Whose Weil? Simone, Patron Saint of Everyone | Hacker News Reader

Whose Weil? Simone, Patron Saint of Everyone

thedriftmag.com

47 pointsapollinaire18 comments

The Philosophize This podcast has covered Weil in four separate episodes, and has a backgrounder / reading list as well, all compiled here:

<https://www.philosophizethis.org/blog/simone-weil-reading-li...>

I first heard about here on this bbc radio show I think

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BS961W-Y8Uk

In our time is such a fantastic show. It’s always fascinating hearing true experts dig deep in their favourite subjects.

I agree wholeheartedly. It's become one of my goto resources for learning about the history of various topics from science to literature. The episode on Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is fantastic.

The infamous bane of French high-school students

> In 1942, during the Nazi occupation of France, Weil fled to the United States at the last possible moment, and only because she knew that her parents, bourgeois Jews, would not leave without her.

> her virulent, if complex anti-Semitism, a subject over which nearly all of her present-day commentators pass in silence

This is weird.

Her parents were Jews, yet she was virulently anti-Semetic?

And the essay's author, Jack Hanson, makes a point to note that her present-day commentators turn a blind eye to it ... yet he never mentions it again?

[flagged]

There was a strong anti-semitic feeling in Europe in the past centuries (including the XXth) [0][1].

The theory that the Jews were conspiring to sacrifice Christian children had started to spread in the 11th century. The legend proliferated first in England and then in France. [2].

Martin Luther in his early days naively imagining that the Jews, to whom he was attracted by his studies, would flock to the Church in his reformed version. When nothing of the sort happened, he denounced them in a set of pamphlets written in vituperative fury. He had produced the early, favorable "That Christ Was Born a Jew" in 1523, but after he turned on this so-called "damned, rejected race," he wrote Against the Sabbatarians (1538) and On the Jews and Their Lies (1543) [3].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism_in_Europe

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism_in_Christianity

[2] https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/culture/how-christian-europe-cr...

[3] https://www.ushmm.org/research/about-the-mandel-center/initi...

One of the main points of the New Testament is that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah. If you're not a Christian, you'd say that Christianity was originally a sect of Judaism; but to a Christian like myself, Christianity is Judaism.

Of course, this sadly does not stop some people from being antisemitic, especially if you go back a few centuries. But for them, the Bible has a few paragraphs (Romans 11:11–32) specifically explaining why it is wrong for Gentile Christians to think that they are somehow "better" than the Israelites. For example, it was only through ancient Israel's rejection of Jesus that Paul (himself a Jew) went to preach to the Gentiles in the first place, and thus arrogance is unwarranted. Also, God will still save Israel in the end and has not abandoned them. To me, this last point feels like a slam dunk case against anyone who calls themselves a Christian and yet is antisemitic—why would a follower of God hate those whom God wants to save?[0]

All this to say, I think that Christianity's own scripture preaches the exact opposite of antisemitism, and so it's inaccurate to call Christianity "antisemitic on a rather deep level."

[0] Frankly, this applies more generally to Christian attitudes towards non-Christians in general. We have no grounds to be holier-than-thou, since no one is saved by their own goodness. And yet, at least on the internet, there's a general perception that that's how (American) Christians are towards others. That is precisely the opposite of what Jesus did (Mark 2:16–17), and He actually was holier than the rest of us.

Tell this to the catholic church and to the orthodox ones who pronounced themselves against the jews and we are talking a christian grownup in a catholic environment.

Even if that were true, doesn't necessarily mean any and all Christians are antisemitic.

Weil's views on religion (and much else) were complex and nuanced.

She converted to Christianity later in her life. The reasons why she did it would probably turn a lot of people towards Christ as well.

I don't think she converted to Christianity out of spite of Judaism, but rather out of love for Christ. In several of her writings she refers to Jesus as the absolute role model a human could ever strive to be.

She did write a couple things that were critical about Judaism, but she also wrote a lot of things that were critical about almost everything that came across her life, being a philosopher.

I wouldn't label her as anti-semitic, though, mainly because one of the main motives behind her whole life (not just her writings, and this is what sets her apart from other philosophers), is to exercise love for all human beings.

(I have read a lot about her but wouldn't consider myself an expert on Weil yet, so this is mostly my intuition about her.)

To add to this it should be noted that some consider Christianity inherently antisemitic, either because they believe all Christians blame all Jews for Christ's crucifixion, or because Christians believe the New Testament presents a new divine contract that replaces the old contract (Judaism).

According to wikipedia, it's not certain she converted to christianity. She was raised as an agnostic, so was only jewish "ethnically".

The Christianity bit is a technicality. She was never baptized so that's why one could argue she's "no true Christian".

Despite that, in many of her writings she explicitly and openly expresses her alignment with Christianity.

I read some of her books and it also sounds weird to me. The only thing that struck me is that she saw the tribe of Israel in the ancient testament as a nasty example of one group crushing another, something she also didn't like in the roman empire, and also in how french regions were culturally crushed at the expense of the center.

Googling turned up this criticism: - Simone Weil, whose life was devoted to witnessing oppression and injustice, and was almost silent about the persecution of Jews by Nazis — chose to instead focus on the fate of France at the hands of the Germans https://levecenter.ucla.edu/mary-gordon-2013/

It seems a stretch to call her antisemitic.

> It seems a stretch to call her antisemitic

I often wonder what % of antisemitism is a consequence of overly enthusiastic accusations. Two (or much, much more) can play the imagination game.

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