Table of Contents

Introduction by Gustave Thilbon Gravity and Grace Voide and Compensation To Accept the Void Detachment Imagination Which Fills the Void Renunciation Of Time To Desire Without An Object The Self Decreation Self-Effacement Necessity And Obedience Illusions Idolatry Love Evil Affliction Violence The Cross Balance And Lever The Impossible Contradiction The Distance Between The Necessary and the Good Chance He Whom We Must Love Is Absent Atheism As A Purification Attention And Will Training Intelligence and Grace Readings The Ring Of Gyges Meaning of the Universe Metaxu Beauty Algebra The Social Imprint The Great Beast Social Harmony The Mysticism of Work

About the Author

Simone Weil (1909-1943). One of the most original philosophical, religious and political thinkers of the twentieth century.

Reviews

'Time and again she pierces the veil of complacency and brings the reader face to face with the deepest levels of existence.' - Church Times

'At the twilight of a century whose accelerated history has led to the rise and fall of so many idols, this book increasingly appears like a message from eternity.' - Gustave Thibon

'One of the most profound religious thinkers of modern times.' - The Twentieth Century, 1961

'We must simply expose ourselves to the personality of a woman of genius, of a kind of genius akin to that of the saints.' - T. S. Eliot

'The light Simone shines makes everything seem, at once, reasurringly recognizable and so luminous as to be heavenly.' - Malcom Muggeridge

'In France she is ranked with Pascal by some, condemned as a dangerous heretic by others, and recognized as a genius by all.' - New York Times Book Review

'The best spiritual writer of this century ... she said it was her vocation to stand at the intersection of Christians and non-Christians. She thus becomes the patron saint of all "outsiders".' - André Gide