91 Facts About Simone Weil

Simone Weil was born in Paris to an Alsatian Jewish family.

Simone Weil taught intermittently throughout the 1930s, taking several breaks because of poor health and in order to devote herself to political activism.

Simone Weil assisted in the trade union movement, taking the side of the anarchists known as the Durruti Column in the Spanish Civil War.

Simone Weil worked for more than a year as a labourer, mostly in car factories, so that she could better understand the working class.

Simone Weil became increasingly religious and inclined towards mysticism as her life progressed.

Simone Weil wrote throughout her life, although most of her writings did not attract much attention until after her death.

Simone Weil's parents were fairly affluent and raised their children in an attentive and supportive atmosphere.

Simone Weil was the younger of her parents' two children.

Simone Weil's brother was mathematician Andre Weil, with whom she would always enjoy a close relationship.

Simone Weil was distressed by her father having to leave home for several years after being drafted to serve in the First World War.

For example, a young Simone Weil sent her share of sugar and chocolate to soldiers fighting at the front.

From her childhood home, Simone Weil acquired an obsession with cleanliness; in her later life she would sometimes speak of her "disgustingness" and think that others would see her this way, even though in her youth she had been considered highly attractive.

Simone Weil was generally highly affectionate, but she almost always avoided any form of physical contact, even with female friends.

Simone Weil's mother stated that her daughter much preferred boys to girls and that she always did her best to teach her daughter what she believed were masculine virtues.

Simone Weil was a precocious student and was proficient in Ancient Greek by age 12.

Simone Weil later learned Sanskrit so that she could read the Bhagavad Gita in the original.

Simone Weil attracted much attention at the Lycee Henri IV with her radical opinions and actions such as organising against the military draft.

Simone Weil gained a reputation for her strict devotion to ethics, with classmates referring to her as the "categorical imperative in skirts".

Simone Weil stated that, "one thing alone mattered in the world today: the revolution that would feed all people on earth," with a young Beauvoir replying that the point of life was to find meaning, not happiness.

Simone Weil cut her off, stating that, "it's easy to see you've never gone hungry".

Simone Weil often became involved in political action out of sympathy with the working class.

Simone Weil often held classes outdoors, often refused to share grades with school leadership, and is said to have created a "family atmosphere".

Simone Weil traveled weekly to Saint-Etienne to teach workers French literature, believing literature could be a tool for revolution and give workers ownership over their heritage and revolution.

Simone Weil began to feel her work was too narrow and elite, telling her students it was an error to "reason in place of finding out" and that philosophy was a matter of action based in truth and that truth must be based in something.

Simone Weil critiqued Marxist theorists, stating "they themselves have never been cogs in the machinery of factory".

Simone Weil doubted aspects of revolution, stating revolution is a word for "which you kill, for which you die, for which you send the laboring masses to their death, but which does not possess any content".

Simone Weil felt oppression was not limited to any particular division of labor, but flows from la puissance or power, which affects all people.

In 1932, Simone Weil visited Germany to help Marxist activists, who were at the time considered to be the strongest and best organised communists in Western Europe, but Simone Weil considered them no match for the up-and-coming fascists.

In 1933, Simone Weil was dismissed from a teaching job in Auxerre and transferred to Roanne.

Simone Weil participated in the French general strike of 1933, called to protest against unemployment and wage cuts.

Simone Weil donated most of her income to political causes and charitable endeavours.

Simone Weil participated in the 1936 Paris factory occupations and planned on returning to factory work In 1936, but became focused on the Spanish Civil War.

Simone Weil identified as an anarchist and sought out the anti-fascist commander Julian Gorkin, asking to be sent on a mission as a covert agent to rescue the prisoner Joaquin Maurin.

Gorkin refused, saying Simone Weil would be sacrificing herself for nothing, since it was highly unlikely that she could pass as a Spaniard.

Simone Weil replied that she had "every right" to sacrifice herself if she chose, but after arguing for more than an hour, she was unable to convince Gorkin to give her the assignment.

Simone Weil's comrades tried to avoid taking her on missions, though she did sometimes insist.

Simone Weil was forced to leave the unit and was met by her parents, who had followed her to Spain.

About a month after Simone Weil departed, her former unit was nearly wiped out at an engagement in Perdiguera in October 1936, with every woman in the group being killed.

Simone Weil was distressed by the Republican killings in eastern Spain, particularly when a fifteen-year-old Falangist was executed after he had been taken prisoner.

Simone Weil said that, "non-violence is good only if it's effective," and she became committed to fighting the Nazi regime, even if it required force.

Simone Weil began the risky work of delivering the Cahiers du temoignage, a resistance paper.

The resistance group of which Simone Weil was part was infiltrated by informants, and Simone Weil was questioned by the police.

Simone Weil encouraged her parents to buy a farm in the Ardeche where they could sustain themselves and work, but Simone Weil's family thought it safer to plan to move to the United States.

Simone Weil was born into a secular household and raised in "complete agnosticism".

Simone Weil was attracted to the Christian faith beginning in 1935, when she had the first of three pivotal religious experiences: being moved by the beauty of villagers singing hymns in a procession she stumbled across while on holiday to Portugal.

Simone Weil was led to pray for the first time in her life as Lawrence S Cunningham relates:.

Simone Weil had a third, more powerful, revelation a year later while reciting George Herbert's poem Love III, after which "Christ himself came down and took possession of me", and, from 1938 on, her writings became more mystical and spiritual, while retaining their focus on social and political issues.

