Realism and Faith in Transformation Through the Creativeness of a Conscious Life: Simone Weil (1909–1943)

Abstract

Who was Simone Weil? Paris, February 3rd 1909—Ashford (Kent), August 24th, 1943. Between these two dates elapsed the short life (thirty-four years) of a woman whom we can neither classify nor grasp. She had no private role (she did not marry, she had no children), nor any public role (she taught philosophy in lycées de filles for just a few years, and the education establishment was not pleased with her teaching). She had no colour (at École Normale Supérieure in Paris they called her “the red virgin”, a name which defined a contrast), nor a political idea. She supported the dissident Communist minorities of the Thirties with tangible solidarity, but she never became a member of the Communist Party (at eighteen she began a letter of adherence that remained unfinished in her room for a long time: so her brother André, the great mathematician who just lately died, told me).

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