Action, transcendance, incarnation. Pour une lecture unifiée de la pensée politique de S. Weil

In contrast to the readings that oppose a first \u27revolutionary\u27 Simone Weil to a second \u27conservative\u27 Simone Weil, this article supports the thesis of a profound continuity and coherence in Weil\u27s political thought, parallel to the overall unity of her philosophy. Just as there is no opposition between her political thought of the early and the late 1930s, there is no opposition between her \u27mystical\u27 philosophy from the period in Marseille and her "political" philosophy from the period in London.  However, this does not abolish the distance that must be maintained between religion, mysticism and politics, because the "synthesis" of these levels is not historical-political, but eschatological. Ultimately, we show that Weilian thought supports both the dual necessity and the mutual insufficiency of mysticism and politics, which enables it to escape both totalitarian idolatry and the mysticism of a pure afterlife. If she ignores the opposition so common in modern thought between "Amor Dei" and "Amor Mundi", it is because she wishes to comply with the dual Platonic and Christian injunction to bring the Good down into necessity without confusing both, thus making political action the criterion of truth of political thought

Une tout autre forme d’authenticité. Travail du désir et anthropologie de la médiation chez Simone Weil

The aim of this article is to examine the actuality of Simone Weil\u27s concept of the impersonal, as expressed in La personne et le sacré. To this end, I address the theme of authenticity by proposing two alternative models. According to the first model, "being oneself" corresponds to the immediate self-expression. Weil\u27s critique of the "person\u27s right to self-fulfillment", on the other hand, gives rise to an anthropology of mediation, which constitutes a second model centered on the notion of work. Hence, my original contribution consists in the argumentation of the thesis that in Weil\u27s oeuvre the access to the self is structured in concordance to a "work of desire", which constitutes the human being\u27s essence. Taking up the various allusions to the "desire for the good", scattered throughout the Weilian corpus, the article unveils what this affective work, that transforms the subject, consists of, and emphasizes the importance of the experience of the transcendent Good as a condition for a free interpretation of the value of the desired goods

On the Utopia of The End of Alienation. Hannah Arendt (Mis)reading Simone Weil ̶ and Karl Marx

  The starting point of this paper is Hannah Arendt\u27s positive comment on Simone Weil\u27s La condition ouvrière, in The Human Condition. I first offer a brief reconstruction of Arendt\u27s interpretation of Marx\u27s analysis of labor which is the context in which the above-mentioned comment appears. This interpretation is based, I claim, on a (mis)reading which consists in a rather systematic blurring of the distinction between labor as a universal and irreducible human activity and labor in its historically determined capitalist form, which is the object of Marx\u27s critique, i.e., alienated labor. Following that, I discuss Weil\u27s construal of labor and I shed light on its affinities with the Marxian problematic. My aim is to show that Arendt\u27s comment does not do justice to the problems that Weil addresses both with and beyond Marx

L\u27ennui ouvrier dans la pensée de Simone Weil. Cohérence du matériel et du spirituel

This paper focuses on one aspect of Weil\u27s philosophy of labor, which has not been studied until now: the problem of boredom. In a 1938 article, she defines boredom as the main source of suffering for factory-workers. But shouldn\u27t boredom rather occur during leisure-time, when one has nothing to do? In fact, factory work can lead to boredom, despite its frenetic rhythm and the deep concentration it implies. According Weil, boredom in factory has two main causes: monotony, and the fact that, while working, the workers lose the control over their own time. This correlation of boredom with certain conditions of work is nowadays still relevant, and it concerns modern life not only in the working sphere. It implies a critical approach to the conditions of production in the capitalist era. But it also helps to describe the paradoxical state in which, while being active, one suffers from weariness. At last, it shows the relevance of an exploration of the various aspects of modern alienation through the problematic of time. The interest in the problem of boredom therefore allows to explore two complementary sides of Weil\u27s thought: materialism and religious inspiration

Literature at the service of truth: Simone Weil and \u27L’Enracinement\u27

The purpose of this article is to elaborate the many literary allusions that Simone Weil used in her ultimate work: L\u27 Enracinement, translated as The Need for Roots, to achieve her goal of encouraging her fellow countrymen to create a new postwar society. Understanding how she used the riches of the French and Western Literary Cannon, less easily grasped by those not educated in the French Education system, enriches the understanding of Weil\u27s purpose and skill in writing on many levels, simultaneously for different target audiences. Underlying her stress on the need for truth and honesty about a county\u27s past and present, with discernable respect for every person, is her foundational belief in the spiritual destiny of every human being. Examining her literary allusions in detail to show her clever subversion of traditionally accepted interpretations brings a new dimension to Simone Weil studies, while underlining the relevance of this essay to contemporary dilemmas

