Simone Weil: An Introduction to Her Thought

Louise H. Girard was Head of Book Selection, University of St. Michael's College Library, Toronto.

John Hellman, member of the History Department at McGill University and author of a book and articles on modern intellectual history, is to be congratulated for making such a complex thinker as Simone Weil as accessible to the general reader as he does in this book. Hellman writes simply and concisely and never condescendingly. His analysis is divided into logical and, what is even more important, manageable sections.

Intermittently throughout the work, Hellman adds an extra dimension to the work by comparing and contrasting Simone Weil’s thought with that of other well-known philosophers. In the first chapter, for example, he effectively introduces the reader to Simone Weil by juxtaposing her with Simone de Beauvoir, concluding quite convincingly that “Simone de Beauvoir may have ended up, in retrospect, where Simone Weil began. But, paradoxically as it may seem, it can also be said that Simone Weil ended up where Simone de Beauvoir began.” In the chapters that follow, Hellman considers Simone Weil’s political, historical, and religious ideas, following, as much as possible, the chronological development of her ideas and relating them to her life as a whole. Hellman’s final chapter is particularly effective in rounding out the book. Here we find Hellman basically reviewing the entire work before tying it all together.

Ironically, in terms of what this book was meant to be, the strength of Hellman’s analysis is the only element that could be considered a weakness of the book. This work is described as an introduction. However, the depth and strength of the analysis gives the work a tone of finality that would seem to disqualify it as such. By the end of the book one feels that one does understand Simone Weil’s thought (albeit in summary form) and at that point one is left wanting to know more about Simone Weil, the person, but one is no longer as interested in exploring her thought. In this sense, this work is not so much an introduction as an excellent (though brief) synthesis.