Simone Weil and Jacques Lacan by: christopher peyton miller

DISSERTATION

Falling to the Heights:

Simone Weil’s Metaxu, Attention, and Decreation

Through a Lacanian Lens

Christopher Peyton Miller

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of

Doctor of Philosophy in Interdisciplinary Studies

with a concentration in Humanities & Culture

March 21, 2018

Dissertation Chair: Dr. Diane Allerdyce

Union Institute & University

Cincinnati, Ohio

Falling to the Heights:

Simone Weil’s Metaxu, Attention, and Decreation

Through a Lacanian Lens

Christopher Peyton Miller

A Dissertation Approved on: March 21, 2018

Union Institute & University

Cincinnati, Ohio

Abstract

In this dissertation I approach the work of Simone Weil through the lens of Lacanian psychoanalysis, and by doing so I provide a framework which demonstrates consistency on the part of Weil’s literature. This framework is structured by these three major constructs I find in her work: Metaxu, Attention and Decreation. Weil’s work clearly addresses issues around social justice, morals and ethics. My impression of Weil is that she is not to be understood as inconsistent. The way I read her work implies consideration of an internal pattern, at least in her works Gravity and Grace, and The Need for Roots. I venture into the constructs above in an effort to demonstrate their usefulness as structuring devices and ways of putting her thought into categories.

The reader will find that Weil’s thought, as illustrated through Lacan’s psychoanalytic science, makes available Metaxu, Attention, and Decreation in such a way as to illiterate consistent and viable applications to social justice and change. Metaxu opens a way of actively balancing and understanding dichotomies as contradictions, bereft of explanation through paradoxical thought, standing on their own. These contradictions point the way to the action of bringing just as much significance to one side of the dichotomy as to the other. Attention is a process by which a broader view of, for example power and weakness, brings about recognition of the inherent similitude of such a oppressing dualistic categorization. Meanwhile, Decreation is the process by which a reality is considered which is not realized as a creation until it passes into an uncreated space. It is upon and in these balances, recognitions, and spaces that an understanding of Weil’s caring and work toward justice can first be considered.

Preface

According to Dorothy Tuck McFarland (1983) Simone Weil is “one who has recognized and expressed as perhaps no one else in this century [twentieth-century] the ineluctability of human spiritual needs and the unsatisfied spiritual hungers that have driven twentieth-century men into totalitarianisms of left and right” (p. 169). There are a number of ways which Weil’s literature has been accessed and used in religious, philosophical and political thought; however, there is a general consensus among Weil scholars that the importance of her contributions has been largely underestimated and underutilized. I write from the position that Simone Weil has the potential to be one of the most influential continental philosophers of the wartime era.

I argue that Weil’s philosophical themes, which have been identified by multiple scholars in a patchwork fashion, can be understood in light of three constructs, Metaxu, Attention, and Decreation, that I explicate in this dissertation. These constructs provide a framework that demonstrates a consistent and cohesive philosophy that runs throughout Weil’s work. I arrive at this conclusion by analyzing Weil’s multiple ideas of gravity, grace, affliction, contradiction, means vs ends, beauty, waiting, impersonalism, and physicality through Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalytical lens. The application of Lacan’s psychoanalytic theory is useful in unpacking meaning from Weil’s dense and expansive material. I believe Lacanian theory provides a systematic interpretation of Weil’s writings. The importance of such a finding is significant, including setting up a conceptual framework that makes the philosophy of Weil more approachable and applicable to salient social and religious concerns of her time and the present, as well as

laying a path for new connections to be made between Weil’s themes that may allow the scholarship around Weil to advance in the direction of greater understanding.

The reader will notice that throughout my discussion I quote and cite Weil at some length, so that the context of Weil’s words may be preserved. As I re-quote smaller portions of this large text in my analysis the shorter quotes will most often not be recited. Throughout this analysis portion, I have placed boxed algorithms of Lacanian discourses as quick references descriptive of Lacan’s psychoanalytic discourses. These are standard algorithms that are found in most all of the texts that explain Lacanian discourse. A fuller description of the four Lacanian discoursed and other important Lacanian concepts can be found at the end of Chapter One, which can be used by the reader as a reference.

Weil’s philosophy in many respects could be considered a precursor to postmodernism in that she much promotes questioning everything almost to the point of nihilism. Weil questions, for example, the privileged position the “I,” as much as Linda Alcoff (1991-1992) explains that such a positioning of the “I” is dangerous. Weil (2003) was very relevant to the canon of literature surrounding social justice.

Weil “evokes the ‘anti-French plots’” as well as her “desire to be free of France as a colonizing power” (Weil, 2003, p. 45). Weil can also be seen as influential to the postcolonialism movement. Weil (2003) wrote on colonialism “in the last months of her life” and that work formed “a very central part of her intellectual and social preoccupations” (p. 1). Weil was a great contributor to issues of social justice and ethics.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter One: Introduction: Unveiling the Mystic ....................................................... 1

Some Biographical Notes: Passion, Body, and Mysticism.................................. 13

Weil’s passion.......................................................................................... 17

Weil and Body ......................................................................................... 19

Weil as Mystic ......................................................................................... 21

Weil as accessible through a Lacanian lens............................................. 24

Weil and Language .................................................................................. 27

Weil and Subjectivity............................................................................... 29

Key Lacanian Concepts ....................................................................................... 32

Four Discourses ....................................................................................... 32

The hysteric’s discourse............................................................... 34

The master’s discourse................................................................. 34

The university discourse .............................................................. 34

The analyst’s discourse ................................................................ 35

Jouissance ................................................................................................ 35

Lack.......................................................................................................... 36

Master Signifier ....................................................................................... 36

Name-of-the-Father.................................................................................. 37

Three Orders

Real .............................................................................................. 38

Symbolic ...................................................................................... 39

Imaginary ..................................................................................... 39

Chapter Two: Metaxu: Interrogating for Truth......................................................... 41

Key Ideas ............................................................................................................. 55

Master Signifier ....................................................................................... 55

Anaclisis................................................................................................... 56

Ex-sists..................................................................................................... 56

Lacan’s imaginary order .......................................................................... 57

Textual Analysis .................................................................................................. 59

Metaxu as Necessity ................................................................................ 59

Man’s Might............................................................................................. 66

Metaxu as the Use of Contradiction......................................................... 73

Metaxu to expose the master’s discourse................................................. 80

Metaxu as the social-bond ....................................................................... 88

Metaxu as means versus ends .................................................................. 93

The wrong union of opposites: good versus evil ..................................... 98

Metaxu as the impossible good.............................................................. 101

Metaxu and right action ......................................................................... 110

Chapter Three: Attention: Captured and Silenced .................................................. 117

Key Ideas ........................................................................................................... 132

Analyst’s Discourse ............................................................................... 132

Real order............................................................................................... 132

vii

Symbolic order....................................................................................... 133

Imaginary order...................................................................................... 133

Impossibility .......................................................................................... 133

Higher plane........................................................................................... 134

Energy.................................................................................................... 134

Education ............................................................................................... 135

Desire ..................................................................................................... 135

Textual Analysis ................................................................................................ 136

Beauty and the real................................................................................. 136

Joy and pain cannot be separated........................................................... 139

Joy is needed to know suffering............................................................. 141

Suffering is needed to know more ......................................................... 143

Attention as a process for change .......................................................... 148

Attention and impartiality...................................................................... 150

Attention and politics............................................................................. 153

Weil’s personal application of Attention to politics .............................. 158

Creativity................................................................................................ 166

Chapter Four: Decreation: Rapelling Upward ......................................................... 175

Key Ideas ........................................................................................................... 188

Master signifier ...................................................................................... 188

The Name-of-the-Father ........................................................................ 190

Desire ..................................................................................................... 191

Hole in the Real ..................................................................................... 193

Lack........................................................................................................ 193

Weil’s void and Lacan’s lack................................................................. 193

Impersonality ......................................................................................... 194

The split subject ..................................................................................... 195

Textual Analysis ................................................................................................ 196

The exception to the rule........................................................................ 196

Longing and desire................................................................................. 202

A void is required................................................................................... 205

Accepting the void is supernatural......................................................... 209

A universalist aside ................................................................................ 213

Impersonalism........................................................................................ 215

The afflicted ........................................................................................... 220

Union...................................................................................................... 222

Chapter Five: Conclusion: Coherent Contradiction ................................................ 228

References...................................................................................................................... 242

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List of Figures

Figure 1. Mobius strip, as retrieved from Paul Bourke.................................................... 42

Figure 2. Being and meaning......................................................................................... 192

Chapter One

Introduction: Unveiling the Mystic

Simone Weil (1909-1943) may well be one of the most intriguing thinkers and political activists of the early twentieth century. Weil was born a Parisian Jew into a family that produced two prodigies; her brother, André Weil, became a renowned mathematician and Simone herself an absurdist philosopher, religious thinker, and political activist. According to Roger Walsh, Albert Camus pronounced Weil “the only great mind of our times” (p. 35). Weil grappled with social justice within the context of theology. T. S. Elliott referred to Weil as “a kind of genius akin to that of the saints” (Weil, 2002b p. viii). Elliot’s comparison of her to sainthood set the stage for a subsequent reception of Weil’s philosophical work that centers largely on her personal asceticism and public life, which she dedicated to helping the oppressed laborers.

As her biographer and friend, Simone Pétrement (1976) states that, “the bond between her life and her thought was inconceivably close” (p. viii). Weil’s achievements spanned from words to deeds, in the differing areas of her life; it is apparent that her words and actions have been perplexing to her onlookers, especially in her insistence on not having any organized affiliations, in this respect she is somewhat of a renegade. As George Abbott White (1981) states, “what use has a political analyst outside a party, or a bureaucracy, or a government? What use has a religious seeker outside a denomination, or the Church? What use has an intellectual bearing the stigmata of industrial and agricultural labor, and the high visibility of one who has constantly criticized intellectuals and even the intellect itself?” (p. 11). Robert Coles (1987) notes Reinhold Niebuhr’s perplexity over Weil’s “obvious brilliance” and “serious blind spots and confusion” (p.

xv). John Hellman (1982) asserts that his work is an attempt to “examine the seeming contradictions and inconsistencies” in Weil’s writings as well as to grasp “several generalizations which seem rash in isolation” (p.2). It is quite common that when reading Weil’s works, especially in isolation, they seem contradictory and internally inconsistent.

Weil has had many oddities about her person articulated, some which are illustrated in the short biographical introduction to follow. Therefore, a longstanding focus on Weil’s fascinating biography has drawn consideration away from Weil’s writing. Some of the scholars who have taken a biographical approach include Petrement, Robert Coles, David McLellan, Gabriella Fiori and Francine du Plessix Gray. Athanasios Moulakis takes a historical approach. Dorothy Tuck McFarland (1983) calls for further interpretation of Weil’s life and work, for “when bits and pieces are selected from the vast composition on several planes . . . that constitutes Weil’s life and work and are put together without deep reflection on the meaning to be found in them, the resulting picture has the one-dimensionality of caricature” (pp. 167-168). Because of her idiosyncratic behavior and seemingly contradictory words, scholars have received her in a dichotomous way, calling her everything from a genius to heretic.

Weil does not fit into any ideological box; therefore, her work has found audience in a variety of different groups of scholars including theologians, political activists, educators and artists. As Diogenes Allen and Eric O. Springsted (1994) proclaim: “She is an author who can be read in many ways and over long periods, all with profit”(p. ix). They go on to say, “ we simply do not get anywhere in understanding Weil” because the scholarship is “episodic” with many of the same ideas being explored, over and over again. Many scholars touch on her most prevalent themes such as “necessity”, Attention,

grace, power, beauty, rootedness and affliction from a variety of perspectives. Those scholars that claim to focus on her thought are often looking at a limited scope, such as Lawrence A. Blum and Victor J. Seidler, and Miklos Vetö. Others that claim a more comprehensive approach to her thought such as Henry Leroy Finch, Robert Chenavier, and John Hellman who states his purpose is to set out Weil’s worldview, remain limited to touch on her main themes without much of a systematic organization.

Many of the attempts to study Weil have relied on edited complications of several scholars including The Relevance of the Radical, The Beauty that Saves, and The Christian Platonism of Simone Weil. George Abbott White states in his compilation Simone Weil: Interpretations of a Life: “The more one tries to know Simone Weil and the ideas and issues she engaged, the clearer it becomes that one cannot do it; it can only be done collectively” (p. ix). Other scholars have looked at Weil from a literary standpoint including Joan Dargon’s, Thinking Poetically, and Katherine T. Brueck’s, The Redemption of Tragedy. However insightful these works are, they remain limited in scope. Bradley Jersak has been lead to limit his study of Weil to creating a new translation of Waiting on God, and Letter to a Priest, into the title Awaiting God. He explains his rational as follows, “don’t read and write endless monographs and biographies about Simone Weil. Read her. Listen to her. Undergo her. . . . Let her infuriate you, seduce you and rebuff you. Then repeat this dance” (p.1-2). He states his purpose is to “encourage a new generation” to read Weil.

Weil is an engaging writer, often using bold sweeping statements, sometimes very poetic and other times very technical. Weil seems to present her ideas contradictory ways. She brings statements of truthfulness which announce a way toward justice and

social change, using riveting words that are constantly challenging pre-existing assumptions, which often create roadblocks to understanding her message. The bulk of Weil’s writing has been collected and extrapolated on in pieces, these include personal notebook writings, short essays and letters, making her philosophy and theology seem discontinuous. The bulk of my analysis will be drawn from Gravity and Grace, The Need for Roots, and selections from Awaiting God and the Simone Weil Reader to include a broad range of subject matter including cultural criticism, theology, philosophy, psychology, pedagogy and aesthetics.

I have found the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan very useful in examining Weil’s writing. Lacan’s over arching principles are that we are “born into language” and that “the unconscious is structured as a language.” What this implies is that, according to Adrian Johnston (2013), “humans are born saddled with such imperatives,” and that humanity must seek out the answer to its basic symptom, i.e. the trauma of finding that there is an other. As a structuralist, Lacan uses four models of psychoanalytic explanation to describe the relations humans find themselves in; these dictate the outcomes. As a way of reaching personal power the human attempts to find that which is forever not able to be communicated, truth. Lacan’s theory has been developed over several years and applied to many fields of study. This philosophy of psychoanalysis can be used to analyze a full spectrum of Weil’s thoughts about joy, desire, hunger, void, death, as well as allowing a systematic method to look at the most challenging of her texts. Lacan’s explanation of the ways these ideas operate in the human psyche shed light on Weil’s own philosophy and helps her readers understand the way she maneuvers

through the rich and often otherwise obscure terrain of meaning making to which she attends.

The understanding of Lacan’s four discourses allows for a look at Weil’s words without the complexity of the historical, biographical and comparisons to other theoretical frameworks that have been relied upon by previous scholars. Lacan’s notion of jouissance, which describes the remnant of the real that language can never fully express, sheds light on many of the dichotomies Weil repeatedly highlights. Ellie Ragland (2004) writes, “Lacan gave new meaning to the many tasks language must perform to negotiate desire and jouissance [pleasure beyond explanation], while coping with the traumatic aspects of the Real” (p. 55). Lacan offers a theory which illuminates the underlying structure that Weil finds in the suffering and affliction of humankind. Through this work I have found that Weil is not fragmented and inconsistent in her writing, but has a very consistent and cohesive philosophy that runs throughout her work. For Lacan language is structure, and I take serious note that there is structure and consistency in Weil’s discourse.

