Editing Simone Weil (section)

==Philosophy==
{{Christian mysticism}}

=== Absence ===
Absence is the key image for her [[metaphysics]], [[Religious cosmology|cosmology]], [[cosmogony]], and [[theodicy]]. She believed that God created by an act of self-delimitation—in other words, she argued that because God is conceived as utter fullness, a perfect being, no creature can exist except where God is not. Thus, creation occurred only when God withdrew in part. This idea mirrors [[tzimtzum]], a central notion in the Jewish [[Kabbalah]] creation narrative.

This is, for Weil, an original ''[[kenosis]]'' ("emptiness") preceding the corrective ''kenosis'' of [[Incarnation (Christianity)|Christ's incarnation]]. Thus, according to her, humans are born in a damned position, not because of [[original sin]], but because to be created at all they must be what God is not; in other words, they must be inherently "unholy" in some sense. This idea fits more broadly into [[apophatic theology]]. 

This notion of creation is a cornerstone of her [[theodicy]], for if creation is conceived this way{{Em dash}}as necessarily entailing [[evil]]{{Em dash}}then there is no [[problem of evil|problem of the entrance of evil]] into a perfect world. Nor does the presence of evil constitute a limitation of God's [[omnipotence]] under Weil's notion; according to her, evil is present not because God could not create a perfect world, but because the act of "creation" in its very [[essence]] implies the impossibility of perfection.

However, this explanation of the essentiality of evil does not imply that humans are simply, originally, and continually doomed; on the contrary, Weil claims that "evil is the form which God's [[mercy]] takes in this world".<ref>''Gravity and Grace'', Metaxu, page 132</ref> Weil believed that evil, and its consequent affliction, serve the role of driving humans towards God, writing, "The extreme affliction which overtakes human beings does not create human misery, it merely reveals it."<ref name=":14">{{cite book| last = Weil | first = Simone | title = Gravity and Grace | publisher = Routledge & Kegan Paul | year = 1952}}</ref>

=== Affliction ===

Weil developed the concept of "affliction" ({{Langx|fr|malheur}}) while working in factories with workers reduced to a machine-like existence where they could not consider real thought or rebellion with Weil stating "thought flies from affliction as promptly and irresistibly as an animal flees from death".{{r|Zaretsky|pp=4&ndash;7}} Weil found this force too inhumane stating "affliction constrains a man to ask continually 'why' - the question to which there is essentially no reply" and nothing in the world can rob us of the power to say 'I' except for extreme affliction".{{r|Zaretsky|pp=33,37}}

Simone Weil's concept of affliction is an exploration of human suffering that extends beyond mere physical or emotional pain. She characterizes affliction as a multifaceted experience encompassing physical torment, psychological distress, and social degradation, which collectively uproot an individual's life and identity.<ref name=":11">{{Cite web |title=Simone Weil {{!}} Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy |url=https://iep.utm.edu/weil/?utm_source=chatgpt.com |access-date=2025-05-16 |language=en-US}}</ref> Weil distinguishes affliction from general suffering by emphasizing its capacity to isolate individuals from others and from themselves. Affliction imposes a sense of guilt and self-loathing on the innocent, effectively branding the soul with a mark akin to slavery. This branding leads to a loss of personal significance and a feeling of worthlessness, as the afflicted person internalizes scorn and revulsion that logically should be directed at the perpetrator of injustice.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Simone Weil and St. Teresa of Calcutta on Affliction. - Free Online Library |url=https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Simone+Weil+and+St.+Teresa+of+Calcutta+on+Affliction.-a0675004351?utm_source=chatgpt.com |access-date=2025-05-16 |website=www.thefreelibrary.com}}</ref><ref name=":11" /> Weil sees affliction as a potential site of grace, not because suffering is inherently good, but because it can strip away illusions and allow openness to the divine.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Kruk |first=Edward |date=2006 |title=Spiritual Wounding and Affliction: Facilitating Spiritual Transformation in Social Justice Work |url=https://ojs.uwindsor.ca/index.php/csw/article/view/5775/4714 |journal=Critical Social Work |language=en |volume=7 |issue=1 |doi=10.22329/csw.v7i1.5775 |issn=1543-9372|doi-access=free }}</ref>

