| 1931
| Passes
her agrògation brilliantly in July. |
| | In August obtains her first position as a teacher of philosophy
at the girls' Lycòe of Le Puy, seventy miles southwest of Lyons.
|
| 1932
| In Le
Puy actively supports unemployed demonstrators. A public scandal ensues and she
is transferred. |
| | Visits Germany in the summer to observe the political situation,
just before Hitler's accession to power. |
| | Begins to teach at the girls' Lycòe in Auxerre, near Paris. her
controversial teaching methods cause problems and her students do poorly in their
examinations. The school administrators abolish her position as a teacher of
philosophy, and she is released. |
| 1933
| Her
interest in political sociology begins to take firm shape. |
| | Spends the month of August with her parents at
Chambon-sur-Lignon. |
| | Takes a new teaching positions at the girls' Lycòe in Roanne, a
city sixty-five miles to the west of Lyons. Acquires a reputation for being a
communist and an atheist. |
| | On December 3, in the city of Saint-Etienne, takes part in the
famous "March of the Miners" planned by the national CGT [Confeederation Gònòrale
du Travail] Miners' Federation to protest unemployment and wage cuts.
|
- chronology of Simone Weil's life, in the Simone Weil Reader,
edited by George A. Panichas (David McKay Co. NY 1977) p xxxvii
The fideist theory (N.B. fideism is the view that any affirmation of the mind
does not come from reason, but from feeling): one believes something because one
wants to believe it; belief in certain things becomes an obligation. Fideism is a
view very well suited to all forms of spiritual tyranny; fideism always ends up
in the subordination of thought to a social myth.
But the fact that doubt is possible shows that fideism is false. What is more,
whenver one tries to suppress doubt, there is tyranny.
- Simone Weil, Lectures in philosophy (Leçons de philosophie)
translated by Hugh Price (Cambridge University Press 1959, 1978) p 103
One of the most exquisite pleasures of human love--to serve the loved one without
his knowing it--is only possible, as regards the love of God, through
atheism.
- Simone Weil, First and last notebooks (last notebook 1942)
(Oxford University Press 1970) p 84
In order to obey God, one must receive his commands.
How did it happen that I received them in adolescence, while I was professing
atheism?
To believe that the desire for good is always fulfilled--that is faith, and
whoever has it is not an atheist.
- Simone Weil, First and last notebooks (last notebook 1942)
(Oxford University Press 1970) p 137
No human being escapes the necessity of conceiving some good outside himself
towards which his thought turns in a movement of desire, supplication, and hope.
consequently, the only choice is between worshipping the true God or an idol.
Evey atheist is an idolater--unless he is worshipping the true God in his
impersonal aspect. The majority of the pious are idolaters.
- Simone Weil, First and last notebooks (last notebook 1942)
(Oxford University Press 1970) p 308
Wrongly or rightly you think that I have a right to the name of Christian. I
assure you that when in speaking of my childhood and youth I use the words
vocation, obedience, spirit of peverty, purity, acceptance, love of one's
neighbor, and other expressions of the same kind, I am giving them the exact
signification they have for me now. Yet I was brought up by my parents and my
brother in a complete agnosticism, and I never made the slightest effort to
depart from it; I never had the slightest desire to do so, quite rightly, I
think. In spite of that, ever since my birth, so to speak, not one of my faults,
not one of my imperfections really had the excuse of ignorance. I shall have to
answer for everything on that day when the Lamb shall come in anger.
You can take my word for it too that Greece, Egypt, ancient India, and ancient
China, the beauty of the world, the pure and authentic reflections of this beauty
in art and science, what I have seen of the inner recesses of human hearts where
religious belief is unknown, all these things have done as much as the visibly
Christian ones to deliver me into Christ's hands as his captive. I think I might
even say more. The love of these things that are outside visible Christianity
keeps me outside the Church. ...
... But it also seems to me that when one speaks to you [Father Perrin] of
unbelievers who are in affliction and accept their affliction as a part of the
order of the world, it does not impress you in the same way as if it were a
question of Christians and of submission to the will of God. Yet it is the same
thing.
- Simone Weil, her last letter to Father Perrin from a refugee camp in Casablanca, 26 may 1942
the Simone Weil Reader, edited by George A. Panichas (David McKay Co. NY 1977) p 111
It represents--but in a much nobler form--Maurras' doctrine, "Politique d'abord."
But Maurras, with perfect logic, is an atheist. The
Cardinal [Richelieu], in postulating something whose whole reality is confined to
this world as an absolute value, committed the sin of idolatry. ... The real sin
of idolatry is always committed on behalf of something similar to the State.
- Simone Weil, Prelude to Politics, completed shortly before her death in 1943
the Simone Weil Reader, edited by George A. Panichas (David McKay Co. NY 1977) p 199
Antiquity is often accused of having only been able to recognize collective
values. In fact, this mistake was only made by the Romans, who were atheists, and
by the Hebrews; and in the latter case, only up to the time of the Babylonian
exile.
- Simone Weil, Prelude to Politics, completed shortly before her death in 1943
the Simone Weil Reader, edited by George A. Panichas (David McKay Co. NY 1977) p 212
Our patriotism comes straight from the Romans. ... It is a pagan virtue, if these
two words are compatible. The word pagan, when applied to Rome, early possesses
the significance charged with horror which the early Christian controversialists
gave it. The Romans really were an atheistic and idolatrous people; not
idolatrous with regard to images made of stone or bronze, but idolatrous with
regard to themselves. It is this idolatry of self which they have bequeathed to
us in the form of patriotism.
- Simone Weil, Prelude to Politics, completed shortly before her death in 1943
the Simone Weil Reader, edited by George A. Panichas (David McKay Co. NY 1977) p 220
Rome is the Great Beast of atheism and materialism, adoriing nothing but
itself. Israel is the Great Beast of religion. Neither one nor the other is
likable. The Great Beast is always repulsive.
- Simone Weil, Prelude to Politics, completed shortly before her death in 1943
the Simone Weil Reader, edited by George A. Panichas (David McKay Co. NY 1977) p 393
Religion in so far as it is a source of consolation is a hindrance to true faith;
and in this sense atheism is a purification. I have to be an
atheist with that part of myself which is not made for God. Among those in
whom the supernatural part of themselves has not been awakened, the
atheists are right and the believers wrong.
- Simone Weil, Faiths of Meditation; Contemplation of the divine
the Simone Weil Reader, edited by George A. Panichas (David McKay Co. NY 1977) p 417
That is why St. John of the Cross calls faith a night. With those who have
received a Christian education, the lower parts of the soul become attached to
these mysteries when they have no right at all to do so. That is why such people
need a purification of which St. John of the Cross describes the stages. Atheism
and incredulity constitute an equivalent of such a purification.
- Simone Weil, Faiths of Meditation; Contemplation of the divine
the Simone Weil Reader, edited by George A. Panichas (David McKay Co. NY 1977) p 418
The last sentence she wrote in the notebook found after her death was: "The most
important part of education--to teach the meaning of to know (in the scientific
sense)."
The whole of Simone Weil is contained in these few words.
- Biographical Note, Simone Weil, Waiting for God (GP Putnam's Sons 1951, Harper 1975) p xi
Simone Weil has observed: "There are two atheisms of which one is a
purification of the notion of God."
- William Robert Miller (ed.), The New Christianity (New York: Delacorte Press 1967) p
267; in Paul Schilling,
God in an age of atheism (Abingdon: Nashville 1969) p 17
Simone Weil 1909-1943
|