After using Lacan’s structural approach to examine several of Weil’s passages on various themes my unique understanding of Weil’s philosophy has emerged. I demonstrate that there are three constructs: Metaxu, Attention, and Decreation, which I have discovered work well together and manifest Weil’s consistency overall; presuming her reader may have need for such consistency. Metaxu is a construct that Weil uses sparingly and ambiguously to refer to a “region of good and evil” (2002a, p.147). I apply this construct to three actions that Weil takes in her thought (seeing a barrier as a way through, constant searching for contradiction as a method to find more truth, and her

negotiation of means vs. ends). Attention is a construct of Weil’s that highlights beauty, love, waiting, creativity, and finding truth on a higher plane. Decreation is a construct of Weil’s that demonstrates extreme humility and the acceptance of the transcendent. These three constructs have been derived from my research and I assert and conclude that they work together in setting up a conceptual framework that makes the philosophy of Weil more approachable and applicable to the salient social and religious concerns of her time and of the present. This framework allows for new connections to be made between Weil’s themes that may allow the scholarship around Weil to advance in the direction of greater understanding. These three constructs all highlight actions or movements that happen in Weil’s thought that not only explain some of her biographical peculiarities but offer practical applications for those who look to Weil as a moral authority on social justice.

Weil adds an emphasis on the individual over social groups to the canon of scholarship that challenges the master narrative and power relations. Through Metaxu she acknowledges suffering or the disempowered by actively bridging the gap between the powerful and those without a voice. Attention is a state of stepping back and seeing the broader view of both the beauty and ugliness of suffering. Then, through Attention, she challenges the literature of the master narrative (or signifier in Lacanian terms), forcing her audience to think about issues that make them uncomfortable. Decreation offers the space for the created to pass into the uncreated in order to acknowledge previously unvoiced suffering and injustice to be voiced.

It should be reiterated that the importance of Weil’s writing is very profound, not only among the academic community, but for many other readers as well. Weil’s

authenticity has given her great authority among those who have found the example of her life and the challenges of her words deeply and emotionally moving. Weil has profound theological importance in that she has made religious thought approachable even to those who would consider themselves outside religion.

During her life, though she has found profound meaning in the example of Christ and the sacrament, she intentionally refuses fellowship with the Catholic Church so that she would not be separated from those outside the church. Henry Leroy Finch (2001), who elaborates on Weil's perception of God, demonstrates one of the characteristics for which Weil is known and for which she is accepting of the contradictory. Finch writes about Weil by stating that when Weil considers "'God's idea of the very best of all possible worlds . . . that he was not capable of producing very much' (Here the two ideas of the best do not combine very well together, for she is saying that the worst is the best.)" (p. 137). Weil welcomes ideas of God from several religious traditions and demonstrates her commitment to continue to ask hard questions about religious matters. She also refuses to divorce spiritual matters from her philosophical thought or the political activism that she poured herself into. According to Palle Yourgrau (2011) this commitment to the spiritual is the reason Weil was omitted from Mary Warnock’s Women Philosophers (p.12-13).

I look closely at Weil’s material, through a Lacanian lens, in order to address what I think is the need to resurrect her work in a light that bears on theological import and social justice, in the end, by demonstrating her consistency, as well. Metaxu, Attention, and Decreation pull together a theological and philosophical endeavor by Weil to address the plight of the proletariat: the working poor and ignored peoples. As du

Plessix Gray (2001) points out Weil goes so far as to accuse Lenin and Trotsky ignored and “exploited the working class as ruthlessly as most abusive capitalist entrepreneurs” (p. 65). Marx theorized that the historical forces and institutions would bring about revolution. Again du Plessix Gray notes Weil’s “retaining her faith in the ability of the human mind to obtain objective knowledge” (p. 55).

In the remainder of this introduction I will give some brief biographical notes regarding Weil’s life, including three elements of her thought that scholars have not often noted. I demonstrate how these elements are also highlighted by the Lacanian approach. I will follow this with some reflections on how Lacanian psychoanalytic theory is particularly applicable to examining Weil. There are many striking similarities in several of Weil’s thoughts and Lacan’s theory that warrant further inquiry, but are beyond the scope of this project. I will end this introductory chapter with some concise definitions of Lacanian terms that are necessary for an understanding of the analysis. Some of these same definitions are also in the chapter they are most applicable to for convenience.

In Chapter Two, I develop the construct of Metaxu as referring to a handful of cognitive actions Weil uses to gain knowledge and flexibility in how she looks at any situation. These include her concept of “necessity,” her use of contradictions to search for further truth, and her views of means vs. end. This is explained through a variety of texts about human suffering, psychology, slavery, the narcissism of Hitler, propaganda, good versus evil, human limitations, theology, and the effect of scientific progress. These concepts and cognitive actions that make up my understanding of Metaxu come naturally for Weil as understood through Lacan’s definition of a hysteric. Other Lacanian concepts

applicable in this chapter include the master’s discourse, anaclisis, and the imaginary order. Christine Howe (2009) points out Weil’s understanding of genius as “work that is intimately linked with the writer’s own struggle with necessity [emphasis added], and deals with the suffering inherent in the human condition” (p.65). This necessity is linked to desire and one’s misery comes through not knowing how to balance what one desires and that there is nothing in the world that can fulfill desire.

When considering Weil’s absurdist way, she believed that in the universe there is a principle, which she termed necessity that protects humans from being scorched by God. Ruby Cohn (1959) writes that "Beckett's heroes are not morally victorious through their laughter; their suffering and death are part of a larger, grimmer joke-the absurdity of the human situation, the cosmological comedy" (p. 12). It should be kept in mind that Weil’s absurdism refers to conditions that God allows in human circumstances that are not negative. Stefan Skrimshire (2006) says that "Albert Camus' philosophy of the absurd described a tension between nihilism and the impulse to resist it at the heart of human experience. His lyrical responses to the challenge of the absurd are founded on the possibility of affirming the struggle for social [justice]” (p. 286). Du Plessix Gray (2001) points out that Weil “categorically refusing nihilism, and remain[ed] a rationalist.” (p. 55). Balancing the forces within and without, Weil demonstrated her ability to be a mystic and a philosopher, who could balance, juxtapose and create tension, to create a space where desire can never be fulfilled, a la Lacan. This balancing is embodied in Weil’s action of Metaxu, resulting in a praxis which was lived out consistently, meaning that Weil’s thought and behaviors were congruent.

McFarland (1983) says “Both Weil herself and her writings embody a paradoxical tension between absolute certainty and a radical openness that is almost a kind of agnosticism” (p 9). In Gravity and Grace, Weil (2002a) makes the following Metaxu statement:

All created things refuse to be for me as ends. Such is God’s extreme mercy toward me. And that very thing is what constitutes evil. Evil is the form which God’s mercy takes in this world. This world is the closed door. It is a barrier. And at the same time it is the way through. (p. 145)

Weil does not accept phenomena as ends in themselves, but rather demonstrates how conceptual dualisms, such as good and evil, can be bridged and developed through their oppositions, to contradiction that is balanced, this is Metaxu. According to Weil (2013), “The contradictions which the mind is brought up against form the only realities, the only means of judging what is real. There is no contradiction in what is imaginary. Contradiction is the test on the part of Necessity” (p. 329). Weil insists on leaving contradiction as a way to leave desire unfulfilled, because if one desires and cannot have, this results in one’s suffering.

In Chapter Three, I explore Weil’s concept of Attention by considering texts that include the topics of aesthetics, theology, human joy and suffering, political leadership, education, will and desire, physical labor, and historical criticism. Attention is Weil’s prescription for an extreme examination of the world that is free from presupposition in order to receive knowledge that is not discerned by reason. Angelo Caranfa (2010) explains, Weil’s idea of education and “method of learning—to look, not to interpret, and to pray, not to search—is a path to be striven for, but it should be pointed out that it is so

terribly difficult to attain because it involves detachment, waiting, solitude, and the death of the self” (p. 64). The Lacanian concepts that are useful here include the analyst’s discourse, jouissance, impossibility, and the three orders of real, symbolic and imaginary. The knowledge that comes from Weil’s practice of Attention cannot be forced but is delivered by a kind of grace; however, as Caranfa understands this is not an easy way to look at things. Weil demonstrates using this method herself as she sets aside her comforts of a state paid educator to work in the factory and fields with the proletariat. Blum and Seidler (1989) point-out that Weil “demanded as a politically serious and conscientious person she herself not maintain distance from what was regarded as the true locus of human oppression—the work place, especially the factory” (p. 90). Weil gains a holistic perspective on the relationship between spiritual matters and her political and philosophical understandings, which she terms the “spirituality of work.” Weil (2002a) states in Gravity and Grace, “Workers need poetry more than bread. They need that their life should be a poem. They need some light from eternity” (p. 180). This contradicts the attribution to Bertold Brecht: “First comes fodder, then comes morality.”

Chapter Four is an examination of Weil’s unwavering commitment to the notion of Decreation, which includes the concepts void or emptiness, detachment and impersonality. These are all grounded in her theological understanding of how God “Decreated” the world, and sheds light on her ascetic way of life and the obscurity which enveloped her at death. The key Lacanian ideas applied to Weil’s notion of Decreation include the Name-of-the-Father, desire, the hole in the real, lack and the split subject. E. Jane Doering and Eric O. Springsted (2004) have the following understanding of Weil, arguing she was one of those who,

truly want[s] to love God [and] must create an empty space for him, or as Eckhart more radically puts it, they must allow God himself to create that empty space in them. Weil bases her idea of self-emptying on a particular idea of God. We must imitate God as God empties himself in creating the world, and decreate ourselves. (p. 15)

According to the type of kenotic notion which Doering and Springsted elaborate above, Decreation is necessary to understand Weil’s mix of passion and disdain for life. For Weil there is a reduction of the religious experience to a very minute reflection of the Other (God) in one’s epistemological position. This reduction is not only in conceptual bodily terms. Sacrificial behavior is also characteristic of hysteria insofar as the hysteric identifies with lack.

In Lacanian theory the ego is the result of the illusory subject and hence is contingent; for Weil the self is a shadow. As Weil (2002a) states, “The self is only the shadow which sin and error cast by stopping the light of God, and I take this shadow for a being” (p.40). Three scholars, Marc De Kesel, William Robert, and Robert C. Reed, all account for connections between Weil’s Decreation and Lacanian thought. Marc De Kesel acknowledges Lacan’s mention of Weil in Seminar VI; however, De Kesel distinguishes how Lacan’s theory diverged significantly from Robert’s interpretation of Weil‘s discourse. Robert concludes that Weil’s Decreation barely allows nothingness in the subject’s vapid existence (p. 61). Reed argues that Lacanian theory along with Weil’s notion of impersonality (the notion of the lack of an essential self), creates grounding for an ethic of “non-personal” responsibility. All of these articles are very insightful; however, my work differs from theirs in one main important way. I look at

several extended texts of Weil, on multiple themes, with extensive use of the four Lacanian discourses. This has lead to my understanding of the framework introduced above and discussed in the following chapters of this dissertation.

Some Biographical Notes: Passion, Body, and Mysticism

Pétrement (1976) says of Weil, “nobody has more heroically endeavored to bring her actions into accord with her ideas” (p. viii). Though afflicted in her very early years with significant illness as well as weakness or deformity of her hands, and although in adulthood she suffered from frequent debilitating headaches, she did not pattern her life and philosophy under the sway of illness. Weil kept very late hours with her academic pursuits and social causes and came to embrace physical labor as an important component in her philosophy. Pétrement describes Weil as a child “very sweet and gay” with a “strong will and definite character. She also had a sense of humor and would play pranks and jokes, but they were never malicious or nasty (p. 20). She loved sunsets and flowers and in her adult years she would make time to attend plays, concerts and art museums.

According to du Plessix Gray (2001) Weil and her brother, André, were reared as well-educated and assimilated Parisian Jewish children. Simone and André both had the benefits of education and culture. Their father was a physician and reportedly was an agnostic; their mother reportedly devoted all of her energy to the intellectual development of the two children (p.4). As young children Simone and André attended several schools, had private tutors and had music lessons as well. Weil (2012) described the experience of a “bottomless despair” (which she had at the age of fourteen) because she was overcome by the perceived mediocrity of her abilities, as she considered them to in

comparison to André’s extreme giftedness in mathematics (p. 137). Nevertheless, she continued on to graduate from École Normale with a degree and certificate to teach philosophy, going on to teach in the lycée as her main profession, including Le Puy. Pétrement (1976) describes Weil’s philosophy as highly influenced by a teacher at Henri IV, known as Alain (Émile-Auguste Chartier). Pétrement states that Alain’s teaching and philosophy were “bold [and] paradoxical affirmations” that “attacked head-on all the reigning commonplaces and clichés” (p. 31).

Though often her reputation has been understood as sour, her grace and levity allowed her to enjoy life. Weil was authentically compassionate and truly carried a burden for the downtrodden. There are accounts from her childhood of her showing particular kindness to a cousin whose mother had died and also of young Weil working to buy gifts to send to an “adopted” soldier. John Dunaway (1984) writes, “(by) the time she was ten she had already been accused by a classmate of being a Communist. Her defiant reply was that she was a Bolshevik. Simone may not have really understood the term, but at the very least it illustrated her predilection for unpopular causes, for championing those who were despised and scorned” (p. 3). As her writings and political activism attest, Weil’s physical debilities did not predetermine her to a fate that might have been projected for her.

Though slight in stature, Weil seemed quite capable of handling herself without timidity. Her opinions were often expressed brashly and forcefully. And Weil often gave the impression that she was an impetuous and rugged individual, earning her such nick- names as “the trolless” and “the Red Virgin”. Anecdotally, Pétrement (1976) writes about Weil’s visit to a union leader:

Albertine Thevenon has more than once told the amazing story of how her first meeting with Simone [Weil] took place . . . Simone rang the bell . . . Simone asked, ‘Is Monsieur Thevenon in?’ When Albertine said he was, Simone shoved her aside with a thrust of her shoulder and before Albertine had time to close the door and turn around, she had already rushed down the hallway and stepped into Thevenon’s room, where he was surprised to see her suddenly appear. (p.79)

Weil demonstrated a spirit of courage and adventure when she signed up to fight on the side of the Republican Army in the Spanish Civil War and later joined the French Resistance. Being in London during WWII, she wanted to be parachuted into the war zone to work with nurses or to carry out a secret mission for the soldiers on the front lines. These ways of thinking and being did not become deterrents to her aptitude in succeeding in many ways, but are examples of her radical philosophy and political agenda. Though she was ready to fight fascists, this did not alter her ability to be concerned about how war infests society with evil.

As the war moved closer to Paris, Weil and her parents had to move to Marseilles; this is where she became acquainted with Catholic priest, Father Perrin. It is in her correspondence with him that we come to know many of her spiritual ideas. Weil writes to him that she has been born and remains “within a Christian inspiration,” but has never “sought for God,” because it is beyond our human capacity to find a “solution to the problem of God” (Weil, 2012, p. 136). Her “Letter to a Priest” is an extended exposition of her broad multicultural knowledge and sensitivities. When Weil wanted to work in the fields, Father Perrin asked Gustav Thibon to take her in and look after her on his farm.

He reluctantly agreed and this began the relationship that led to the collection Gravity and Grace.