According to Weil, souls may experience different levels of affliction with affliction worse for the same souls that are also most able to experience spiritual joy. Weil's notion of affliction is a sort of "suffering plus" which transcends both body and mind, a physical and mental anguish that scourges the very soul.<ref>This notion of Weil's bears a strong resemblance to the Asian notion of ''han'', which has received attention in recent Korean theology, for instance in the work of Andrew Park. Like "affliction", ''han'' is more destructive to the whole person than ordinary suffering.</ref>

{{blockquote|The better we are able to conceive of the fullness of joy, the purer and more intense will be our suffering in affliction and our compassion for others. ...

Suffering and enjoyment as sources of knowledge. The serpent offered knowledge to Adam and Eve. The sirens offered knowledge to Ulysses. These stories teach that the soul is lost through seeking knowledge in pleasure. Why? Pleasure is perhaps innocent on condition that we do not seek knowledge in it. It is permissible to seek that only in suffering.

|sign= Simone Weil
|source= ''Gravity and Grace'' (chpt 16 'Affliction')
}}

=== Beauty ===
Simone Weil's concept of beauty is not an isolated aesthetic category, but a deeply moral and spiritual principle that interweaves with nearly every facet of her thought, including affliction, attention, justice, God, and the pursuit of truth.<ref name=":15">{{Cite book|last=Rozelle-Stone |first=Rebecca |title=Simone Weil: A Very Short Introduction |chapter=Beauty |chapter-url=https://academic.oup.com/book/55988/chapter-abstract/440093395?redirectedFrom=fulltext&login=false |access-date=2025-05-16 |website=academic.oup.com|date=2024 |pages=92–106 |doi=10.1093/actrade/9780192846969.003.0006 |isbn=978-0-19-284696-9 }}</ref> In ''Gravity and Grace'', she writes: "The love of the beauty of the world is the only pure love. It is the love that enables us to look at things without trying to appropriate them."<ref name=":9">{{Cite book |last1=Weil |first1=Simone |title=Gravity and grace |last2=Thibon |first2=Gustave |date=2002 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-0-415-29001-2 |edition=1st |location=London, New York |publication-date=2002 |language=English |translator-last=Crawford |translator-first=Emma |translator-last2=Von der Ruhr |translator-first2=Mario}}</ref>{{rp|148}} She reiterates this in a related line: "The beautiful is that which we desire without wishing to eat it. We desire that it be."<ref name=":9" />{{rp|148}} Here, Weil expresses that beauty fosters a kind of ethical desire, one that does not consume but simply affirms the existence of what is beautiful. This idea links beauty directly to justice, which she defines not as fairness or social order, but as the full recognition of another's reality without attempting to possess or alter it. In her words "Justice consists in seeing that no harm comes to those whom we have noticed as real beings."<ref name=":9" />{{rp|151}} Weil laments that modern civilization (its politics, media, education, and literature) has severed this connection between beauty and truth. It fosters a corrupt understanding of greatness, rooted in power and spectacle rather than humility, attention, and beauty. She contrasts this with true greatness as seen in Zen poems, Giotto's paintings, and the lives of saints<ref name=":412">{{Cite book |last1=Weil |first1=Simone |url=https://www.worldcat.org/title/on1400095204 |title=The need for roots: prelude to a declaration of obligations towards the human being |last2=Schwartz |first2=Ros |last3=Kirkpatrick |first3=Kate |date=2023 |publisher=Penguin Books |isbn=978-0-241-46797-8 |series=Penguin classics |location=UK ; USA |oclc=on1400095204}}</ref>{{rp|180}} As such, Weil propose beauty as something that can help someone transcend the perspective of an individual's own project.<ref>{{Citation |last1=Rozelle-Stone |first1=A. Rebecca |title=Simone Weil |date=2024 |encyclopedia=The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy |editor-last=Zalta |editor-first=Edward N. |url=https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/simone-weil/#Aest |access-date=2025-05-15 |edition=Summer 2024 |publisher=Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University |last2=Davis |first2=Benjamin P. |editor2-last=Nodelman |editor2-first=Uri}}</ref><ref name=":15" />
Theologically for Weil, "The beautiful is the experiential proof that the incarnation is possible". The beauty that is inherent in the form of the world (this inherency is proven, for her, in [[geometry]], and expressed in all good [[art]]) is the proof that the world points to something beyond itself; it establishes the essentially [[teleology|telic]] character of all that exists. In Weil's concept, beauty extends throughout the universe:<blockquote>"[W]e must have faith that the universe is beautiful on all levels...and that it has a fullness of beauty in relation to the bodily and psychic structure of each of the thinking beings that actually do exist and of all those that are possible. It is this very agreement of an infinity of perfect beauties that gives a transcendent character to the beauty of the world...He (Christ) is really present in the universal beauty. The love of this beauty proceeds from God dwelling in our souls and goes out to God present in the universe".<ref name="pp164">Weil, Simone. ''Waiting For God''. Harper Torchbooks, 1973, pp. 164–165.</ref></blockquote> She also wrote that "The beauty of this world is Christ's tender smile coming to us through matter".<ref name="pp164" />

