Simone Weil (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: Gabriella Fiori
- First Published: 1981
- Type of Work: Biography
- Time of Work: 19094943
- Setting: Primarily France; Germany, Spain, Portugal, Italy, the United States, and Great Britain
- Principal Characters: Simone Weil, Bernard Weil, Selma Reinharz Weil, Andre Weil
- Genres: Nonfiction, Biography
- Subjects: Social action, Philosophy or philosophers, France or French people, World War II, Doctors, Jews or Jewish life, Germany or German people, Tuberculosis
- Locales: France, United States, Spain, Germany, Italy, Great Britain, Portugal
No one knows exactly how to categorize Simone Weil. Her writings can be sorted into various pigeonholes—philosophy, religion, political theory, classical studies—but in practice all these categories overlap. Albert Camus said simply that she had a “madness for truth.” She was a brilliant thinker who left notebooks full of wide-ranging reflections, some dazzling in their insight, some wild, downright absurd, yet at the same time she distrusted unmoored thought; she spent a year working in factories to experience at firsthand the grind of industrial labor. Passionately opposed to...
[The entire page is 1658 words long]
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