Throughout her short life, Weil worked in and supported unions, political alliances and offered herself as a gift to causes which were strikingly difficult. She gave of her life until her physicality would no longer withstand her thoughts, feelings and behavior. There has been much speculation regarding her death. Her final days were spent in London, where she was hospitalized with tuberculosis; reports are that she was noncompliant with treatment and sent to a sanatorium. She refused to eat more than just a small amount; Weil was believed by some, such as du Plessix Gray (2001), to have starved herself to death due to anorexia. A diagnosis of anorexia can be accounted for by her lack of desire to eat. I think that Weil’s not eating was a sign of protest and a consecration to her ascetic way of life. According to Pétrement (1976), “the question of what she [Weil] wanted at the end remains obscure, and no doubt we shall never know” (p. 538).

Pétrement explains that once, when Weil was trying to get back to the war effort, and “a man pointed out to her that she did not eat enough, she said that she didn’t have the right to eat more than her compatriots back in France” (p. 490). According to Pétrement, Weil wearily wrote in a letter, “I have given up the idea (suicide) from a fear of a calamity worse than death; to the point that, to avoid the risk of succumbing under the blows of an irrational depression, I decided never to carry through such a resolution” (p. 261). Though Weil would posthumously (decades later) receive a lot of critical attention, her death had attracted little regard of consequence or consideration in her time. As we can know, she died in obscurity in a sanatorium, having left behind extensive

writing which she quietly passed on to Gustav Thibon, on whose farm she had worked. According to David McLellan (1990) Weil’s grave remained unmarked for fifteen years (p. 267). However, now it lay below tall trees of the new cemetery in Ashford where, according to Christopher J. Frost and Rebecca Bell-Metereau (1998) suggest, “a group of distinguished authors purchased a simple stone to mark her birth and death” (p. 19). What follows is a discussion of three themes that many researchers have found in her biographical material and works. It is very interesting that these themes, Weil’s passion for truth, focus on the body, and mysticism are highlighted in the framework of Metaxu, Attention and Decreation, respectively.

Weil’s passion. Weil desired the freedom to feel, think and believe independently. McFarland (1983) charges that “For all her belief in, and orientation toward, absolute truth, her method of thinking is altogether at odds with the kind of thinking that accepts or supports orthodoxies, and this accounts at least in part for her difficulties with the orthodoxies of the political left and, later the Catholic Church” (p.9). In Martin Andic’s (1993) opinion, “Weil was one of the most discerning political minds of the twentieth century, and she was concerned all her life to learn how to discern truth from illusion, reality from appearance” (p.116). Richard Rees (1966) states, “unique and unclassifiable as a thinker, she was neither a reactionary nor a progressive. She was something altogether exceptional—a great soul and a brilliant mind” (p 7). Rees states that his purpose is, “to emphasize that she was an unorthodox and challenging thinker and not the anodyne purveyor of ‘golden thoughts’ that she is sometimes supposed to be” (p. 6). Weil did not cower under the pressure of cultural norms; these norms are considered the master signifier in Lacanian terms. This constant search for truth is seen in

the Metaxu chapter, as I demonstrate Weil’s ways of: seeing barriers as more than a blockade, use of contradiction, and her elevation of means over ends.

Weil’s unending passion was for a truth she spent her life seeking, finding that she was ever coming close to it, but repeatedly getting only the residue to it. In Gravity and Grace she reflects, “the void is the supreme fullness, but man is not permitted to know it” (p. 22). Here Weil uses hyperbole with “supreme fullness,” as she continues to express what Lacan describes as a void in reality and illusive truth. Pétrement (1976) quotes Weil as saying, “I didn’t mind having no visible successes, but what did grieve me was the idea of being excluded from that transcendent kingdom to which only the truly great have access and wherein truth abides. I preferred to die rather than live without that truth” (p. 21). Even in the “depths of her despair,” there was a “certitude” which Weil carried in her performativity. Neal Oxenhandler (1996) argues Weil makes “hysterical use of fantasy as a performative path to experiences that remain beyond the boundaries of what can be cognitively known and accepted” (p. 210). Oxenhandler discerns that throughout Weil’s work is “a powerful sense of humanity as flawed, distorted, and deluded by the weight of its institutions and the lunacy of institutional thinking. Her response was not the humanist’s one of improving institutions but, rather, the mystic’s impulse of self sacrifice” (p. 210).

As typical of a Lacanian hysteric, Weil did not give in to the cultural “no” which would have “put her in her place.” Her approach to knowledge was often agnostic, realistic and skeptical, even self-contradictory in the way that she performed her nature as a spiritual philosopher and the way she was an absurdist often coming into conflict with her own ideas, a conflict which she embraced. The way Weil balanced dualisms

guaranteed her own ability to be confident. In effect Weil was connecting with something she somehow “knew” while also resisting the forces which were pushing her to conformity.

Weil and body. Weil’s somatic or bodily experience was a definite influence on her theoretical and political, as well as philosophical and theological orientations. During the war era, as Elizabeth Hardwick (1975) points out, “the frailty of her physical person was always noticeable- intolerable headaches were in painful conflict with conscientiousness of an almost exorbitant kind” (p. 85). Weil also demonstrated her conscientiousness, in spite of bodily exhaustion and injury, when she chose to work in the factories and on farms in order to gain the direct experience needed to analyze the social, physical, the spiritual life, and the thoughts of the laborers. According to du Plessix Gray (2001), Weil became heavily involved in “Radical Syndicalism” (p. 56). As an anarchistic movement of union workers, Weil proudly hailed their cry. At one point she shouted speeches to the workers occupying the streets and she gave “the excess of her teacher’s pay to the unemployed” (p. 64). These actions stand out in the Attention chapter. As Weil comes upon the benefit of observing and waiting, she does so in the context of the laborers and of sitting in her own physical affliction.

Considering Weil’s text as her body, that body which she left with Thibon, including her political treatises Oppression and Liberty, The Need for Roots, and On the Abolition of All Political Parties, were personal and political, sacred and blasphemous, the content that resound through her work to speak to readers today. The example of her physical manifestations on the worksites of the factory and farm, reached out to many. According to Pétrement (1976), Weil writes, “As I worked in the factory . . . the

affliction of others entered into my flesh and my soul. Nothing separated me from it, for I had really forgotten my past and I looked forward to no future, finding it difficult to imagine the possibility of surviving all the fatigue” (p. 215). Her self-sacrificing and self-denying attitude would also become a key theme for Weil in her theory of physicality. In the introduction to Gravity and Grace Gustav Thibon explained that Weil “worked the land with tireless energy and often contented herself with blackberries from the wayside bushes for a meal” (Weil, 2002a, p. x). Weil’s physical existence relied on very few amounts of food per day, and in the end this may have hastened her death. Her exasperated body worked with great strength as she came to know true work. To work was her way to attempt to fill the lack and the void of her experience, as evidenced in her nearly nihilistic philosophy.

Weil did not express nor did she want any of her desire to dictate her actions. She wanted to be sincere to truth; she wanted to live an authentic life aiming at ultimate truth, allowing nothing to get in her way. Weil’s approach seems much like that of mystics whom Lacan admired—those who, like hysterics, have porous identity boundaries and a kind of knowing that allows for a greater fluidity of perspective and more experience of jouissance than are accessible to those with more normative psychic structures. Here she conveys one of her most significant concepts, Attention. Her philosophical notion, “Attention,” could be adapted to explain her own life of ascetic practice and limited choleric intake. Similarly, Weil had an intense experience when it came to the ideas about enjoyment, beauty, lack and hunger.

As it was an expression of her hunger to be in touch with an unsustainable source of beauty, otherwise known in Lacan’s work as jouissance (which is the French

equivalent of ecstasy beyond orgasm, great pleasure and pain), she explained in her notebooks that Narcissus “was still more unhappy---- still farther away from what he loved . . . he loved a body without a soul” (Weil, 2013, p. 13). To reach states of joy Weil (2002a) wrote that “Extreme attention is what constitutes the creative faculty in man and the only extreme attention is religious. The amount of creative genius in any period is strictly in proportion to the amount of extreme attention and thus of authentic religion at that period” (p. 117).

Weil as Mystic. Weil’s writing and life are aligned with mystical spiritual tradition. To her credit, Weil accepted both physical and psychological tasks as she struggled continuously with her philosophy of religion. The pessimistic critiquing nature of her prose on most everything (the bourgeois, dietary hedonism, scientism, and reductionism) can give the readers the impression that she was a negative person. Those who read her and adore her inflexibly, rather than seeing it as a character flaw, attest to the value of such “negativity.” Though many would see death as a negative Weil puts it on the side of truth. Weil writes, “to love truth means to endure the void and, as a result, to accept death. Truth is on the side of death” (Weil, 2002a, p. 11). This correlates with the Lacanian notion of accepting anxiety, the real of suffering, as a way of dealing with the pain caused by the hole in being. This acceptance of anxiety and void is central to Weil’s spiritual understanding discussed in the Decreation chapter.

Weil showed her attraction away from Judaism toward Catholicism with the following identification. As Weil (2012) wrote in Awaiting God:

This is why he (Christ) suffered the agony of the extreme degree of affliction—slavery. This transference mysteriously constitutes Redemption. In the same

way, when a human being turns his attention and gaze upon the Lamb of God present in the consecrated bread, part of the evil contained in him is carried into that perfect purity and undergoes destruction. (p. 86)

Many who have read Weil, or known her in other ways, have been drawn to like conclusions. Weil’s spirituality becomes largely based on the suffering of Christ. One of the person’s spiritual experiences Weil talks about is coming to the realization that Christianity is the religion of slaves, and after her work in the factories she considered herself forever changed and numbered with those who have the mark of slavery. Joseph Marie Perrin and Thibon (2004) reflect that “the same supernatural inspiration made her see through and trace back to their miserable origin all the states of soul by which a sick and worn-out nature imitates on a far inferior and all too human plane the operation of grace” (p.105). For Weil religion was important as a lever toward opening a degree of desire which many would fear to admit that they experience. She is seen as embracing both her philosophical struggles and her physical suffering. Anthonous Moulakis (1998) says about Weil’s religious experience and her identification with the lowly (the proletariat, which she considers as being the afflicted), that “two things set Simone Weil apart from the stereotype of the French left-wing intellectual. The first is her courage—that is, her uncompromising commitment to translating her beliefs into personal practice. The second is her response to the experience of wretchedness (malheur), which is not self-pity” (p. 41). Weil’s action of “translating her beliefs into personal practice” is demonstrated in her practice of Attention, and the “experience of wretchedness, which is not self-pity” is at the heart of Decreation. In Weil’s view theological formation has the impression of human souls, found wandering or shipwrecked amid tumult, are then

rescued by grace, but remain bereft of fortitude on their own. Weil took such weakness to be advantageous and conceded on this point. Moulakis explains that, “Her principle merit, however, lies in the rediscovery of the essentially dramatic rather than procedural quality of human existence behind the thicket of progressivist ideology and in laying bare the closely allied phenomenon of the delusion represented by the idolatry of immanent goods” (p.21). How could one with such religious ideas be considered a threat or hindrance? Weil was a powerful and gracious person, but people abhor excess.

In approaching Weil’s hysteric never-ending search for knowledge and her suffering, Lacan offers a rationale for them. Ragland (2015) writes that “Unlike other discourse theories that posit whole units—self, text, letter, and so on—Lacan’s theory of a topological ‘structuring’ of the unconscious, shows the signifying chain as myriad units of an interlocking Borromean necklace surrounding loss or holes (Ø) at the heart of words (the symbolic), being (the real), images and the body (the imaginary) (p. 46). Dylan Evans (2006) maintains, when referring to the way in which Lacan departs from Jean-Paul Sartre, that “the gaze is on the side of the object, and there is no coincidence between the two . . . (the) split between the eye and gaze is nothing more than the subjective division of the self” (p. 72) or subject. Lacan calls the gaze an Ur object, a cause of desire. Discussion of the gaze precludes language about Weil’s concept of Attention, in that Attention is more than scopic. Ragland (2015) points to tangible impression of the Other on us, “from the start of life we are gazed at. As others gaze at us, fondly, jealously, with aspirations, and so on, we begin to be named and to have our desires constructed by the Other --- by what the Other has or lacks” (p. 122). If one examines closely enough what Evans and Ragland are doing, there is a striking difference

in the way each cares about completeness, dissonance and the way we are defined, or signified. Whereas Ragland writes of the signifying chain (the meaning-making apparatus) being made of myriad units; Evans seems to reduce it to a self. I will continue with some explanation of basic Lacanian concepts and why they have been an appropriate method for looking at Weil’s writings. It is noted that Weil’s understanding of language and subjectivity align very nicely with Lacanian concepts.

Weil as accessible through a Lacanian lens

Using Lacan as a lens is a structural approach vis-à-vis Lacan’s early notion of the unconscious as structured like a language; this is a foundational theme in Lacan’s early seminars. David Pavón-Cuéllar (2014) states that Lacanian analysis results in “the subjection of the individual to the structure,” and writes about this process as discovering “the real matrix of the symbolic form, the literal foundation of the signifying determination.” In this conversation Pavón-Cuéllar makes a significant contribution in pointing to “structuring power and its real emptiness” (p. 71). Ian Parker (2005) explains that the “theory we need is distributed in Lacan’s writing and practice and in that of his followers, and so this reading is also a rewriting of scattered comments on elements that we might find useful” (p. 166). Parker and Pavón-Cuéllar apply Lacan in scholarly literary-critical fashion; Eric Laurent and Stijn Vanheule apply Lacan in similar ways. Pavón-Cuéllar (2014) states that, “traditional discourse analysis focuses on the determining enunciated fact of the signifying discursive chain” (p. 71). Lacan offers discourse analysis through his notions of the master signifier, excess in jouissance and the divided subject. As Wolfgang Iser (2006) notes there are many different current discourses, and “each patterning the world” according to its “ground plan” (p. 172).

Discourse involves suspicion and establishes representation through commentary; which is the imposition of exclusionary constraints (p. 174). Weil was a philosopher whose epistemology was based in the notion that we are language bearers, which distinguishes us as human.

Weil’s thought is accessible when informed by Lacanian theory on the topic of the use of language. According to Peter Winch (1989), Weil exclaimed, “We can, thanks to language, call to mind anything we please; it is language that changes us into people that act” (p. 51). Weil’s minimized subject indicates the connection between her discourse and the experience of what Lacan identifies as the subject of the unconscious. As a way of considering difficult language, Stephen Frosh (2014) writes, “The reason some things cannot be said is not that they are mystical and the language within them is absent, but rather that language itself produces gaps and difference” (pp. 22-23). Lacan, according to Ragland (1995), explains that “jouissance names that which makes human beings vacillate between the sublime and the ridiculous, pleasure and pain, being and nothingness” (p. 87). I identify this naming which creates jouissance as the perfect example of how Weil’s language can be understood. Weil facilitates an understanding that jouissance is demonstrated when her text touch on ecstasy and rapture as she delved into the minimizing of herself as a subject; her body being excess and her soul needing minimization. I understand Parker’s (2005) ideas to be helpful, as he says, “The notion of ‘text’ in this tradition of work therefore encompasses all forms of socially structured signification” (p. 164). In a footnote Mark Bracher (1993) insists that speaking includes “thinking, feeling, desiring, and acting, and thus have real consequences for people’s

lives” (p. 60). Weil’s dedication to aligning her life with her word gives fertile ground for observing the Lacanian understanding.

