Talk:Simone Weil

message: Copied from Wikipedia:Reference desk:
I just read the article on Simone Weil.  I added a line saying that the
claim that Weil committed suicide is countermanded by Simone Pretrement in 
her biography, Simone Weil, A Life [the definitive bio.]
But I think that there are a number of other errors in the article:
It says that Simone Weil sought affliction by going to work in the factory
while Weil says that she sought the job because anyone who was to write 
about economics/social philosophy  should experience it before writing
and because she sought to learn the special knowledge that workers possessed
[epistemological priviledge]. 
The current article says that Weil's mehtod is like that of James. But James in
a pragmatist. Weil is a Platonist -something that James criticized.
I do not know what to do about the article. I do not feel right just taking out someone else's work and yet, I think the article needs correction.
Katel
:Well, hopefully you'll find your way here from the reference desk. I do want to second the responses you got there--you should feel absolutely free to edit the article, because that's how Wikipedia works.
:That said, perhaps I can help clarify some of the stuff that's there. First off, I had qualms about the suicide thing, though it's definitely a common interpretation. A statement that Petrement rejected the hypothesis that Weil's death was suicidal would be sufficient.
:Also, while I grant that the Petrement biography is canonical, I'm not sure I'd say it's definitive; some scholars feel Petrement was too close to Weil to get a proper feel for her.
:As to the affliction bit, I think it's pretty clear that she was gunning for affliction when she went to the factory; I think that the experience of affliction in fact comprises the epistemological privilege you mention. However, I would not be averse to a change in wording; I'd be happy with "she found affliction in the life of a factory worker," or, "she encountered affliction," etc.
:Now, as to the question of pragmatism and platonism...it's important to differentiate Weil's values and ends, which are utterly Platonic, from her methods, which are not necessarily so. Weil was a foundationalist by choice, belief, and identification, but her methods were not foundationalistic. 
:The comparison to pragmatism is actually Weil's, and not mine; she says, "One might say, with the pragmatists, that all science reduces itself to a process of action on nature, but it is necessary to add the word methodical.--LP, p. 111" Now, this shows that she does not identify as a pragmatism (obviously), but consider the differentiation she makes--she implies that she what stands between her and pragmatism is methodicity, and this is obviously a misconception of Weil's, since the pragmatists all place enormous emphasis on method. In any case, it is not at all out of line to say that Weil, at the very least at the stage of the LP, is, while not a pragmatist, in some sense going about a related project. And I stand by the actual content of my statement, which is that Weil's functional attitudes towards truth (her uses of it, rather than her beliefs about it) are, indeed, closely akin to James's concept of the function of truth.
:(It's also simplistic to say that James's analysis of truth is a pragmatic one; he considered truth as it occurs in human life, whether pragmatic or no; he simply happens to have favored pragmatism on the basis of his own reflections.)
:Perhaps these comments help somewhat to exonerate my statements; if not, please press your concerns, and help make the article more clear, concise, and informative. Also, if you can help contribute to aspects of Weil's life and thought that are not well-represented in the article (e.g., her politics, which were central, are something I don't feel comfortable elaborating without having The Need for Roots in front of me.), that would be marvelous.
Happy wiki-ing,
कुक्कुरोवाच 22:49, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Your changes look very good. Thanks. Good luck with the thesis.कुक्कुरोवाच — Preceding undated comment added 17:22, 23 April 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Untitled

message: There are editorial questions and comments in the text, either between brackets or at the end of paragraphs. I think they are good thinking points for further expansion but should be here not in the article. Rauh 15:41, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Editorial Questions and Comments in the Text 

message: It seems very strange to me to mix tenses throughout the article, like "she became involved ... at this time she is a marxist" and in the next paragraph "she received her diploma and a becomes teacher." In my mother-tongue it would be a serious style error, but although I have not met such constructions in any english text before, I cannot be sure. --matusz 14:38, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mixing the tenses 

message: I am not a professional philosopher nor a frequent Wikipedia contributor. That said, I find the article in fact a rather accurate and coherent summary of Weil's thought.  
It is indeed not in an encyclopedic style but the very nature of her writing and thinking do not lend themselves very well to a systematic account. As it stands it is quite readable and informative. I would propose removing the tags.--RB1:36, 20 February 2006
:They're still here at time of writing, and I don't think they should be removed yet. I've so far looked only at the first section, and it's somewhat badly organized, so that alone justifies the tags. Also, we should be aiming for an encyclopedic style, even if it seems like it will be difficult to achieve. Further discussion about how to do that can happen on this page (and I hope it will). Cantara 21:57, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tags 

