Waiting for God

Product Details

• <a title='Condition Guide' href='/content/Condition_and_S hipping_Guide.htm' target='_blank'>Click here to notion our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices</a>
• Notes: Marque New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Condition: NEW
• ISBN13: 9780061718960

Description

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.

---

Simone Weil is an outsider's saint. The daughter of an agnostic French family of Jewish descent, Weil was never baptized ("God does not want me in the Church," she wrote), and her conversion to Christianity at the age of 23 took her by surprise. Until then, she had been a solemn, committed leftist intellectual. Now she was moving toward a life of divine encounters whose desolate ecstasy, as described by the journals, letters, and essays excerpted in Waiting for God, bear comparison to St. John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila. As Leslie Fiedler writes in her introduction to Weil's book, "She speaks of the problems of belief in the vocabulary of the unbeliever, of the doctrines of the Church in the words of the unchurched." The book is most notable for Weil's lengthy letter titled "Spiritual Autobiography" and for her "Meditation on the Pater Noster," which is the discursive record of a spiritual process that led to her almost daily attainment of a mystical vision of God. This is not pretty writing; it is an agonized record of amazement. --Michael Joseph Gross

---

Customer Reviews

wanted to read some lives of some famous christian saints but
wanted to read some lives of some famous christian saints but didnt really exactly more thumb thru but it just wasnt there too devotional could be now whats her name she was different not a saint saintly however out on the fringes never wanting to become part of any organized church firmly christian and yet It is not up to us to believe in God, but only to not grant our love to false gods things like that are way off the wall she said lots of things like this universe we live in, of which we are a part, is this distance put by divine Love between God and God odd the true definition of science is that it is the study of the beauty of the world dream on dreamer human wretchedness is irreducible it is as great in the totally sinless person as in the sinner which makes me wonder at what point afflictions cause us to reject all the things we thought we believed in hardly been there yet my continued confusion frustration loneliness dead ends am absolutely certain there is no God, in the sense that you are absolutely certain there is nothing real that resembles what you can conceive when you pronounce that name absolutely certain there is no Good, in the sense that you are absolutely certain there is nothing real that resembles what you can conceive when you pronounce that certain there is no Happiness, in the sense that you are absolutely certain there is nothing real that resembles what you can conceive when there is no Certainty, in the sense that an atheist may be simply one whose faith and love are concentrated on the impersonal aspects of God ringing in my ears does not want me in the Church ringing in my when a contradiction is impossible to resolve except by a lie, in my then we know that it is really a door my every perfect life is a parable invented by God ears

2009-07-10 (Here, Earth) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 5

---

Life changing
I guess when one is ready for certain changes in one's life God leads us to those things that will best facilitate that change. Simone Weil has been a catalyst for a major change in my life. Her writings have struck a responsive chord in my life. Although some of her writings are difficult for me to understand, the underlying message is powerful. I found myself relating to her desire to discover the love of God in her life. I appreciated her soul searching honesty is wanting that encounter to be completely without deception, pretense or even pride. She so wanted to guard against a false religious experience, or siimply a social religious experience. Her descriptions of what it is to truly love another are profound. Her life is a journey that I want to follow. I looked up the meaning of her name in the dictionary. It means "one who hears." Certainly, she is one who sought to hear the voice of God. I, too, want to hear the voice of God without deception or pride. I honor Simone as a true religious teacher for me.

2007-04-13 (Idaho, USA) | Helpful Votes: 5 | Rating: 5

---

a bit unorthodox, to say the least
I'm not sure what I expected, but it wasn't this. I was hoping to give this book to my brother-in-law, someone with a Catholic upbringing but a Marxist philosophy now- a bit of the reverse of Simone Weil. The theology in this book is so individual, however, as to make me uncertain that it could even be called Christian. In any case, I'm not sure it's a life-path that would inspire any other than a very select group. Because it is different, and because there probably are some people that it might speak to I give it 2 stars, but it wasn't for me.

