Simone Weil

This article deals with the philosopher. Not to be confused with the politician Simone Veil .

Simone Weil

Simone Adolphine Weil [ ˌsiˈmɔn ˌadɔlˈfin ˈvɛj ] (born February 3, 1909 in Paris , † August 24, 1943 in Ashford , England ) was a French philosopher , lecturer and teacher and social revolutionary of Jewish descent. She was politically and socially strongly committed and combined action and contemplation . Her brother was the mathematician André Weil .

At first she was an agnostic trade unionist and at the same time a critic of Marxism . She later developed into a well-known mystic . She never gave up the unity of politics and religion . She saw life as a search for the absolute . Her thinking was shaped by Christian mysticism as well as by Platonic and Buddhist views, as well as by the Jewish tradition, which she did not admit to. The idea of ​​“décréation” goes back to them, the “total self-emptying of man before God”.

Live and act

Childhood and studies

On her father's lap

Simone Weil grew up in an upper-class Jewish family in Paris. Her father, the internist Bernard Weil, originally came from a family of merchants in Strasbourg , Alsace , but his family had moved to Paris after the Franco-Prussian War in 1871. Her mother, Salome (Selma) geb. Reinherz, was born in Rostov-on-Don . Her family emigrated to Antwerp in 1882 after the pogroms in Russia . Both parents were of Galician origin. Selma's father, a successful businessman, was highly educated and wrote Hebrew poetry. Selma's mother, who lived with the Weils, was a gifted pianist.

At a coffee house table

Simone's three years older brother André , with whom she had a close relationship, became a famous mathematician. Simone Weil was distinguished by her linguistic talent, but also by individual will and stubbornness. At the age of four she could already read, and soon she was reciting long poems. She was emotionally and physically hypersensitive, often ill and had trouble eating and falling asleep. Her mother had bottle-fed her until mid-childhood when Simone Weil refused to eat. Despite the First World War and the associated change of residence, her youth was characterized by family security, warmth and tenderness.

From October 1917 to January 1919 she lived in Laval (Mayenne) , where her father was a military doctor. 1924–1925 she took the philosophy course René Le Sennes at the Lycée Victor Duruy and received in June 1925 at the age of 16 the baccalauréat de philosophie. After graduating from high school, she moved to the Lycée Henri IV . There she was a student of Émile Chartier , called Alain, who shaped her through his moral and religious philosophy . She studied the great philosophers, especially Plato , Spinoza , Descartes , Kant and Marx , and began to write her own treatises. It was then that she began to grapple with the terms work , time and justice , which she continued into the last phase of her life. For them, philosophy and political theory were connected with the reality of social problems. She also gained her own teaching experience.

Study location École normal supérieure in Paris, inner courtyard

In 1926 she passed the Certificats in “Morals and Sociology” as well as in Psychology and in March 1927 in the History of Philosophy . In the certificate in “General Philosophy and Logic” she came off as best. She studied from 1928 at the elite university Ecole Normale Supérieure (ENS) in Paris philosophy, but attended more seminars of Emile Chartier. She completed her studies in 1931 with Léon Brunschvicg . Her idiosyncratic thesis Science et perception dans Descartes (Science and Perception in Descartes) was rated "sufficient" by Léon Brunschvicg. Simone de Beauvoir remembered an encounter while studying:

“China had been ravaged by a great famine and I had been told that when this news was announced she broke into sobs: those tears made me respect her even more than her gift in philosophy. I envied her a heart that could beat for the whole world. One day I managed to make their acquaintance. I don't know how we got talking back then; she said in a cutting tone that one thing counted on earth today: a revolution that would feed all people. In a no less peremptorical way, however, I objected that the problem is not to make people happy, but to find meaning for their existence. She looked at me steadily: 'You can see that you have never been hungry,' she said. With that, our relationship was over again. I understood that she had put me under the heading of 'intellectually ambitious little bourgeoisie'. "

Political activist

In 1931 Simone Weil became a philosophy teacher at what was then the girls' high school in Le Puy , where the Lycée is named after her today. She shared half of her salary with the unemployed. In Le Puy she was criticized for her teaching methods and her political commitment to the unemployed industrial and agricultural workers. Sometimes she took part in front row demonstrations. In the local press it was referred to as “la juive Weil” and “vierge rouge”. She was repeatedly questioned by the police and received threatening anonymous letters.