''[[Beauty]]'' also served a [[soteriological]] function for Weil: "Beauty captivates the flesh in order to obtain permission to pass right to the soul." It constitutes, then, another way in which the [[divine]] reality behind the world invades people's lives: where affliction conquers with brute force, beauty sneaks in and topples the empire of the self from within.{{cn|date=May 2025}} Overall, Simone Weil views beauty as a manifestation of divine reality that draws the soul toward truth and goodness. For her, beauty has an impersonal quality that compels ''attention'', a key virtue in her philosophy. Beauty can momentarily lift a person out of self-centeredness, preparing them to encounter God. It is not merely aesthetic, but moral and spiritual in nature.<ref name=":15" />

=== ''Decreation'' ===
In ''Waiting for God'' Weil outlines the concept of decreation (French: ''décréation)''. Weil believed that if humans are to imitate God they must renounce their power and their autonomy. Weil refers to this as decreation  which she referred to as "passive activity" or based on her childhood readings of the ''Bhagavad Gita'', "non-active action".<ref name=":12" /> 

Weil's concept of necessity related to decreation. Weil felt that necessity includes physical forces as well as social forces.<ref name=":12" /> Weil states: "The self and the social are two great idols, but one is saved by grace."<ref name=":16">{{Cite book |last=Weil |first=Simone |title=Gravity and Grace |publisher=University of Nebraska Press |year=1997 |isbn=0803298005}}</ref>{{rp|45}} All the natural movements of the soul are controlled by laws similar to gravity, except grace. While gravity is the work of creation, the work of grace consists of decreation.<ref name=":16" />{{rp|21}}

Weil felt that when an individual is self-centred they deny necessity. Consent to necessity means the only choice is whether or not they desire the good. For Weil, this type of consent is obtained metaphysically through decreation rather than through effort.<ref name=":12" />

