Week 21 · western

Simone Weil

Simone Weil was a French philosopher, mystic, and political activist who worked in factories, fought in the Spanish Civil War, and starved herself in solidarity with occupied France. She died at 34, and nearly all of her work was published after her death. Albert Camus called her "the only great spirit of our times." She combined the most rigorous intellect with the most reckless compassion anyone around her had ever seen.

“"Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity." She lived that sentence until it killed her. She gave her food rations to others during the war, refused to eat more than the minimum, and died of tuberculosis complicated by starvation at 34.”