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Julie and Scott talk about Simone Weil’s astounding biography, including her experiences volunteering for the Spanish Civil War and participating in the French Resistance. We discuss her essays “The Iliad, or, The Poem of Force,”“The Need for Roots,” and “Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God.” And we ask, how does war turn us into objects? What is the relationship between openness to God and openness to the neighbor? What might a society of “attention” look like? What are some of the complexities of pacifism and anti-statism? What might mean to create a society of attention? And finally, how does Scott read Weil as a Jewish thinker, necessary for us today?
Note: For our use of the term “thingification” see Aimé Césaire’s Discourse on Colonialism.
Other texts and authors discussed:
George Herbert, “Love III”
Kathryn Lawson, Ecological Ethics and the Philosophy of Simone Weil: Decreation for the Anthropocene. Routledge, 2024.
Emmanuel Levinas, “Simone Weil and the Bible” in Levinas, Difficult Freedom: Essays on Judaism, Trans. Sean Hand. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990.
Scott B. Ritner joined the Political Science department at the University of Colorado Boulder in 2022 following appointments at SUNY Potsdam (2021-2022) and Temple University (2018-2021). He earned his PhD from The New School for Social Research in 2018. Scott's research focuses on 20th and 21st Century Critical Social Theory, Race & Ethnic Politics, and Popular Culture including literature and music. His manuscript in progress is titled Revolutionary Pessimism: The Antifascist Politics of Simone Weil. He is currently President of the American Weil Society (http://www.americanweilsociety.org). He teaches courses in Political Theory, American Politics, and Comparative Politics. When not researching or teaching, you can [try to] find him in the mountains. His work on Simone Weil can be found in Theory & Event, in various edited volumes, and at H-Net France.
