Simone Weil And The Enigma of Suffering and Affliction

1999 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter KLENNER
Keyword(s):  
Simone Weil

Simone Weil

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Beatrice Marovich
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
The Political ◽  
Sovereign Power ◽  
Bare Life ◽  
Intellectual Curiosity ◽  
Creation Theology ◽  
Simone Weil

Few of Giorgio Agamben’s works are as mysterious as his unpublished dissertation, reportedly on the political thought of the French philosopher Simone Weil. If Weil was an early subject of Agamben’s intellectual curiosity, it would appear – judging from his published works – that her influence upon him has been neither central nor lasting.1 Leland de la Durantaye argues that Weil’s work has left a mark on Agamben’s philosophy of potentiality, largely in his discussion of the concept of decreation; but de la Durantaye does not make much of Weil’s influence here, determining that her theory of decreation is ‘essentially dialectical’ and still too bound up with creation theology. 2 Alessia Ricciardi, however, argues that de la Durantaye’s dismissal of Weil’s influence is hasty.3 Ricciardi analyses deeper resonances between Weil’s and Agamben’s philosophies, ultimately claiming that Agamben ‘seems to extend many of the implications and claims of Weil’s idea of force’,4 arguably spreading Weil’s influence into Agamben’s reflections on sovereign power and bare life.

scholarly journals Stylizations of Being: Attention as an Existential Hub in Heidegger and Christian Mysticism

Open Theology ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 206-220
Author(s):  
Bernardo Manzoni Palmeirim
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Spiritual Practices ◽  
Karl Rahner ◽  
Existential Phenomenology ◽  
Causal Relations ◽  
Christian Mysticism ◽  
Philosophy And Religion ◽  
Simone Weil ◽  
Key Factor ◽  
Philosophical Framework

AbstractThe assimilation of phenomenology by theology (namely of Heidegger by Karl Rahner) exemplifies how a pre-existing philosophical framework can be imported into a theological system by being suffused with belief. Although one would imagine that the incommensurability between philosophy and religion would thus be overcome, the two disciplines risk to remain, given the sequels of the ‘French debate’, worlds apart, separated by a leap of faith. In this paper I attempt to uncover what grammatical similitudes afforded Rahner formal transference in the first place. Uncovering analogous uses of contemplative attention, namely between Heidegger and Simone Weil, I hope to demonstrate the filial relationship between existential phenomenology and Christian mysticism. I propose that attention is a key factor in both systems of thought. Furthermore, I propose that: 1) attention, the existential hub between subject and phenomena, provides a base for investigating methodologies, as opposed to causal relations, in philosophy and religion; 2) that the two attentional disciplines of meditation and contemplation, spiritual practices designed to shape the self, also constitute styles of thinking; and 3) the ‘turn’ in the later Heidegger’s philosophy is a strategic point to inquire into this confluence of styles of thinking, evincing the constantly dynamic and intrinsically tight relation between philosophy and theology.

Vegan attendance: reading Gibbons’s animals

2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 379-394
Author(s):  
Emelia Quinn
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Aesthetic Pleasure ◽  
Simone Weil ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The One ◽  
Embodied Presence

When we encounter the work of Grinling Gibbons, we find ourselves in the presence of multiple non-human animals. However, it is unclear how one should address these presences. On the one hand, for ecofeminist scholars such as Josephine Donovan, the aestheticization of animal death is to be vehemently resisted and the embodied presence of animals recovered by looking beyond the surface: a mode of looking that Donovan terms ‘attentive love’. On the other hand, a re-reading of the philosophical ideas of Simone Weil, upon which Donovan premises her argument, suggests that attention to others requires a mode of radical detachment. These two positions speak in important ways to the dilemmas faced by a vegan spectator. Drawing on Jason Edwards’s previous work on ‘the vegan viewer’, this article seeks to reconcile a vegan resistance to Gibbons’s depictions of animal death, in their spontaneous falling under human dominion, with the aesthetic pleasure generated by Gibbons’s craftmanship. I therefore propose ‘vegan camp’ as a means of reconciling oneself to insufficiency and complicity in systems of violence without renouncing pleasure. Vegan camp is detailed as an aesthetics that acknowledges the violence of humanity and one’s inescapable place within it, dissolving the subjective idea of the beautiful vegan soul to pay attention to the pervasive presence of an anthropocentrism that, in the case of Gibbons, decoratively adorns the sites at which animals might be eaten, worn, or offered up for sacrifice.

Elogio del discorso inutile

2010 ◽  
pp. 28-40
Author(s):  
Pietro Barcellona
Keyword(s):  
Simone Weil

La nostra epoca tecnico-scientifica sembra ossessionata dalla risoluzione di problemi, pratici o teorici che siano. Saggisti, opinionisti e persino filosofi non resistono al richiamo delle sirene. Il dramma č che ai consulenti predicatori che forniscono ricette e soluzioni, fa da contraltare una schiera sempre piů vasta di individui disorientati e incapaci di prendere decisioni autonome. La ricerca della veritŕ, perň, č ben diversa dalla ricerca di rimedi efficaci, perché implica la creazione di un nuovo spazio mentale, dove pensieri ed emozioni si trasformano in nuovi pensieri ed emozioni. Di qui la scelta dell'elogio del discorso "inutile", che attiene alle trasformazioni soggettive, alle relazioni affettive, liberando lo spazio mentale dai vincoli del conformismo sociale e dall'etica del successo. Sono "inutili" tutti quei discorsi che riguardano la sfera psichica, che producono rappresentazioni mentali diverse e creano scenari differenti da quelli consueti. Si tratta di dialoghi interattivi, creativi, dove non č possibile distinguere chi dona da chi riceve e richiamano le riflessioni sul radicamento di Simone Weil, secondo cui sapere č comprendere e non apprendere. L'efficacia del comprendere ha a che vedere con la trasformazione del soggetto, attraverso il suo sguardo sul mondo. Il discorso "inutile" usa il linguaggio dell'eccedenza, che ci aiuta ad appezzare l'incalcolabile significato degli affetti, dell'amicizia, di tutto ciň per cui vale la pena di perdere la vita per ritrovarla piů ricca. Come la conversione di Paolo, ogni nuova visione del mondo č un'irruzione dell'impensato nella vita quotidiana. E l'impensato sta a testimoniare l'eccedenza. Possiamo considerare i percorsi psicoanalitici delle conversioni, perché si strutturano nel tempo attraverso la creazione di nuovi significati, che retroagiscono sulla storia del soggetto, rilanciandola in avanti.

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