Simone Weil
RESEARCH NETWORK
Selected Bibliography
Compiled by Gwen Dupré
Introduction
This bibliography has been compiled to help those new to Simone Weil who are reading her in English. Weil published very little in her lifetime, and primarily published in left wing journals in France. The bulk of Weil’s mature thought consists of miscellaneous notes and diary entries written amidst World War II, in a context where she lived a rather transient existence. Her output was also curtailed by her premature death in 1943 at the age of thirty-four, and her sole book length project, The Need for Roots, a spiritually informed and practical critique of modern government and society, was written in just a few months in 1943. Despite her sporadic corpus Weil has since been established as an important 20th century thinker, with her work influencing the likes of T. S Eliot, Albert Camus, Jean-Luc Godard and Flannery O’Connor, and informing the thought of philosophers such as Iris Murdoch, Roberto Esposito and Giorgio Agamben.
This bibliography seeks to be cohesive and interesting but not exhaustive. Those looking for an extensive bibliography might follow the recommendations of David McLellan, who in his biography of Weil, Simone Weil: Utopian Pessimist (1989), points readers to the exhaustive bibliography on Weil compiled in J. P. Little (1973) Simone Weil. A bibliography (London: Grant and Cutler (Supplement 1979)) which had a small update in 1995, and also to J. Cabaud (1964) Simone Weil. A Fellowship in Love (New York: Harvill) pages 364–85. Taking account of the quantity of Weil scholarship which has been produced since these bibliographies, a helpful, wide-ranging and up-to-date bibliographic source for the contemporary reader would be the online University of Calgary Simone Weil Bibliography (simoneweil.ibrary.ucalgary.ca) which lists more than 5,000 books, essays, journal articles and theses on and related to Simone Weil.
There is a focus here on contemporary writing on Weil and interdisciplinary approaches to her work, however, as mentioned, a significant amount of primary and secondary literature has been left out for purposes of brevity and with the intention of presenting a curated selection of texts to a new Weillian audience. The bibliography thus focuses on selected key primary and secondary literature alongside more recent studies, taking into account that some early commentaries have had their reliability questioned due to accusations that Weil’s words and thoughts have been ‘juggled’ in order to shape what is written about her into hagiography¹, something Miklós Vetö also mentions in the introduction to his early exposition of Weil’s ideas, The Religious Metaphysics of Simone Weil (1994). There has also been the critique that early responses to her writing, writing in praise of Weil, therefore come from the perspective of acting as an ‘overview’ of her ideas rather than critical studies. Academic scholarship, in light of this critique, has continued to focus on situating Weil in a broader context, encompassing her philosophical ideas and their genealogy, and on contextualising her as a religious thinker rather than a mystical theological outlier, maintaining a critical perspective on her thought.
Arguably one of Weil’s most well known works is Gravity and Grace, an extremely influential collection of writings from her notebooks. Gravity and Grace was published with support from Weil’s parents and was compiled by Gustave Thibon, a French priest and Christian thinker, who Weil stayed with in rural France during the Nazi occupation of Paris. Thibon’s categorisation of Weil’s thought, into themes of ‘love’, ‘decreation’, ‘affliction’ and the ‘void’ has been foundational in terms of how her thought has been organised by scholars. However, the religious tone of this work also set in motion a splitting of Weil’s thought between her political, religious, and philosophical ideas. These separations tend to be seen as somewhat superficial, rather than strict “different” versions of Weil, nonetheless, her religious writing is perhaps best represented by her notebooks, and collections such as Waiting for God (1951) trans. E. Craufurd (New York: Putnam) (Attente de Dieu), and Letter to a Priest (1954) trans A. Wills (New York: Putnam), (Lettre à un religieux) which exhibits Weil’s critique of the Catholic Church. Oppression and Liberty (1958) trans. A. Wills and J. Petria (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul), (Oppression et liberté) and essays such as On the Abolition of All Political Parties (2014) trans. Simone Leys (New York: NYRB Classics) are examples of her political theory, and in Weil’s last work, The Need for Roots (1952) trans. A. Wills (New York: Putnam) (L’Enracinement) she combines ethics, colonial critique, political thought, theology and philosophy. While Weil’s well-known works are listed here, also included are some of her minor essays to highlight the breadth of her thought and topics of engagement.
