Link to episode: https://philosophizethis.libsyn.com/episode-172-simone-weil-attention
Podcast: Philosophize This!
Topic: Simone Weil (SW)
1928 – Simone accepted to Ecole Normal Superior – Sartre, Derrida, Foucault
One of 11 in her class, only woman
Scored highest marks – second was Simone de Beauvoir
SW tried to live by the values she espoused – a living philosophy
Died at 34 from tuberculosis, arguably from hunger bc she wouldn’t accept more food due to the widespread famine
As a teen, taught herself Sanskrit so she could read Bhagavad Gita
Camus said she was “the only great spirit of our time”
Importance of attention, the ethics of attention
The quality of attention dictates every experience that you have
Different experience of everything you do is available to you – depending on how you choose to pay attention
ONLY if you’re open to receiving it
Most people fall into default state of attention – based on biology and habits
School education – one of first places we learn to pay attention
After graduation, SW gets a job teaching, unique style
Her class would sit under a tree and just think about new problems in a field (eg, geometry)
Encouraged students to think openly and creatively
For complex problems, by default, people search for answers, and settle into incomplete answers, and then it’s about defending your position and finding people who just agree with you
Hardest job of teaching is to change this collectivist way of thinking
Instead, accept that everything you believe is a partial truth, seek new experiences, without agenda
Our thought should be empty, open, not seeking, ready to receive
Concept of “passive activity”
Strike a balance between completely passive and completely in control / aggressive activity
Middle path – put in effort, but remove your personal prejudices, detached from your self
“The great human error is to reason in place of finding out”
She could’ve lived a very comfortable life, but chooses adventure / new experience
Went to the trenches, joined front of Spanish Civil War, lies and says she’s a journalist! Despite being far sighted
Act of courage based on moral conviction
Accidentally steps into pot of boiling oil, scalded badly
Quit job as a teacher
For months, she does physical labor in an auto factory to better understand the working class / worker life
Learns that the main priority of these jobs is the “quota”, the output – matters more than the people
Impossible for these workers to think about other stuff – must meet quota
Thinking is the first thing to go
Means to an end for someone else’s economic goal
Made into a modern day slave / robot
Zero connection to what you’re producing
Concludes that the biggest thing these factories produce (in workers) is affliction, a spiritual malaise
Affliction is when people are transformed from human begins into things – and they’re incapable of thinking their way out of this stuck place of existence
Force is to humans as gravity is to physical world – what makes things happen
Power itself isn’t the problem; the problem is the “pursuit of power”, in this pursuit people will be turned by others into instruments
As remedy, could focus on Political change vs. Spiritual change
All it takes is one person to see things differently to inspire change in others
Suspend your own personal agenda, see others as they are