2006-02-09 (Nashville, TN USA) | Helpful Votes: 7 | Rating: 2

---

by a modern saint
Simone Weil (1909-1943) was a remarkable saint of the modern era. After being raised in a Jewish middle class family and graduating from the finest schools, she went to work in the inner city as a blue-collar factory worker. She once complained to the supervisor about a coal drill: "This drill was designed to break rocks. It was not designed for human hands" while illustrating the vibrating effects with her arms. She reportedly debated Trotsky on the living conditions of the proletariat into the ground.

Weil died of physical and mental exhaustion at age 34 after an arduous life of fasting, writing, and working in solidarity with the most downtrodden of society. Besides her amazing solidarity with the working class, it is Weil's profound writings that have established her legacy. Contemporary Albert Camus called her "the only great spirit of our time." T.S. Eliot wrote in his forward to one of her books: "We must expose ourselves to the personality of a woman of genius, of a kind of genius akin to that of a saint." In his essay titled, "The Importance of Simone Weil," Czeslaw Milosz wrote, "France offered a rare gift to the contemporary world in the person of Simone Weil." Waiting for God (Harper Perennial, 2001) is the best introduction to her spiritual writings, and what follows are some highlights from that work.

The first few chapters consist of letters she wrote to her friend, Father Perrin. Though one gets a better sense of how she felt and struggled daily living out her ideas, it is her four essays in the latter half of the book that show the most profundity and coherence of thought. Every page, nearly every paragraph has such significance, one cannot finish reading an essay without being ravished through the direction of one who knew the spiritual life as deeply as she did.

When I first read the essay "Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God," I was having trouble picking up a case to read for law school. It seemed pointless especially since I had already decided to become a pastor rather than an attorney. But Weil showed me that "the key to a Christian conception of studies is the realization that prayer consists of attention." (p.58). She states, "Students must therefore work without any wish to gain good marks, to pass examinations, to win school successes; without any reference to their natural abilities and tastes; applying themselves equally to all their tasks, with the idea that each one will help form in them the habit of that attention which is the substance of prayer." (p.59) This explains why Weil mastered several languages including Sanskrit and a wide range of academic subjects: they helped her to pray more effectively. She exhorts, "Whoever goes through years of study without developing this attention within himself has lost a great treasure." (p.64)

In another application, Weil insightfully states that studying also helps one love his neighbor. She explains, "Those who are unhappy have no need for anything in this world but people capable of giving them their attention." (p.64) Hence studying helps enable the soul to "[empty] itself of all its contents in order to receive into itself the being it is looking at, just as he is, in all his truth." (p.65) The immeasurable help that studying can bring to others is captured in this thought: "The capacity to give one's attention to a sufferer is a very rare and difficult thing; it is almost a miracle; it is a miracle." (p.64)

In the next essay "The Love of God and Affliction," Weil writes:

"The great enigma of human life is not suffering but affliction. It is not surprising that the innocent are killed, tortured, driven from their country, made destitute . . .since there are criminals to perform such actions. It is not surprising either that disease is the cause of long sufferings, which paralyze life and make it into an image of death, since nature is at the mercy of the blind play of mechanical necessities. But it is surprising that God should have given affliction the power to seize the very souls of the innocent and to take possession of them as their sovereign lord. At the very best, he who is branded by affliction will keep only half his soul." (p.69)

Weil defines affliction as the experience of "physical pain, distress of soul, and social degradation, all at the same time." (p.81) She analogizes it to a nail that God uses to pierce the center of one's soul, to leave the person as it were crucified, where he or she can experience God most intimately as Job and Christ did in view of God's apparent absence.

But Weil warns that amidst affliction, if one does not strain to hear an absent God in silence, or feel the beauty of God in the world's absolute obedience to Him, then the person remains like a slave with half a soul. For "sin is not a distance," according to Weil, "it is a turning of our gaze in the wrong direction." (p.73) In other words, losing hope is a greater sin than acknowledging one's feelings of abandonment by God. She elaborates that just as two strangers may be near but not together and two friends may be apart but still near, "God can never be perfectly present to us here below on account of our flesh. But he can be almost perfectly absent from us in extreme affliction. . . . That is why the Cross is our only hope." (p.75)

In her essay "Forms of the Implicit Love of God," Weil comments on four loves: of neighbor, the order of the world, religious practices, and friendship. Regarding love for our neighbor, she profoundly states, "The Gospel makes no distinction between the love of our neighbor and justice." (p.85) She explains that "the supernatural virtue of justice consists of behaving exactly as though there were equality when one is the stronger in an unequal relationship." (p.85) Thus a believer cannot show love to his poor neighbor if he assumes that he is reaching down or doing the impoverished person a favor.

