With The Subversive Simone Weil: A Life in Five Ideas, the author has given (us) mystical wonderers a great feast. I don't want to get in trouble, but I'm tempted to give a rating of "8-Stars."

Probably around 1996, shortly after my bout with cancer, I ran across the name of Simone Weil for the first time. It took me a little while to figure out she was a she (not a he) and to figure out how to pronounce her last name. In the three decades since, I've grown in my interest towards her for any (many) number of reasons: our mutual interest in inner sculpting, our tendency to be somewhat "maladroit" in common, everyday affairs, and our fixation on the "second great commandment."

I don't know how much Tolstoy influenced her (if at all), but many of her ideas parallel his later-life injunctions: the import of not lying, the necessity of not closing one's eyes to the suffering of others, and the preeminence of feeding starving human beings.

Zaretsky didn't delve into Weil's sex life, which is maybe appropriate (even if the topic can have a pretty substantive effect on how some people's lives and ideas progress). He did provide strong descriptions of Weil's thoughts on "seeing" the Kingdom of Good (or God), her reluctance to convert to the Catholic Church, and her seriousness (by turning away from childish things at age 25). She decided, as have I, that "a life worth living" is a life filled with solving life's problems generally and concretely (and not only the problems in one's own life).

Robert Zaretsky is a liberal arts professor at the University of Houston and has authored a few books on Camus, including Victories Never Last (2022). If you like The Subversive Simone Weil, some other relevant titles would include No Compromise (1989), Heaven Is Under Our Feet (1991), Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing, The Republic (Plato), and What Then Must We Do? (Tolstoy). ( )

In giving us a biography of Simone Weil's philosophy, Robert Zaretsky focuses on five ideas -- affliction, attention, resistance, rootedness and the Good and God. Other reviews have taken issue with his omission of Justice from these five. In a letter of response to the New York Review of Books, Zaretsky accurately points out that he discusses Weil's view of justice at length. The reason for my agreement with his choices was Weil's evolution on what constitutes justice. Describing herself as a "bolshevik" in high school, Zaretsky underscores her evolution from such sympathies in these words: "Like Orwell and Camus, Weil was an isolated voice on the left who denounced communism with the same vehemence as she did fascism." She saw Stalinism as, not a Marxist clock out of order, but a different mechanism onto itself.
Part of Simone Weil's charisma is the above independence.
Zaretsky's chapter on rootedness is, imho, his best. "Duty towards the human being -- that alone is eternal," he quotes Weil. Instead of prioritizing "rights," Weil instead focuses on our obligations toward each other as part of our rootedness in the human community.
Having come to Weil as a neophyte, I was surprised to read not only of her conversion to Catholicism (she was brought up in a secular Jewish household), but to read that that conversion was based on two mystical experiences. "Weil observed," writes Zaretsky, "that her own suffering (she was afflicted by migraines), or malheur, resonated with the suffering, framed by Christian faith...." Visiting a chapel in Assisi, "she felt something 'stronger than I was' that forced her to her knees. A brilliant moral philosopher, Weil insisted that her conversion was based "upon the seamless movement between Greek thought and Christian faith." Yet, true to herself, Weil refused baptism and refused to submit to Catholic doctrine: "... she refused to separate herself from the fate of unbelievers. Anathema sit, the churches sentence of banishment against heretics, filled Weil with horror," Zaretsky emphasizes.
Besides Camus, the other moral philosopher Zaretsky brings into Weil's ideas are those of Iris Murdock. Zaretsky considers their ideas connected and quotes Murdock to illustrate. I found the connection Zaretsky makes fortuitous, and thus his decision to do so a distraction.
Zaretsky's short book inspired me to purchase Weil's biography written by her friend, Simone Petrement. Here, I expect Petrement will flesh out how Weil's physical fraility resulted in her inability to fulfill her aspirations. From her experience in Spain with the Repbulicans to her plan (presented to de Gaulle) to parachute nurses dressed in white into combat to fight alonside allied soldiers, Weil's tenacious idealism broke against the rocks of reality, including her own physical limits. Over time, this took its toll on Simone Weil's health as well as her morale
Weil also wrote against political parties. If a politicican announced that they would pursue completely what was best for the country and the world, Weil wrote, they would be exiled from their party. Yet this is what Weil advocated -- principled office holders who viewed duty to human beings as transcending party interests. How we could use her voice today.
Simone Weil above all was an absolute idealist. She placed huge obligations on herself to adhere to principle. In Middlesex hospital, dying of tuberculosis, Weil refused to eat more than the rations alloted to her fellow French during the war. She refused treatment for her illness. Tragically, she died at the age of thirty four.
I'm afriad I must agree with some of the other reviews that Zaretsky's digression into the moral issues he feels at encountering panhandler's coming off the expressway near his home and work jolted me out of the book's narration. Weil addressed issues of metaphysical significance during a time of the worst evil in history. Reading how Zaretsky addressed a panhandler at his expressway exit detracted from his narration of Weil's ideas. And thus the book. ( )