She spent the summer and autumn of 1932 in Berlin to get an idea of ​​the political situation for herself and to convey this through media. She predicted the victory of National Socialism, although her analyzes neglect ideological and sociological elements. In Berlin she met Leo Sedov and took a suitcase with secret documents to Paris. After returning from Germany, she was transferred to Auxerre in autumn 1932 and to Roanne in October 1933 . From 1932 she was in contact with Boris Souvarine , who reinforced her critical stance towards Soviet communism . She published several articles in his newspaper La Critique Sociale .

In December 1933, despite considerable differences of opinion , she arranged for Leon Trotsky to stay in his parents' house in Paris across from the Jardin du Luxembourg and used this opportunity for a personal discussion. Trotsky described her as “completely reactionary”, having a “legal, logical, idealistic spirit”. In response to her allegations about his behavior towards the Kronstadt sailors , he replied: “If you think so, why are you taking us in? Are you from the Salvation Army ? "

At the end of the semester in June 1934, Simone Weil applied for a year free of classes. From December 1934 she worked as an unskilled factory worker to get to know the living conditions of the workers. In the Alsthom electrical factory in Paris, she worked on the press, on the rocker arm and then on the furnace. The chord conditions were physically demanding, she had to endure deafening noise. In addition, as she had since she was twenty, she continued to suffer from severe headaches and an otitis media . In early April 1935 she injured her hand and became unemployed. Ten days later she was employed by the Carnaud metal works in the Boulogne-Billancourt district . Just one month later, she was given notice without notice. After further unemployment, lack of money and hunger, she found a job at Renault .

In the summer of 1935 she traveled to Spain and Portugal with her parents and was touched by the religiosity of the poor fishermen in Póvoa de Varzim . The Portuguese fado left an indelible mark on her: she came to the conclusion that Christianity was the religion of slaves.

In the Spanish Civil War

Used in the Spanish Civil War

During the Spanish Civil War , she supported the republicans on the side of the international militia officers of the POUM in the "Column Durruti " in a brief mission from August 8 to September 25, 1936 as a miliciana . It turned out to be unsuitable for handling a rifle. It was therefore used in the kitchen. There she accidentally stepped into a bowl of boiling oil due to her nearsightedness , whereupon she was taken to the hospital. Although her conscience was burdened by the rampant violence and she was sobered by the anarcho-syndicalism, she wanted to stay in Spain, but allowed her parents to persuade her to return to France.

“A human life is nothing in Spain. In a country where the vast majority of the poor are peasants, the betterment of the peasants must be an essential goal for any group on the extreme left; and the civil war was perhaps initially mainly a war for (and against) the division of the land to the peasants. What happened? Those anemic, great peasants of Aragon, who had kept their pride amid all the humiliations, were not even an object of curiosity to the city militiamen. Without assaults, insolence or insults - at least I did not notice any of this, and I know that robbery and rape were punishable by the death penalty in the columns of anarchists - an abyss separated the soldiers from the unarmed population, an abyss, which was just as deep as that between poor and rich "

- Simone Weil

Many members of the international group to which Simone belonged were killed a short time later on October 17, 1936 near Perdiguera .

Religious experiences

The basilica in Santa Maria degli Angeli in Assisi, in whose portiuncula chapel Simone Weil had one of the spiritual encounters that led her to Christianity

Benedictine Abbey of Saint-Pierre de Solesmes , where she had another mystical experience

From 1936, religious questions came to the fore for Simone Weil, although she had previously been agnostic. In spring 1937 she traveled to Italy for the first time and attended the Whitsun Mass in St. Peter's Basilica . She was impressed by the beauty of the art and landscape of Italy. From Umbria she wrote to her parents:

“I would never have dreamed of such a landscape, such a magnificent species of people and such impressive churches. [...] When I was alone there in the small Romanesque chapel from the twelfth century, Santa Maria degli Angeli , that incomparable miracle of purity, where St. Francis prayed so often, something forced me that was stronger than myself, on my knees for the first time in my life. "

- Simone Weil : Letter to the parents

During a service in the Benedictine Abbey of Saint-Pierre de Solesmes , she had her first mystical experience in 1938; others followed, for example in November 1938 when George Herbert said a poem like a prayer , in which God is described as love that receives the sinner and forgives him.

"You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat: So I did sit and eat."