Instead a believer must seek to reaffirm the dignity of this person made in God's image before seeking to help him. (p.88) Weil comments that "[i]t is not surprising that a man who has bread should give a piece to someone who is starving. What is surprising is that he should be capable of doing so with so different a gesture from that with which we buy an object. Almsgiving when it is not supernatural is like a sort of purchase. It buys the sufferer." (p.91) The beauty of the inseparability of justice and love is that it creates solidarity between rich and poor, and allows the coexistence of generosity and respect. In this way of "creative attention" we become God-like. Weil elaborates:

"God alone has this power, the power really to think into being that which does not exist. Only God, present in us, can really think the human quality into the victims of affliction, can really look at them with a look differing from that we give to things, can listen to their voice as we listen to spoken words. Then they become aware that they have a voice, otherwise they would not have occasion to notice it. . . . God is present at the point where the eyes of those who give and those who receive meet." (p.93-4)

Regarding love of the order of the world, Weil writes, "[T]he soul's natural inclination to love beauty is the trap God most frequently uses in order to win it and open it to the breath from on high." (p.103). She describes the beauty of the world as "Christ's tender smile for us coming through matter." (p.104) Weil however laments that too many treat the dim reflections of God's beauty on earth as the final and only reality (as manifested in luxury, art, science). (p.106-8) This locating the absolute in pleasure is the "crime of idolatry." (p.111)

On the love of religious practices, the thought most associated with Weil's contribution to spirituality is that "one of the principal truths of Christianity, a truth that goes almost unrecognized today, is that looking is what saves us." (p.125) She offers the illustration: "The bronze serpent was lifted up so that those who lay maimed in the depths of degradation should be saved by looking upon it." (p.125) Weil is adamant that "the will cannot produce any good in the soul." (p.126) She writes:

"That we have to strive after goodness with an effort of our will is one of the lies invented by the mediocre part of ourselves in its fear of being destroyed. Such an effort does not threaten it in any way . . . not even when it entails a great deal of fatigue and suffering. For the mediocre part of ourselves is not afraid of fatigue and suffering; it is afraid of being killed." (p.127)

To the contrary, Weil emphasizes that "the effort that brings a soul to salvation is like the effort of looking or of listening; it is the kind of effort by which a fiancée accepts her lover. It is an act of attention and consent." (p.126) In other words, "[t]he crucifixion of Christ is the model of all acts of obedience." (p.126) Thus, Weil exhorts, "it is at those moments when we are, as we say, in a bad mood, when we feel incapable of the elevation of soul that befits holy things, it is then that it is most effectual to turn our eyes toward perfect purity. For it is then that evil, or rather mediocrity, comes to the surface of the soul and is in the best position for being burned by contact with the fire." (p.125)

She distinguishes between morality, which depends on the will, and religion, which consists of desire, and concludes, "It is desire that saves" and again "to long for God and to renounce all the rest, that alone can save us." (p.127-8) Acknowledging the counterintuitive nature of true sanctification that is contrary to the commonly held view of it being a matter of sheer strenuous will power, Weil nevertheless exclaims: "There is an easiness in salvation which is more difficult to us than all our efforts" and "this waiting for goodness and truth is . . . something more intense than any searching." (p.127-8) She perceptively observes that "the notion of grace, as opposed to virtue depending on the will, and that of inspiration, as opposed to intellectual or artistic work, these two notions, if they are well understood, show the efficacy of desire and waiting." (p.129)

Weil's comments on friendship are brief, so I will be brief. She defines it as "a supernatural harmony, a union of opposites." (p.132) She explains, "In all human things, necessity is the principle of impurity. All friendship is impure if even a trace of the wish to please or the contrary desire to dominate is found in it." (p.135) Thus "in a perfect friendship . . .the two friends have fully consented to be two and not one, they respect the distance which the fact of being two distinct creatures places between them. Man has the right to desire direct union with God alone." (p.135)

She concludes her essay on the four loves with a few more precious insights only one of which I'll mention. She encourages people to cherish the certainty of one's hunger for God as invaluable even if one is uncertain of His presence. For the greatest argument for the existence of God, as with bread or water, is hunger and thirst. (p.138)

In her essay "Concerning the Our Father," Weil explicates the Lord's Prayer sentence by sentence. His prayer had special meaning for her because through it, she once wrote in her diary, Christ daily "descended and took her." I leave it to the reader to discover its riches.