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¹ Steiner, George. “Sainte Simone”. p. 177. In, No Passion Spent: Essays 1978–1996. London: Faber and Faber, 1996. p. 173.
Texts by Simone Weil
Collections with dates of first English translation
First and Last Notebooks
Translated by Richard Rees. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970.
Formative Writings, 1929–1941
Translated by D. McFarland and W. Van Ness. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1987. (Contains diploma thesis on Descartes, articles on Germany, factory journal and later articles.)
Gravity and Grace
Translated by Arthur Wills. New York: Putnam. 1952.
The Need for Roots
Translated by Arthur Wills. New York: Putnam, 1952.
The Notebooks of Simone Weil
Translated by A. Wills, 2 vols. New York: Putnam, 1956.
The Simone Weil Reader
Edited by George A Panichas. London: Moyer Bell Ltd, 1977.
Selected Essays 1934-1943
Edited and translated by Richard Rees. London: Oxford University Press, 1962.
Lectures on Philosophy
Translated by Hugh Price. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 1978.
Letter to a Priest
Translated by Arthur Wills. New York: Putnam, 1954.
Oppression and Liberty
Translated by Arthur Wills and John Petrie. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1958.
Waiting for God
Translated by Emma Craufurd. New York: Putnam, 1951.
Simone Weil: Late Philosophical Writings
Translated and edited by Springstead E and Schmidt L. Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2015.
Intimations of Christianity Among the Ancient Greeks
Translated by E.C. Geissbuhler. London: Routledge, 1957
Essays of note
Weil, Simone. 1987. “Are We Struggling for Justice?.” Philosophical Investigations, edited by H. O. Mounce, 1–10, Vol. 10. Translated by M. Barabas. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
Weil, Simone. 2003. The Iliad or the poem of force: A Critical Edition. Edited and translated by James Holoka. Peter Lang.
Weil, Simone. 1990. “Essay on the Notion of Reading.” Philosophical Investigations 13, no. 4: 297-303.
Weil, Simone. On the Abolition of All Political Parties. Translated by Simon Leys. New York: NYRB Classics, 2014.
Biographies
This selection represents a small portion of the academic biographies which have become the standard building blocks when approaching the study of Simone Weil. The biography written by Gustave Thibon and Father Perrin has a theological leaning while David McLellan and Simone Pétrement’s bibliographies of Weil take a more secular approach.
McLellan, David. Utopian Pessimist: The Life and Thought of Simone Weil. New York: Poseidon Press, 1990.
McLellan’s study of Simone Weil’s life has an emphasis on her political intentions and activism and highlights her construal of personhood.
Von der Ruhr, Mario. Simone Weil: An Apprenticeship in Attention. London: Continuum, 2006.
Translated by D. McFarland and W. Van Ness. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1987. (Contains diploma thesis on Descartes, articles on Germany, factory journal and later articles.)
Pétrement, Simone. Simone Weil: A Life. Translated by Raymon Rosenthal. New York Schocken Books, 1989.
Amongst the various Weil biographies, this one, written by her close friend and classmate, Simone Pétrement, offers a closely personal yet non-judgmental overview of Weil’s life and ideas. It is one of the best.
Perrin, J.M. and G. Thibon. Simone Weil as We Knew Her. New York: Routledge, 2003.
There is a notable hagiographic tone to this work owing to the two authors’ friendships with Weil, but this work nevertheless gives important insight into the formation of Weil’s late thought by two friends who knew her well.
Yourgrau, Palle. Simone Weil, London: Reaktion, 2011.
A detailed overview of Simone Weil’s ideas and life which addresses Weil’s Jewish background.
Secondary Literature
Key English language texts
Bell, Richard. H. Simone Weil: The Way of Justice as Compassion. New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc, 1998.
Bell analyses the social and political thought of Weil, paying particular attention to Weil’s concept of justice as compassion.
Bell, Richard, ed. Simone Weil’s Philosophy of Culture: Readings Toward a Divine Humanity. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1993.
