Gravity and Grace / Edition 1

by Simone Weil

Overview

Gravity and Grace was the first ever publication by the remarkable thinker and activist, Simone Weil. In it Gustave Thibon, the farmer to whom she had entrusted her notebooks before her untimely death, compiled in one remarkable volume a compendium of her writings that have become a source of spiritual guidance and wisdom for countless individuals. On the fiftieth anniversary of the first English edition - by Routledge & Kegan Paul in 1952 - this Routledge Classics edition offers English readers the complete text of this landmark work for the first time ever, by incorporating a specially commissioned translation of the controversial chapter on Israel. Also previously untranslated is Gustave Thibon's postscript of 1990, which reminds us how privileged we are to be able to read a work which offers each reader such 'light for the spirit and nourishment for the soul'. This is a book that no one with a serious interest in the spiritual life can afford to be without.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780415290012
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	09/12/2002
Series:	Routledge Classics
Edition description:	First Complete English Language Edition
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	5.06(w) x 7.81(h) x (d)

About the Author

Simone Weil (1909-1943). One of the most original philosophical, religious and political thinkers of the twentieth century.

Table of Contents

Introduction by Gustave Thilbon Gravity and Grace Voide and Compensation To Accept the Void Detachment Imagination Which Fills the Void Renunciation Of Time To Desire Without An Object The Self Decreation Self-Effacement Necessity And Obedience Illusions Idolatry Love Evil Affliction Violence The Cross Balance And Lever The Impossible Contradiction The Distance Between The Necessary and the Good Chance He Whom We Must Love Is Absent Atheism As A Purification Attention And Will Training Intelligence and Grace Readings The Ring Of Gyges Meaning of the Universe Metaxu Beauty Algebra The Social Imprint The Great Beast Social Harmony The Mysticism of Work

Editorial Reviews

'Time and again she pierces the veil of complacency and brings the reader face to face with the deepest levels of existence.' - Church Times

'At the twilight of a century whose accelerated history has led to the rise and fall of so many idols, this book increasingly appears like a message from eternity.' - Gustave Thibon

'One of the most profound religious thinkers of modern times.' - The Twentieth Century, 1961

'We must simply expose ourselves to the personality of a woman of genius, of a kind of genius akin to that of the saints.' - T. S. Eliot

'The light Simone shines makes everything seem, at once, reasurringly recognizable and so luminous as to be heavenly.' - Malcom Muggeridge

'In France she is ranked with Pascal by some, condemned as a dangerous heretic by others, and recognized as a genius by all.' - New York Times Book Review

'The best spiritual writer of this century ... she said it was her vocation to stand at the intersection of Christians and non-Christians. She thus becomes the patron saint of all "outsiders".' - André Gide

From the Publisher

“In these private reflections, at once pregnant and precise, and all springing out of painful depths of experience, mental pride is transmuted into spiritual insight.”—Manchester Guardian

Manchester Guardian

“A book of Pascalian pensees, touching on many phases of the intellectual and spiritual worlds. Written in prose which is as unadorned as a geometry theorem, it bears clear personal traces of the young genius who was half icy intellectual, half mystic.”—New York Times

New York Times