Simone Weil, the great mystic and philosopher for our age, shows where anyone can find God.Why is it that Simone Weil, with her short, troubled life and confounding insights into faith and doubt, continues to speak to today’s spiritual seekers? Was it her social radicalism, which led her to renounce privilege? Her ambivalence toward institutional religion? Her combination of philosophical rigor with the ardor of a mystic?Albert Camu...

A new translation of Simone Weil's best-known work: a political, philosophical and spiritual treatise on what human life could beWhat do humans require to be truly nourished? Simone Weil, one of the foremost philosophers of the last century, envisaged us all as being bound by unconditional, eternal obligations towards every other human being. In The Need for Roots, her most famous work, she argued that our greatest need was to be rooted: in a community, a ...

NYRB CLASSICS ORIGINAL: Simone Weil’s searing argument against partisan politics will speak to modern U.S. citizens who are fed up with Congressional infighting and legislative deadlock.“One of the most brilliant and original minds of 20th-century France.” —The New York TimesSimone Weil—philosopher, activist, mystic—is one of the most uncompromising of modern spiritual masters. In “On the Abolition of All Political Parties” she cha...

Gravity and Grace is a profound and thought-provoking book by French philosopher and mystic Simone Weil, first published posthumously in 1947. The work is a collection of her reflections, aphorisms, and meditations, offering a deep exploration of the human condition, the tension between materiality and spirituality, and the path toward transcendence.Weil’s reflections are deeply rooted in her experiences with suffering, her study of religion (particularly Christianity, though she d...

'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 editionSimone 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 fough...

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 nat...

The inspiring letters of philosopher, mystic, and freedom fighter Simone Weil to her family, presented for the first time in English.Now in the pantheon of great thinkers, Simone Weil (1909–1943) lived largely in the shadows, searching for her spiritual home while bearing witness to the violence that devastated Europe twice in her brief lifetime. The letters she wrote to her parents and brother from childhood onward chart her intellectual range as well as her itine...

Although trained as a philosopher, Simone Weil (1909–43) contributed to a wide range of subjects, resulting in a rich field of interdisciplinary Weil studies. Yet those coming to her work from such disciplines as sociology, history, political science, religious studies, French studies, and women’s studies are often ignorant of or baffled by her philosophical investigations. In Simone Weil: Late Philosophical Writings, Eric O. Springsted presents a unique collection of Weil’s writi...

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 ...

Hailed by Albert Camus as ‘the only great spirit of our times’, Simone Weil was one of great essayists and activists of the twentieth century. Her writings on the nature of religious faith and spirituality have inspired many subsequent thinkers. Wrestling with the moral dilemmas entailed by commitment to the Catholic Church, Letter to a Priest is a brilliant meditation on the perennial battle between faith and doubt and resonates today as much as when it was first written. This edition als...

In Living Up to the Ads Simone Weil Davis examines commodity culture’s impact on popular notions of gender and identity during the 1920s. Arguing that the newly ascendant advertising industry introduced three new metaphors for personhood—the ad man, the female consumer, and the often female advertising model or spokesperson—Davis traces the emergence of the pervasive gendering of American consumerism.Materials from advertising firms—including memos, manuals, meeting minutes...

Simone Weil was one of the most profound and thought-provoking thinkers of the twentieth century. An intellectual prodigy from an early age in both the sciences and the arts, she was at different times a teacher, factory and farm labourer, and political activist, spending a brief period in Spain during the Spanish Civil War. Her writings, which span philosophy, politics, religion and spirituality, are marked by a both passionate and contemplative attempt to understand profound questions ab...