Decreation allows for obedience to the truth and not feel cheated or interested in compensation. Weil states: <blockquote>"And forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors.' To remit debts is to renounce our own personality. It means renouncing everything that goes to make up our ego, without any exception. It means knowing that in the ego there is nothing whatever, no psychological element, that external circumstances could not do away with. It means accepting that truth. It means being happy that things should be so."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Weil |first=Simone |title=Waiting For God |date=2009 |publisher=Harper Collins |isbn=9780061718960 |pages=149 |chapter=Concerning the Our Father}}</ref></blockquote>Simone Weil argues that our perception of reality is clouded by attachment—attachments born from the self, projected onto the world. We do not see things as they are, but as they relate to our desires, values, and imagined needs. The self, or "I," fabricates a world driven by illusions: imagined debts others owe us, rewards we fantasize receiving from kings or gods. These imaginary constructs become the primary motivators of human behavior because, unlike real rewards, they are limitless.<ref name=":16" />{{rp|53-54, 59}} 

True access to reality requires detachment: the stripping away of these illusions and the destruction of the "I." This detachment is not mere indifference but a spiritual discipline that suspends imagination and opens one to necessity and truth. Only in this emptiness—desire without an object—can we encounter the presence of God, which is veiled by imagination but present in everything that exists.<ref name=":16" />{{rp|59, 100–101, 115}}

Weil sees obedience as taking two forms. One is mechanical, driven by imagined righteousness or divine approval—an obedience rooted in desire and self-deception. The other is a form of pure attention: a fixed gaze on the real relationships among things, free from self-interest. This pure attention is the only true motive for action, because it does not seek reward or justification.<ref name=":16" />{{rp|96–97}}

To harm another is to attempt to fill our own emptiness by taking from them—by expanding ourselves at their expense. But Weil insists that the only true freedom lies in the voluntary destruction of the self, a self that affliction may also destroy involuntarily. This loss, when embraced through decreation, allows the soul to participate in the divine act of creation.<ref name=":16" />{{rp|50, 71, 76, 80}}

Even in ancient mysteries, people served or touched the divine without knowing it, clothing God in ignorance. For Weil, the meaning of such mystery is not in knowing, but in the purity of action and attention, being with God without imagining or naming Him.<ref name=":16" />{{rp|105, 115}}

=== Obligation ===
Weil advocated for rebuilding a Free France around a framework of obligations and needs and cautioning against a system built of rights.<ref name=":02">{{Cite book |last1=Weil |first1=Simone |title=The need for roots: prelude to a declaration of obligations towards the human being |last2=Kirkpatrick |first2=Kate |date=2023 |publisher=Penguin Books |isbn=978-0-241-46797-8 |series=Penguin classics |location=UK USA |translator-last=Schwartz |translator-first=Ros |chapter=Introduction}}</ref> Weil's ''The Need for Roots'' was originally titled ''Draft for a'' ''Statement of Human Obligations''.<ref>{{Harvnb|Rees|1966|loc=p78, 82}}</ref> Weil felt that in our moral culture centered on individual rights, it's as though we constantly turn away from others' suffering because we lack the moral strength to confront its most extreme expressions.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Kruk |first=Edward |date=2006 |title=Spiritual Wounding and Affliction: Facilitating Spiritual Transformation in Social Justice Work |url=https://ojs.uwindsor.ca/index.php/csw/article/view/5775/4714#:~:text=Spiritual%20affliction%20is%20an%20extreme,another%20and%20away%20from%20oneself. |journal=Critical Social Work |language=en |volume=7 |issue=1 |doi=10.22329/csw.v7i1.5775 |issn=1543-9372|doi-access=free }}</ref> 

Weil felt that "all human beings are bound by identical obligations, although they are performed in different ways according to particular circumstances". and that "duty to the human being as such - that alone is eternal".{{r|Zaretsky|pp=105,129}} Weil differentiates between rights and obligations viewing the two as subject and object. "The actual relationship between the two is as between object and subject. A man, considered in isolation, only has duties, amongst which are certain duties towards himself. Other men, seen from his point of view, only have rights. He, in his turn, has rights, when seen from the point of view of other men, who recognize that they have obligations towards him. A man left alone in the universe would have no rights whatever, but he would have obligations."{{r|Zaretsky|pp=105,129}} Weil elaborates supporting the idea that obligations alone are independent stating "rights are always found to be related to certain conditions. Obligations alone remain independent of conditions." with obligations being a universal condition "All human beings are bound by identical obligations, although these are performed in different ways according to particular circumstances." whereas rights are conditional "...a right is not effectual by itself, but only in relation to the obligation to which it corresponds".{{r|Zaretsky|pp=105,129}}