Weil’s concepts are erudite and bring into full purview the connectivity with psychic notions. That which is sketched-out here demonstrates, in two examples, the way that Lacanian notions bring forth an understanding of Weil’s key concepts. Weil’s Metaxu, bridging differences, leads me to think of Lacan’s topological surface of the Mobius strip, a mathematical concept describing a kind of loop with only one surface. Because there is not really a difference between the inside or outside of the Mobius loop, there is a continuous bringing together of what otherwise would seem to be opposites: outside and inside surfaces. I understand Weil’s Metaxu similarly, in that she puts forth with this term the idea that what may seem to be irreconcilably different may really be connected.

Lacan’s “divided subject” and Weil’s “Decreation” are also similar. According to Katrien Libbrecht (1998), “a human being’s desire [is] always a desire for something else [and] as a corollary to this movement, the divided subject emerges” (p. 85). Weil’s understanding of creation (Decreation) similarly considers a divided deity. Pétrement (1976) explains Weil’s concept of Decreation as follows, “(God) did not create outside himself beings that did not exist before, thus extending the domain in which to exercise his power. On the contrary, he left outside himself a domain that before was within him and was himself, and in which he no longer intervenes or does so only under certain conditions” (p. 496). Weil’s very language and thought is so similar to Lacan’s use of structure and language that the Lacanian lens seems only natural and important to explain

Weil’s use of language. Both Weil and Lacan’s respect for language makes it imperative to explain language within the context of Weil’s use thereof.

Weil and language. Weil writes about language in strikingly similar ways as Lacan. Full examination of this topic is beyond the scope of this project, but it is worth a brief discussion here; both Weil and Lacan take the position that culture and influential practices designate realities as simple and understandable in order to diffuse them of the harsh truths which are hidden by the quasi-metonymic tasteful choice of words. Weil writes in her Notebooks “to try to define the things which, while effectively taking place, remain in a sense imaginary. War. Crime. Revenge. Extreme affliction” (Weil, 2013, pp.160-161). In her text, “To try to define the things which, while effectively taking place, remain in a sense imaginary,” immediately in discourse analysis of the text there emerges Weil’s attempt to reify or signify phenomena like “War. Crime. Revenge. Extreme affliction,” while realizing that each slips into an imaginary place. She continues:

Those which do not contain any multiple reading. The crimes in Spain were actually perpetrated and yet they resembled mere acts of braggadocio.

Some realities that have no more dimensions than a dream—flat ones. (pp.160-161)

A close reading of the passage involves noting that Weil (1977) is writing an incendiary against the minimization of stark evil realities. These words, when properly defined, lose their “capital letter and can no longer serve either as a banner or as a hostile slogan; it becomes simply a sign, helping us to grasp some concrete reality, or concrete objective,

or method of activity” (p. 270). Weil’s misgivings about language and communication are undergirded and affirmed by Lacan.

Here I take a closer look at Lacan’s idea of communication and language whereby he addresses the symptom. A symptom is the world’s failure to communicate; it is for the psychoanalyst to decipher meaning from this breakdown in language. Lacan (2002) says in the Ecrits that with the nature of signification, “it is already quite clear that symptoms can be entirely resolved in an analysis of language, because a symptom is itself structured like a language: a symptom is language from which speech must be delivered” (p.223). Ragland (2015) emphasizes that “there is a limit to our language. This limit lies in an orientation of the real, producing excesses of jouissance, where we can access certain answers or knowledge. Moreover, desire seeks the excesses its satisfaction has come to demand: encore or repetition.” (pp. 51-52). Weil’s idiosyncratic thought and behavior designate a pattern of peculiar looks at language and its demarcations. The limit of language, the breakdown of communication, is the symptom. De Kesel (2013) demonstrates that Weil’s reflection on the story of the miser, whose buried treasure was stolen from him, is cited in Lacan’s sixth seminar as “an excellent illustration of his own theory of desire and, more precisely, of the object of desire” (p. 190). The buried treasure as the object of desire is never missed because it was never used to meet any desire, or obtain any excess.

For Lacan, the void can be represented by the hole in the real. As Weil (2002a) points to tension she says “the void is the extreme fullness, but man is not permitted to know it” (p. 23). It follows that, in this discussion there is a dichotomy which is impervious to deconstruction, because the dichotomy itself identifies and indicates

emptiness. The desire of the individual to be whole reinforces that feeling of lack; as in Eastern thought, insecurity is well found. Lissa McCullough (2014) suggests that:

To Weil, “Because our existence is inherently limited, absolutely conditioned by death, we cannot regard our existence as a good in itself, much as we try to transform it into one. We invariably seek more than simply to exist; we seek the means to secure and aggrandize our existence, which is to say, we crave power after power.” (p. 58)

Weil finds much strength in language, as she writes in Pétrement (1976), “I will dedicate what little energy and life thus granted to me either to thinking and writing down what I have in me (even if there will be no one to consume it) or to some activity in the cannon-fodder line” (p. 531). These thoughts are given fuller notice in the Decreation chapter.

Weil and subjectivity. Weil identifies subjectivity as that which is refined by affliction and suffering; this is the subject’s ultimate condition, according to Weil’s philosophy. As Susan Cameron (2003) presents it, “What we call ‘I,’” as Weil wrote, “is only a motive” [N, 1:97]) (p. 224). Understanding Weil’s subjectivity through the dynamic of dialectic, the dominant discourse and the philosopher’s dichotomy demonstrates how Weil portrayed the reliance in Western thought on duality. Cameron’s essay examines:

the fictive relations within Weil’s writing on self- annihilation—she called it ‘Decreation’ (N, 1:279)—as well as the relation between Weil’s didactic imperatives for the achievement of that state and her representation of a person who lived such a reduced life. The resistance between these positions is what

makes Weil’s writing interesting; resistance registers her uncompromising understanding of the difficulty of her own project. (pp. 217-218)

Weil expended a lot of energy on writing and teaching philosophy, at Le Puy where her bedroom was strewn with books and papers which seemed to be a puzzle only she could put together. Cameron continues, “I am also concerned with how we might understand someone who attempted to separate personality from being— that is, with how we might value someone who herself valued impersonality [an identification with lack] at such tremendous cost” (p. 217).

As for impersonality and the ego, Bruce Fink (1995) explains that “in Lacan’s version of psychoanalysis is the ego is clearly not an active agent, the agent of interest being the unconscious [considered the speaking being]. Rather than qualifying as a seat of agency or activity, the ego is, in Lacan’s view, the seat of fixation and narcissistic attachment” (p.37) governing all narcissism and the imaginary. While the influence of philosophy is apparent in Weil’s corpus, she is also able to be wise enough to see beyond the smokescreen and mirrors of dualism. The notion of completeness and centeredness of human beings never seems to fold into Weil’s thinking.

Éric Laurent (2014) explains that “finding a modality of the origin of language . . . Lacan proposed something different: that psychoanalysis leaves behind the animal-human opposition in favour of that between the living being and the speaking being” (p. xiv). Humans as language bearing beings, “speaking beings,” this is the distinction Laurent emphasizes in Lacan’s teaching. Weil also recognizes the nature of language, being human, and it is language with which Weil attacks positivism. The division in Weil’s subject emerges in her writings in a manner which makes it possible for others to

experience her troubles and pain. Kit Fan (2007) explains that, “Weil’s words, written from within the extremity of her intellectual predicament” find their way into the works of “later writers seeking to mediate between some of the same contradictions” (p. 132). Weil excelled at diminishing the import of the psyche, but only as it reflects the diminishing of the Other.

Weil can be considered a hysteric in Lacanian terms, that is, a person with fluid ego boundaries who always wants more knowledge. As typical of hysterics, Weil offered herself up to universal causes; her sacrifices were indicative of such a Lacanian psychoanalytic designation.

Weil minimized the psyche even to the level of death, strikingly akin to Kierkegaard. Anne Loades (1984) links Weil’s expression of suffering to the acceptance of death, writing that “participation in the redemptive suffering of Christ by consenting to death, the precise moment at which God seems to be absent. Death [for Weil] represented the ‘the centre and object of life’” (p. 133). Thus, Weil turns division into an opportunity for accepting contradictions. For some, Weil’s life is an inspiration and a testament to the eloquence of suffering in ascetic-like practice, living and dying in hunger, in a way that identifies with otherness, with the work of the proletariat, which Weil did with her work in factories. That is, she connects personal suffering to a larger meaning, drawing a link between what in Lacanian thought is the small-o-other to the large-O-Other. Weil’s hunger is in touch with an unsustainable source of beauty and her compensatory assertion of human emptiness, which is nothing less than “extreme affliction” (Weil, 2002a, p. 26), reminding us of her tenuousness of thought about existence. Being in tune with the world for Weil meant she understood her body to be the same as an extension of the world’s

sufferings. We now are left with her words, which likewise for many like I have been an extension or at least a reverberation, understanding or participation in the same sufferings we experience.

Key Lacanian Concepts

In my subsequent detailed examinations of Weil’s understanding and uses of Metaxu, Attention, and Decreation, I am drawing upon the following six Key Lacanian concepts that I have found helpful in unveiling this framework include: the four discourses (the master, the university, the hysteric, and the analyst), jouissance, lack, the Name-of-the-Father, the master signifier, the orders of the symbolic, the imaginary and the real. These concepts are introduced and explained in this chapter, and again in the chapter in which they have their greatest application.

Four discourses. The four discourses are Lacan’s way of describing the structure he sees behind all communication. Discourse creates a social bond; therefore these four discourses explain not only spoken words, but social relationships as well.

There are four fixed places as follows:

agent other

__ __

truth product

The agent is the position of dominance and represents the voice of “the one talking” (not necessarily a singular person). This position identifies which of the four discourses is being described. “Everyone” who speaks has an intended audience; this is represented by the position of the other. Every act of communication has a result; this is represented by the position of the product. The position of truth, below the agent, demonstrates its hidden nature. This is the Lacanian understanding that the full truth can never be spoken.

This position of truth also demonstrates that it is the driving force behind the agent’s communication. This truth can never be adequately communicated by the agent because it remains unknown to the agent. This is the key Lacanian notion of impossibility, that all communication is a failure.

There are four terms, in a fixed order, that move through the four positions.

$ is the subject. It has a line through it to show that it is split between the conscious and the unconscious. When subject is in the place of the agent, this is the hysteric’s discourse.

S1 is the master signifier. This is the signifier that “represents the subject for another signifier.” Russell Grigg (2001) explains, “The Lacanian signifier, diacritical in nature, never exists on its own but always and only in relation to, and in opposition to, other signifiers” (p. 186). When it is in the place of the agent, this is the master’s discourse.

S2 is knowledge. This is sometimes called the signifying chain. It can be thought of as all signifiers that are used to designate a given person’s experience or understanding. When it is in the place of the agent, this is the university discourse.

a is the ‘objet a’ or the ‘object cause of desire’. This is a complex term, but very foundational to Lacan’s psychoanalytic theory. As the subject becomes grounded in language and truth cannot be fully expressed in language, there always remains more beyond the conscious knowledge and we always desire this part that was “lost” with the introduction of language. Objet a represents this part that is lost. This is the residue of

the real, being fleeting and illusory in nature. It is correlative to pleasure, beauty and truth. When it is in the place of the agent, this is the analyst’s discourse.

The hysteric’s discourse.

In this discourse the subject, who is divided, is endlessly questioning S1, the master signifier to prove him/her/itself. This interrogation of the master signifier by the subject produces knowledge, S2. In the position of truth is the ‘object cause of desire’, a, the real that can’t be spoken and drives the divided subject to continue to question.

This is the discourse that explains Weil’s questioning, use of contradiction, political activism, and resistance to join the social organizations.

The master’s discourse.

In this discourse the master signifier (the signifier that identifies the subject) addresses knowledge, all the other signifiers. Something of value or pleasure, a, is produced for the master signifier. The divided subject is in the position of truth, driving this discourse by wanting to hide the insecurity of its division behind the master signifier’s claim of truly identifying the subject.

This discourse can be seen in many of Weil’s critiques of power, the plight of the working class, and the use of propaganda of her day. This discourse is also seen in her understanding of “necessity” (a concept discussed in the Metaxu chapter), and “Decreation”.

$  S1

__ __

a S2

S1  S2

__ __

$ a

The university discourse.

S2  a

__ __

S1 $

In this discourse, knowledge (a signifying chain of words) speaks with authority to the ‘real’ that can’t be fully expressed in words, a. Knowledge’s claim to authority over this remnant of the real produces the divided subject, perplexed by what can’t be fully known. The master signifier is in the position of truth driving this discourse while remaining hidden behind knowledge’s rationalization.

This discourse can be seen in Weil’s academic bent and her respect for the power of words.

The analyst’s discourse.

a  $

__ __

S2 S1

In this discourse, the remnant of the real that cannot be expressed in words, a, is in speaking position. It speaks (not in words) to the subject, and a new master signifier for the subject is produced. Knowledge is in the position of truth and puts ‘the object cause of desire’, a, in the dominate position of agent by keeping its signifying chain of words hidden.

This is the discourse that best describes Weil’s prescription for Attention.

Jouissance. Jouissance is a complicated word that carries connotations of fleeting orgasmic pleasure and pain. One of the core premises is that something is always lost, or not communicated when words are spoken, the real cannot be known. Jouissance refers to the now forbidden pleasure, of the unknown real, that has been lost. Carmela

Levy-Stokes (2001) explains “What is allowed of jouissance is in the surplus jouissance connected with an object a. Here jouissance is embodied in the lost object. Although this object is lost and cannot be appropriated, it does restore a certain coefficient of jouissance. This can be seen in the subject repeating him/herself with his/her surplus jouissance” (p. 104). For Weil, all that can be known of the transcendent is the blind law of necessity, it embodies the surplus jouissance.

Master signifier. The master signifier is often, but not always represented by S1. The master signifier designates the positioning of major psychoanalytic dominant themes for all, who are controlled by it. Themes that appear in discourse, played-out as S1 are greater versus lesser, including domination versus submission. These encode themselves in texts, discourse and also act as indicators of identity, such as naming: “liberal,” “communist,” or “American.” According to Evans (1996) “the master is the master signifier (S1) who puts the slave (S2) to work to produce a surplus (a) which he can appropriate for himself. The master signifier is that which represents a subject for all other signifiers” (p. 109). Fink (1998) expresses in the definition the capricious nature of the master signifier, by saying the following:

In the master’s discourse, the dominant or commanding position . . . is filled by S1, the nonsensical signifier, the signifier with no rhyme or reason, in a word, the master signifier. The master signifier must be obeyed—not because we will be better off that way or for some other such rationale—but because he or she says so. No justification is given for his or her power: it just is. (p. 31)

In the master’s discourse the master signifier designates what is involved in the signification process, but has no signifier itself, it signifies the links within a signifying chain. In the process of being what it is, the master signifier is the originator of meaning, the first signifier which receives no signification. The concept or referent (or both) signified by any "master signifier" is forever to be something rather nonsensical or impossible to understand, because of having no relation to a signifier itself. The master signifier’s context is explained in yet another way by Paul Verhaeghe (1995):

if one compares the Freudian primal father with the Lacanian Master signifier S1, the difference is very clear: with the first one, everybody sees an elderly greybeard before his or her eyes, roving between his females, etc. It is very difficult to imagine this greybeard using the S1 . . . which precisely open up the possibility of other interpretations of this very important function. (p. 2)

Thus the master’s discourse is the cultural “no.” It is that which delimits the narrative of the day; it determines what is undermined and what is left alive in language and communication.

