Simone Weil (1909-1943) was a defining figure of the twentieth century; a philosopher, Christian, resistance fighter, anarchist, feminist, Labour activist and teacher. She was described by T. S. Eliot as 'a woman of genius, of a kind of genius akin to that of the saints', and by Albert Camus as 'the only great spirit of our time'. Originally published posthumously in two volumes, these newly reissued notebooks, are among the very few unedited personal writings of Weil's that still survive today. Containing her thoughts on art, love, science, God and the meaning of life, they give context and meaning to Weil's famous works, revealing an unique philosophy in development and offering a rare private glimpse of her singular personality.
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Yes, you can access The Notebooks of Simone Weil by Simone Weil, Arthur Wills in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Historia & Historia antigua. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.
THERE are certain things which cause no suffering whatever by themselves, but make us suffer as signs. Signs of what? Of a state of things which, by itself, only rarely (or never?) makes us suffer, being too abstract by itself to constitute a woe. But the signs make us suffer from it, though not painful in themselves.
Thus the defeat (cf. Gide's Feuillets) and the sight of a German soldier in uniform.
Thus the identity card at Renault's.
If there are many such signs every day, there is woe.
Other things are by themselves causes of suffering. Physical suffering in this case. Humiliation (that is a physical suffering).
Others again both by themselves and as signs (humiliation). These are the most painful.
Problem: the defeat, not felt as a pain at certain moments (beautiful day, beautiful landscape).
The defeat having taken place, a German soldier has only to appear in the landscape and suffering is created.
Pain born of the link (from sign to thing signified) between two things not painful when outside this link. And this pain is felt by the body (can go as far as tears).
Is it the same in the case of joy? Aesthetic sensation, fêtes . . .? Ornaments of a fête, for example.
[His definition of philosophy (not co-ordinated with the rest): values centred around the ‘I’.]
His idea of an absolute universe of sounds (pure, combined) evoked by each fragment of music. This absolute universe can only be silence—Music starts from silence and goes back to it. . . creation and duration.
Why pure sounds? Produced at will.
Mehl: to conceive time it is necessary to conceive creation. That is true, but also unlimited duration. An opposite of God (or of good— Theaetetus) is required.
The analogue of silence for the plastic arts would be immobility (and the analogue of sound, movement).
The arts render sensible Time and Space.
A sunset renders sensible Time and Space.
Sensible in a certain way. What way? Feeling of reality.
Describe the difference between a beautiful thing (work of art) and the rest, setting aside beauty altogether. One would thus light upon something instructive.
Woe—defines itself: by physical pain—by symbolism (cf. page I) —by the linking up of moments, the flow of duration.
Breaking up of time, the greatest evil we can do a man.
Beauty is the only criterion of value in human life. The only one it is possible to apply to all men. Otherwise there only remains well-being . . . The conditions of a full life are equivalent for all men, but under forms which are, of course, different.
Beauty—rootedness—pact between oneself and one's own conditions of existence—circle of time.
Make it so that time is a circle and not a line.
Sin: diversion—intoxication—licence.
Sin can also show itself in terms of time. Ex. licence=immediacy. Intoxication: state of suspension (passive) with regard to the near future, undefined desire, Danaids.
Evil has two forms, sin and woe. (Socrates recognized it [neither
]1 and even the Stoics [preferable].) Sin, woe, good.
Connection between sin and others’ woe. Essential or accidental? [Love thy neighbour as thyself. Opium-fiend who seeks to turn all his entourage into opium-fiends . . .] Sin is the unlimited, the subjective (co-ordinate that with its characteristics in relation to time). Others constitute a limit and an existence outside ourselves, the only one, for matter . . . 3rd dimension. Respect.
.1
In the case of sin as in that of woe, don't we lose the same thing? That is to say, the world. How then distinguish them the one from the other? Don't they reproduce each other in a reciprocal cycle? Ambiguousness of the word slave, already in the case of the Greeks. A man loses half his soul. . .
(Zeus takes half his soul away from the man who becomes a slave.)
Punishment. It would seem then that, if there is to be a cure for sin, punishment must not be considered an affliction. A painful experience, yes, certainly. A breaking in. What sort of a breaking in?
How, to what extent, does triumphant sin resemble woe?
Inadequacy of the Republic. There Plato analyses sin, but not woe. Electra.
We aspire to escape from woe; we don't aspire to escape from sin; thus by transforming sin into woe we give the soul the desire for salvation; this would be the justification for punishment. But, when a certain degree of woe is reached, do we aspire to escape from it? Besides, that presupposes an evident, not accidental, link between sin and punishment.
Woe is an evil, but pain can be a good.
Is there always pain in woe? Slavery, prison.
In what case does imminent death, known as such (risk of death, certain death) constitute an affliction?
Malheur,2 admirable word, without its equivalent in other languages. We haven't got all we could out of it.
Phèdre: ambiguousness between woe and sin.
What power has a man to extricate himself from woe? This power is necessarily physical. He can thus be deprived of it. The question is to know whether one can deprive him of it without killing him.
What power has he over his own duration?
What power over the symbolism which turns certain sensible things into signs of woe?
And over that which turns certain sensible things into signs of joy?
If I believe that man is not at the mercy of circumstances, I act upon others inconsiderately.
If I believe that man is at the mercy of circumstances, I abandon myself personally to them. Which brings about, amongst other things, the former consequence. Reciprocal action, moreover. These two beliefs lead to the same state. Therefore, right behaviour implies a contradiction.
It is not in the least true that good is without its contradictory side, that evil alone is contradictory. Virtue might well be, perhaps, less logical than sin.
What contradictions are legitimate, and what are not? Quite a different logic . . .
Physical pains. Some of them make one ‘lose’ the world, whilst they last: e.g. dentist. Others constitute a contact with the world: e.g. gathering up sheaves full of thorns in one's arms.
The same with fatigue which comes from work; it is of two kinds.
Object of art: make space and time sensible to us. Contrive for us a human space and time, made by man, which nevertheless are time itself, space itself.
Creation, end of the world. Birth, death. Etc. Render space and time, in a sense, finite. Or group the indefinite around the finite. The statue in the surrounding space, like the poem in the silence.
Elements of the poem. A time which has a beginning and an end. To what does that correspond? Then the flavour of the words: that each word have a maximum flavour. Which implies an accord between the meaning we give it and all its other meanings, an accord or an opposition with the sound of its syllables, accords and oppositions with the words coming before and after.
A picture—a finite space, limited by a frame: it is necessary the infinite should be in it.
Always a certain relation—a certain accord, a certain opposition—between the finite and the indefinite.
Examples of perfect poems, i.e. having a beginning and an end, and a duration which is an image of eternity. There are few of them. That of Sappho:
1
The 2 strophes (or only the Ist?) of:
2
‘Love’ of Herbert. Marlowe perhaps: ‘Come live with me and be my love . . .’ Shakespeare's ditties: ‘Come away, come away, death . . .’ and above all, ‘Take, O take those lips away . . .’ In French, nothing, I think. Nor in German either. Nor in Italian either, as far as I know.
‘. . . But the opus will have eliminated as much as possible chance combinations; no doubt chance will always play a part in its composition, but solely to awaken in the mind of the musician a particular point in a system of sounds which in the opus itself pre-exists chance...’
The notion of work lies at the root of physics and governs it entirely. Why isn't there a book—a book of...
