Tag Archives: Albert Camus

An Encounter With Simone Weil

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Simone-Weil-round-glasses-not-smiling

‘Atten­tion is the rarest and purest form of generosity.’

In her short life, Simone Weil (1909–1943) fought in the Span­ish Civil War, worked as a machine oper­a­tor and farm laborer, debated Trot­sky, taught high school stu­dents and union mem­bers, and was part of the French Resis­tance. The daugh­ter of afflu­ent Jew­ish par­ents, she spent her life advo­cat­ing for the poor and dis­en­fran­chised in France and for col­o­nized peo­ple around the world, bravely orga­niz­ing and writ­ing on their behalf. A con­sum­mate out­sider, who dis­trusted ide­olo­gies of any kind, Simone Weil left behind a body of work that fills fif­teen vol­umes and estab­lishes her as a bril­liant polit­i­cal, social, and spir­i­tual thinker.

In her writ­ings, she ana­lyzed power and its dehu­man­iz­ing effects, out­lined a doc­trine of atten­tion and empa­thy for human suf­fer­ing, and cri­tiqued Stal­in­ism long before most of the French left-wing. She believed intel­lec­tual work should be com­bined with phys­i­cal work, and that the­o­ries should evolve from close obser­va­tion and direct expe­ri­ence.  And, after three Chris­t­ian mys­ti­cal expe­ri­ences, she began grap­pling with reli­gious faith, its role in human his­tory, and the short­com­ings of orga­nized reli­gion. Her best-known works, all pub­lished posthu­mously, are Grav­ity & Grace, Oppres­sion & Lib­erty, Wait­ing for God, and The Need for Roots.

Encounter-with-Simone_Weil-Filmstill-06.

Simone Weil died in obscu­rity in Lon­don in 1943. She was just 34. Her rep­u­ta­tion rested mainly on her involve­ment in left-wing pol­i­tics in France dur­ing the 1930s. Then after the war, she was dis­cov­ered. T.S. Eliot intro­duced her to Eng­lish read­ers, with the claim that she pos­sessed “a genius akin to saint­hood.” A lot of atten­tion was focused on Weil’s extreme per­son­al­ity and her extra­or­di­nary life. Now, schol­ars and read­ers are pay­ing atten­tion to the endur­ing sig­nif­i­cance of her polit­i­cal and reli­gious thought.

The New York Times described her as “one of the most bril­liant and orig­i­nal minds of twentieth-century France.” But by far her biggest advo­cate was the exis­ten­tial­ist philoso­pher Albert Camus who played a major role in get­ting her work pub­lished after her death. He even made a pil­grim­age to her writ­ing room before leav­ing for Stock­holm to receive the Nobel Prize in 1957. Yet, despite these lumi­nary sup­port­ers, Simone Weil is a little-known fig­ure, prac­ti­cally for­got­ten in her native France, and rarely taught in uni­ver­si­ties or sec­ondary schools. Slowly that is start­ing to change.

Albert Camus described her as “the only great spirit of our times”.


Happy Birthday Franz Kafka

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Franz Kafka was born in Prague on July 3, 1883 — 129 years ago today.

The first book from Kafka that I read was The Meta­mor­pho­sis and I loved it greatly, how­ever at the time I was not aware of the main theme behind most of his writings: “The Absurd.” Then I watch the movie The Trial based on the book by the same name of Kafka, and then it click. Te trial is a fright­en­ing exam­ple of the absur­dity of the human condition.

In “The Myth of Sisy­phus,”  Albert Camus dis­cusses the works of Kafka. Accord­ing to him, Kafka’s works are per­fect exam­ples of what he terms “The Absurd.”

Here are some pas­sages from Camus Essay “Hope and the absurd in the Work of Franz Kafka”

The whole art of Kafka con­sists in forc­ing the reader to reread. His end­ings, or his absence of end­ings, sug­gest expla­na­tions which, how­ever, are not revealed in clear lan­guage but, before they seem jus­ti­fied, require that the story be reread from another point of view. This is what the author wanted.

But it would be wrong to try to inter­pret every­thing in Kafka in detail. Noth­ing is harder to under­stand than a sym­bolic work. A sym­bol always tran­scend the one who makes use of it and makes him say in real­ity more than he is aware of expressing.

There is in the human con­di­tion a basic absur­dity as well as implaca­ble nobility.

In The Trial, Joseph K. is accused. But he doesn’t know of what. He is doubt­less eager to defend him­self, but he doesn’t know why. The lawyers find his case dif­fi­cult. Mean­while, he does not neglect to love, to eat, or to read his paper. Then hi is judged. But the court­room is very dark. He doesn’t under­stand much. He merely assumes that he is con­demned, but to what he barely won­ders. At times he sus­pects just the same, and he con­tin­ues liv­ing. Some time later two well-dressed and polite gen­tle­men come to get him and invite him to fol­low them. Most cour­te­ously they lead him into a wretched sub­urb, put his head on a stone, and slit his throat. Before dying the con­demned man says merely: “Like a dog.”

Camus is pri­mar­ily drawn to Kafka’s works because of the lucid­ity with which they present the fun­da­men­tal dilemma that for him defines absurd rea­son­ing. On the one hand, Camus says we hope to find some meaning—or God, or order, or explanation—in the uni­verse, and on the other hand, we are faced with a sense­less mul­ti­plic­ity of things that do not orga­nize them­selves in any way that promises an answer. (Q)

I’m going to leave you with a short ani­mated film by direc­tor Piotr Dumala enti­tled “Franz Kafka” that resem­bles very well the suf­fo­cat­ing worlds cre­ated by Kafka in his writings.