An important collection of academic voices, including essays from Rowan Williams and Ann Loades. Weil is approached with a rigorous theological and philosophical lens.
Dietz, Mary. Between the Human and the Divine: The Political Thought of Simone Weil. Totowa: Rowman & Littlefield, 1988. 
Dietz’s book introduced the impact of Weil’s political ideas to an American audience.
Doering, E. Jane and Eric O. Springsted, eds. The Christian Platonism of Simone Weil. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2004.
This collection addresses the ways in which Weil used and adapted Plato in her central ideas and thought.
Winch, Peter. Simone Weil: “The just balance”. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
Winch positions Weil alongside Wittgenstein and Spinoza, constructing an analytical philosophical approach to Weil’s overall philosophy.
Vetö, Miklós. The Religious Metaphysics of Simone Weil. Translated by Joan Dargan. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1994.
Considered one of the first standard works on Simone Weil in French and English, Vetö’s work reads as slightly outdated in aspects such as his presentation of Weil’s world renouncing asceticism but overall is an important philosophical reading of Weil that centers ‘decreation’ in her thought and making a convincing case of how Weil’s philosophy descended from Plato and Kant.
Contemporary Weil Scholarship and Inter-disciplinary Approaches
Bourgault, Sophie, & Daigle, Julie, eds. Simone Weil, Beyond Ideology? London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020.
A thorough analysis of Weil’s political thought with reflection on the impact of Weil’s ideas in relation to contemporary political circumstances.
Irwin, Alexander. Saints of the Impossible: Bataille, Weil, and the Politics of the Sacred. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002.
Irwin’s book is now over twenty years old yet it represents a shift in Weil studies from the scholarship of the 1990’s which was primarily theological. In her book Irwin considers Weil in a more interdisciplinary way with more context given to her relation to her academic contemporaries, with a focus here on Bataille.
Kotva, Simone. Effort and Grace: On the Spiritual Exercise of Philosophy. London: Bloomsbury, 2020.
Kotva addresses the genealogy of Weil’s thought extremely thoroughly, offering unique insight into Weil’s concept of attention, its roots in ancient Stoic philosophy and its influence from and reaction to French Spiritualism.
McCullough, Lissa. The Religious Philosophy of Simone Weil: An Introduction. London: I.B. Tauris, 2014.
This is a thorough philosophical explication of Simone Weil’s metaphysical approach to religion, investigating the paradoxical dialectic McCullough sees as woven throughout Weil’s work.
Rozelle-Stone, Rebecca & Stone, Lucian. eds. The Relevance of the Radical: Simone Weil 100 Years Later. London: Bloomsbury, 2009. 
Contributors to this collection propose a framework for the ways in which Weil’s ideas of radical selflessness and humility could create a more just world.
Springsted, Eric O. Simone Weil for the Twenty-First Century. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2021. 
Eric Springsted presents a comprehensive analysis of Weil’s interdisciplinary thought shedding light on the ways in which Weil’s thought can challenge post-modern philosophy.
Zaretsky, Robert. The Subversive Simone Weil: A Life in Five Ideas, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2021.
Zaretsky seeks to honour the complexity of Weil’s thought while presenting five of her key ideas, reflecting on the relationship between thought and action in her work.
Contemporary Creative Writing and Simone Weil
There has been an on-going adoption of Simone Weil’s life and work into popular culture since the mid-nineties, particularly by female artists and writers who view Weil through a feminist lens, and who address, via Weil, themes of failure, anorexia, mysticism, selfhood and alienation. Notable examples of this appropriation include American writer and film maker Chris Kraus’s film Gravity & Grace (1995), named after Simone Weil’s posthumous notes compiled by Gustave Thibon and addressing themes of cultural alienation and apocalypse. Kraus calls Weil ‘the first radical philosopher of sadness’, later chronicling her film’s failure on the market in her book Aliens & Anorexia (2000). Canadian poet Anne Carson’s Decreation (2005), named after Weil’s conception of the undoing of being and addressing themes of death and nothingness, has inspired current writers who continue the lineage of adopting Weil into poetic and artistic work, with quotes from Weil’s work found in various collections of poetry of the last few years including small white monkeys: on self-expression, self-help and shame (2017) by Sophie Collins, and Life Without Air (2020) by Daisy Lafarge. In recent years Simone Weil has even made it to social media, where tribute accounts can be found on Twitter and Instagram (e.g. @simoneweilfooddiary and @simoneweilbot). Nods to Weil have also been made by filmmakers such as Greta Gerwig, who appears to reference Weil in her film Lady Bird (2017) particularly in the scene where Catholic nun Sister Sarah-Joan asks the titular character: “Don’t you think they are maybe the same thing? Love and attention?”
