Simone Weil and the Intellect of Grace

Weil was a Marxist who experienced the relations of power between producing and ruling classes firsthand as a factory and field worker. She was an internationalist who felt that the fall of Paris was a "great day for Indo-China" and yet she wanted to fight for France. She was a mystic and self-styled Christian who refused to join the Church because of its intolerance and exclusivism. The scope of her thought is remarkable, and this volume seeks to cover it all: religion, politics, science, history and culture. What comes through strongly are Weil's power of analysis and criticism, her love of truth and hunger for justice, her commitment to nonviolence, and, most of all, her regard for everyone and everything marginalized or excluded by orthodoxies and establishments, whether colonized people or heresy.

Henry Leroy Finch taught philosophy at Sarah Lawrence College for twenty years and at Hunter College for sixteen years. He was the author of three books on Ludwig Wittgenstein and edited the papers of Eric Gutkind. He was one of the founders of the American Weil Society in 1970. He died in 1998.

Martin Andic is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Massachusetts, Boston.