2005-05-10 (Princeton, NJ United States) | Helpful Votes: 42 | Rating: 5

---

WAITING FOR GOD
I first tried to read this book decades ago, but could not get far with it. Then I read Iris Murdoch's, Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals, in which IM refers to Simone Weil and her philosophy. That took me back to SW, and now I find myself re-reading parts several times. For example, read what she says about carnal love and its several levels, from the purest to debauchery. Simone Weil answers the question that so many ask: Why do we? Simone Weil has one of the most penetrating minds one can meet, and her writings are a result.

2003-03-05 | Helpful Votes: 7 | Rating: 5

---

Simone Weil: An Anthology

Product Details

• Notes: Stamp New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• ISBN13: 9780802137296
• Inure: NEW

Description

Philosopher, theologian, critic, sociologist, political activist -- Simone Weil was among the foremost thinkers of our time. Best known in this country for her theological writing, Weil wrote on a great variety of subjects ranging from classical philosophy and poetry, to modern labor, to the language of political discourse. The present anthology offers a generous collection of her work, including essays never before translated into English and many that have long been out of print. It amply confirms Elizabeth Hardwick's words that Simone Weil was "one of the most brilliant and original minds of twentieth-century France" and "a woman of transcendent intellectual gifts and the widest learning." A longtime Weil scholar, Sian Miles has selected essays representative of the wide sweep of Weil's work and provides a superb introduction that places Weil's work in context of her life and times.

---

Customer Reviews

A synopsis of Weil's thought
First a clarification: I am neither Christian nor particularly religious. Thus my opinions on Weil's writings are from a secular viewpoint. Moreover, like any truly great religious writing, Weil's writings should be read by everybody regardless of their religious affiliations, even if they are atheists.

This book contains a collection of essays by Weil and some excerpts from her book Gravity and Grace. To many people, Weil's writing style can be opaque and infuriating. I believe it was Auden who said that Weil does not attempt to persuade through her writing ---instead she uses her brilliant aphoristic style to make assertions. In their own way, her aphorisms and insights make her case far better than any reasoned argument.

The best essay in this collection is "The Iliad, or the Poem of Force". The key contention of the essay is that the main theme of Iliad is the degradation of humanity through the brute power of physical force. Achilles is the person through which the effect of physical force is manifested most clearly. Faced with the rage of Achilles, the Trojans are no more than timid subhuman beasts in front of a lion who slaughters them with no mercy. But the same awesome force degrades Achilles to a cruel beast ---by treating others inhmanely, he himself loses his human qualities of mercy and civilization until they are roused by the visit from Priam.

The other essays in the collection are good, but do not come close to the power of the essay on Iliad. Overall this book is a good introduction to the writings of Simone Weil. To the readers of this book, I would recommend "Gravity and Grace" which is the best of her books.

2006-07-06 | Helpful Votes: 15 | Rating: 4

---

War and the Iliad

Product Details

• Ready: NEW
• ISBN13: 9781590171455
• Notes: Mark New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.

Description

Simone Weil's essay on Homer is one of the uncompromising mystic moralist's most famous and powerful works — a reading of Homer which is also a nightmare vision of war as a machine in which all humanity is lost. Since it first appeared in 1939, it has served as a manifesto of pacifism. Rachel Bespaloff's recently rediscovered essay on Homer was written in the midst of World War II, partly in response to Weil. Bespaloff's account of Homer beautifully illuminates the complexities of his characters, with a focus on the existential drama of choice and a difficult awareness that at times, war is the only option. Bespaloff's essay is here presented for the first time together with Weil's, as it was originally meant to be. These two works offer a provocative demonstration of the link between great literature, philosophy, and human life and death.