Name-of-the-Father. The Name-of-the-Father is the symbolic process that blocks mother from child. The Other which is the complete alterity, that which was lost during the process of the first trauma, which the father was saying “no,” whereby the

mother lost her influence: henceforth designated “mOther.” The mOther desires what is beyond the capacity of the child to apprehend, complete knowledge. The symbolic element of the Name-of-the-Father instructs and demands that the individual not endeavor to find answers that the mOther can utilize. In Lacan there is a hole in the Other, which is that place whereby alterity is symbolized. The symbolic is the place of radical alterity, which Lacan refers to as the other/Other. The Other transcends the illusionary otherness of the imaginary because it cannot be assimilated through identification. Radical alterity with language and the law and hence the Other is inscribed within the order of the symbolic. For Weil the term for God resembles Lacan’s Other and indicates a potential absorption.

Three orders. This refers to the three intrapsychic domains which make up the elementary ideas describing that which Lacan used to fill-in the area of Freud’s relational psychic phenomena. These are sometimes referred to as orders or registers. The three overlap in Lacan’s use of the Borromean knot to exemplify the way these orders relate to one another.

Real. The real is that part of experience which resists symbolization; it is the experience one has which is seemingly tangible yet escapes into symbolization the moment it is realized to be “there.” The real is an order which for Lacan is available to the senses yet is somehow quite unreachable therewith. Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen (1991) imbibes in Heidegger to explain a dual nature of “human reality” and “given reality” a so-called “dualistic ontology” when explaining the nature of the real. This is understood as Heidegger’s famous ‘difference’” (p. 17). Tom Eyers (2011) writes, “it is only through

an attention to the conceptual genesis of the category of the Real that the materialist potential of Lacanian theory may be fully realized” (p. 155).

Symbolic. Libbrecht (2001) states that “the shift in focus from the pre-eminence of speech and language over the supremacy of the signifier in language as structure to the symbolic order as grounded by the signifier” (p. 198). The symbolic is the order of representation, that place where the real occurs once it immediately escapes our experience. As mentioned above, the real order is that according to Lacan is available to the senses yet is somehow quite unreachable therewith. Things in the symbolic only represent through signs and symbols that which is in the Real Order.

Imaginary. Evan’s (1996) “Imaginary in Lacan is quite different from the typical use of the word implies. The imaginary exerts a captivating power over the subject, founded in the almost hypnotic effect of the specular image” (p. 84) and is quite different from the traditional use of the word in English, in that it does not represent some fictitious place or scopic world. “The imaginary is rooted in the subject’s relationship to his own body (or rather to the image of his body). . . .it imprisons the subject in a series of static fixations” (p. 84).

For Lacan, “The imagination, filler up of the void, is essentially a liar” (p. 16). A Lacanian understanding of the imagination sheds light on Weil’s understanding of the imaginary. As Evans has it,

The imaginary is the realm of image and imagination, deception and lure. The principal illusions of the imaginary are those of wholeness, synthesis, autonomy, and duality and, above all, similarity. The imaginary is thus the order of surface

appearances which are deceptive, observable phenomena which hide underlying structure; the affects are such phenomena. (p. 82)

In various passages of her writings Weil comes close to a depiction of imagination which coincides with the Lacanian notion of the imaginary.

Chapter Two

Metaxu: Interrogating for Truth

Dorothy Tuck McFarland (1983) views Weil as a “writer with profoundly holistic vision of man and his relationship to the world” (pp. 168-169). This vision is demonstrated in Weil’s use of Attention, Decreation, and, most specifically, Metaxu to integrate her words into a singular and consistent corpus of literature that we find today. As a hysteric, Weil demands all the knowledge that she possibly can and then is not satisfied and desires more knowledge. The hysteric’s discourse demands knowledge beyond what is given by the master narrative, by the hegemony of the time, and this is exactly what Weil does in her discussion of Metaxu.

Metaxu is a concept that can be traced back to ancient Greek thought; however, Weil’s understanding and use of Metaxu differ from those of Plato. For Weil, Metaxu has many different connotations including suffering, contradiction, impossibility, and certain contradictions that connect us to our humanity. According to James M. Rhodes (2013), “Zdravko Planinc addressed the Voegelin Society arguing that Plato never caused any of his dramatis personae to elevate ‘metaxy’ into a technical term or a principal theoretical symbol on the level of concepts such as eros, justice, and the agathon (the good)” (para. 2). Rhodes goes on to give an example of its usage as follows: “The confused Socrates-Agathon wonders what kind of an entity could be between mortal and immortal. The teacher answers: ‘A great daimon, for the whole of the daimonic is between [metaxy] god and mortal.’” In Weil’s work Metaxu is demonstrated as a cognitive act, as opposed to a formulated concept of some aspect of reality. The key originality in Weil’s use of the term lies in it not meaning in between, but rather both/and.

I use the word Metaxu to refer to three main cognitive actions that Weil uses. 1) She uses the action of a way through a barrier (such as a veil or wall). 2) She further uses an insistence on looking for and holding together of contradiction. 3) And she intends the view of the idea of a means versus an ends. This demonstrates the ways I see her ambiguous use of Metaxu and the multiple, complementary meanings. Weil (2002a) does acknowledge a Platonic understanding of Metaxu as a “between” which she refers frequently to “the distance between the necessary and the good” (p. 105); however, her concepts explored in this chapter show that she is concerned not with middle ground between two contradictories, but the bridge that allows one the means to travel back-and-forth between these points. What is of premium importance is the process or action; Weil takes to accept challenges, contradictions and power struggles as they lead her further along the path of the hysteric’s search for more truth or knowledge.

To further clarify how Weil’s methods of Metaxu differ from the Greek understanding of “in between,” I submit Lacan’s description of the mobius strip. The mobius strip is a narrow piece of paper or ribbon in which the two ends are connected after one end is twisted 180 degrees. Though the paper seems to have two sides there is no separation of these sides when one traces the paper with a finger from start to finish. Similarly, Metaxu is a phenomenon of both fully-in and fully-out, not compromise or as a “between.”

Figure 1. Mobius Strip, as retrieved from Paul Bourke

Weil does not make a distinction in the idea of Metaxu between political and spiritual realms. The message of Metaxu refers to the transcendent or a “higher plane.” Therefore, Weil’s methods of Metaxu also lead her to an understanding of spiritual resolution and a completeness (which is never fully complete), which conflates the spiritual and the political.

The following quote expresses Weil’s statement about her intentionality and missionality toward seeking more and more knowledge and inviolability, while demonstrating her ambiguous use of the term Metaxu.

What is it a sacrilege to destroy? Not that which is base, for that is of no importance. Not that which is high, for even should we want to, we cannot touch that. The Metaxu. The Metaxu form the region of good and evil. No human being should be deprived of his Metaxu, that is to say of those relative and mixed blessings (home, country, traditions, culture, etc.) which warm and nourish the soul and without which, short of sainthood, a human life is not possible. (Weil, 2002a, p. 147)

This missionality is holistic in nature and she is speaking of that which cannot be put into language, which reaffirms Lacan’s acknowledgment that communication cannot truly take place. It is that dissonance of the Lacanian split subject and the dissonance of all experiences of difficulties, hardships and injustices which are approached by Weil through Metaxu. Weil (2002a) first helps us to understand Metaxu with the metaphor of a barrier or a wall: “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” (p. 145). Weil (2002a) also writes, “This world is the closed door. It is a barrier. And at the same time it is the way through” (p. 145). This is a cognitive exercise of seeing obstacles as something more. Necessity is a barrier and a bridge between us and the holy. Necessity, for Weil, encompasses all the laws that the physical world we know are ruled by; these laws apply equally to all people. Weil repeatedly returns to the idea of necessity as a foundational concept in her philosophy and uses it in a variety of ways to resolve subjective angst.

Weil uses the concept of “necessity” to apply this cognitive exercise on a grand scale, as demonstrated in the following quotes. Weil (2002a) states that “God has committed all phenomena without exception to the mechanism of the world” (p. 104). The mechanism of the world rests on necessity and the obligation that the sun and all stars do shine and all matter does create gravity. These are necessary elements and fundamental to the continuous nature of the cosmos. Necessity is the subsistence of all things both finite and eternal, earth and heaven. Weil (2002a) states that “There are necessity and laws in the realm of grace . . . Even hell has its laws (Goethe). So has heaven” (p. 92).

From Weil’s point of view, these mechanisms of the physical and metaphysical world cause man great suffering; however these mechanisms also provide protection from being consumed by God’s full power and holiness. Again this is an illustration of how the barrier, or the wall, is also the way through, or the means of communication. Weil’s pessimistic utopia of necessity proves to be, according to McFarland (1983), “no less threatening to the future of civilization now than they were in the 1930s” (p. 169).

McFarland brings forward necessity as the driving force for the whole cosmos, which is very fundamental to Weil’s work. Weil (2012) writes of it this way:

This universe where we live, of which we are just a particle, is that distance placed by divine love between God and God. We are a point in that distance. Space, time and the mechanisms that govern matter are that distance. All that we call evil is only that mechanism. God made it so that His grace, when it penetrates to someone’s very center and illuminates their whole being, permits that person to walk on water without violating the laws of nature. But when someone turns away from God, they simply give themselves over to gravity. Then they believe they will and choose, but they are only a thing, a falling stone. (p. 39)

Without the protection of space, time, and matter humanity would evaporate as water in direct sunlight. For Weil (2002a) “Necessity is God’s veil” (p. 104). The veil is necessity which keeps humans from being scorched by God’s radiance; necessity perpetuates the universe in its increasing infinitude, necessity guarantees the ex-sistence of space, time, and matter (p. 32). For Weil (2002a) “Necessity is the screen set between God and us so that we can be” (p. 33), indeed, that which prevents our evaporation.

Metaxu, demonstrated as seeing obstacles as something more, is perpetuated by the gravity of laws in the universe which preserve life. As I have said, Necessity is a barrier and a bridge between us and the holy. Weil (2002a) states “The distance between necessity and good: this is a subject for endless contemplation” (p. 105). The mechanisms of necessity display ultimate obedience to divine Wisdom; therefore, being subject to necessity can be our bridge to obedience to divine Wisdom as well. In terms of

the veil, it is used in the following way, “In such cases suffering, emptiness are the mode of existence of the objects of our desire. We only have to draw aside the veil of unreality and we shall see that they are given to us in this way. When we see that, we still suffer, but we are happy” (Weil, 2002a, p. 23).

Weil’s approach to the somatic aspect of life is explained well by Charity K. M. Hamilton (2013), who refers to “the body [as] that space which can connect us with God or separate us from God” (p. 93). The body as Metaxu is a site for Weil according to Hamilton. It serves as a theological bridge it can make between a woman and God. Weil’s troubled life with her body signifies Weil as suffering. Hamilton (2013) writes it in this way:

Her relationship to the body was not merely philosophical or idealistic it was trou-bled. Weil demonstrates an ongoing and underlying preoccupation with her body throughout her life, which appears to affect her relationships with others as well as informing her understanding of the nature of human suffering. (p. 89)

and “the dichotomy between the suffering body connected to God because of its suffering, and the subverted body separating from God through its false state is one which sets up the ideal opportunity for Metaxu, for the body to be that space which can connect us to God or separate us from God” (p. 93). So for Hamilton (2013) Metaxu is spelled-out in Weil’s “idealistic” and “troubled” philosophy of the body. I agree with Hamilton, but would add that Weil demonstrates Metaxu as it is effective on the body itself in the flesh, not just conceptually. By way of Metaxu Weil critically analyzes the suffering body of physical during physical labor as an action. Physical labor is an enactment of Metaxu the person who realizes that physical and spiritual are not separate.

Out of Weil’s compassion she sees a different reality than that of the discourse of the master (Marx, Lenin, Trotsky or Hitler); again she seeks knowledge beyond what is known even to experts. Weil’s political thought focuses on justice, morality and recognition of the hard-working individual who was oppressed and exploited. Fred Rosen (1979) reminds readers that “Weil’s insight into the double deprivation of the workers which consisted not only of low wages but also of loss of dignity” (p.306). As Weil (2002a) proclaims,

The true earthly blessings are metaxu. We can respect those of others only insofar as we regard those we ourselves possess as metaxu. This implies that we are already making our way towards the point where it is possible to do without them. For example, if we are to respect foreign countries, we must make of our own country not an idol, but a stepping stone toward God. (p. 147)

Her approach is spiritual, humanistic and compassionate, not highbrow and elitist. She found herself in the factory with the worker and single-handedly negotiated a philosophy honoring what she refers to as Metaxu, man’s connection with “earthly blessing.” Weil is focused on the human one at a time; her compassion led her to the conclusion that she does not have comprehensive solutions but rather individual approaches, for example Attention, which explained in the next chapter. Weil sought out truth as a continuous effort, while realizing that there may be no end in sight.

Weil’s sense of Metaxu as involving contradiction plays out in her view that what is transcendent is also lowly. Weil believed that the entire world is contradiction. In Howe’s (2009) estimation “Weil’s conception of roots is heavily influenced by the Greek idea of Metaxu: in this case the existence of intermediaries that form bridges between

earth and heaven. Weil placed such importance on these aspects of human existence” that the result was that she was inclined to embrace earth and heaven. Weil believes all of the cosmos is contradiction, and this contradiction is what grounds us, connects us to the transcendent, or gives us roots. The world is the social and physical realm in which there is “baseness,” “lowness” and a “property of evil” (p. 77), in Weil’s writing it is apparently the social realm that creates a barrier “which keeps evil away” from some. For Weil (2002a) Metaxu is acceptance of contraries, e.g. “every man is the slave of necessity, but the conscious slave is far superior.” Weil conflates “necessity” and “submission” in “The only way to preserve our dignity when submission is forced upon us is to consider our chief as a thing. Every man is the slave of necessity, but the conscious slave is far superior” as well as stating Metaxu with the following: “if one day we are driven, under pain of cowardice, to go and break ourselves against their power, we must consider ourselves as vanquished by the nature of things and not by men,” (p. 157-158); here that Metaxu is applicable to “the nature of things” and “men.” It again is a seeing more when faced with a barrier, remembering that very barrier is our aid.

The second cognitive action Weil uses as part of her doing Metaxu is to retrieve a picture of the whole by looking at extremes. Weil as the hysteric (in the manner of the hysteric’s discourse) questions the master signifier. This is because the full truth can never be spoken; she considers truth as something to pursue, even though she can only get glimpses of it. The balancing of the challenges she faces include finding the complication with the use of dichotomies, or finding the contradiction in the way we typically think of opposites. These typical notions have to be taken apart, which happens through suffering, so we can have a better understanding of the true relationship of these

ideas. Weil seeks out the “right union” of opposites, which is not about a between, but about what is found on a “higher plane.” Dialectics for Weil are not seen as dichotomous, but rather as meeting and joining by way of a bridge for getting back and forth, and even in contradiction often being in the both places at the same time, which may appear as coalescence, but not a compromise. This is the nature of Metaxu, to bring together contradictories in spite of their contrariness. Weil (2002a) writes that “We must seek equilibrium on another plane” (p. 6). This plane might seem difficult to conceive of or even entertain cognitively, but Weil gives the following metaphor to assist in understanding “another plane”:--- “If I am walking on the side of a mountain I can see first a lake, then, after a few steps, a forest. I have to choose either the lake or the forest. If I want to see both lake and forest at once, I have to climb higher” (p. 99).