=== Rootedness ===
In ''The Need for Roots'' Weil argues that ''rootedness'' is a spiritual need which involves their real, active, and natural participation in the life of a collectivity that keeps alive the treasures of the past and the aspirations of the future.<ref name=":3">{{Cite book |last1=Weil |first1=Simone |title=The need for roots: prelude to a declaration of obligations towards the human being |last2=Kirkpatrick |first2=Kate |date=2023 |publisher=Penguin Books |isbn=978-0-241-46797-8 |series=Penguin classics |location=UK USA |translator-last=Schwartz |translator-first=Ros |trans-title=33-34}}</ref> Weil believes this rootedness is natural, coming from place, birth, and occupation with each person needing to have multiple roots and deriving their moral, intellectual, and spiritual life from the environment in which they belong.<ref name=":3" /> Weil makes the case for roots or the idea that the persistence of people is tied to the persistence of their culture, their way of life, as carried through generations. For Weil roots involved obligations to participate in community life, feel connected to place, and maintain links through time. The "roots" Weil refers to are nourishment that enable humans to fully grow and that a rooted community allows the individual to develop with a view toward God or eternal values.<ref>{{Cite news |last=McRobie |first=Heather |date=2009-02-03 |title=Should we still read Simone Weil? |url=https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2009/feb/03/religion-simone-weil |access-date=2024-08-02 |work=The Guardian |language=en-GB |issn=0261-3077}}</ref><ref name=":12" />

In contrast, a threat to the human soul is uprootedness (''déracinement'') is the condition of people where the only binding forces in society are money and the imagined nation.<ref name=":12" /> For industrial working conditions Weil states "although they have remained geographically stationary, they have been morally uprooted, banished and then reinstated as  it were on sufferance, in the form of industrial brawn".{{r|Zaretsky|p=102}} Weil states that "money destroys human roots wherever it is able to penetrate" and it "manages to outweigh all other motives because the effort it demands of the mind is so much less...".{{r|Zaretsky|p=102}} Uprootedness may be caused by many factors, including conquest, colonialism, money, and economic domination. Weil states money destroys roots wherever it goes, because the drive to make money supplants everything else.<ref name=":32">{{Cite book |last1=Weil |first1=Simone |title=The need for roots: prelude to a declaration of obligations towards the human being |last2=Kirkpatrick |first2=Kate |date=2023 |publisher=Penguin Books |isbn=978-0-241-46797-8 |series=Penguin classics |location=UK USA |translator-last=Schwartz |translator-first=Ros |trans-title=33-34}}</ref> Uprootedness is aggravated if people also lack participation in community life and uprooted people lack connections with the past and a sense of their own integral place in the world.

Weil opposed behavior that uprooted people including colonialism (including the French empire), some forms of mass media, and poor industrial working conditions. Weil did not excuse moral issues within a place, stating countries are a vital medium but one with good and evil and justice and injustice. Weil wrote passionately against the French government's colonial policies including the [[Civilizing mission|''mission civilisatrice'']] stating "we can no longer say or think that we have received from on high the mission  to teach the universe how to live". though Weil also opposed the creation of new nations based on the European model stating "there are already too many nations in the world"{{r|Zaretsky|pp=111,115}}