---

Customer Reviews

Sublime Masterpiece - Not the best translation
Simone Weil was one of the transcendent geniuses of our time. The archetypal intellectual/activist - the clarity of her insight and the depth and weight of her oeuvre is remarkable, incredible for anyone - no less someone in their twenties and early thirties. A brilliant comet of a being, intensely engaged in the vortex of social change, yet seen by her contemporaries only from a distance - she died at a mere 34!
Weil mastered Ancient Greek in her teens and used to correspond with her brother in Attic script. She even contemplated a translation of the Iliad, which she believed to be "the purest mirror of the human condition". Her writings on Greek thought, luminous, eloquent, and profound are collected in a svelte volume, 'Intimations of Christianity Among the Ancient Greeks' Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1957. Wonderful as it is to have these works in English in one volume - the best translation of her noted masterpiece, 'The Iliad, the Poem of Force' is not to be found here - nor is it to be found in NYRB's reissue of the original English translation by Mary McCarthy. The translation which, to my ear, really captures the honed edge of Weil's prose is Holoka's 'The Iliad or the Poem of Force: A Critical Edition'. New York and Frankfort on Main, Peter Lang, 2003.

Compare the rendering of famous first lines of the 26 page essay:

McCarthy: "The true hero, the true subject matter, the center of the Iliad is force. Force employed by man, force that enslaves man, force before which man's flesh shrinks away".

Holoka: "The true hero, the true subject matter, the center of the Iliad is force. The force that men wield, the force that subdues men, in the face of which human flesh shrinks back".

2007-10-23 (Allan Hancock College) | Helpful Votes: 8 | Rating: 4

---

The Hedgehog and the Fox
Mary McCarthy translated both of these great essays on the ILIAD written during the Occupation by two of France's leading intellectuals with the intention of publishing them both together, but entanglements with the estate of Simone Weil made this impossible until now. The great Greek literary works about warfare and civilization were much on the minds of French intellectuals during World War II, and these two essays are among the most remarkable fruits of that thematic obsession.

Homer's literary inheritor, the seventh-century BCE poet Archilochus, wrote, "The fox knows many tricks, the hedgehog only one, but it is a good one." The great twentieth-century philosopher Isaiah Berlin thus grouped the preeminent figures of Western culture into the categories of "foxes" and "hedgehogs." In her essay here, Weil shows herself to be a hedgehog, pursuing one theme relentlessly and obsessively but exceptionally persuasively. In pursuit of her argument that the ILIAD is a poem about force she herself reenacts such violence upon the characters, stripping the characters of their names (such that Andromache becomes "the wife," Priam "the suppliant") in order to make her point that they are de-humanized by the processes of war. Even with this in mind, hopwever, it would be hard to think of a more encompassing or poignant reading of the poem, though Rachel Bespaloff, who apparently read Weil's piece while writing her own study of the ILIAD and altered her argument to accommodate Weil's, may well out-do her. Bespaloff is intellectually a fox, pursuing many ideas and themes with real grace and with Weil's very historically and culturally broad sense of scope; her argument is absolutely remarkable, and shows that, like Weil, she has a strong command of the poem's ethical problems as well as of its richness. As icing on the cake, NYRB also appends the novelist Hermann Broch's own fine essay on Bespaloff's piece. Anyone who has read the ILIAD carefully will find much meat here, even sixty years after the original essays were written.

2007-04-14 (Portland, OR) | Helpful Votes: 8 | Rating: 5

---

Historic Rescue from the Sands of Time
Besides being thankful to the New York Review of Books for publishing some of the most intelligent and expansive literary criticism around, we can now be grateful for one more gift from the series of New York Review Classics. This one, two essays ostensibly on the Iliad by Simone Weil and Rachel Bespaloff, attains the very special pantheon of a glorious literary event.

Both pieces were written by women who were Jewish intellectuals forced to flee France on the cusp of the Second World War and were composed in that climate of national upheaval. In writing about the greatest war epic in Western literature, they were able-each in her own way-to cast a reflection on her own time and the devasting changes that the threat of war was effecting. Needless to say, this creates an urgency and immediacy to their writing that goes beyond the literary. These are not aloof reflections on an ancient relic but the purest example of writing on life and death as a matter of life and death.