Weil kept her own philosophical position and did not give way to the thoughts of the day, especially political. Fiori attests to the potential contradictions and inconsistency in Weil’s ideas which only positions Weil as truly a human and unpretentious political figure. Fiori (1989) writes, “de Kadt declared at the same time that he did not at all share Simone’s ideas, which were drawing ever closer to Gandhi’s” (p. 93) approach to protest. According to Fiori, “The nonviolent editors of the Dutch monthly, Liberation, published a translation of her articles in the form of a booklet. They had quickly discerned her detachment from every separatist scheme and from all factionalism” (p. 93). Weil was not a joiner, according to her friend Pétrement. Towards the last part of her “political life” Weil differed in opinions from many, an example,

For Bataille, “(the Russian) revolution is the triumph of the irrational,” for Simone, it is the triumph of the ”rational.” What for him is a “catastrophe,” for

Simone is a “methodical action for which we should strive in every way to mitigate the damage.” While for him the revolution is a “liberation of the instincts, especially those considered currently to be pathological,” for Simone it means the need for “a superior morality.” (Fiori, 1989, p. 96)

Weil seeks to find when the opposite is true, and seeks the balance that opposites bring into the foreground. Weil’s likelihood to contradict theories in order to bed within the confines of the hysteric’s discourse is indicated by her symptoms.

Weil had particular understanding of the political era she lived in and she presented a holistic and unique perspective on the nature of revolution; one could say that Weil was not interested in the same sort of revolution than that which Trotsky had in mind. Weil didn’t fit into a particular camp of thought on the matters of political import. Whereas Trotsky was interested in revolution within the whole of social order, Weil understood the needs of the individual worker as more important than a revolution that would just instate a new rule. Blum and Seidler (1989) contend that in Weil’s view “revolutionary insurrection has nothing to do with genuine radical change . . . [she also thought such insurrections] . . . do not touch the real sources of oppression and dignity, which concern the structure of work and work relationship” (pp. 62-63). Weil interprets change as illusory to the masses and theorists, a contradiction in their thought to the extent that Weil can see through it into the psyche and have a further knowledge, again as the hysteric seeking what is beyond the truth of theorist.

Again Blum and Seidler remind us that “Weil suggests that genuine radical change can come about without a violent insurrection” (p. 63). Metaxu interestingly is used by Weil to find the abolition of all political parties. Weil (1977) explains that

“revolution is the opium of the masses” (p. 120) and is quite clear that Marxism “constitutes an improvement on the naïve expressions of indignation which it replaced, one cannot say that it throws light on the mechanism of oppression” (p. 127, italics added). Weil again states that even the French Revolution left people standing by, “helpless, watching a new oppression immediately being set up” (p. 127), even after the beheading of the aristocrats. Metaxu is an active way of understanding the moment of actual change, not a conceptual or cognitive construction of an understanding of a historical process. Metaxu is the active process of dealing with contradictions to be resolved starting with action based awareness on the part of the people with which she worked side-by-side. This can only happen through being-with the workers and educating them on the nature of the action-based awareness, which she called “Attention,” which is the subject of the next chapter. Weil’s insistence on Metaxu as a cognitive action continues her search for truth, which leads her to the use of Attention. Weil agrees with Marx that oppression can only end if the structure of power has changed. However, Weil contends that what society sees as change is not genuine change, but further oppression.

When Weil uses Metaxu she works through oppositions and contradiction related to work life. This is a union of opposites not in the typical conceptual understanding, but rather through concrete happening. This is due to the political and public sectors being not as they seem. Weil dismantles both sides of the opposites and finds through active awareness that the right union of opposites happened on a higher plane. Weil (2002a) writes to the worker, “The desire for vengeance is a desire for essential equilibrium. We must seek equilibrium on another plane” (p. 6).

There is another division in the thought of Weil which demonstrates the nature of dichotomies, as Weil understands it. Thus, she writes in Oppression and Liberty,

As Plato said, an infinite distance separates the good from necessity. They have nothing in common. They are totally other. Although we are forced to assign them a unity this unity is a mystery; it remains for us a secret. The genuine religious life is the contemplation of this unknown unity. The manufacture of a fictitious, mistaken equivalent of this unity, brought within the grasp of the human faculties, is an inadequacy as a philosophy through the description of Marxism as being a religion in the bottom of the inferior forms of the religious life. (p. 165)

Weil on the same page indicts Marxism as being a “fully fledged-religion,” adding in the “impurest sense of the word” (p. 165). She continues to develop the notion that Marx is only a shade away from Plato’s spirituality in comparison to materialism (p. 165). Weil states elsewhere in the same work that “it is possible to say, without fear of exaggeration, that as a theory of the workers’ revolution Marxism is a nullity” (p. 175). Revolutionary Marxism is based on a reductive ideology, whereas Weil emphasized revolution is a hope that never fulfills its promise. Hence, the nature of the hysterics reality comes alive in the non-fulfilling nature of revolution.

In addition to seeing a barrier as a way through, and seeking out contradiction, the third main cognitive action that Weil frequently takes in this process of Metaxu is looking at the means versus the ends. The metaphor of the bridge illustrates the concept of means nicely. The summarization of Weil’s use of the bridge comes in the following text from Gravity and Grace:

The bridges of the Greeks. We have inherited them but we do not know how to use them. We thought they were intended to have houses built upon them. We have erected skyscrapers on them to which we ceaselessly add stories. We no longer know that they are bridges, things made so that we may pass along them, and that by passing along them we go towards God. (p. 146)

Bridges are necessary in order to cross terrain that is impossible to cross otherwise; Weil was only interested in the means, the bridge itself, of crossing over. Weil’s focus was not on the ends; for her that would be a trap, the end of knowing. Because of the hysteric’s need to continue toward truth, Weil felt nothing was as important as the bridge as the means not the ends. Weil pictures the bridges as that which can readily be passed over to connect and investigate difference. Weil writes “Only he who loves God with a supernatural love can look upon means simply as means” (p.146). Weil’s concern that humans not use ends, but rather continue with means is for her as being of high importance. When ends come to be a prospect, as a solution to problems or as a way to complete a transaction or communication, this is the lowest of notions, it is the completion of desire. Desire as means leading to desire as a means is the essence of beauty, because of the infinite nature of such; therefore, ends in themselves or means to an end are like blowing out candles in order to save wax which is turning the world into darkness and bitterness.

Means is a significant philosophical and theological concept and can be applied to Weil’s representation of the human ends in the case of endeavors completed, finite, objectified or totalized. Weil saw great distress in a world of only ends. The importance of means for means’ sake and means leading to further means added synchronicity and

spontaneity to the world. It was godly and noble to be of the understanding that means are fluid and related to the flux of life. Weil has numerous commentaries on power, money and resources; and on how they are indeed means that produce more means as they are applied correctly to life. Weil speaks, the “miser’s treasure is the shadow of an imitation of what is good. It is doubly unreal. For, to start with, a means to an end (such as money) is, in itself, something other than a good. But diverted from its function as a means and set up as an end, it is still further from being a good” (p. 52).

Weil maintains a moral sense which informs her political and religious sensibilities. She is strongly against what she considers harmful in the shaping of humans, individually and collectively. Weil states that “The Metaxu form the region of good and evil” (p. 147). For Weil good and evil are equivalent when on the transcendent plane; they are separate otherwise in human existence. In the discussion of good and evil, the work that Weil does on Hitler covers the divide between good and evil which demonstrates a just and spiritual understanding of these realities. Weil reinvigorates those who would give her voice and delivers a sense of values that are above discriminatory morals and provides an approach toward a way of truer liberty. She had, again as Blum and Seidler (1989) have pointed out,

Escaped the terms of moral relativism that have become the common-sense assumptions within social theory and anthropology because they seemed to be the only alternative to nineteenth century rationalism, which tacitly judged other cultures in terms of the values and institutions of Western culture. (p. 213)

Weil seeks to connect philosophy to concrete history. Weil’s accumulation of writing as collected by Gustav Thibon, from Weil’s work which he entitled Gravity and Grace,

amasses material that covers many topics; nonetheless, throughout Weil’s work there is the thread of material on Metaxu. I shall discuss some of key ideas, in order to contextualize and shed light on the way these ideas are used in the texts I analyze below.

Key Ideas

These key ideas underlie Weil’s concept of Metaxu and prepare the reader in understanding how I go about applying Lacanian theory.

In the master’s discourse the master signifier designates what is involved in the signification process, but has no signifier itself; it signifies the links within a signifying chain. In the process of being what it is, the master signifier is the originator of meaning, the first signifier which receives no signification. The concept or referent (or both) signified by any "master signifier" is forever to be something rather nonsensical or impossible to understand, because of having no relation to a signifier itself. The master signifier’s context is explained in yet another way by Verhaeghe (1995):

Thus the master’s discourse is the cultural “no.” It is that which delimits the narrative of the day; it determines what is undermined and what is left alive in language and communication.

Anaclisis. Anaclisis is the term which designates how the person identifies themselves in the other. This results in the definition of his/her ideal-ego. Fink (2016) states that, “The ideal-ego is the source of an imaginary projection” (p. 75).

Ex-sists. Ex-sists means it is something that which, according to Fink (1995) “We can discern a place for it within our symbolic order, and even name it, but it remains ineffable, unspeakable.” To ex-sist is to be capable of being written but not spoken (p. 122).

Lacan’s imaginary order. In various passages of her writings Weil comes close to a depiction of imagination which coincides with the Lacanian notion of the imaginary. For Weil as for Lacan, “The imagination, filler up of the void, is essentially a liar” (Evans, 1996, p. 16). A Lacanian understanding of the imagination sheds light on Weil’s understanding of the imaginary. As Evans has it,

The imaginary is the realm of image and imagination, deception and lure. The principal illusions of the imaginary are those of wholeness, synthesis, autonomy, duality, and, above all, similarity. The imaginary is thus the order of surface appearances which are deceptive, observable phenomena which hide underlying structure; the affects are such phenomena (p. 82).

Weil (2002a) points to the aspect of evil which is perhaps “Monotony of evil: never anything new, everything about it is equivalent. Never anything real, everything about it is imaginary” (p. 69). All aspects of evil manifest in the same monotony participated in when on farm and in factory. This is where Weil applied Attention and hard labor.

That which made Weil’s experience good is that she learned to exercise Attention within her working situation. Weil admits that “Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring” (p. 70). Weil even sees evil as almost benign and strangely significant. According to Weil “It is the purity, the perfection, the plenitude, the abyss of evil. Whereas, hell is a false abyss (cf. Thibon). Hell is superficial. Hell is a nothingness which has the pretension and gives the illusion of being” (p. 27). Therefore, Hell is more pertinent to the sinner than evil, evil is something for the righteous to avoid with caution; because of its seductiveness. Evil for Weil was a kind of non-existence which deprived one of a clear picture of reality. According to Weil:

Does evil, as we conceive it to be when we do not do it, exist? Does not the evil that we do seem to be something simple and natural which compels us? Is not evil analogous to illusion? When we are the victims of an illusion we do not feel it to be an illusion but a reality. It is the same perhaps with evil. Evil when we are in its power is not felt as evil but as a necessity, or even a duty. (p. 71)

The illusory nature of the imagination, when left to its own devices, can leave the person vulnerable to the seduction of evil, though seemingly necessary evil in Weil’s estimation. Weil acknowledges that “We must continually suspend the work of the imagination filling the void within ourselves. If we accept no matter what void, what stroke of fate can prevent us from loving the universe? We have the assurance that, come what may, the universe is full” (p. 18). The void is filled with imaginary, that which is not real.

If the imaginary is filling the void, then it seems to follow that the cosmos is imaginary or illusion. This is why the image is so powerful in determining the outcome of one’s deliberation about subjectivity. This is where our values are implicated, as Weil says:

Illusions about the things of this world (e.g. the image in the mirror, as I see it) do not concern their existence but their value. The image of the cave refers to values. We only possess shadowy imitations of good. It is also in relation to good that we are chained down like captives (attachment). We accept the false values which appear to us and when we think we are acting we are in reality motionless, for we are still confined in the same system of values. (p. 51)

Weil thinks positive outcomes of revolution are illusory, because the outcome is always the same, meaning a power structure is still formulated and a bureaucracy remains.

Within the filler of the void is where Weil’s words given capital letters come to play. For many would shed blood for this illusory state of affairs based on the perception of a greater good found in the revolutionary spirit, as defined by those words. But when empty words are given capital letters, then, on the slightest pretext, men will begin shedding blood for them and piling up ruin in their name. For example, Greeks experienced frenzy for Troy; Christians retaliation for the sake of good over evil, Knights for chivalry, or Liberty for Americans. Means are the bridge that Weil envisions, while ends are the capital letters. Bracher (1993) suggests that “the more fully these master signifiers are exposed, the less capable they are of exercising their mesmerizing power” (p. 59). Weil exposes the master signifier in the moves that the powerful in her culture make in order for it to remain the hegemony.

Textual Analysis

Metaxu as necessity. The first piece to be analyzed here, from Gravity and Grace, is about the depth of human suffering and its relation to God. The definition of subjective experience for Weil is essential for her understanding and her expression of what God is; she is willing to discuss the nature of the cosmos and its relation to the depths of human experience, but theology continues to be a difficult and major process for Weil as is so obvious in her letters about her questions on the topic. Below is a text which demonstrates one of the positions she takes and where she stands on the topic of divine love in relation to life as she knows it. Weil’s detail remains very concrete and not as esoteric as one would expect of her, considering how she has been defined as a mystic; nevertheless, Weil (2002a) leaves me with a quality which is reminiscent of all her writing, confounding.

Relentless necessity, wretchedness, distress, the crushing burden of poverty and labor which wears us out, cruelty, torture, violent death, constraint, disease---- all these constitute divine love . . . for if we were exposed to the direct radiance of his love, without the protection of space, of time and of matter, we should be evaporated like water in the sun . . . . Necessity is the screen set between God and us so that we can be. (p. 32-33)

In this text she outlines necessity as the determining and ordering force that holds all of her theory together. Necessity saves us. It is the way things have to be and the way they are; though necessity seems so deterministic, it remains Weil’s position on how the universe is ordered. According to Weil all of humanity experiences “wretchedness, distress, the crushing burden of poverty and labor which wears us out, cruelty, torture, violent death, constraint, disease,” without exclusion. In Weil’s wartime and unjust society, she is often writing about the collective of the individual hard-working proletariat. Weil also explains that the masses are protected by the divine will, in and by their suffering, pain, and disenfranchisement. The subjective feeling for the individual would be “wretchedness, distress;” the societal consequence is “labor that wears us out.” The production of this objective and concrete experience is such that no one is immune to all of it.

This quoted text above is Weil’s demonstration of the inner working of the divine’s relationship to the world. The above text under consideration here, about affliction, sets forth Weil’s interpretation of a God gone mad with desire. Within the context of Weil’s life she introduces as divine whim “cruelty, torture, violent death, constraint, disease” against the body. One is not exempt from the determination of

wretchedness; protection from suffering does not come from deity. According to Weil all of the descriptions she gives above, “wretchedness, distress, the crushing burden of poverty and labor which wears us out, cruelty, torture, violent death, constraint, disease,” for her are as equivalent to divine love; this is strange indeed. Weil reframes her theological impression here by explaining the most traumatic experiences as necessary, in order to shield humans from being “evaporated like water in the sun.” Weil indicates her ideas about God and wretchedness as being balanced throughout her entire corpus, as seen in her notions gravity and grace. Weil demonstrates how humans are shielded within the Metaxu, as the earth is from scorching heat.