"Sit down! Anyone who ever tastes my meat recovered: So I sat down at the table - and ate. "

- George Herbert : Love

The poem made a strong impression. Simone Weil did not describe the feeling that Christ was present as an appearance, but as “a personal, more certain, more real presence than that of a human being”. Neither the senses nor the imagination were involved in the "sudden overwhelming power of Christ". Throughout her suffering she felt the presence of a love like that "that one reads in the smile of a loved face".

“In my reflections on the insolubility of the God problem, I had not foreseen this possibility: that of a real contact from person to person down here, between the human being and God. I had probably heard talk of the like indefinitely, but I never believed it. "

- Simone Weil

It approached Catholicism . She shared an intensive correspondence with the Dominican Father Joseph-Marie Perrin , who was trying to get into the Catholic Church. But Simone Weil insisted that the perfection and love of Christ could be in us without us belonging to the Church. God has not yet given her to recognize that he expects this step from her. She found the Church's past with the Inquisition , the Crusades and Wars of Religion repulsive. She also missed the intensive commitment of the Church to social and spiritual reforms .

France Libre

Because of the German occupation of France, she fled from the Gestapo to Marseille . She did agricultural work and in the waiting time persisted in increasingly strict asceticism . She talked to Dominican monks about the early Christian scriptures and dealt with Sanskrit , Indian and Chinese philosophy as well as Spanish mysticism, which brought her close to Sephardic and Hasidic wisdom.

In 1942 she came to England via the USA , where she became a member of the Charles de Gaulle Liberation Committee . He said that she was too clumsy to actively work in the Resistance and that she looked too Jewish. Simone Weil developed a plan for the training of nurses who should work on the front line, with which the own troops should be morally stabilized and to demonstrate superiority over the enemy. De Gaulle didn't want to hear about it. He thought she was crazy and sent her to his desk to think about a future constitution for France and to keep in touch with resistance groups in France by letter. De Gaulle then demanded the sole right of representation for France for himself and his movement. That is why Simone Weil saw a kind of political party emerging in Gaullism and feared that it could become fascist .

She terminated the collaboration, although at that time she had no income other than her salary from France Libre and was seriously ill. The exhaustion of her body and soul reached a level that exceeded the possibility of the wearable and was only felt as despair. As a question she noted: “Dark night. Perhaps man has to go through the test of continuous duration (hell) (every time up to the highest state?) Before he can gain access to eternity? "

Death in England

The lack of parental closeness increased the self-imposed obligation to suffer. The anorexia took over and was fatal. Simone Weil died at the age of 34 of starvation and heart failure due to tuberculosis .

It is possible that she was baptized shortly before her death , not by a priest but by a friend. Georges Hourdin reports on the baptism in the London hospital room before leaving for Ashford and shares an exchange of letters with Father Perrin and Simone Deitz. However, there is no evidence of this in Simone Weil's notes, which she continued until shortly before her death. It is doubtful whether she herself attached any importance to this baptism or whether she was rather indifferent to it. According to Simone Pétrement, she herself commented on the baptism with the words: “You can do it, it won't do any harm.” In any case, she did not provide any information on religious affiliation on the registration form for the sanatorium in Ashford. She told the doctor there that there was a reason why she could not claim to be a Catholic.

Few people attended Simone Weil's funeral in Ashford Cemetery on August 30, 1943, including the politician Maurice Schumann and her London landlady. The pastor had missed the train from London. There was no tombstone until 1958. The plaque in front of her grave reads: "Her writings have established her as one of the foremost modern philosophers."

Posthumous publication

The work La pesanteur et la grâce (Gravity and Grace) is a posthumously published compilation of aphorisms and maxims . In May 1942 she had given her social philosopher friend Gustave Thibon a briefcase filled with papers at the train station in Marseille. Thibon published the work four years after Weil's death. With the release of the full Cahiers and numerous essays, poems, letters and the Factory Diaries and by Albert Camus published last work enracinement L' however, it became clear that the records in La pesanteur et la grâce were selected tendentious and orderly. Heinrich Böll judged Simone Weil:

“The author is on my mind like a prophet; it is the writer in me who is afraid of her; it is the potential Christian in me who admires her, the socialist hidden in me, who senses a second Rosa Luxemburg in her ; who wants to give it more expression through its expression. I want to write about her, give her voice a voice, but I know: I can't do it, I'm not up to it, not intellectually, not morally, not religiously. What she wrote is far more than 'literature' as she lived, far more than 'existence'. I'm afraid of her severity, her spherical intelligence and sensitivity, afraid of the consequences she would impose on me if I got really close to her. In this sense it is not 'literature as baggage', but a burden on my soul. Her name: Simone Weil. "

- Heinrich Boell

Politics, Philosophy and Theology

1922

Duties to the human being

Simone Weil saw the purpose of every community and the state in preventing war and the oppression of the individual. She wanted to individualize politics. Each individual should face responsibility to the other and to society. Parties are bad in principle, and so are their effects in practice. They should be abolished. The candidates for a parliament would then no longer be able to say to the voters: “I wear this label” - which tells the voters practically nothing about their concrete stance on individual problems - but rather: “I think this, this and this about this and that this big problem. ”According to Simone Weil's diagnosis, the workforce is uprooted and dependent on outside money. Factory work is slave labor. The worker only feels like part of a machine. The abolition of private property and the nationalization of businesses could not help. These revolutionary ideas, including Marxism, are utopian dreams or strive for a worker imperialism , which one must reject just like national imperialism . The human situation of the worker cannot be improved in this way. People should be given the opportunity to take root again. People need a conscious participation in a tradition in which they are placed through birth, place, occupation and environment. It is only when people are rooted that people are able to affirm life with its tasks. Every worker should therefore become the owner of a house, a small piece of land and a machine. The agonizing time pressure should be lifted and the insight into the overall context of the individual activity should be promoted. Technology had to be adapted to people's needs. A humanization of work is neither capitalist nor socialist, but directed towards human dignity.

Knowledge and "lecture"

For Simone Weil, knowledge takes the form of a gradual ascent in which the world can be understood like a divine book. “Lectures superposées: lire la nécessité derrière la sensation, lire l'ordre derrière la nécessité, lire dieu derrière l'ordre. (Superimposed reading: reading the necessity behind the sensory perception, reading the order behind the necessity, reading God behind the order.) “The appearances as such are not accessible to individual perception:“ ... d'effets produits par des apparences qui n'apparaissent pas ou à peine. (Sensory impressions are generated by the seemingly external, which is not or barely revealed.) “The appearances cause the sensations and emotions that form the basis of all knowledge. In the subjective judgment, the "jugement", the appearances are modified and thus to the meanings , the "significations". The value-laden world of meaning constituted by the subjective judgment is not the true reality. The true reality can only be recognized when the person frees himself from public opinion and from his desires (“les passions”), imagination and illusion. This is made possible by the "décréation". In doing so, the person reduces the “ I ” (ego-parts) part of the knowledge. This increases the possibility of recognizing God himself behind all appearances . An attitude of attentiveness (“attente”, hoping expectation) leads to supernatural knowledge, the “connaissance surnaturelle”. This is not targeted. It presupposes patient expectation and consent to grace . In this respect, Simone Weil speaks of “non-lecture”. The separate individual phenomena of the world are understood as an overall system of symbols pointing to God. The world is seen as a “poésie surnaturelle”. But only God himself as a reader can read the true text:

«Penser un vrai texte que je ne lis pas, que je n'ai jamais lu, c'est penser un lecteur de ce vrai texte, c'est à dire Dieu. »

"To imagine a true text that I do not read, that I have never read, that means to imagine a reader of this true text, that is, God."

- Simone Weil

Attention, prayer and work creation

Simone Weil has renewed the concept of attention , which was part of medieval prayer teaching . It is about the "non-acting action", which is both a spiritual and ethical principle and the reason for the creation of work:

“The poet produces the beautiful by keeping the attention focused on the real ... The real and pure values ​​of the truth, the beautiful and the good in a person's actions are produced by one and the same act: by a certain application of the Full attention to the object. "

- Simone Weil

According to Weil, prayer is nothing more than attention in its purest form. Every exercise in school or at university, such as solving a geometric problem or translating a text in a foreign language, trains attention and is at the same time a reflection of spiritual life. Attention in this sense becomes a method of understanding . One should not try to interpret the works, images and signs. Rather, it is important to look at them until "the light breaks out ."

