Weil
Waiting for God
60,00 ₾You cannot get far in these essays without sensing yourself in the presence of a writer of immense intellectual power and fierce independence of mind.’ – Janet Soskice, from the Introduction to the Routledge Classics edition
Simone Weil (1909–1943) is one of the most brilliant and unorthodox religious and philosophical thinkers of the twentieth century. She was also a political activist who worked in the Renault car factory in France in the 1930s and fought briefly as an anarchist in the Spanish Civil War. Hailed by Albert Camus as ‘the only great spirit of our times,’ her work spans an astonishing variety of subjects, from ancient Greek philosophy and Christianity to oppression, political freedom and French national identity.
Waiting for God is one of her most remarkable books, full of piercing spiritual and moral insight. The first part comprises letters she wrote in 1942 to Jean-Marie Perrin, a Dominican priest, and demonstrate the intense inner conflict Weil experienced as she wrestled with the demands of Christian belief and commitment. She then explores the ‘just balance’ of the world, arguing that we should regard God as providing two forms of guidance: our ability as human beings to think for ourselves; and our need for both physical and emotional ‘matter.’ She also argues for the concept of a ‘sacred longing’; that humanity’s search for beauty, both in the world and within each other, is driven by our underlying desire for a tangible god.
Eloquent and inspiring, Waiting for God asks profound questions about the nature of faith, doubt and morality that continue to resonate today.
This Routledge Classics edition includes a new Introduction by Janet Soskice and retains the Foreword to the 1979 edition by Malcolm Muggeridge.
The Need for Roots
65,00 ₾Hailed by Andre Gide as the patron saint of all outsiders, Simone Weil’s short life was ample testimony to her beliefs. In 1942 she fled France along with her family, going firstly to America. She then moved back to London in order to work with de Gaulle. Published posthumously The Need for Roots was a direct result of this collaboration. Its purpose was to help rebuild France after the war. In this, her most famous book, Weil reflects on the importance of religious and political social structures in the life of the individual. She wrote that one of the basic obligations we have as human beings is to not let another suffer from hunger. Equally as important, however, is our duty towards our community: we may have declared various human rights, but we have overlooked the obligations and this has left us self-righteous and rootless. She could easily have been issuing a direct warning to us today, the citizens of Century 21.
Intimations of Christianity Among the Ancient Greeks
68,00 ₾Simone Weil (1909–1943) is one of the most brilliant and unorthodox religious and philosophical minds of the twentieth century. She was also a political activist, worked in the Renault car factory in France in the 1930s and fought briefly as an anarchist in the Spanish Civil War, before her tragic early death in England at the age of thirty-four. Her work spans an astonishing variety of subjects, from ancient Greek philosophy and Christianity to oppression, political freedom and French national identity.
Intimations of Christianity Among the Ancient Greeks sees Weil apply her unique and piercing intellect to early Greek thought, where she finds fundamental precursors to Christian religious ideas. She argues, provocatively, that concepts fundamental to Christianity such as incarnation, redemption, suffering and resurrection are Greek as well as Christian and that there is much we can learn, spiritually and philosophically, from their entwinement.
This Routledge Classics edition includes a new Foreword by Christopher Hamilton.
Gravity and Grace
68,00 ₾Gravity and Grace was the first ever publication by the remarkable thinker and activist, Simone Weil. In it Gustave Thibon, the farmer to whom she had entrusted her notebooks before her untimely death, compiled in one remarkable volume a compendium of her writings that have become a source of spiritual guidance and wisdom for countless individuals. On the fiftieth anniversary of the first English edition – by Routledge & Kegan Paul in 1952 – this Routledge Classics edition offers English readers the complete text of this landmark work for the first time ever, by incorporating a specially commissioned translation of the controversial chapter on Israel. Also previously untranslated is Gustave Thibon’s postscript of 1990, which reminds us how privileged we are to be able to read a work which offers each reader such ‘light for the spirit and nourishment for the soul’. This is a book that no one with a serious interest in the spiritual life can afford to be without.