Philosopher · Contemporary
Simone Weil
1909–1943 · Christian Platonism; mysticism of attention
Never certainly baptized (a friend reported a deathbed baptism, unconfirmed); she refused baptism out of solidarity with those outside, while believing most of what the Church believes. Listed here only because she died outside visible communion.
Philosopher, factory worker, and mystic, Weil was seized by Christ in 1938 and thereafter wrote of attention as prayer, of affliction, of the “decreation” of the self, of God's withdrawal in creation, and of the need for roots. She remained on the threshold of the Church, “waiting for God,” out of love for all that the Church seemed to exclude.
Why he matters: Paul VI named her among his three greatest modern influences (with Pascal and Bernanos); Benedict XVI quoted her on beauty to artists in 2009; her Need for Roots is read beside Catholic social teaching, and her account of attention has entered Catholic spirituality.
Where to be careful
She was not baptized, and her objections to “anathema sit” deny the Church's authority to define (Dei Filius ch. 4); her rejection of much of the Old Testament and of Israel's election is the Marcionite tendency contrary to Dei Verbum 14–16 and Nostra Aetate 4; her sympathy for the Cathars, her theory of creation as God's abdication, and her severity toward the body need the correction of Lateran IV and the Church's teaching on its goodness.
Reading
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Waiting for GodSimone Weil · The letters to Fr. Perrin and the essays on attention and the love of God.
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The Need for RootsSimone Weil · Obligations, rootedness and the reconstruction of France.
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Simone Weil as We Knew HerJoseph-Marie Perrin, OP, and Gustave Thibon · Her Dominican confessor and her Catholic host remember her.
Documented positions
Where this thinker stands on each question the test asks.