Forms of love

Simone Weil sees supernatural love as charity, love for the beauty of the world, for spiritual exercises and as friendship. It is not the individual who loves his neighbor, but God in him loves his neighbor. Man only imitates the divine love that created him. Love for the beauty of the world is also just an imitation of the divine love that created the universe. God is present in one's neighbor, in the beauty of the world and in the spiritual exercises. Without divine grace, however, the personal effort to approach the mystery is of no use. Man has to be ready in anticipation of God.

The relationship of the soul to God

Simone Weil distinguished between gravity and grace as the two poles of human existence. The law of gravity includes revenge , retribution , self-assertion, and the will to power . Man gives his heart to material things and immaterial goods such as status, influence or self-confidence, although these are only illusions. They create the false appearance of a fullness of reality, but are in truth only unreal shadows. What is not there, people are subject to. There is only submission, man is really chained by unreal chains. While man's immanent gravity pulls him down again and again, grace works in the opposite direction. God would exhaust himself to reach man's soul. If she can be snatched from pure and complete consent, even for a moment, then God has conquered her:

“And once it has become completely a thing that belongs only to him, he leaves it. He leaves her all alone. And now the soul for its part, but in a blind touch, has to measure the infinite density of time and space in search of the one it loves. So the soul now travels in the opposite direction along the route on which God came to it. And this is the cross. "

- Simone Weil

The only thing in the world that chance cannot rob people of is the ability to say "I". Exactly this "I" must be given to God:

“That is what we are to give to God, that is, to destroy. There is absolutely no other free act that we are allowed to do except the destruction of the ego. "

- Simone Weil

Divine self-love and its opening up in creation is the model for how man should also love himself. Man has the wrong urge to throw himself away and humble himself before false gods. “It is not because God loves us that we should love him . But because God loves us, we should love each other. How could one love oneself without this motive? ”The universe continues even when the person dies. This is no consolation for him when the universe is different from himself.

"However, if the universe is like a different body to me, then my death ceases to be of greater importance to me than the death of someone else."

- Simone Weil

History of effects

The term enracinement has also inspired educational thinkers. Once the physics didactic and pedagogue Martin Wagenschein , who wanted to understand his physics education from and for the everyday world. It is particularly about the understanding of the Socratic method, which is supposed to enable deepening into the matter through expectant attention. On the other hand, the chemistry didactic Peter Buck Wagenschein takes pedagogical ideas further by making rooting a central concept.

Sign on Simone Weil Avenue

Honors

In Ashford, England, where she died, a street was renamed Simone Weil Avenue in her honor .

There are also streets with the name Simone-Weil-Straße in Wiesbaden (65197) and Ingolstadt (85049) , as well as in Catalonia in Sabadell (08206), north of Barcelona, ​​the Carrer de Simone Weil .

Works

Writings on history and politics , edited by Albert Camus

German translation

• Gravity and grace. Translated by Friedhelm Kemp . Munich 1952 (La pesanteur et la grâce)
• The misfortune and the love of God . Translated by Friedhelm Kemp. Munich 1953 (Attente de Dieu)
• The rooting, introduction to the duties towards the human being . Translated by Friedhelm Kemp, Kösel, Munich 1956 (L´Enracinement)
  • Neuübers. Marianne Schneider : The roots. Prelude to a declaration of duties to man. diaphanes , Zurich 2011, ISBN 978-3-03734-161-2
• Oppression and freedom. Political Writings . Translated by Heinz Abosch. Rogner & Bernhard, Frankfurt 1975; Two thousand and one , Frankfurt 1987
• Testimony for the good: tracts, letters, notes . Ed. U. Translated by Friedhelm Kemp. Walter, Olten / Freiburg 1976 / dtv, Munich 1990 / Benziger, Zurich 1998
• Factory diary and other writings on the industrial system . Translated by Heinz Abosch. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 1978
• Attention to the everyday . Edited by Otto Betz. Kösel, Munich 1987
• Decision on distance: questions to the church . Translated by Friedhelm Kemp. Kösel, Munich 1988
• Cahiers. Records . Ed. And transl. Elisabeth Edl , Wolfgang Matz . 4 volumes. Munich 1991-1998
• Poems . Translated by Elisabeth Edl, Wolfgang Matz. In: Akzente (magazine) , 1998, no.4
• Comment on the general abolition of political parties. Translator Esther von der Osten. diaphanes , Zurich 2009, ISBN 978-3-03734-059-2
• War and violence. Essays and notes. Translated by Thomas Laugstien. diaphanes , Zurich 2011, ISBN 978-3-03734-142-1

in French

• Œuvres complètes . Ed. André-A. Devaux, Florence de Lussy. Paris 1988ff. As of 2012, the editor is Robert Chenavier.