The publishing of the the pairing of these two pieces is an act of heroic recovery, the best example of why writing matters.

2005-03-26 | charlus (New York, NY USA) | Helpful Votes: 37 | Rating: 5

---

The Need for Roots: Prelude to a Declaration of Duties Towards Mankind (Routledge Classics)

Description

In this, her most famous book, Weil reflects on the importance of religious and political social structures in the life of the individual.

---

Customer Reviews

The soul's needs are many
Unlike Whitman, who celebrated contradictions and made these explode like fireworks, Simone Weil tries to explain and fabricate a system out of the soul's contradictory "needs," (as distinct from wants), not as a form of celebration, but perhaps more in an attempt to provide calm. (We should probably remember that the author suffered from migraines.) Although the contradictions are many, and the reality of the described needs not always obvious, set forth by Weil these assume a tranquility that can only come from scientific precision and a truth that must be absolute. Here is the list: Order, Liberty, Obedience, Responsibility, Equality, Hierarchism, Honor, Punishment, Freedom of Opinion, Security, Risk, Private Property, Collective Property, and Truth. For additional detail on each, see inside.

2009-02-13 (New York, New York) | Helpful Votes: 3 | Rating: 5

---

Simone Weil: A Modern Pilgrimage (Skylight Lives)

Description

The French writer and philosopher Simone Weil (1906-1943) devoted her life to a search for God--while avoiding membership in organized religion. She had a startling intellect, the social conscience of a grass-roots labor organizer, and the certainty and humility of a mystic. And she persistently carried out her spiritual search in the company of the poor and oppressed.

Robert Coles's intriguing study of Weil--who has been called both saint and madwoman--details her short, eventful life, showing why she had a profound spiritual influence on so many others, among them T. S. Eliot, Flannery O'Connor, Adrienne Rich, and Albert Camus. This most accessible introduction, now updated with a new foreword by the author, shows us why this extraordinary life continues to inspire seekers everywhere.

---

Customer Reviews

Explains Weil's Roots
This is an essential Weil book for the beginner. It's always useful to understand a philosopher's roots, and this book does not disappoint. Afterward I had much more appreciation for Weil's brilliance as well as her mental dysfunction. I came away with the sense that she was an unfinished work; that her philosophy up until her death was not yet mature. What insights she might have more completely developed had she lived! Re-reading her words now, I have a good sense of perspective on what influenced her thoughts and decisions.

2003-05-14 (Southeast Florida) | Helpful Votes: 8 | Rating: 4

---

Gravity and Grace (Routledge Classics)

Description

Gravity and Grace was the first ever publication by the remarkable thinker and activist, Simone Weil. In it Gustave Thibon, the priest to whom she had entrusted her notebooks before her untimely death, compiled in one remarkable volume a compendium of her writings that have become a source of spiritual guidance and wisdom for countless individuals.

---

Customer Reviews

Quintessence of a Spiritual Genius
GRAVITY AND GRACE by Simone Weil. With an Introduction by Gustave Thibon. Translated from the French by Emma Craufurd. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972 (1952) ISBN 071002262X.

'Gravity and Grace' is a slim book of (in my edition) just 160 pages which holds within itself the quintessence of the greatest spiritual genius of the 20th century. The book is a compilation of brief extracts from Simone Weil's Notebooks and was assembled by Gustav Thibon, who has also added a valuable Introduction of 30 pages, the purpose of which is simply to provide readers with some necessary background, for, as he points out, "Simone Weil's writings belong to the category of very great work which can only be weakened and spoilt by a commentary."

M.Thibon has organized these sayings into 38 chapters - Detachment, The Self, Illusions, Idolatry, Love, Evil, Violence, Contradiction, Chance, Beauty, The Great Beast, etc. (The original French edition - LA PESANTEUR ET LA GRACE (Paris: Plon, 1947) - contained an additional chapter on Israel (pp.216-221) which the English publishers, for reasons best known to themselves, have silently omitted from the 1952 English edition. Whether it has since been restored I don't know).

