Modern Philosophy 2
Introduction to Simone Weil’s “Essay on the Concept of Reading”
Simone Weil (1909-1943) was a French philosopher who lived during one of the most turbulent periods of the 20th century. Having witnessed World War I and the Spanish Civil War, she developed a perspective on life that incorporates Christian mysticism and a way of thought that struggles with the existence of suffering.
Much like Socrates, she lived according to her beliefs. She died at an early age at least partly because, even though she was seriously ill, she refused to eat more than the amount of food that was rationed to her compatriots in the occupied territories of France. For a period of her life, she also chose to work alongside factory workers and developed a sympathetic understanding of their conditions. Both her stint as a factory worker and her Christian faith shaped her political and philosophical thought.
The article chosen for the final reading of our course captures Weil’s unusual perspective on life and her insight into human existence. For Weil, everyday experience involves a form of “reading” in which meanings are read into what we see, hear, and feel. Her description of a mother who reads a letter about the death of her son is one example that illustrates what Weil means by the term reading:
Everything happens as if the pain were in the letter itself, and jumped out from the letter to land on the face reading it. With respect to the actual sensations themselves—the color of the paper or the ink—they do not even come to mind. It is the pain that is given to one’s sight (p. 22).
In this case the significance lies not in the mere perception of ink on a page, which paradoxically is not even experienced as such, but in the deeply painful response to what is seen. In this way meanings are read into what is seen, heard, touched, etc. Thus, Weil applies the concept of reading very broadly; she states: “The sky, the sea, the sun, the stars, human beings, everything that surrounds us is ... something that we read” (p. 23).
A difficulty arises when different people have conflicting ways of reading the same phenomena. Moreover, new — though not necessarily better — ways of reading can be impressed into students, workers, and soldiers. Weil states that “War, politics, eloquence, art, teaching, all action on others essentially consists in changing what they read” (p. 26). The question of how to read the correct meaning in the people and events around us is one of the perennial issues of philosophy.
— A. Pasqualoni, 2018 (Revised March 2021)
Text and Reading Assignment
Week 6:
Read “Essay on the Concept of Reading” (PDF)
Source: “Essay on the Concept of Reading” by Simone Weil (1941). Excerpted from Simone Weil: Late Philosophical Writings, edited by Eric O. Springsted, University of Notre Dame Press (2015).
Quotations for Discussion 6 (Week 6)
Quotations from “Essay on the Concept of Reading”:
1. “All of us know that sensation is immediate, a brute fact, and that it seizes us by surprise.” (p. 21)
2. “I burned myself. Something seizes me here — it is the universe...” (p. 21)
3. “...the mind does not play any part in the sensation, except to submit to it.” (p. 22)
4. “Yet, they [the black marks on a sheet of paper] can have the same effect.” (p. 22)
5. “It is the pain that is given to one’s sight.” (p. 22)
6. “The mystery is that there are sensations that are pretty much insignificant in themselves, yet, by what they signify, what they mean, they seize us in the same way as the stronger sensations.” (p. 22)
7. “Thus at each instant of our life we are gripped from the outside...by meanings that we ourselves read in appearances.” (p. 22)
8. “It is impossible not to read...” (p. 23)
9. “...one has to force oneself to read a different kind of meaning here, not that of words or phrases, but of mere letters...” (p. 23)
10. “The sky, the sea, the sun, the stars, human beings, everything that surrounds us is ... something that we read.” (p. 23)
11. “I get closer and suddenly everything changes...” (p. 23)
12. “If the pen skips because of some problem with the paper, the pen’s skipping is what is immediately felt...” (p. 23)
13. “There is not an appearance and then an interpretation; a human presence has penetrated to my soul through my eyes...” (p. 23)
14. “If I hate someone, he is not on one side and my hatred on the other; when he comes near me it is odiousness itself that approaches...” (p. 23)
15. “If someone does not hate, fear, despise, or love the way I do, that also bothers me.” (p. 24)
16. “...I no more can refuse to fear than I can refuse to hear.” (p. 24)
17. “...if during civil unrest or war unarmed men are sometimes killed, it is because there is something vile about these beings that penetrates through the eyes to the soul of armed men...” (p. 25)
18. “In a glance, these armed men read along with their hair color and flesh the evidence that says it is necessary to kill them.” (p. 25)
19. “...in a civil war, put somebody in contact with a certain category of human beings and the idea of sparing a life is weak...” (p. 25)
20. “Each reading, when it is current, appears as the only real, only possible way to look at things...” (p. 25)
21. “However, this power [to change the meanings that I read] is also limited, indirect, and it, too, requires work.” (p. 26)
22. “...every apprenticeship is an apprenticeship in reading.” (p. 26)
23. “For the sailor, for the experienced captain, his boat has become in a sense an extension of his own body...” (p. 26)
24. “A man, a head of state, declares war, and new meanings rise up all round forty million people.” (p. 26)
25. “The general’s art is to lead enemy soldiers into reading flight in appearances...” (p. 26)
26. “...he will refrain from it, because it will seem to him, despite himself, that something in the deposit itself cries out to be given back.” (p. 27)
Please choose a quote that has not been discussed by another student — see the Discussion Guidelines for additional information.
Supplementary Material
Lectures and notes have been posted on the Video Lectures page.