Abstract
Simone Weil (1909–43) spent much of her philosophical life trying to separate unskillful models of spirituality from more helpful ones. Sifting tirelessly through world traditions of historical, literary, philosophical, artistic, and scientific texts, and never straying far from her own experience, Weil’s desire was to understand the necessities that shape human life and define its possibilities. Turning to literary figures like Antigone, and historical persons such as Joan of Arc, Weil reflected critically upon traditional models of spirituality. These models were her teachers, the treasures of cultural traditions, and they provided material for her philosophical judgments about what counts as genuine and what counts as ersatz spirituality. Often, Weil did not accept what received literary or historical traditions had to say about a particular figure or narrative, instead reversing, reinterpreting, and retelling traditional stories in light of her own understanding and purpose.1 This Weilian trademark can be seen in her treatment of Joan of Arc. Journals and essays written during the early 1940s show Weil reflecting upon Joan of Arc with a sensibility sharpened by the circumstances of war and the exigencies of a refugee’s life on the run.
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Notes
For more on Simone Weil’s relationship to narrative and the prose style that figured so strongly in her philosophy, see Joan Dargan, Simone Weil: Thinking Poetically (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999);
Christine Ann Evans, “The Power of Parabolic Reversal: The Example in Simone Weil’s Notebooks,” Cahiers Simone Weil 19.3 (1996): 313–24;
Ann Pirruccello, “Simone Weil’s Violent Grace,” Cahiers Simone Weil 19.4 (1996):397–411.
Simone Weil, The Need for Roots, trans. Arthur Wills with a preface by T.S. Eliot (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1952, ARK Edition 1987), p. 126.
Simone Weil, Intimations of Christianity Among the Ancient Greeks, trans. E. Geissbuhler (London: Roudedge and Kegan Paul, 1957, ARK Edition, 1987), p. 193.
Régine Pernoud and Marie Véronique Clin, Joan of Arc, Her Story, trans. and revised J. duQuesnay Adams (New York: St. Martins Press, 1998), p. 34.
Simone Weil, On Science, Necessity and the Love of God, trans. Richard Rees (London: Oxford University Press, 1968), pp. 184–88.
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© 2003 Ann W. Astell and Bonnie Wheeler
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Pirruccello, A. (2003). Force or Fragility? Simone Weil and Two Faces of Joan of Arc. In: Astell, A.W., Wheeler, B. (eds) Joan of Arc and Spirituality. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-06954-2_15
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-06954-2_15
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