I purchased my own copy of this book (bibliographical details of which are given above) over thirty years ago. Although many hundreds if not thousands of books have passed through my hands since then, it remains one of five or six books I would never ever consider parting with. Simone Weil's thoughts are so truthful and of such power that one never forgets them and her book becomes one that you find yourself returning to again and again. Here are a few of those thoughts selected at random:

"We cannot under any circumstances manufacture something which is better than ourselves" (p.41).

"The only organ of contact with existence is acceptance, love" (p.57).

"Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvellous, intoxicating" (p.62).

"Joy is the overflowing consciousness of reality" (p.73).

'Gravity and Grace' brings us the truth about the human condition, the truth about ourselves, and much of this truth is far from comforting. As M. Thibon points out, "It is not a question of philosophy here but of life," the life that all of us are at this moment living and that Simone Weil can help us more fully appreciate and understand. Her thoughts weave themselves into the fabric of one's mind and will leave any sensitive reader immeasurably enriched.

2007-03-01 | tepi | Helpful Votes: 15 | Rating: 5

---

A startlingly authentic spirituality that doesn't shy away from suffering
I admit that since I am a student of analytic philosophy the axiomatic format made it difficult to follow the author at times. It is just not the kind of writing to which I am accustom. If you like writtings which take a thoroughly explicit and systematic approach to religious questions this book is probably not for you. Still, I think it is impossible to read this book without being moved by the power the author's holiness. I found many of these sayings profoundly beautiful (I am especially enamored with the section on love) and some unsettling but always deeply moving. I believe this is one of those rare books which can change a person's life.

2005-08-29 | religion and philosophy nerd | Helpful Votes: 14 | Rating: 5

---

The struggles of a Russian Jew
This is a case of Dialectic Materialism approached through a Nietzsche perspective, a woman as an idealist scholar with an extraordinary Jewish background whose brother suffers the loss of his life at the hands of Nazis! Simone Petrement, Simone Weil's biographer and classmate [Ecole Normale et al], clearly presents the defeating struggles with which Ms. Weil must but stealthily reveal! To say she deplored her Jewish background would be to deny her devotion to her parents which could not completely be. Her struggle is not her with Jewism itself but with the affliction of her father, Dr. Bernard Weil (1872-1955) and her mother, the daughter of Mme. Reinherz. Try the perils of the afflicted Russian Jew who no longer finds palatable the mere potatoes which she herself chose. She subtly [quietly]pleaded for her parents' assistance and then rejected their offers through her inner anxiety, a struggle to preserve Humanity amongst those who spoke Omniscient Salvation in other languages but offered moral support to Russian Jews who didn't appreciate the blasphemy of stating "Jesus Christ" over and over again! Thus is the subtle and controversial attitude.

2000-10-02 (Van Nuys, California United States) | Helpful Votes: 6 | Rating: 5

---

They called her the Red Virgin
Simone Weil's writings were impenetrable for me in the fifties. Now I have most of her works and I am frequently amazed at how penetrating are her ideas and thoughts, and how contrary to most thinking today. That in itself recommends her. She understands people, life, and suffering, and sees its purpose. She sees through all falseness to the goodness. Simone Weil is the most honest person I know or have heard of. Yet while her classmate, Simone de Beauvoir is famous Simone Weil is relatively unknown. She loves Plato, Buddhism, Geometry, Jesus, working people, her homeland, France, but she rejected the Catholic Church, baptism, and Judaism (her background). She is a saint if there ever was one. I am profoundly grateful for having known something of her, her diamond mind, and her beautiful soul.

1999-09-28 | Helpful Votes: 69 | Rating: 5

---

Mind-blowing aphorisms...
This young lady's writings and personal story blow away most other 20th Century thinkers. These are mainly short blasts. Provocative. Accessible. Yet push you further than you've likely been. Lots of ancient Christian desert hermit influence (St. Theresa, St. John of the Cross, Philokalia) on this revolutionary, radical mind. Timeless. Challenging. Simple. Confounds modernism.

1998-09-01 | Helpful Votes: 37 | Rating: 5

---