Hailed by Andre Gide as the patron saint of all outsiders, Simone Weil's short life was ample testimony to her beliefs. In 1942 she fled France along with her family, going firstly to America. She then moved back to London in order to work with de Gaulle. Published posthumously The Need for Roots was a direct result of this collaboration. Its purpose was to help rebuild France after the war. In this, her most famous book, Weil reflects on the importance of religious and political social structures in the life of the individual. She wrote that one of the basic obligations we have as...

On the fiftieth anniversary of the first English edition, this Routledge Classics edition offers the English reader the complete text of this landmark work for the first time ever.

Simone Weil (1909-1943) was a defining figure of the 20th century - a philosopher, Christian, resistance fighter, anarchist, feminist, Labour activist and teacher. She was described by T.S. Eliot as a woman of genius, of a kind of genius akin to that of the saints. These are her notebooks.

Simone Weil's Lecons de Philosophie are derived from a course she taught at the lycee for girls at Roanne in 1933 4. Anne Reynaud-Guerithault was a pupil in the class; her notes are not a verbatim record but are a very full and, as far as one can judge, faithful rendering, often catching the unmistakable tone of Simone Weil's voice as well as the force and the directness of her thought. The lectures form a good general introduction to philosophy, ranging widely over problems about perception, mind, language, reasoning and problems in moral and political philosophy too. Her method of...

In 1931, Simone Weil read an article by Louis Roubaud in the Petit Parisien that exposed the Yen Bay massacre in Indochina. That article opened Weil's eyes, and from then until her death in exile in 1943, she cared most deeply about the French colonial situation. Weil refused to accept the contradiction between the image of France as champion of the rights of man and the reality of France's exploitation and oppression of the peoples in its territories. Weil wrote thirteen articles or letters about the situation, writings originally published in French journals or in French collections of her...

'Weil's particular form of independent Marxism combined with a later turn to mysticism and religion provides a provocative tradition. Clearly an important work, the book should be part of any academic collection.' -Choice

Eine (Wieder)Entdeckung: Simone Weil über Krieg und Gewalt §Der Band versammelt, größtenteils zum ersten Mal in deutscher Sprache, bislang kaum erschlossene Schriften Simone Weils der dreißiger und frühen vierziger Jahre am Vorabend des zweiten Weltkriegs, vor dem Hintergrund von Weltwirtschaftskrise, Volksfront und spanischem Bürgerkrieg, und zuletzt zu Kriegszeiten im besetzten Frankreich und in ihrer Aktivität für die Résistance. In ihren Analysen seziert Simone Weil die Mechanismen der Macht, die Formen der Gewalt und die Verführungskraft der Ideologie und überrascht etwa...