literature

• Heinz Abosch : Simone Weil. An introduction. Panorama, Wiesbaden approx. 2005, ISBN 3-926642-66-1 . (Series: Great Thinkers) (earlier edition by Junius: ISBN 3-88506-858-3 )
• Imelda Abbt, Wolfgang W. Müller (Ed.): Simone Weil. A life makes you think. Eos Verlag, St. Ottilien 1999.
• Walter Buder: Mysticism, an event of radical humanity? A theological attempt based on Simone Weil's life and work. Österreichischer Kulturverlag, Thaur 1990, ISBN 3-85395-132-5 .
• Angela Büchel Sladkovic: Waiting for God - Simone Weil between rationalism, politics and mysticism. Lit, Münster 2004, ISBN 3-8258-6912-1 . (Religion, history, society; 15)
• Jacques Cabaud: Simone Weil. Logic of love. Freiburg / Munich 1968.
• Ria Endres : Downsizing the misfortune. On Simone Weil's topicality. Stadthaus Ulm , edition stadthaus, Volume 8, Ulm 2009, ISBN 978-3-934727-27-4 .
• Ernst Gatterbauer: Peter Sloterdijk: the set pusher on the stage, looking for the saint - Simone Weil: the attentive border crosser, behind the scenes. Dissertation University of Vienna, 2013.
• Nina Heinsohn: Simone Weil's concept of attention. Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2018, ISBN 978-3-16-155416-2 .
• Charles Jacquier (Ed.): Life Experience and Mental Work. Simone Weil and anarchism. Grassroots Revolution , Nettersheim 2006, ISBN 3-939045-04-7 .
• Simone Weil. In: Salomé Kestenholz: Equality in front of the scaffold. Portraits of French revolutionaries. Luchterhand Literature, Darmstadt 1988, ISBN 3-630-61818-9 , pp. 105-169 (emphasizes Weil's revolutionary power)
• Angelica Krogmann: Simone Weil. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1970, ISBN 3-499-50166-X .
• Marie Cabaud Meaney: Bridges to the Supernatural. Simone Weil about evil, war and religions . Bernardus-Verlag, Aachen 2018, ISBN 978-3-8107-0285-2 .
• Simone Pétrement: Simone Weil. One life. Universitätsverlag, Leipzig 2007, ISBN 978-3-936522-84-6 .
• Susanne Sandherr: Simone Weil. In Annegret Brauch (ed.): In the name of a better world: Rosa Luxemburg , Hannah Arendt , SW, Dorothee Sölle . Evangelical Academy Baden , Karlsruhe 2006, ISBN 3-89674-548-4 .
• Heinz-Robert Schlette, André Devaux (Ed.): Simone Weil: Philosophy, Religion, Politics. Frankfurt 1985, ISBN 3-7820-0522-8 .
• Dorothee Seelhöfer: Simone Weil: philosopher - unionist - mystic. Matthias Grünewald Verlag, Mainz 1994, ISBN 3-7867-1792-3 . (Topos paperbacks 241)
• Dorothee Seelhöfer:  WEIL, Simone Adolphine. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 13, Bautz, Herzberg 1998, ISBN 3-88309-072-7 , Sp. 605-613.
• Susan Taubes : The Absent God. In: The Journal of Religion. 35, Chicago, pp. 6-16 (1955). (Reprinted in: Thomas JJ Altizer (Ed.): Toward a New Christianity. Readings in the Death of God Theology. New York 1967, pp. 107–119)
• Susan Taubes : The Riddle of Simone Weil. In: Exodus. 1, New York, pp. 55-71 (1959). German Translator: The riddle about Simone Weil. In: The stake. Yearbook from the no man's land between art and science. 9 (1995), pp. 205-220.
• Stefanie Völkl: Perception of God in beauty and suffering. Theological aesthetics as a reading of the logic of love in Simone Weil and Hans Urs von Balthasar . Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau 2016, ISBN 978-3-451-37608-5 .
• Simone Weil and EM Cioran . In: Accents. 4/1998. Edited and translated by Elisabeth Edl and Wolfgang Matz. Contains Because: "Last Text"; Maurice Blanchot : "The assertion (the desire, the wait)"; Emmanuel Levinas : "Simone Weil against the Bible"
• Sylvie Weil: André and Simone - The Weil family. Leipziger Universitätsverlag, Leipzig 2010.
• Maja Wicki: Simone Weil. A logic of the absurd. Haupt, Bern 1983.
• Maja Wicki-Vogt: Simone Weil. In: Regine Munz (Ed.): Philosophinnen des 20. Jahrhundert . WBG, Darmstadt 2004, pp. 54–85.
• Reiner Wimmer: Simone Weil. Person and work. Herder, Freiburg 2009.
• Reiner Wimmer: Four Jewish philosophers: Rosa Luxemburg , Simone Weil, Edith Stein , Hannah Arendt . 2nd Edition. Reclam, Leipzig 1999, ISBN 3-379-01575-X . (Reclam Library 1575)
• Elisabeth Thérèse Winter: World love in a tense existence. Basic concepts of a secular spirituality in the life and work of Simone Weil (1909–1943). Würzburg 2004, ISBN 3-429-02616-4 , (also university thesis: Innsbruck, Univ., Diss., 1998) (= studies on systematic and spiritual theology, volume 40)
• Hendrik Wallat : Analysis of fascism and criticism of Marxism in Simone Weil. Helle Panke, 2011. (Philosophical Conversations, Issue 21)

