' - Gustave Thibon

'One of the most profound religious thinkers of modern times.' - The Twentieth Century, 1961

'We must simply expose ourselves to the personality of a woman of genius, of a kind of genius akin to that of the saints.' - T. S. Eliot

'The light Simone shines makes everything seem, at once, reasurringly recognizable and so luminous as to be heavenly.' - Malcom Muggeridge

'In France she is ranked with Pascal by some, condemned as a dangerous heretic by others, and recognized as a genius by all.' - New York Times Book Review

'The best spiritual writer of this century ... she said it was her vocation to stand at the intersection of Christians and non-Christians. She thus becomes the patron saint of all "outsiders".' - André Gide

The first English translation of Simone Weil's Lecons de Philosophie, a general, elementary introduction to philosophy. Derived from a course given by Weil, edited by her pupils and first published in French in 1951.

You cannot get far in these essays without sensing yourself in the presence of a writer of immense intellectual power and fierce independence of mind.' - Janet Soskice, from the Introduction to the Routledge Classics edition

Simone Weil (1909–1943) is one of the most brilliant and unorthodox religious and philosophical thinkers of the twentieth century. She was also a political activist who worked in the Renault car factory in France in the 1930s and fought briefly as an anarchist in the Spanish Civil War. Hailed by Albert Camus as 'the only great spirit of our times,' her work spans an astonishing variety of subjects, from ancient Greek philosophy and Christianity to oppression, political freedom and French national identity.

Waiting for God is one of her most remarkable books, full of piercing spiritual and moral insight. The first part comprises letters she wrote in 1942 to Jean-Marie Perrin, a Dominican priest, and demonstrate the intense inner conflict Weil experienced as she wrestled with the demands of Christian belief and commitment. She then explores the 'just balance' of the world, arguing that we should regard God as providing two forms of guidance: our ability as human beings to think for ourselves; and our need for both physical and emotional 'matter.' She also argues for the concept of a 'sacred longing'; that humanity's search for beauty, both in the world and within each other, is driven by our underlying desire for a tangible god.

Eloquent and inspiring, Waiting for God asks profound questions about the nature of faith, doubt and morality that continue to resonate today.

This Routledge Classics edition includes a new Introduction by Janet Soskice and retains the Foreword to the 1979 edition by Malcolm Muggeridge.

Table of Contents

Introduction to the Routledge Classics Edition Janet Soskice

Foreword to the 1979 Edition Malcolm Muggeridge　

Part 1: Letters

1. Hesitations Concerning Baptism

2. Same Subject

3. About Her Departure

Part 2: Letters of Farewell

4. Her Spiritual Autobiography

5. Her Intellectual Vocation

6. Last Thoughts

Part 2: Essays

7. Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God

8. The Love of God and Affliction

9. Forms of the Implicit Love of God

10. Concerning the 'Our Father'

11. The Three Sons of Noah and the History of Mediterranean Civilization.

Index

Awaiting God (218 pages) combines a fresh translation (by Weil scholar, Brad Jersak) of Simone Weil's 'Waiting for God' and 'Letter to a Priest' (Attente de Dieu and Lettre un Religieux) in one volume. These works are considered Weil's primary essays and letters. In addition, Simone Weil's niece has contributed an introductory article entitled, 'Simone Weil and the Rabbi's: Compassion and Tsedekah, ' which puts Weil's relationship with Jewish thought into perspective. She includes source material from the Rabbis that put Weil (however reluctantly) in line with rabbinical thought throughout her major themes. The book is the ideal English introduction to the works and thought of Simone Weil, including important preface material (by Jersak) on how to read her work, as well as her relationship to Roman Catholicism and Judaism. The book includes: Part 1 - Essays 1. Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies in View of the Love of God 2. The Love of God and Affliction 3. Forms of the Implicit Love of God a. Love of Neighbor b. Love of the Order of the World c. Love of Religious Practices d. Friendship e. Implicit and Explicit Love / 99 4. Concerning the Our Father Part 2 - Letters Preface to her letters: Weil on Catholicism and Judaism 5. Hesitations Prior to Baptism / Jan 1942 - Fr. Perrin 6. Hesitations Prior to Baptism / 1942 - Fr. Perrin 7. Departure from France / Apl 1942 - Fr. Perrin 8. Spiritual Autobiography / May 1942 - Fr. Perrin 9. Intellectual Vocation / May 1942 - S. 10. Last Thoughts / May 1942 - Fr. Perrin 11. Letter to a Priest / Nov 1942 - Fr. Couturier

Simone Weil (1909–1943) is one of the most brilliant and unorthodox religious and philosophical minds of the twentieth century. She was also a political activist, worked in the Renault car factory in France in the 1930s and fought briefly as an anarchist in the Spanish Civil War, before her tragic early death in England at the age of thirty-four. Her work spans an astonishing variety of subjects, from ancient Greek philosophy and Christianity to oppression, political freedom and French national identity.

Intimations of Christianity Among the Ancient Greeks sees Weil apply her unique and piercing intellect to early Greek thought, where she finds fundamental precursors to Christian religious ideas. She argues, provocatively, that concepts fundamental to Christianity such as incarnation, redemption, suffering and resurrection are Greek as well as Christian and that there is much we can learn, spiritually and philosophically, from their entwinement.

This Routledge Classics edition includes a new Foreword by Christopher Hamilton.

Table of Contents

Foreword to the Routledge Classics Edition Christopher Hamilton

1.God's Quest for Man

2. The Laments of Electra and the Recognition of Orestes

3. Antigone

4. The Iliad, Poem of Might

5. Zeus and Prometheus

6. Prometheus

7. God in Plato

8. Divine Love in Creation

9. The Symposium of Plato

10. The Republic

11. The Pythagorean Doctrine

12. A Sketch of a History of Greek Science.

Index