Simone Weil’s Thoughts On Piety And Justice

Simone Weil,(1909-1943),French philosopher who graduated from the Lycée Henri IV and the école Normale Supérieure(Paris).In her brief life,she taught at several schools,worked as a factory worker,fought in the Spanish Civil War,wrote for the Journal du Sud in Marseille and later worked as an editor in Free France.She overcame all kinds of practical difficulties,wrote with great perseverance and left an incredible number of works and manuscripts.The first chapter is an introduction,which introduces the background and significance of the topic chosen for the thesis,and provides an overview of the publication of Weil’s writings in French,in Chinese translation and of the existing research works.A thread of understanding is implicit in the many studies on Weil,namely that her religious thought points to reconsider the conflict between the two fundamental Western traditions such as ancient philosophy and Biblical revelation,this effort may be the source of her personality and the uniqueness of her thought.The second chapter compares Weil’s different biographies and analyses her family influence,her education,her working life and her exile during the Second World War,in an attempt to sort out the two main themes of piety and justice in her thought.Influenced by her mentor Alain’s philosophy of "will",Weil practised the unity of knowledge and action throughout her life,and was actively involved in major movements in the first half of the twentieth century,such as the French workers’ social movement,the Spanish Civil War and the resistance movements in many places during the Second World War.She practised her knowledge in practice,while deepening her thinking in practice.The third chapter focuses on the concept of piety,starting from the specific event of Weil’s refusal to be baptized,and using her six letters to Father Perrin,which are her confessions of faith,as the basis for textual analysis,to sort out her examination of Catholic doctrine and organizational forms,and to try to explore how Weil thinks and practices the tension between the individual contemplation and the social order,and how this way of thinking and acting is intrinsically related to the political-philosophical tradition since Plato,especially to what extent it echoes the philosophical dialogue of Plato on the theme of "On Piety" in the Euthyphro.The fourth chapter focuses on the concept of justice,starting from Weil’s multifaceted understanding of the concept of justice and using her only one tragic work,The Rescued Venice,as the basis for textual analysis,in an attempt to explore her very rich and profound reflections about the discursive relationship between goodness and justice and how these reflections complement her interpretation and elaboration of Old Testament chapters such as the Book of Jonah and the Book of Job.In contrast to the Enlightenment tradition,which emphasised the natural rights of the individual,Weil advocates the reconstitution of a communal order of justice based on "duties to humanity".Weil’s thinking is unique in that her reflections on piety and justice are both deeply grounded in scholarship and intensely concerned with reality.Around the themes of piety and justice,with the relationship between faith and reason as the thread,the good as the focus,this thesis tries to explore how a representative modern philosophical-religious thought was inspired by different Western intellectual traditions,and seeks to understand the inner complexity of the crisis of modernity which is reflected therein.