- Weil, Simone
- (1909-1943)philosopher, writerBorn and educated in Paris, simone Weil, whose writings would influence French and British social thought, in 1934 worked at the Renault plant, then taught secondary school while becoming a social activist. in 1936, she joined the international Brigade and fought in the Spanish civil war. After returning to France (1941), she left for New York and London, where she worked in the offices of the resistance in exile. Disagreeing, however, with certain of general charles de gaulle's political policies, she resigned in 1943. She died in August of that year in England while trying, despite her tuberculosis, to subsist on the same rations as her French compatriots living under the German Occupation. opposed to violence, she always took the side of the weak, vanquished, and oppressed, with whom she identified in her passionate and unrelenting quest for truth and justice. While her mysticism has a Christian inspiration (of Jewish origin, she never converted to Christianity), her views were also drawn from Hellenism, Gnosticism, and Hinduism. The writings of Weil, published after her death, include La Pensateur et la Grâce, 1947; La Connaissance surnaturelle, 1949; L'Enracinement, 1950; Lettre à un religieux, 1951; La Condition ouvrière, 1951; La Source grecque, 1953; Oppression et Liberté, 1955; Écrits historiques et politiques, 1960.
France. A reference guide from Renaissance to the Present . 1884.