message: This section is *way* too long and reads like a term paper.  Needs a lot of work.69.86.157.199 15:10, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: "Uprootedness"

message: I was intrigued by the need for a citation on the statement regarding her reasons for rejecting the Catholic Church.  I googled an article by Bauer  http://www.cesnur.org/2002/slc/bauer.htm  that seems to solidly root her objections to Catholicism to her political analysis of religions in a 1974 publication, "Lettre au un Religieux", that both Judaism and Christianity were "religions of slaves."  I seem to remember that this was an analysis from Weil's earlier writings. I wonder if the Wiki article's assertion that her objection to Catholicism was it's exclusion of other religious thought was a later development.  And further, I'm wondering if it was her later interest in religions of the east that paled her commitment to Catholicism alone, though it was where she experienced an awakening. Her thought, though she died young, did broaden over time.  And there's the question, too, that if she rejected religions taking on characteristics of each other, and she was passionately awakened by an experience within the realm of Catholicism and still interested in Eastern religions, was she denying herself the possibility of ever worshiping with like-minded individuals such as herself?  She was a radical individualist, but she would not have denied the importance of community, or would she have?
Or was it that though she had a spiritual awakening in the chapel of St. Francis of Assisi, she did not necessarily ascribe that as a "Catholic" experience.?  What IS the work from which you got your impression?  Perhaps I could read more.
Ftord1960 00:06, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Need for citation

message: I have tried to reorganize the sections here. I've added the "Works" section, under which my description of The Need for Roots appears. I think the section on Gravity and Grace should also go here. The sections on Philosophy and Theology need to be expanded with more detail. I am thinking that we need an analysis along the lines of Peter Winch's book on Weil's philosophy. I'd even go so far as to suggest that we need sections on the traditional subdivisions of philosophy: metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics, logic, and so on. In Weil's case, sections on metaphysics, epistemology, and political science seem called for. In Theology, we are obviously dealing with mysticism, though her work with other religions might apply as well. Grammatophile (talk) 04:27, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Organization

message: Can we replace the picture? I don't think the current one really does justice to how she normally looked. How about this one: http://encyclopedie.bourges.net/weil5.jpg ?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.245.42.233 (talk) 01:06, 23 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Different picture? 

message: According to the article "the coroner's report was simply mistaken." It is incredible that a man could become a coroner and function in that position for some years and not detect that "it is in fact Weil's poor health condition that eventually made her unable to eat."
If this is true, then the unintelligent coroner understood cause and effect in reverse order. Did he have a history of such mistakes? Is this credible?Lestrade (talk) 00:25, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: As someone who has been caring for a woman who suffered from tuberculosis and has had severe difficulties eating ever since, I can attest than even today it is extremely common for medical professionals to be extremely ignorant of these issues and attribute them to mental health, especially when women are affected. It would not at all surprise me that a coroner from the 1940s would make this mistake. 82.28.152.71 (talk) 14:20, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Hysteron proteron]]

message: Pity no one with a commitment to basic Wikipedia guidelines took this subject on. This article is absurdly long and mostly very obviously a personal essay. Original research and critical interpretation is not what Wikipedia is for. 72.229.55.176 (talk) 22:39, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Encyclopedia article? 

message: Several books on Weil point out her anti-fascism e.g.,
"Later, she (Weil) would travel to Spain to during itscivil war, not to fight, but to support the anti-fascist forces" Quoted in "These words upon
Your Soul", edited by Paul Ofstedal (p.121).
"The range of journals she contributed to...included "Vigilance" ,the latter an organ
of the Committee of Vigilance of Anti-Fascist Intellectuals". Quoted in
"Simone Weil:Portrait of a Self-Exiled Jew", Thomas R. Nevin 1991 (p.23).
So I'm adding her to the "Category:Anti-fascists", since her anti-fascism went
beyond supporting the French Resistance and was an important part of her career. 176.61.94.25 (talk) 20:09, 23 March 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Weil as Anti-Fascist 

message: What de Gaulle said about Simone Weil was "elle est folle". That does not mean "she's a fool", as the last two references in this article are cited as saying. In literal translation it would mean "she's crazy". In the context of her life and thought it might be conveyed by saying "she's an innocent" or, even, "she's a holy fool", something that implies a quite different description of Weil and appreciation of her character by de Gaulle. (John Crowfoot) Any halfways decent French-English dictionary
Voronov (talk) 03:35, 12 April 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wrong translation? 

