In the Grip of Love

This chapter justifies a reading of Weil as a “combative” thinker not only because she has always considered war to be “the main engine of social life” (Intuitions Pré-Chrétiennes, 76), but also because of something more deeply rooted in her thought and in her life that transmits the tone and language of an uninterrupted battle directed primarily against herself. Even in her most passionate phase of pacifism, this is something that prevented her from “renouncing the struggle which, according to Heraclitus, is the condition of life,” therein revealing life's internal movement. Love is author of the most complete harmony since it unites the most contrary of contraries. This also allowed her to affirm that: “war itself, especially as conducted in the old days, stirs man's sense of beauty in a way that is vital and poignant” (Waiting for God, 106).