Simone Weil

Simone Weil was known as a rebel and, but a woman deeply concerned about the well-being of others. Frequently compared to Mother Theresa; often Christlike in what she did. Her parents were affluent and raised Simone in an attentive and supportive environment. According to some of her close friends, Simone knew early on that she would pursue a vocation helping to improve the social conditions of the disadvantaged.

 

As Simone grew older, she became a teacher and participated in political action out of sympathy for the working class. She joined local political activities, supporting the unemployed and striking with workers despite receiving criticism from her close friends. In her twenties, she became increasingly critical of Marxism, identifying it as a new form of oppression, where élite bureaucrats would make life just as miserable for ordinary people as did the most exploitative capitalists. In 1933, she protested the unemployment and wage cuts during the French general strike. The following year, she took a 12-month leave of absence from teaching to work as a factory laborer. In 1936 she joined the Spanish Civil War to fight against the Franco government. She identified herself as an anarchist asking to be sent on a mission to rescue the prisoner Joaquín Maurín. They refused her help knowing well that she would be sacrificing herself for nothing and it was unlikely that she could pass as a Spaniard. 

At age 34, after a lifetime struggling with health issues, Simone died from cardiac failure. The coroner's report concluded that she starved herself. To this day, the exact cause of her death is uncertain. In her book, “In Waiting for God,” Simone explains her forms of implicit love: (1) love your neighbor (2) love the beauty in the world. According to Simone, “by loving those things, one indirectly loves God.” Love your neighbor occurs when the strong treat the weak as equals and when people give personal attention to those that otherwise seem invisible. Albert Camus wrote, "she was the only great spirit of our times." Gustave Thibon, the French philosopher, Weil's close friend said, "I will only say that I had the impression of being in the presence of an absolutely transparent soul, which was ready to be reabsorbed into the original light.”

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