Simone Weil and the dangerous Myths of Science and Technology

  In this article I aim to clarify the role of science and technology in Weil\u27s account of the formation and maintenance of the bureaucratic state as a totalitarian form of State, which allows to identify the similarities between capitalist, fascist and communist regimes. In the first section I characterize Weil\u27s conception of modernity. Having The Need for Roots as my main reference, first, I reconstruct Weil\u27s conceptualization of human nature, after I explore the meanings and signs of uprootedness and Weil\u27s critique of Marxism. In the second section, I analyze the relationship between Revolution, Totalitarianism and the invention of the bureaucratic State. I retake Weil\u27s critique of Marx and the Marxists arguing that science and technology must be subjected to a new criticism today, for they have been reduced to mere means of a totalitarian logic, which ultimately reinforces social oppression. I conclude by rescuing Weil\u27s defense of the fundamental value of individual freedom and of thought, for our humanity lies in it

Like a Fly against a Pane of Glass: Simone Weil in the Context of Contemporary Theories of Suffering

The last five years have seen a welcome rise in philosophical research on suffering. In this paper I will introduce the main new proposals and point out their respective weak-nesses. All accounts focus on an important aspect of suffering, but each one is too nar-row. I will sketch an account of suffering as being forced to endure the unendurable, based on Simone Weil\u27s writings. I will argue that not only does this account manage to encompass the important aspects of suffering emphasised by current research, but that it much more plausibly brings out the ethical dangers, such as seeking consolations in fabricated narratives of meaning, and the value of suffering, such as enabling the mind to make unfiltered contact with reality

Simone Weils frühes Verständnis des Totalitarismus als existenzielle Bedrohung

Coming from anarchist circles and revolutionary-syndicalist trade unions, Simone Weil initially saw herself as a Marxist and an anarchist, before increasingly becoming their early and extremely pointed critic. From 1933 on, she distanced herself more and more from the syndicalist movement in terms of content, and at the same time she was increasingly skeptical of its politics. She saw in the syndicalists, socialists, and communists no more accurate knowledge of society than in the conservatives or fascists. Moreover, she came to realize that they did not have the necessary means of action to carry out a revolution. In the assertion of the "historical mission of the working class," she saw a phrase that served the functionaries but only further humiliated and betrayed the working class. In this respect, even Marxism was for Weil still the intellectual expression of the bourgeoisie, because even a change in property relations would not have eliminated the oppression of the working class. Until the end of her life, she held that instead a radical change in labor relations was necessary to end the oppression of the working class and its social misery. The article attempts to situate Simone Weil\u27s early disillusionment with syndicalism, socialism, Marxism and Stalinism, as well as her recognition of what was widely labelled totalitarianism in Western societies at the latest after the Second World War, in her writings

Geography of Boredom. On Bogomil Raynov\u27s Travelling in Everyday Life

Thе aim of the paper is to present the problem of boredom in Bogomil Raynov’s fourth book Travelling in Everyday Life (1945). The interpretation of boredom in the novel is seen as based on the idea of a mismatch between expectation and experience. The expectation of the individual turns out to be modeled by the mass commercialization of the 20th century. The "cultural industry" replaces the sublime ideas of the romantic poetics with superfluous clichés, which deny the world its unpredictability, its unexpectedness. It is these kinds of clichés that are subject of irony in Bogomil Raynov\u27s novel – false expectations create a false feeling of boredom. Boredom as a problem has been rarely discussed either by Bulgarian authors, or by Bulgarian literary historians, therefore this paper tries not only to focus scholars’ attention on it, but also to interprete it

The Hermeneutics of Tradition: Political Implications of a Philosophical Legacy

The interrogation of the problematic character of established traditions has become an increasingly dominant feature of contemporary political and social discourse. Gadamer\u27s discussion of tradition takes on an often-unacknowledged utility in light of these discussions by both observing the subtle ways in which tradition persists even in times of social change while also placing an emphasis on the volitional (hence, risky and contingent) character of engagements with tradition. Gadamer\u27s approach allows for a fidelity to tradition that nonetheless allows for a critical, emancipatory engagement with it, a precursor to the more explicitly political projects of hermeneutic thinkers such as Luigi Pareyson and Gianni Vattimo. This hermeneutic lineage offers our modern age a chance to embrace a new and more authentic relationship with the traditions in which we always-already find ourselves situated by giving us the opportunity to make those traditions speak to the challenges of our tumultuous present