Simone Weil (Critical Lives)

Simone Weil, legendary French philosopher, political activist, and mystic, died in 1943 at a sanatorium in Kent, England, at the age of thirty-four. During her brief lifetime, Weil was a paradox of asceticism and reclusive introversion who also maintained a teaching career and an active participation in politics.

In this concise biography, Palle Yourgrau outlines Weil s influential life and work and demonstrates how she tried to apply philosophy to everyday life. Born in Paris to a cultivated Jewish-French family, Weil excelled at philosophy, and her empathetic political conscience channeled itself into political engagement and activism on behalf of the working class. Yourgrau assesses Weil s controversial critique of Judaism as well as her radical re-imagination of Christianity following a powerful religious experience in 1937 in light of Plato s philosophy as a bridge between human suffering and divine perfection.

In Simone Weil, Yourgrau provides careful, concise readings of Weil s work while exploring how Weil has come to be seen as both a modern saint and a b te noir, a Jew accused of having abandoned her own people in their hour of greatest need.