Weil, Simone (1909-1943), was a French writer, mystic, social philosopher, political activist, and pacifist. She became famous after her death through the posthumous publication of a number of books. Her writings deeply influenced social thinkers in both France and the United Kingdom and were noted for their profound spiritual qualities.
Weil was born on Feb. 3, 1909, in Paris into an intellectual Jewish family. She was a clever child and a brilliant student, both at school and at the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris, from which she graduated in 1931. She taught philosophy at various schools during the next seven years, changing jobs frequently and breaking off from teaching to take jobs involving hard physical labor on farms and at an automobile factory. She took these tough manual jobs to find out about the lives led by ordinary working people. Weil also worked for various Socialist and Communist causes and wrote articles for socialist journals.
In 1936, Weil went to Spain and joined an anti-Fascist unit preparing to fight in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). Her pacifist beliefs would not allow her to take part directly in the war, so she offered her services as a camp cook. She was later scalded in an accident and went to Portugal to recover.
In 1938, Weil had the first of several mystical experiences. She abandoned her Jewish heritage and adopted Christianity. Although close to Roman Catholicism in her religious views, she never attached herself to any organized church. After the German occupation of France, she moved to Marseille, where she wrote for various journals connected with the French resistance. In 1942, she escaped from France with her parents and traveled to the United States. She then went to the United Kingdom to work for the French resistance from England.
Throughout her life, Weil had sought to identify with oppressed or downtrodden groups by experiencing their hardships. She now sought to identify with her compatriots in occupied France. On Aug. 24, 1943, after trying to live on the same kind of food rations as those living under German occupation, she died of starvation in Ashford, Kent. Her first book to be translated into English was The Iliad: or, The Poem of Force (1945). Weil’s major writings, all published after her death, include perhaps her most important work, Gravity and Grace (1947; translated into English in 1952). Among her other writings are Waiting on God (a spiritual autobiography, 1950; translated in 1951); The Need for Roots (1949; translated in 1952); Oppression and Liberty (1955: translated in 1958); and Notebooks (published as Cahiers in 1951 and translated in 1956).