=== Patriotism of Compassion ===
Weil's ''The Need for Root''s discusses the "uprootedness of the nation" and false conceptions of greatness attached to religion and patriotism. Weil was not opposed to patriotism but saw it rooted not in pride but instead in compassion and that this compassion, unlike pride, can be extended to other nations stating compassion is "able, without hindrance, to cross frontiers extend itself over all countries in misfortune, overall countries without exception for all peoples are subjected to the wretchedness of the human condition".{{r|Zaretsky|p=117}} She compares the often antagonized and prideful feelings resulting from a patriotism based on grandeur with the warmth of a patriotism based on tender feeling of pity and an awareness of how a country is ultimately fragile and perishable.  A patriotism based on compassion allows one to still see the flaws in one's country, while still remaining ever ready to make the ultimate sacrifice if obligated.<ref>{{Harvnb|Weil|1952|loc=155–182}}</ref>

=== Spiritual Nature of Work ===
Weil's ''The Need for Roots'' argues for the spiritual nature of work placing labor not merely as an economic necessity but as a moral and metaphysical act relating to attention, affliction, and rootedness. Weil believes urban and rural workers face conditions that create uprootedness. Weil argues for a social model that would be neither [[Capitalism|capitalist]] nor [[Socialism|socialist]], but allow restore human dignity through a cooperative system where the workplace becomes a site of meaningful engagement, community, and spiritual fulfillment and workers feel at home.<ref name=":42">{{Cite book |last1=Weil |first1=Simone |url=https://www.worldcat.org/title/on1400095204 |title=The need for roots: prelude to a declaration of obligations towards the human being |last2=Schwartz |first2=Ros |last3=Kirkpatrick |first3=Kate |date=2023 |publisher=Penguin Books |isbn=978-0-241-46797-8 |series=Penguin classics |location=UK ; USA |oclc=on1400095204}}</ref>{{rp|35-59}}  

Weil criticizes the disunity and ineffectiveness of well-intentioned reformers, noting that activism is often undermined by a lack of cohesion and by human nature's tendency to overlook the suffering of the truly oppressed. She observes that unions frequently focus on the relatively privileged, neglecting marginalized groups such as youth, women, and immigrant workers, who bear the brunt of systemic injustice.<ref name=":42" />{{rp|98}} She also critiques socialist reformers who attempt to make everyone proletariat rather than improve conditions.<ref name=":42" />{{rp|98}}

For urban laborers in particular, Weil advocates for the abolition of large-scale factories in favor of smaller, decentralized workshops. These would operate with limited working hours and dedicate time to learning and community life. She envisions a structure in which machinery is owned by individuals or cooperatives, with homes and land granted by the state to encourage stability and autonomy<ref name=":42" />{{rp|45-46}} 

Crucially, Weil maintains that the alienation of urban workers can only be healed by forms of industrial production and culture that make them feel "at home". In her proposed cooperative system, workers would receive a set number of tasks and be free to organize their own schedules, fostering both responsibility and agency.<ref name=":42" />{{rp|45-46}}  Machines would be owned by individuals or cooperatives, not the factories, and combined with house and land conferred to them by the state.<ref name=":43">{{Cite book |last1=Weil |first1=Simone |url=https://www.worldcat.org/title/on1400095204 |title=The need for roots: prelude to a declaration of obligations towards the human being |last2=Schwartz |first2=Ros |last3=Kirkpatrick |first3=Kate |date=2023 |publisher=Penguin Books |isbn=978-0-241-46797-8 |series=Penguin classics |location=UK ; USA |oclc=on1400095204}}</ref>{{rp|56}} She insists that working and thinking must not be separated; instead, physical labor should engage the intellect and spirit alongside the body<ref name=":42" />{{rp|50,73}} Weil states that working and thinking should not be separate acts.<ref name=":44">{{Cite book |last1=Weil |first1=Simone |url=https://www.worldcat.org/title/on1400095204 |title=The need for roots: prelude to a declaration of obligations towards the human being |last2=Schwartz |first2=Ros |last3=Kirkpatrick |first3=Kate |date=2023 |publisher=Penguin Books |isbn=978-0-241-46797-8 |series=Penguin classics |location=UK ; USA |oclc=on1400095204}}</ref>{{rp|73}}  

