Simone Weil: An Introduction to Her Thought

by John Hellman

Overview

“The generation of 1930 in French intellectual life was unique in the gravity of the challenges they faced.” Simone Weil—the brilliant social and political theorist, activist, and spiritual writer—was one of an eminent company in the France of the 1930s who responded to these challenges. In her brief, remarkable life she wrote a host of essays and letters and filled several notebooks with reflections. Hellman’s volume sets out the single world view—with its paradoxes and its logic—which appears behind her disparate writings but which she never lived to set out formally herself. Hellman extracts the key themes in Weil’s writings on Marxism, Hitlerism, factory work, history, and religion, in an effort to examine the seeming contradictions and inconsistencies in her fusion of deep spirituality and commitment to the poor and oppressed and her love-hate relationship with Roman Catholicism and Israel. The result is a synthesis of her thought as a whole, drawn principally from her varied, fragmentary writings, and seen in relation to her life and personality.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781725255531
Publisher:	Wipf & Stock Publishers
Publication date:	07/22/2014
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	120
File size:	16 MB
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About the Author

John Hellman, a member of the History Department at McGill University, is an associate editor of Cross Currents and the author of Emmanuel Mounier and the New Catholic Left, 1930–1950 and of articles on modern European intellectual, political, and religious history. He holds the Ph.D. degree from Harvard University.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Simone Weil was a mischievous, often playful individual, with a good sense of humour and that special sense of irony . . . She brought fresh and astute solutions to a host of spiritual problems; she thought about history, politics and modern scientific culture in a new and stimulating way."
—from the Foreword

Editorial Reviews

"Such a clearly conceived and written book as Hellman's study of Simone Weil's thought will be essential to those making a first approach to this unique and gifted writer and to those seeking elucidation of her ideas."

French Review

"Simone Weil was a mischievous, often playful individual, with a good sense of humour and that special sense of irony . . . She brought fresh and astute solutions to a host of spiritual problems; she thought about history, politics and modern scientific culture in a new and stimulating way."
—from the Foreword

From the Publisher