Simone Weil

Simone Adolphine Weil (French: [simɔn adɔlfin vɛj]; 3 February 1909 – 24 August 1943) was a French philosopher, mystic, political activist and labourer. Despite her short life, her ideas concerning religion, spirituality and politics have remained widely influential in contemporary philosophy.

She was born in Paris to an Alsatian Jewish family. Her elder brother, André, would later become a renowned mathematician. After her graduation from formal education, Weil became a teacher. She taught intermittently throughout the 1930s, taking several breaks because of poor health and in order to devote herself to political activism. She assisted in the trade union movement, taking the side of the anarchists known as the Durruti Column in the Spanish Civil War. During a twelve-month period she worked as a labourer, mostly in car factories, so that she could better understand the working class.

Weil was very attracted to the ascetic egalitarian elements of Christianity, and became increasingly religious and inclined towards mysticism as her life progressed. She died of heart failure in 1943, while working for the Free French government in exile in Britain. Her uncompromising personal ethics may have contributed to her death—she had restricted her food intake in solidarity with the inhabitants of Nazi-occupied France.

Weil wrote throughout her life, although most of her writings did not attract much attention until after her death. In the 1950s and '60s, her work became famous in continental Europe and throughout the English-speaking world. Her philosophy and theological thought has continued to be the subject of extensive scholarship across a wide range of fields, covering politics, society, feminism, science, education and classics.