Weil does not resolve matters, but juxtaposes experiences in the way in which she practices Metaxu. Weil (2012) goes as far as to express it, in her essay “The Love of God and Affliction” that “affliction renders God absent for a time” (p. 33). This notion, during the war-torn period, was common among philosophers, like, Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber, and Hans Jonas and Elie Wiesel. Weil, through her religious/ethnic background knows the nature of a capricious deity, although she may be echoing and acknowledging the tragedies, she certainly stays within the trajectory and whim of Jewish deity. The experience of suffering as divine love testifies to a strangeness that is reminiscent of the Lacanian concept jouissance. Jouissance is a complicated word that carries connotations of fleeting orgasmic pleasure and pain. One of the core premises is that something is always lost, or not communicated when words are spoken, the real cannot be known. Jouissance refers to the now forbidden pleasure, of the unknown real, that has been lost. Levy-Stokes (2001) explains “What is allowed of jouissance is in the surplus jouissance connected with an object a. Here jouissance is embodied in the lost object. Although

this object is lost and cannot be appropriated, it does restore a certain coefficient of jouissance. This can be seen in the subject repeating him/herself with his/her surplus jouissance” (p. 104). For Weil, all that can be known of the transcendent is the blind law of necessity, it embodies the surplus jouissance. Weil certainly does repeat herself with this concept throughout her writings, as a symptom of being attached to this suffering. This approach leaves the reader with a sense of dissonance if one is looking for answers, because Weil continually (as a hysteric) seeks answers to the most perplexing questions.

Weil understands the other and the Other within the context of suffering and affliction. Weil (2002a) announces, “The sun shines on the just and on the unjust . . . God makes himself necessity. There are two aspects of necessity: it is exercised, it is endured: the sun and the cross” (p. 43). Weil (2012) discerns in her essay “The Love of God and Affliction” that:

Affliction is the uprooting of life, a more or less protracted equivalent to death, rendered irresistibly present in the soul by impairment or immediate apprehension of physical agony. If physical agony is completely absent, there is no affliction to the soul, because our thoughts can still turn towards any other object. But thoughts flee from affliction as promptly, as irresistibly as an animal flee death. (p. 32)

Hence, the hierarchy in the relationship between the subject and the Other stays intact, as Weil understands it. The master’s discourse places the burden of wretchedness, distress, and labor that wears us out upon humanity. Though as a hysteric Weil accepts the master’s answers to her questions, but always has more questions on her own part. As Lacan (2013a) reminds us “when anxious, the subject is affected, as I told you, by the

Other’s desire. . . . the subject is affected by that desire in an immediate matter which cannot be dialectized” (p.57). This “relentless necessity” is an inescapable and deterministic view of the development of the world and the psyche with a bridging that separates the subject from the Other. Further on, in a passage considered later, I demonstrate how Weil uses suffering to foreground Metaxu and the “right union of opposites.”

Weil uses the concept necessity extensively throughout Gravity and Grace in order to illustrate the fixity and deterministic estimation of the works of the God she considered herself to have experienced through transcendence, as such. In The Need for Roots Weil (2002b) writes about balance and a plexus of limits to describe Metaxu in the following text:

And like the oscillations of the waves, the whole succession of events here below, made up, as they are, of variations in balance mutually compensated— birth and destructions, waxings and wanings— render one keenly alive to the invisible presence of a plexus of limits without substance and yet harder than any diamond. That is why things are beautiful in their vicissitudes, although they allow one to perceive a pitiless necessity. Pitiless, yes; but which is not force, which is sovereign ruler over all force. But the thought which really enraptured the ancients was this: what makes the blind forces of matter obedient is not another, stronger force; it is love. They believed that matter was obedient to eternal Wisdom (Σόφια) by virtue of the love which causes it to consent to this obedience. (p. 284)

Weil speaks of the “eternal Wisdom” and describes this as “invisible” and “without substance,” which places it as something other than the “matter” that composes necessity. It is also has an authoritative role of strength as a “plexus of limits” and “harder than any diamond.” Its limits are seen in the “mutually compensated” nature of the “variations in balance” which characterize necessity, a concept which is “obedient to eternal Wisdom (Σόφια).” Weil (2012) explains that, “God willed necessity as a blind mechanism” (p. 36). This unwittingly indicates the Lord ( אדּוֹנּיּ ) in the Hebrew sense, as a player here also.

This may well be what Weil does not see within herself: the Jewishness to which she

unconsciously clings. The process that Weil is iterating above is not about brute strength,

but as she says it “is not another, stronger force; it is love.” How can love be capriciously

extended? This is the point exactly, alas, the contradiction that Weil always seems to

insist upon.

As Weil writes in the text above, “That is why things are beautiful in their vicissitudes, although they allow one to perceive a pitiless necessity.” Beauty will be one of the major themes explored in the Attention chapter; what is important to note here is the holding together of seeming opposites “pitiless necessity” and love, as the expression of the unknowable real. This is the concept of Lacanian jouissance. The grace that descends from on high rests within the flux, as in Weil’s “birth and destructions, waxings and wanings.” Any materialization of this process, for example, the crafting of a piece of art, is always and forever to subject to vandalism or deterioration. For Weil necessity is pitiless, but to an extent capricious much like her conception of the Hebrew deity. What comes about from Weil’s description above is the realization of some basic psychoanalytic and Weil’s phenomenological concepts in action. This process is always

in the moment, metonymically speaking, a now and a forever. This necessity dovetails nicely with Lacanian understandings of the nature of the process of subjectification.

This text is critical because it portrays the relationship between the Lacanian understanding of the “subject” and Weil’s concept of necessity, “the whole succession of events here below.” This relationship can level any process that could be formulated to describe sexuality, symbiosis of infant and mother, and the growing autonomy of the infant. The subject/necessity relationship is more crucial in a psychoanalytic understanding of Weil than any other argument about what brings Weil and Lacan together. Weil’s “oscillation of the waves” of being obeys the nature of gravity and leans on relentless necessity, following necessity’s way. Every person is subject to necessity, leans upon it, and has what can be described as an anaclitic relationship with it. According to Kaja Silverman (1984), anaclisis “is the name given by Freud to the leaning or propping of the erotic drive upon the self-preservative instincts, a support system whereby the mother, source of nourishment and warmth to the infant child, becomes for that very reason its first object choice” (p. 325). As an example of the use of the concept in psychoanalytic terms is that it can be used to describe object-choice whereby one decides upon a relationship with a love-object that resembles a parental figure. Michael Clark (2014) explains “anaclisis” as a level of depending/ leaning on others, as the basis for any formula’s “independence as a ‘node’ (a point of intersection and connectivity) that structures what Lacan calls a ‘signifying flux’ in which the subject cannot even pretend to find its place as the organizer of the flux” (p. 660). With the words, “the thought which really enraptured the ancients,” it is apparent that Weil was alluding to the way that the most significant experience becomes, for the psyche, a state of flux. This

concept of flux can also be seen in Weil’s valuing means as more virtuous that ends, which is a very prominent theme in her writing.

Because of the announcement of the subject on Weil’s terms it is important to realize how Lacan understands of the illusory nature of the workings within the psyche (psychodynamics). The subject can be seen in its role as the inventor of the illusory and is itself dependent upon the tide and sway of gravity, and therefore necessity. The Lacanian subject, the result of impressions and perceptions produces the ego which is illusory, and the subject itself being a variance that cannot be consciously gathered together (it is always a split, a conscious and unconscious subject as process). To the extent that the subject is conscious it is busy following the way of gravity attempting to create, but not sustain the ego, which again is an illusion. As Clark states, the “subject cannot even pretend to find its place as the organizer of the flux.” Obedient is the subject to eternal Wisdom and to flux, but unrelentingly demanding to stay together, especially for the hysteric who needs continuity in order to gain more and more knowledge. Here the hysteric’s discourse is demonstrated by the process that Weil envisions, which maintains an unending necessity.

Man’s might. In The Illiad, Poem of Might, Weil (1977) writes about the objectification of the other, demonstrating how might (or force) works in the social realm. Weil expresses the strength of might in the poem as alliterated here:

Might is that which makes a thing of anybody who comes under its sway. When exercised to the full, it makes a thing of man in the most literal sense, for it makes him a corpse. There where someone stood a moment ago, stands no one. This is

Master’s Discourse

S1  S2

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$ a

the spectacle which the Iliad never tires of presenting . . . the hero is become a thing dragged in the dust behind a chariot. (pp 153-154)

The objectification of all things, coming under the strength of gravity and of necessity, “Might is that which makes a thing of anybody who comes under its sway. When exercised to the full, it makes a thing [emphasis added] of man in the most literal sense, for it makes him a corpse.” This is a demonstration of the master’s discourse, the master signifier, S1, in the position of agent wielding its totalizing objectifying might, and the split subject, $, clearly not in control in the hidden position of truth, as evidenced in the following, “There where someone stood a moment ago, stands no one.” Weil appreciates “the spectacle which the Iliad never tires of presenting;” she knows the tragic workings of the master’s discourse well. Weil dismantles power relations with her discourse in by pointing out that even the hero, in Iliad, becomes a thing “dragged in the dust behind a chariot.” This returns to the idea of everyone being subject to necessity.

To understand Weil’s subjectivity, being linked with power relations, one is likely to have to come to grips with the other (the social order), especially in terms of that one’s spiritual journey. Weil faced others who would ridicule her and patronize her. Weil received the help of Father Perrin, who kept an atmosphere of openness in order for Weil to write without criticism. Weil, in her letter to Father Perrin, wrote “It is only with you that I have never felt the backlash of this mechanism,” (p.109). She describes this mechanism below. In the next portion of Weil’s text she shares a perspective on those that “amused themselves” at her expense in a letter she wrote to Father Perrin,

They did not behave like this from malice, but as a result of the well-known phenomenon that makes hens rush upon one of their number if it is wounded, attacking and pecking it.

All men bear this animal nature within them. It determines their attitude toward their fellows, with or without their knowledge and consent. Thus it sometimes happens that without the mind realizing anything, the animal nature in a man senses the mutilation of the animal nature in another and reacts accordingly. It is the same for all possible situations and the corresponding animal reactions. This mechanical necessity holds all men in its grip at every moment. The only escape from it in proportion to the place held in their souls by the authentically supernatural. (p. 109)

Weil is not excusing those who mistreat others, including those who have insulted her. Instead, Weil describes the nature of the order of things, the way things really are which does not include relativism. Weil does not dismiss the behavior of humans by making the behavior relative; instead she explains that behavior comes from an animal nature which implies a sort of determinism. Weil seems to be reducing human behavior to a sort of biological determinism. That which is instinctual can only be overcome by an “authentically supernatural” intervention through which one can “escape” the subjective experience of necessity. Weil unyieldingly remains neutral in the face of necessity without judging others according to their behavior. Showing how friends can turn and damage their friendships, Weil tells Father Perrin,

It is only with you that I have never felt the backlash of this mechanism. My situation with regard to you is like that of a beggar, reduced by extreme poverty to

a state of constant hunger, who for the space of a year had been going at intervals to a prosperous house where he was given bread, and who, for the first time in his life had not suffered humiliation. (p. 109-110)

Weil describes human behavior as “mechanism,” which demonstrates the mechanic becoming real and the function of structure, through necessity, to reinforce her thought about how indignation drives the behavior of others, how they have “amused themselves” at Weil’s expense, yet she finds solace in a relationship.

Regardless of the content, the structure and the process continue to influence and undergird this thinking as she continues to confront the inner world and the other (the social world). Lacan says that structure ex-sists prior to any language, even though language is structure and structure is language, structure is the elementary principle a priori. Within the master’s discourse, Weil as the “subject” cannot speak to the “other” because the subject is in the hidden position of truth, subverted by the master signifier in the position of agent. In the subaltern place Weil (2002a) finds herself subjugated to insult, but she craftily handles her critics and naysayers in her approach: “Every man is the slave of necessity” ( p. 158). In Weil’s speaking here the structure of the master’s discourse shows that her concept of necessity is taking on the role of the master signifier, in order to preserve some comfort or dignity and allow the truth of our suffering to be hidden. The master signifier within the discourse is the only part of the analysis that can speak to the “other”; Weil speaks unconsciously within the master’s discourse about necessity, throughout her work, to alleviate her hurt and to take command of her existential crisis. She considers her “chief,” the friends who mock her, as a thing.

The main point here to be discovered is seeing how Weil moves from the hysteric’s discourse to the master’s discourse. The thingness of the insulter is revealed through discourse and is found in Weil by her writing that “the only way to preserve our dignity when submission is forced upon us is to consider our chief as a thing” (pp. 157-158). Weil’s compassion shows through though in her writing to Father Perrin, “They did not behave like this from malice.” Weil explains the ways and deeds of her so-called friends as only responding out of necessity. Weil continues to write about a subjective state in a rather objective way, “without the mind realizing anything, the animal nature . . .senses . . . and reacts accordingly.” When understanding Weil here I keep in mind that within the Lacanian system her intersubjectivity takes in account that the split subject is in the position of agent, which means that one must realize that the subject is partially unconscious and is speaking to the master signifier. As the agent, Weil when wanting to know more she approaches authority in doing so, undermining the authority of the authoritative voice.

Weil wrote openly about power relations, in different contexts, and was unbending in her approach to the master’s discourse. As it has been demonstrated by Weil (2002b) necessity is the slave of eternal Wisdom, obeying the limits placed on it, yet she expresses necessity in the following way, “pitiless necessity. Pitiless, yes; but which is not force, which is sovereign ruler over all force” (p. 284). Weil (2002a) writes illustrating the master’s discourse as demonstrated by the representation of contingency between those who have power and those who are subject to it:

The powerful, if they carry oppression beyond a certain point, necessarily end by making themselves adored by their slaves. For the thought of being under

absolute compulsion, the plaything of another is unendurable for a human being. Hence, if every way of escape from this constraint is taken from him, there is

nothing left for him to do but to persuade himself that he does the things he is forced to do willingly, that is to say, to substitute devotion for obedience. And sometimes he will even strive to do more than he is obliged and will suffer less thereby . . . It is by this twist that slavery debases the soul: this devotion is in fact based on a lie, since the reasons for it cannot bear investigation . . . The only way of salvation is to replace the unendurable idea of compulsion, not by the illusion of devotion, but by the notion of necessity

We must always consider men in power as dangerous things. We must keep out of their way as much as we can without losing our self-respect. And if one day we are driven, under pain of cowardice, to go and break ourselves against their power, we must consider ourselves as vanquished by the nature of things

and not by men. One can be in a prison cell and in chains, but one can also be smitten with blindness or paralysis. There is no difference. The only way to preserve our dignity when submission is forced upon us is to consider our chief as a thing. Every man is the slave of necessity, but the conscious slave is far superior. (pp. 156-158)

In the master’s discourse the powerful Master Signifier S1 is in the position of agent and speaks commands to the other, the slave S2 in this case. The slave carries out the orders to accomplish whatever is the master’s pleasure, pleasure a being the product of this discourse. Weil asserts an alternative perspective stating in extreme cases, when the powerful “carry oppression beyond a certain point,” the slave will become this pleasure

Master’s Discourse

S1  S2

__ __

$ a

Hysteric’s Discourse

$  S1

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a S2

themselves. Weil continues to illustrate the reality of the hegemonic relationship of the master’s discourse with the words: “For the thought of being under absolute compulsion . . . is unendurable.” This is putting the split subject $ in the place of the hidden truth, the position which drives the discourse. As Weil states, “the thought of being under absolute compulsion, the plaything of another, is unendurable for a human being;” this submission would be untenable unless it is being made into pleasure. One enjoys the symptom of slavery which is the adoration of the master; this enjoyment is, in Lacanian terms, a sort of pleasure. The process of thinking about being a slave becomes jouissance, turning the pain of slavery into adoration of their master. The paradoxical subject/symptom relationship is what instantiates the system of this hegemonic master’s discourse, because the master has them become “adored by their slaves” in a god-like fashion.