message: Why is she categorized as a convert to Roman Catholicism if, according to the article, she decided against being baptized? 176.221.120.203 (talk) 00:02, 5 April 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Religious affiliation 

message: I was looking for an article on the English Wikipedia to which I could link her diploma, "her DES (diplôme d'études supérieures)", from the École Normale Supérieure, which now appears in section Simone Weil#Intellectual life as a red link to an article on the French Wikipedia, and in the article Grandes écoles, in the section Grandes écoles#Écoles Normales Supérieures, I read the following sentence:
If this is true, how could Simone Weil have earned a formal diploma?  – Corinne (talk) 04:47, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Diplome 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified 4 external links on Simone Weil. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20070424181411/http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/weil.htm to http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/weil.htm
*Added archive https://archive.is/20121210045454/http://blog.seteuropeablaze.com/2012/11/simone-weil.html to http://blog.seteuropeablaze.com/2012/11/simone-weil.html
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20091010181204/http://www.siue.edu/artsandsciences/philosophy/weilsociety/colloquy.shtml to http://www.siue.edu/artsandsciences/philosophy/weilsociety/colloquy.shtml
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20070815211545/http://www.globaljusticecenter.org/papers2005/presbey_eng.htm to http://www.globaljusticecenter.org/papers2005/presbey_eng.htm
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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: There is a quotation in the Philosophy section of this article, beginning with the phrase "The man who has known pure joy, if only for a moment..." and attributed to Simone Weil in Gravity and Grace. However, I recently searched a PDF of this book and could not find this quote anywhere in the text. (I tried searching for small fragments of it, but was unable to find anything resembling the quote.) I am concerned that this quote was either invented or misattributed, and would appreciate it if someone could investigate and correct this citation. 71.105.123.51 (talk) 00:27, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks IP. The passage wasn't in my hard copy either, or at least not in the 'Affliction' section. And it seemned contary to some of her other writings. I replaced with an actual quote from the book. There's possibly some other OR in the philosophy section, I might re-write it if no else does, and ever get time to give it the attention it deserves. FeydHuxtable (talk) 09:09, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
replies: text:  The quotation is by Simone Weil, Pensées sans ordre concernant l’amour de Dieu first edition Paris, Gallimard, 1962: "C'est seulement pour celui qui a connu la joie pure, ne fût-ce qu'une minute," (p. 91 of the PDF version) Ontoraul (talk) 09:41, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dubious quotation 

message: I can see no logical reason for the article to contain a (small) list of Arabic translations of her work. We don't have a list of German, Chinese, or Hebrew translations; this is not the purpose of an English-language article. I can see nothing in the article in any way related to Arabia besides her fondness for  Lawrence of Arabia. I am thus removing that section. 
Philologick (talk) 00:18, 12 March 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Arabic translations 

message: Just letting everyone know that I plan to add sub-sections to Section 2 ("Philosophy") of this Wiki Page. Specifically, I will add a new sub-section, numbered 2.2, titled “Philosophy in Waiting for God.” That section will include two further sub-sections, numbered 2.2.1, titled "Attention", and 2.2.2., titled "Three Forms of the Implicit Love of God." In Section 2.2.1., I will explain how Weil conceptualizes attention, and how she elucidates the relationship between attention, prayer, and love of neighbor, in her book Waiting for God. In Section 2.2.2, also drawing from Weil’s Waiting on God, I present Weil’s notion of three forms of implicit love of God (love of neighbor, love of the beauty of the world, and love of religious ceremonies).
Ewang57 (talk) 16:38, 3 May 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: That sounds great, long have I been considering adding more about attention, a central theme to much of her work. Sounds like you have a fruitful way to handle it.  Just as a general note, there's normally no need to flag an intention to edit on a talk page,  unless maybe you're thinking of a massive re-write,  or the articles been especially contentious, which isn't the case here. Looking forward to seeing what you do here. FeydHuxtable (talk) 16:43, 3 May 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Waiting For God