Radio and film

• Georg Stefan Troller : The red virgin - From the life of the communist mystic Simone Weil. ZDF 1984
• Ria Endres : “An extremist's misfortune”. Thoughts on Simone Weil. Hessischer Rundfunk 1985
• Ronald Steckel (Director), Julia Jentsch (Actress): "Gravity and Light." Homage to Simone Weil. Radio play, Westdeutscher Rundfunk & Radio Berlin Brandenburg 2007
• Julia Haslett : An Encounter with Simone Weil. Documentary 2010
• Simone Weil: radical thinker. The philosopher Dr. Imelda Abbt in conversation with Norbert Bischofberger. Great hour of philosophy 2009

Web links

Commons : Simone Weil  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Wikiquote: Simone Weil  - Quotes

• Literature by and about Simone Weil in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by and about Simone Weil  in the German Digital Library
• Simone Weil in nndb (English)
• A. Rebecca Rozelle-Stone, Benjamin P. Davis:  Simone Weil. In: Edward N. Zalta (Ed.): Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy . March 10, 2018 (English).
• Judith Klein: Opportunities against the familiar - On the thinking of the philosopher Simone Weil. In: Deutschlandfunk broadcast “Essay and Discourse”. February 15, 2009 . 
• Ursula Schweers: Simone Weil. In: FemBio. Women's biography research (with references and citations).
• Alina Fichtner: Don't make compromises! , From the time of the January 23, 2014

