Gravity and Grace Paperback – November 1, 1997

Simone Weil as she presents her thoughts in this work is a Christian Platonist in the Platonic mystic tradition, somewhat distrustful of social institutions including any established church, primarily concerned with the personal spiritual journey but also in how that guides ethical action. The principles she discusses are meant to be timeless but are presented in a way accessible to modern secular thought, while not being "of" that origin.The primary influences over Weil readily detected in her work by those familiar with them are Plato, the gospels and New Testament generally, St Francis of Assisi and St John of the Cross. Besides Plato, she shows a thorough and scholarly awareness of the Greek classics, and in places the influence of (or convergence with) St Augustine can be seen, but without citing him by name.Notably Weil's conception of God is as the idea of the good and as the truth, while explicitly identifying both with Christ. She also shares Augustine's Platonic conception that our good acts are best thought of as the acts of God as the good itself acting through us, while our evil acts are our own - though often also associated with a blind natural mechanism. She also shares with the medieval and early modern mystics the language of love applied to acceptance of God's grace.Weil has a developed view of how natural psychology works in the absence of grace - the "gravity" of the title - in which concern with power and dignity form a closed arena of struggle, in which a Nietzsche, Machiavelli, or Thrasymachus would feel at home. This conception also aligns with the Hegelian dialectic of masters and slaves struggling tragically for "recognition", which she would likely see in much of modern philosophy and social science. For her, this is what human life would look like without grace, without the action of true goodness, and without authentic religion in the world.Weil has a definite view of what human spiritual freedom consists in, and that view is that it is a matter primarily of attention (and desire for the good), not of anything properly described as will. If we turn out attention toward the good itself and toward God and hold it there resolutely, the good itself will gradually purge us of our natural spiritual evil. She is adamant that this is not our acts but the acts of grace upon us, to which we must consent. Most flee from this into self deceptions that excuse our natural evil and spare us this transformation.Weil has a deep and nuanced appreciation for affliction and for suffering, and the role these play both within us and without us in our spiritual orientation. She recognizes that crushing affliction threatens not just our happiness or pleasure but our soul. Naturally speaking, there is a limit of affliction beyond which we do not have the power to bear it with patience ourselves, but it must breed resentment - of others or, more deeply, of the nature of existence itself. The spiritual difficulty and task is to transmute such affliction into what she terms suffering, accepted and endured in a redemptive fashion, without loss of our love for other people and for life. She argues plausibly that only a kind of grace from outside our own lives and resources, from a good placed beyond earthly existence and made the focus of our sustained spiritual attention, can perform this through us.Weil is noteworthy for her intellectual honesty and rigor, for her refusal to sugar coat anything she says, and for avoiding all "cant" and dogma. She presents a very attractive understanding of beauty as the sign of the divine (of good and of love), that is readily accessible to secular minded moderns. These conceptions can be traced to her Platonism, but they are also distinctly her own in their formulation and in their fitness for modern people.I would chose the following 2 passages from her work (to give a sense of her appeal to philosophically open minded readers new to her and to this entire sort of spirituality. The first from an essay "the forms of the implicit love of God", collected with others in the work Waiting for God. The second is from Gravity and Grace, in the section entitled "Chance"."In the period of preparation the soul loves in emptiness. It does not know whether anything real answers its love. It may believe that it knows, but to believe is not to know. Such belief does not help. The soul knows for certain only that it is hungry. The important thing is that it announces its hunger by crying. A child does not stop crying if we suggest to it that perhaps there is no bread. It goes on crying just the same.""The beings I love are creatures. They were born by chance. My meeting with them was also by chance. They will die. What they think, say and do is limited and is a mixture of good and evil. I have to know this with all my soul and not love them the less. I have to imitate God who infinitely loves finite things in that they are finite things... The vulnerability of precious things is beautiful because vulnerability is a mark of existence."Overall I can highly recommend this work. It will make you think, it will also make you feel deeply. The good might use it to do still more with some of us.

Simone Weil, a twentieth-century French philosopher and political activist, possessed excellent academic training and worked in the Spanish leftist political movements. Around the advent of World War II, however, she became disillusioned with the totalitarian politics of Europe and made a reflective move inward. She began to convert to a Roman Catholic form of Christianity. Unfortunately, she died in obscurity before the war’s end as a result of a longstanding struggle with anorexia. She had labored at farms in the French countryside and entrusted a notebook/journal of writings to a French philosopher/farmer/friend. Seeing their value, he soon published these writings and a decade later, they were translated into English. They demonstrate an active mind and spirit seeking to understand reality amidst profound alienation.These writings fall somewhere within the realms of personal philosophy and of a spirituality of a seeker. Though Christian in orientation, they do not teach any specific theological creed. They allude to religious rites like the Eucharist, but neither at length nor centrally. Weil was born into Judaism and graduated at the top of her class in philosophy at Paris. These writings show a clear – if not dominant – influence from these traditions.The topics are varied, including love, evil, the social framework, and asceticism. She practices spiritual disciplines using the so-called via negativa (or negative way), wherein she acknowledges her own frailty and inadequacies in light of the Divine. (This seemed to go hand-in-hand with her anorexia.) She acknowledges two deep forces in the universe: gravity and grace. Gravity, intellectually understood from physics, holds the universe together, but God’s grace allows “the good” to grow. (Weil was a longtime Platonist.) She sees these two scientific and theological forces as complementary, not competitive.Centuries earlier, another French genius Blaise Pascal left his Pensées, written on scraps of paper and published posthumously. Similarly, Weil’s writings were shared after her untimely death. Her life did not meet with nearly as much acclaim as Pascal’s did in scientific fields. Nonetheless, both’s forays into religious philosophy leave enduring legacies that deserve to be consulted by philosophical theists. Both maintain the role of a seeker, not a strict adherent to a creed, yet both overlap with orthodox Roman Catholic beliefs. They will be remembered in forthcoming centuries for their honesty and intellectual probing. Thinking Christians will value Weil’s contributions here, in her most accessible work that inspires spiritual pondering more than preaching.

Simone Weil was a mystic, a romantic for the Divine, a gorgeous writer, a prophet and a jester. She probably had many more layers of expressional depth then this. At times abstract but always completely thoughtful, real and direct, Simone wrote down her observations about humanity, the "I", love, loss, Gravity and Grace, to name just a few themes. It will either guide you to an encounter with God, or be a mirror for why that encounter hasn't happened yet. This is the type of book that is a go-to for me when I am ready to dive into my own self and heart and mind. Bravo. 5 stars.

A reading that changes perspectives and with it, in many ways life and how we relate to life. And it invites us to discover the fascinating thought of Simone Weil.