In the last few pages of this section of ''The Need for Roots'' she focuses on her central theme – that the great vocation of our times is to create a civilization which recognizes the spiritual nature of work. She draws further parallels between spiritual mechanism and physical mechanism, referring to parables in the Bible concerning seeds and then discussing our scientific understanding about how plants reach the surface by consuming the energy in their seeds and then grow upwards towards the light. Weil suggests similar parallels could be targeted for urban workers. She says if people can have both spiritual and scientific ideas converging in the act of work,  then even the fatigue associated with toil can be transformed for good, becoming  "the pain that makes the beauty of the world  penetrates right into the core of the human body".<ref name="Weil_pp94-98">{{Harvnb|Weil|1952|loc=p94-98}}</ref>

Weil further asserts that the return of truth will also reawaken the dignity of physical labor.<ref name=":45">{{Cite book |last1=Weil |first1=Simone |url=https://www.worldcat.org/title/on1400095204 |title=The need for roots: prelude to a declaration of obligations towards the human being |last2=Schwartz |first2=Ros |last3=Kirkpatrick |first3=Kate |date=2023 |publisher=Penguin Books |isbn=978-0-241-46797-8 |series=Penguin classics |location=UK ; USA |oclc=on1400095204}}</ref>{{rp|229}} She describes physical work as a kind of breath, an act in which the human body and soul become intermediaries between different states of [[matter]].<ref name=":45" />{{rp|229}} Yet she warns that labor can become violent to human nature, especially when marked by monotony. To consent to work, she concludes, is second only to consenting to death, both acts of submission that are essential to life and spiritual growth.<ref name=":45" />{{rp|235}}

=== ''Metaxu'': "Every separation is a link" ===
''[[Metaxy|Metaxu]]'', a concept Weil borrowed from [[Plato]], is that which both separates and connects (e.g., as the word 'cleave' means both to cut and join). This idea of connecting distance was of the first importance for Weil's understanding of the created realm. The world as a whole, along with any of its components, including the physical [[Human body|body]], is to be regarded as serving the same function for people in relation to God that a blind man's stick serves for him in relation to the world about him. They do not afford direct insight, but can be used experimentally to bring the mind into practical contact with reality. This metaphor allows any absence to be interpreted as a presence, and is a further component in Weil's theodicy. 

In ''Gravity and Grace'' Weil provides a metaphor to explain this concept "Two prisoners whose cells adjoin communicate with each other by knocking on the wall. The wall is the thing which separates them but it is also their means of communication. It is the same with us and God. Every separation is a link."<ref name=":12" />

=== Attention ===
As Weil explains in her book ''Waiting for God'', attention consists of suspending or emptying one's thought, such that one is ready to receive—to be penetrated by—the object to which one turns one's gaze, be that object one's neighbour, or ultimately, God.{{r|n=Weil Waiting for God|r={{Cite book|last=Weil|first=Simone|title=Waiting for God|date=1973|publisher=Harper & Row|isbn=0-06-090295-7|edition=1st Harper colophon|location=New York|oclc=620927}}|pp=111&ndash;112}} Weil states that "the capacity to give one's attention to a sufferer is a very rare and difficult thing: it is almost a miracle; it ''is'' a miracle".{{r|Zaretsky|p=46}} Attention may be linked to compassion so that, with attention, one can identify with an afflicted individual letting go of ourselves and allowing the other person to have our attention. Weil contrasts this attention with pity describing pity as "it consists in helping someone in misfortune so as not to be obligated to think about him anymore, or for the pleasure of feeling distance between himself and oneself".{{r|Zaretsky|p=46}}

