Summary
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the French philosopher and social activist Simone Weil. Born in Paris in 1909 into a wealthy, agnostic Jewish family, Weil was a precocious child and attended the prestigious Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris, achieving the top marks in her class (Simone de Beauvoir came second).
Weil rejected her comfortable background and chose to work in fields and factories to experience the life of the working classes at first hand. She was acutely sensitive to human suffering and devoted her life to helping those less fortunate than herself. Despite her belief in pacifism she volunteered on the Republican side during the Spanish Civil War and later joined the French Resistance movement in England.
Her philosophy was both complex and intense. She argued that the presence of evil and suffering in the world was evidence of God's love and that Man has no right to ask anything of God or of anyone whom they love. Love which expects reward was not love at all in Weil's eyes.
Weil died of TB in Kent at the age of only 34. Her strict lifestyle and self-denial may have contributed to her early death. T.S Eliot said "she was not just a woman of genius, but was a genius akin to that of a saint"; Albert Camus believed she was "the only great spirit of our time."
With:
Beatrice Han-Pile Professor of Philosophy at the University of Essex
Stephen Plant Runcie Fellow and Dean of Trinity Hall at the University of Cambridge
David Levy Teaching Fellow in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh
Producer: Natalia Fernandez.
Transcript
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| 0:47.0 | Hello in Bybrook Cemetery in Ashford, Kent lies the grave Simone Vay, the French philosopher and social activist, described by her |
| 0:55.4 | compatriot al-Bacamieu as the only great spirit of our time. |
| 1:00.3 | A simple tombstone states that she died at the age of 34 from tuberculosis. |
| 1:05.7 | Not long after her death an unknown admirer added a small plaque bearing an inscription |
| 1:09.4 | in Italian which translates as, my solitude held in its grasp the grief of others till my death, |
| 1:17.0 | a quotation which reveals a great deal about the life of a woman whose central philosophical tenet and focus in life was to emphasize with the sufferings of others, always at her own expense. |
| 1:28.0 | Simanveil's life may be short but achievements are vast. |
| 1:32.0 | An inspiration to a Pope, several writers and philosophers, |
| 1:36.1 | she's been dismissed by some as a mystic. So who was she really? And how is her philosophy |
| 1:41.6 | and writing view today? |
| 1:43.2 | With me to discuss him and very Beatrice Hanpile, |
| 1:46.7 | professor of philosophy at the University of Essex, |
| 1:49.5 | Stephen Plant, Runcey fellow and Dean of Trinity Hall at the University of Cambridge, and David Levy, teaching |
... |
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