Carson, Anne. Decreation: Poetry, Essays, Opera. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005.
Carson, Anne. “Decreation: How Women Like Sappho, Marguerite Porete, and Simone Weil Tell God”. Common Knowledge, Volume 8, Issue 1, Winter 2002, pp. 188-203 (Article), Duke University Press.
Collins, Sophie. small white monkeys: on self-expression, self-help and shame. London: Book Works, 2017.
Kraus, Chris. Aliens & Anorexia. San Francisco: Semiotext(e)/ Native Agents, 2000.
Kraus, Chris. Gravity & Grace (1996), 88 minutes, Lonely Girl Films (New Zealand/USA/Canada).
Lafarge, Daisy. Life Without Air. Edinburgh: Granta, 2020.
Robertson, Lisa. Anemones: A Simone Weil Project. Amsterdam: If I Can’t Dance, 2021.
Wilk, Elvia. Death by Landscape. New York: Soft Skull Press, 2022.
Public Facing Resources
Although providing an exhaustive list of online essays on Weil would be a thankless task, here are some resources to begin with, both contemporary and historical.
Sontag, Susan, “Simone Weil”, The New York Review of Books, February 1963 [LINK]
In this infamous review from 1963, Susan Sontag writes on Weil’s ‘Selected Essays’, translated by Richard Rees. Sontag is suspicious of Simone Weil, but appreciates her radical spirit.
McCullough, Lissa, “Simone Weil and her Critics”, THE I.B. Tauris Blog, December 2013 [LINK]
Here Weil Scholar Lissa McCullough argues against common misconceptions about Weil.
Moi, Toril, “I came with a sword”, London Review of Books, July 2021 [LINK]
Toril Moi reviews Robert Zaretsky’s ‘The Subversive Simone Weil: A Life in Five Ideas’, and decides it would be near impossible for her to live up to the ethical demands Simone Weil espouses.
Rose, Jacqueline, “An Endless Seeing”, The New York Review of Books, January 2022 [LINK]
Another review of Zaretsky’s book, Jacqueline Rose compares Weil’s ethical vision to ‘magical thinking’, an act of radical self-transgression. Rose also makes note of Weil’s writing style.
Casewell, Deborah, “A just and loving gaze”, Aeon [LINK]
Aeon has great academic resources that are informative and thought provoking. All the articles are easily accessible to the public, with several articles addressing Weil and relaying some key components of her philosophy in a succinct and clear manner.
Other Online Resources
Simone Weil Bibliography, University of Calgary
Simone Weil Denkkollektiv
Attention – Simone Weil
American Weil Society
Simone Weil, Rozelle-Stone, A. Rebecca and Benjamin P. Davis, edited by Edward N Zalta & Uri Nodelman - The Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy (Spring 2018 Edition, Revised November 2021)
The Marginalian
This page organizes articles based on some key themes of the Weil’s philosophy. It explores Weil's thoughts in relation to some other philosophers, schools of thought, and to contemporary issues as well.
The Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
The Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews has scholarly reviews written by scholars who are generally experts and well-knowledgeable about the field. If a reader wants to decide which book of Weil they would like to read, this compilation of reviews is a helpful guide that lets them know what each book is about.
https://ndpr.nd.edu/search/?search_keyword=&as_sitesearch=ndpr.nd.edu&q=Weil
The Living Philosophy
The living philosophy is a public resource with articles on different philosophers. Their article on Weil addresses different aspects of her thought in relation to her biography.