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Burkhard Reinartz: "A big star will fall into my lap". A long night about Else Lasker-Schüler, Gertrud Kolmar and Simone Weil. In: Deutschlandfunk broadcast “Long Night”. January 31, 2015, accessed August 24, 2018 . 
2. ↑ Heinz-Robert Schlette, André Devaux (Ed.): Simone Weil: Philosophy, Religion, Politics. Frankfurt 1985, pp. 137-156
3. ↑ Ursula Homann: A Jew who did not want to be. Simone Weil died in exile 60 years ago. In: grandstand . Journal for understanding des Judentums 42, issue 166. 2003, accessed on August 24, 2018 (reproduced on ursulahomann.de). 
4. ↑ Weil, Sylvie: André and Simone - The family Weil. Leipzig 2010
5. ↑ Maja Wicki-Vogt (2004), p. 68.
6. ↑ Simone de Beauvoir: Memoirs of a daughter from a good family. Hamburg 1968, p. 234 f.
7. ↑ Maja Wicki-Vogt (2004), p. 72.
8. ↑ Simone de Beauvoir: Memoirs of a daughter from a good family. Hamburg 1968, p. 229.
9. ↑ German "the Jewess Weil"
10. ↑ German "red virgin"
11. ↑ Heinz Abosch: Simone Weil. An introduction. Panorama, Wiesbaden approx. 2005, pp. 53–60
12. ↑ Heinz Abosch , Simone Weil , License edition Panorama, Wiesbaden [2005], p. 76.
13. ↑ Simone Pétrement (2007), p. 266.
14. ↑ Maja Wicki-Vogt (2004), p. 75.
15. ↑ Maja Wicki-Vogt (2004), p. 80.
16. ↑ Misfortune and the love of God.
17. ↑ Simone Pétrement (2007), p. 385.
18. ↑ Simone Pétrement (2007), p. 390
19. ↑ Simone Weil, quoted from Hans Magnus Enzensberger: The short summer of anarchy. 1972, p. 162 f.
20. ↑ Weil, Spiritual Autobiography
21. ↑ Proven with Angelica Krogmann: Simone Weil. Reinbek 1970, p. 45.
22. ↑ Quotations proven in Simone Pétrement (2007), p. 471.
23. ↑ Maja Wicki-Vogt (2004) p. 72.
24. ↑ Simone Pétrement (2007), p. 719, see also p. 686.
25. ^ Cahiers I, 265
26. ↑ Maja Wicki-Vogt (2004), p. 81.
27. ↑ Georges Hourdin: Simone Weil. Paris 1989, p. 230 f.
28. ↑ Simone Pétrement (2007), p. 708 f.
29. ↑ Simone Pétrement (2007), p. 708.
30. ↑ Basically: "Your writings have established your position among the leading modern philosophers." Lene Zade: A search for traces in England. In: Jewish newspaper. August 2007
31. ↑ Maja Wicki-Vogt (2004), p. 56.
32. ↑ Heinrich Böll: A burden on my soul. In: literature as luggage. Essays and poems, Mainz 1979, p. 28 f.
33. ↑ Simone Weil: Note on the general abolition of political parties. Berlin 2009, p. 28.
34. ↑ Simone Weil: L'Enracinement. Paris 1949; German rooting, 1956
35. ↑ Simone Weil: Cahiers II. Paris 1951–1956, p. 164.
36. ↑ Simone Weil: Essai sur la notion de lecture (1941), in: Les Études philos. NF 1 (Marseille 1946), p. 15.
37. ↑ Simone Weil: Essai sur la notion de lecture (1941), in: Les Études philos. NF 1 (Marseille 1946), pp. 16-17.
38. ↑ Simone Weil: Cahiers I. Paris 1951–1956, p. 151.
39. ↑ Simone Weil: La connaissance surnaturelle. Paris 1951, p. 17 ff.
40. ↑ Simone Weil: Cahiers I. Paris 1951–1956, p. 178.
41. ↑ Simone Weil: Essai sur la notion de lecture. (1941), in: Les Études philos.NF 1 (Marseille 1946), p. 18.
42. ↑ Simone Weil: Gravity and Grace. Munich 1952, p. 213 ff.
43. ↑ Simone Weil: Formes de l`amour implicite de Dieu. In: Attente de Dieu, Paris 1950; dt. The misfortune and the love of God, 1953
44. ↑ Simone Weil: Gravity and Grace. Munich 1952.
45. ↑ Simone Weil: Gravity and Grace. Munich 1952, p. 38.
46. ↑ Simone Weil: Gravity and Grace. Munich 1952, p. 88.
47. ↑ Simone Weil: Gravity and Grace. Munich 1952, p. 241.
48. ↑ Martin Wagenschein: Teaching understanding. Genetic - Socratic - Exemplary. Beltz Verlag, Weinheim, Basel 1968.
49. ↑ Peter Buck: Rooting and Compaction. Tema con variazione about two metaphors of Wagenschein's didactics. (2nd edition) Verlag der Kooperative Dürnau, 1997/2008.
50. ↑ Excerpts in: Simone Weil: “Uprooting is by far the most dangerous disease in human society.” Exhibition catalog of the Peace Library , Berlin 2003, 2008. There also statements about Simone Weil by Albert Camus , Thomas Merton , Heinrich Böll , Heinz Abosch and Jacques Cabaud
51. ↑ Peter Sloterdijk: the set pusher on the stage, looking for the saint - Simone Weil: the attentive border crosser: abstract. University Library Vienna, July 22, 2014, accessed on August 24, 2018 . 
52. ↑ further editions in Attempto-Verlag, with various ISBNs. All editions since 1995 with bibliographical notes, previous ones not. First a series of lectures at the Universities of Konstanz and Tübingen
53. ↑ An Encounter with Simone Weil. (No longer available online.) Line Street Productions, archived from the original on May 30, 2017 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.