In 1938 Simone Weil visited the Benedictine Solesmes Abbey and while suffering from headaches she found pure joy in Gregorian chant that she felt the "possibility of living divine love in the midst of affliction".

Simone Weil was attracted to Catholicism, but declined to be baptized at that time, preferring to remain outside due to "the love of those things that are outside Christianity".

Simone Weil felt that humility is incompatible with belonging to a social group "chosen by God" no matter if that group is a nation or a Church.

Simone Weil believed that all these and other traditions contained elements of genuine revelation, writing:.

Nevertheless, Simone Weil was opposed to religious syncretism, claiming that it effaced the particularity of the individual traditions:.

In 1942, Simone Weil travelled to the United States with her family.

Simone Weil had been reluctant to leave France, but agreed to do so as she wanted to see her parents to safety and knew they would not leave without her.

Simone Weil was encouraged by the fact that it would be relatively easy for her to reach Britain from the United States, where she could join the French Resistance.

Simone Weil had hopes of being sent back to France as a covert agent.

Yet there is evidence that Simone Weil was recruited by the Special Operations Executive, with a view to sending her back to France as a clandestine wireless operator.

Simone Weil wrote furiously during this period sending a plethora of proposals though she was frustrated by feeling she was too safe and not doing enough to address the suffering.

Simone Weil was found slumped on the floor of her apartment, emaciated and exhausted.

In 1943, Simone Weil was diagnosed with tuberculosis and instructed to rest and eat well.

Nor does the presence of evil constitute a limitation of God's omnipotence under Simone Weil's notion; according to her, evil is present not because God could not create a perfect world, but because the act of "creation" in its very essence implies the impossibility of perfection.

Simone Weil developed the concept of "affliction" while working in factories with workers reduced to a machine-like existence where they could not consider real thought or rebellion with Simone Weil stating "thought flies from affliction as promptly and irresistibly as an animal flees from death".

Simone Weil's notion of affliction is a sort of "suffering plus" which transcends both body and mind, a physical and mental anguish that scourges the very soul.

Simone Weil believed that if humans are to imitate God they must renounce their power and their autonomy.

Simone Weil felt that necessity includes physical forces as well as social forces.

Simone Weil felt that when an individual is self-centred they deny necessity.

Simone Weil is really present in the universal beauty.

Simone Weil wrote that "The beauty of this world is Christ's tender smile coming to us through matter".

Simone Weil states that "the capacity to give one's attention to a sufferer is a very rare and difficult thing: it is almost a miracle; it is a miracle".

In Waiting for God, Simone Weil explains that the three forms of implicit love of God are love of neighbour love of the beauty of the world and love of religious ceremonies.

Finally, Simone Weil explains, love of religious ceremonies occurs as an implicit love of God, when religious practices are pure.

Simone Weil writes that purity in religion is seen when "faith and love do not fail," and most absolutely, in the Eucharist.

Simone Weil believed it was her writings that embodied the best of her, not her actions and definitely not her personality.

Simone Weil had similar views about others, saying that if one looks at the lives of great figures in separation from their works, it "necessarily ends up revealing their pettiness above all", as it's in their works that they have put the best of themselves.

Simone Weil wrote The Iliad, or The Poem of Force, a 24-page essay, in 1939 in Marseilles.

The essay contains several extracts from the epic which Simone Weil translated herself from the original Greek; Petrement records how Simone Weil took over half an hour per line.

For Simone Weil roots involved obligations to participate in community life, feel connected to place, and maintain links through time.

The "roots" Simone Weil refers to are nourishment that enable humans to fully grow and that a rooted community allows the individual to develop with a view toward God or eternal values.

Simone Weil opposed behavior that uprooted people including colonialism, some forms of mass media, and poor industrial working conditions.

Simone Weil did not excuse moral issues within a place, stating countries are a vital medium but one with good and evil and justice and injustice.

Simone Weil was not opposed to patriotism but saw it rooted not in pride but instead in compassion and that this compassion, unlike pride, can be extended to other nations stating compassion is "able, without hindrance, to cross frontiers extend itself over all countries in misfortune, overall countries without exception for all peoples are subjected to the wretchedness of the human condition".

Simone Weil had given Thibon some of her notebooks written before May 1942, but not with any intent to publish them.

Simone Weil felt gravity and grace were opposites believing that gravity signifies the force of the natural world of which all beings are physically, materially, and socially affected and that this "pulls" attention away from God and the afflicted whereas grace is a form of justice and a counter-balance, motivated by the goodness of God.

Simone Weil felt that this gravity and grace are the two most fundamental aspects of the world and came together at the crucifixion.

Pope Paul VI said that Simone Weil was one of his three greatest influences.

Simone Weil is cited as an influence by Iris Murdoch, Jacques Derrida, Albert Camus, Franz Fanon, Emmanuel Levinas, George Grant, Adrienne Rich, Jacqueline Rose, and Thomas Merton.

Simone Weil's popularity began to decline in the late 1960s and 1970s.

Simone Weil was a harsh critic of the influence of Judaism on Western civilisation.

Simone Weil was an even harsher critic of the Roman Empire, in which she refused to see any value.

Haslett noted that Simone Weil had become "a little-known figure, practically forgotten in her native France, and rarely taught in universities or secondary schools".

Additionally, the bishops' religion, Vialism, pronounced similarly to "Weilism," hints at a direct homage to Simone Weil, underscoring the album's exploration of suffering, awareness, and the search for truth, key themes in Weil's work.