Posted on February 25, 2018 by PLT Staff

Discussion led by Christopher Yates at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, VA (February 2018). Using passages from Weil’s writing, Yates contemplates impressions of her life and ideas using the following seven guiding principles found in her work: devotion to intellectual honesty, the interplay between belief and certainty, proximity to unbelievers, divinely-inspired worldly order, susceptibility to false beauties, the love of neighbor, and obedience. For Weil, Yates argues, there is no separation between theological commitment and practices. The end game then is dedicating the highest form of our attention to God, turning from the idols of the world to redemption and righteousness through active prayer. To find a listing of all our Occasional Lectures, click here. 

Excerpt: “If Simone Weil is correct… justice means the right relationships among all things. I think this relates to social justice, the active restoration of right relationships, because after all, what does the beauty of the world tell us? That it has a beautiful order that relates to the love of God. Now the beautiful ordering of social relationships is the task of justice. That is why she goes to work in a factory and goes on hunger strikes among other things to be an agent of justice, whereas charity is giving from a distance. Today, there’s a lot of ways to do this… Just as she doesn’t want us to approach the truth of God from a distance, a comfortable enlightenment distance, she doesn’t want us to approach the neighbor from a distance. So there’s a just way of thinking and a just way of living for Weil.”

• Audio Information
• Date Recorded:February 2018
• Location Recorded:Charlottesville, VA
• Audio File:Download File »