As Weil explains, one can love God by praying to God, and attention is the very "substance of prayer": when one prays, one empties oneself, fixes one's whole gaze towards God, and becomes ready to receive God.{{r|Weil Waiting for God|p=105}} Similarly, for Weil, people can love their neighbours by emptying themselves, becoming ready to receive one's neighbour in all their naked truth, asking one's neighbour: "What are you going through?"{{r|Weil Waiting for God|pp=114&ndash;115}} Weil connects attention directly to the moral and spiritual life. It is the foundation of love and justice, and also the essence of the way we apprehend beauty stating "Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity."<ref name=":10">{{Cite book |last=Weil |first=Simone |title=Waiting for God |publisher=Harper Perennial Modern Classics |year=2001 |isbn=9780061718960}}</ref>{{rp|111}}
This attention is not a passive gaze, but an active, ethical engagement, a suspension of self (decreation) so that the reality of the other may come forward in its own truth (reflecting her view of beauty). In her essay ''Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God'', Weil offers one of her clearest formulations of this idea:<blockquote>"The love of our neighbor in all its fullness simply means being able to say to him: 'What are you going through?' It is a recognition that the sufferer exists, not only as a unit in a collection, or a specimen from the social category labeled 'unfortunate,' but as a man, exactly like us, who was one day stamped with a special mark by affliction. For this reason it is enough, but it is indispensable, to know how to look at him in a certain way. This way of looking is first of all attentive. The soul empties itself of all its own contents in order to receive into itself the being it is looking at, just as he is, in all his truth."<ref name=":10" />{{rp|64}}</blockquote>Weil further equates aspects of attention to love stating "To empty ourselves (French: ''Se vider)'' of our false divinity, to deny ourselves, to give up being the center of the world in imagination, to discern that all points in the world are equally centers and that the true center is outside the world, this is to consent to the rule of mechanical necessity in matter and of free choice at the center of each soul. Such consent is love. The face of this love, which is turned toward thinking persons, is the love of our neighbor."<ref name=":12" /> Weil also equates attention to justice. In ''Gravity and Grace'', she writes: "Justice consists in seeing that no harm comes to those whom we have noticed as real beings."<ref name=":412" />{{rp|151}} Weil also states To harm another person is to receive something from him, gaining importance and expanding, filling an emptiness in ourselves by creating one in someone else.<ref name=":16" />{{rp|50}} 

=== Three Forms of the Implicit Love of God ===
In ''Waiting for God'', Weil explains that the three forms of implicit love of God are (1) love of neighbour (2) love of the beauty of the world and (3) love of religious ceremonies.{{r|Weil Waiting for God|pp=137&ndash;199}} As Weil writes, by loving these three objects (neighbour, world's beauty and religious ceremonies), one indirectly loves God before "God comes in person to take the hand of his future bride," since prior to God's arrival, one's soul cannot yet ''directly'' love God as the object.{{r|Weil Waiting for God|p=137}} Love of neighbour occurs (i) when the strong treat the weak ''as equals,''{{r|Weil Waiting for God|pp=143&ndash;144}} (ii) when people give personal attention to those that otherwise seem invisible, anonymous, or non-existent,{{r|Weil Waiting for God|p=149}} and (iii) when people look at and listen to the afflicted ''as they are'', without explicitly thinking about God—i.e., Weil writes, when "God in us" loves the afflicted, ''rather'' than people loving them in God.{{r|Weil Waiting for God|pp=150&ndash;151}} Second, Weil explains, love of the world's beauty occurs when humans imitate God's love for the cosmos: just as God creatively renounced his command over the world—letting it be ruled by human autonomy and matter's "blind necessity"—humans give up their imaginary command over the world, seeing the world ''no longer'' as if they were the world's center.{{r|Weil Waiting for God|pp=158&ndash;160}} Finally, Weil explains, love of religious ceremonies occurs as an implicit love of God, when religious practices are pure.{{r|Weil Waiting for God|p=181}} Weil writes that purity in religion is seen when "faith and love do not fail", and most absolutely, in the [[Eucharist]].{{r|Weil Waiting for God|p=187}}