Weil is announcing her observation about how things are, in other words in the master’s discourse, but then she begins her hysteric’s discourse, as she states “it is by this twist that slavery debases the soul: this devotion is in fact based on a lie.” Bracher (1993) sites the hysteric’s discourse as “discourses involving resistance, protest and complaint” (p. 66). Weil protests by making the case of understanding the chief S1 as a thing, not the slave as a thing. The lie is that the slave has “[persuaded] himself that he does the things he is forced to do willingly, that is to say, to substitute devotion for obedience.” Weil’s states the solution: “The only way of salvation is to replace the unendurable idea of compulsion, not by the illusion of devotion, but by the notion of necessity.” Weil is explaining that this proclivity to succumbing to the master (or men) must be thought of as

seeing the real, the law of necessity; which is governed, in essence, by the balance of contradictories, “we must consider ourselves as vanquished by the nature of things and not by men.” Weil is demonstrating that there is the conversion from the hegemonic master’s discourse to the master’s discourse which is based in necessity. Reflecting on Weil’s (2002b) text regarding the plexus of limits on the laws of the universe, she states “the thought which really enraptured the ancients was this: what makes the blind forces of matter obedient is not another, stronger force; it is love” (p.284). Understanding necessity (blind force) is to see through the illusion of devotion. Illusory devotion is the devotion a man places on another man. Necessity is the balance which leads to salvation because it is driven by a real devotion to “eternal Wisdom.”

This salvation looks different than the salvation espoused by the prevailing narrative put forth by Marxists that expects a successful revolution. Since necessity is determinant there can be no other way; therefore there can be liberation through slavery, instead of liberation from slavery, in terms of psychological and spiritual matters, especially. Weil concludes that, “The only way to preserve our dignity when submission is forced upon us is to consider our chief as a thing. Every man is the slave of necessity, but the conscious slave is far superior.” There is no dignity in resigning to society’s approach; therefore acceptance of one’s station in life, not in relation to man, but in relation to higher laws, is Weil’s definition of a conscious slave.

Metaxu as the use of contradiction. I have been looking at necessity, but now I will be looking at contradiction and how Weil seeks out contradiction to investigate truth. Perhaps more than many philosophers, Weil contradicts herself and appreciates contradictions; yet, her philosophy is consistent when taken as a whole. Weil often looks

for “the correlation of contradictories” and “the right union of opposites” in a way to pose two sides of the same coin. In looking at contradictions, Weil is conjuring-up possibilities that she understands as essential in the search for truth. Conflicting notions face each other as counterbalances. I see her as writing explicitly about Metaxu while holding together contradictories and understanding these corollaries to be inextricable. While oppositions make stark splits that can lead to detachment or alienation and disenfranchisement, Weil’s Metaxu prevents such a problem.

These contradictions can be more fully understood in light of Lacan’s notion that the truth can never be fully spoken. One of the foundational Lacanian concepts is the impossibility of words to fully communicate what is real. Lacan states the “congruous truth” is the one that designates it is a half truth, because the truth can never fully be spoken. As Lacan (1998) explains in Seminar XX: “to retain to a congruous truth ̶ not the truth that claims to be whole, but that of the half telling (mi-dire), the truth that is borne out by guarding against going as far as avowal (or approval), which would be the worst, the truth that becomes guarded starting right with (dès) the cause of desire” (p. 93). Because of Weil’s hysteric nature she is always and only in search of real and full truth and nothing less, to the extent to which she endorses the half-telling (which is what appears to be contradiction), because she is always awaiting and calling for further definition. This is where Weil utilizes balancing, because she will accept the difficulty, the not-knowing, when it leaves out the whole truth, which never finds its way into words. Weil guards against just following the master’s discourse too closely, the discourse which develops meaning in terms of the chief accumulation of representations in a culture; as far as not dismissing its believability, Weil affirms the truth which she

believes, no matter its half-telling, or to say it another way, even when it doesn’t make sense. Weil is not deliberately undermining authority; she is simply searching for a deeper understanding.

In one of most eccentric and perplexing passages of her work, Weil directs her attention toward one of the hardest theological concepts within the Christian scriptures. Weil (2002a) writes of Metaxu, in the chapter “Contradiction” within the collection Gravity and Grace, in the following way:

The correlation of contradictories is detachment. An attachment to a particular thing can only be destroyed by an attachment which is incompatible with it. That explains: ‘Love your enemies . . . He who hateth not his father and mother . . .’ Either we have made the contraries submissive to us or we have submitted to the contraries. (p.101)

The correlation is attachment and detachment; these two notions are paired as correlates. The attachment is “love” bridged by, to, and with “hate,” the understanding of which they are opposites or contradictories indicates a place where opposites can have the same meaning. Weil’s phrasing is one that indicates the inability or impossibility of language to capture the balancing that is existent in the biblical discourse about loving and hating, and unlike many early philosophers she does not strive to resolve these contradictions but posits them as crucial to becoming a conscious individual, or a crucial in an endeavor to truly understand truth. The problem with this biblical text, which is so disturbing, is how can one love enemies and hate family? The meaning is irrefutably contradictory, even destructive. Nonetheless, bridging happens to bring the two impossible connections together, by attachment. An attachment to a particular thing (love) can only be destroyed

by an attachment which is incompatible (hate). Loving enemies, and hating those who are loved, father and mother, are notions that collide in a moment of mutual consideration, in order to free one of all attachments or biases.

Weil, as the hysteric she is, asserts “either we have made the contraries submissive to us or we have submitted to the contraries.” Weil explains through her excess of knowledge, characteristic of the hysteric, the necessity of a special understanding of this contradiction. The place of truth is always hidden, it can never be spoken, because, “we have made the contraries submissive to us” is like hiding the truth. If we have “submitted to the contraries” then we have believed a lie, because we believe the half-telling to be the whole truth. The prevailing approach to contraries is to think either one is true or the other is true, or is to look for the anonymity of the truth.

The next text passage from Gravity and Grace explains further the use of contradictories and the way Weil uses planes to give a fuller understanding truth. Weil (2002a) again writes of the implication of Metaxu, noting that,

The right union of opposites is achieved on a higher plane. Thus the opposition between domination and oppression is smoothed out on the level of the law—which is balance. In the same way suffering (and this is its special function) separates the opposites which have been united in order to unite them again on a higher plane than that of their first union. The pulsation of sorrow-joy. But, mathematically, joy always triumphs. Suffering is violence, joy is gentleness, but joy is the stronger. The union of contradictories involves a wrenching apart. It is impossible without extreme suffering. (p. 101)

In this text there is a move that strikes me as most interesting; this is the move from the mind twisting analytic discourse to a poetic discourse. In the first two sentences Weil uses the terms: right, achieved, opposition, law, balance, function. She is very technical in her explanation of how suffering helps to separate opposites and reorder them. In the third and fourth sentence she becomes poetic as she repeats the word “joy” for emphasis, and uses more emotionally charged phrases such as “pulsation of sorrow-joy,” “always triumphs.” I think Weil does this move intentionally, perhaps because she considers poetry to be the highest plane for theology or philosophy. Some poetry has come in moments of lucidity, clarity, and yet full of contradiction, and suffering; this is what is attractive about Weil. Anyone who suffers trauma, or even secondary trauma as in witnessing Nazi brutalities, resolves grief. This resolution can only happen on a higher plane.

Where beauty and pain, “sorrow-joy,” is the bitterness of life in its kindest form, this is the essence of Weil’s understanding of Metaxu. The “sorrow-joy,” the bitterness and kindness are indicative of Lacan’s jouissance. The Lacanian psychoanalytic notion of jouissance is pleasure that is forbidden due to a loss of the real. Our only experience of it is fleeting and unsatisfying. As we continue to pursue it again and again, there is pain. This is helpful in understanding Weil’s notion that suffering or pain is a requirement of reaching the joy that is found in the right union of opposites, which is only found on the “the higher plane,” that which is beyond words and linguistic designation, the real that has been lost. This envelops contradiction and combines contrary modes of being and understandings of reality. Weil understands such contradiction as conceptually

acquiescent with a consistent philosophy to remove biases from her own thoughts and action, in order to continue an on-going search for more knowledge or truth.

Weil pushes contradiction beyond what could be considered by others to require a satisfactory consideration of “contradiction” to be, as simply put, paradox. Not settling for paradox as an explanation means, once again that Weil’s hysteric’s way is to go beyond acceptance of a simple interpretation toward more and more knowledge, without any appeasement. Appeasement would ultimately serve to preserve the status quo or the master signifier as Lacan terms it, which is an arbitrary signification; and ultimately empty of meaning. It could be understood that suffering is what separates and also unites opposites in order to reach a conclusion on a higher plane. Weil uses the word “united” to have two different meanings. Her first use, “been united,” refers to imposing terms such as domination/ oppression, as in the hegemonic master’s discourse, mentioned earlier. Then she uses, “unite them again,” to refer to the deeper understanding of truth that goes beyond the half-telling. This is the “right union of opposites” which is gained through “suffering.” The wrong union of opposites often brings suffering in the world. Weil finds it so important to investigate these contradictories as they have “been united,” because when we truly look at the suffering implicit in them, then that suffering will wrench them apart. Hence, they can be reunited on the higher plane. Weil (2002a) states that, “Yet at the same time evil is privation. We have to elucidate the way contradictories have of being true [emphasis added]. Method of investigation: as soon as we have thought something, try to see in what way the contrary is true” (p. 102), which is Weil’s pushing to the extreme.

In Gravity and Grace Weil further examines the theological relationship of the human and the divine. In a theological scuffle Weil struggles with theodicy and shows the balance of contradiction as leading to suffering (wrong-union of opposites) and that suffering just is (consider Weil’s understanding of necessity). It is quite absurd to wish sufferings upon oneself, unless of course one is an ascetic. The contradiction is that the Incarnation is quite the contrariety, but is doubly so when it is realized that the suffering one is the incarnate, as Weil (2002a) says,

Suffering: superiority of man over God. The Incarnation was necessary so that this superiority should not be scandalous I should not love my suffering because it is useful. I should love it because it is. (p. 80)

The superiority of man over God is the ultimate wrong union of opposites; just as the incarnation demonstrates the right union of opposites. An invitation to suffering, a summons to affliction, seems absurd. As Lacan (2013b) states in Discourse to Catholics that man transfers nothing but his self-love (p. 34), this transference is utterly selfish. Suffering seems part and parcel with Weil’s orientation to life and the nature of the reality of love. Lacan again states a malady of the human condition, “Owing to the identifications with his imaginary forms man believes he recognizes the core of his unity” (p. 35). Lacan does not advance the idea of a self with the exception that the subject puts forward an ego which is an illusion.

The Deity is the ultimate, yet humanity has its shining moment as well, according to Weil. And yet, the insight into the self in relationship to Deity demonstrates the depravity of humanity. Weil (2012) states in Awaiting God, “The idea of God’s quest for man is a splendor and unfathomably profound. When it is replaced by the idea of man’s

quest for God there is decadence” (p. 202). To the greatest extent Weil structures contradiction in order to deploy balance; she wrote of the matter, “Two tendencies with opposite extremes: to destroy the self for the sake of the universe, or to destroy the universe for the sake of the self. He who has not been able to become nothing runs the risk of reaching a moment when everything other than himself ceases to exist” (p.142). I note that this “moment” is much akin to a Lacanian “impasse.” Lacan (1998) says “This can only be inscribed on the basis of an impasse of formalization” (p. 93) which means the subject is formalized or reified in these circumstances. Emptiness surrounding the self protrudes from Weil’s text in greater ways, as will be explored in the Decreation chapter. Weil does think about the opposite extreme, the one in which “everything other than himself ceases to exist” and uses Hitler as an example of such a person.

Metaxu to expose the master’s discourse. Weil speaks about Hitler as an example to make an important reflection on the nature of narcissism. History always enshrines the narcissist, whether that individual becomes exalted or despised. The narcissistic mentality reifies the presumed totality of the ego (the fallacious move mentioned above), an illusion of the subject, while reaching a moment or historical impasse is being noticed as contrariety, and all history is good, as seen in the quote about Hitler below. Weil (2002b) writes about Hitler’s dual experience as a narcissist,

People talk about punishing Hitler. But he cannot be punished. He desired one thing alone, and he has it: to play a part in History. He can be killed, tortured, imprisoned, humiliated, History will always be there to shield his spirit from all the ravages of suffering and death. What we inflict on him will be, inevitably, an historical death, an historical suffering –in fact, History. . . . So for this idolizer of

History, everything connected with History must be good. . . . Whatever Hitler is made to suffer, that will not stop him from feeling himself to be a superb figure. Above all, it will not stop. . .some solitary little dreamer . . . from seeing in Hitler a superb figure, with a superb destiny from beginning to end [emphasis added], and desiring with all his soul to have a similar destiny. In which case, woe betides his contemporaries. The only punishment capable of punishing Hitler, and deterring little boys thirsting for greatness in coming centuries from following his example, is such a total transformation of the meaning attached to greatness [emphasis added] that he should thereby be excluded from it. (p. 224)

Hitler, the narcissistic ways not wanting, came down in history as “playing a part” that demonstrated what is commonly attested to in Freud’s papers, that “when you're in love, you are mad, as ordinary language puts it,” and the ego is in love with the ideal-ego. One is in love with that which he can become, “a part of history.” In order for there not to be one who follows Hitler in form “he [Hitler] should thereby be excluded from it,” from greatness through infamy. The formulation of the narcissistic way is noticeable through the search for a destiny replete with great negativity or positivity. To stop grandiose narcissism is not to allow the one who just desires to “be a part of history,” to take that part in history.

The narcissist benefits from any station in life and is functioning to grasp it to his own advantage. Weil speaks of the “the superb destiny” from beginning to end and balances and juxtaposes the fame and the infamy to demonstrate Hitler’s destructive and heinous life as an example of narcissism, and shows how in degradation and greatness is a balancing of the narcissist’s lowest and highest point in what she calls History. The

internal state for the “solitary little dreamer” is that of a little-furor within a psychological dichotomous worldview whereby the crucible for the dreamer is the will to make History, in a negative or positive, self aggrandizing way. Weil writes about the “transformation of the meaning attached to greatness that he should thereby be excluded from it.” For Weil this is where she uses her method of investigation whereby when seeing something is the path to greatness she insists the solution is found in finding how the contrary is true. Weil does not give the answer on what this saving contrary will be, and she offers no suggestions on how to transform the meaning of greatness, she only states that it must be a “total” transformation, which indicates it can only be found on the higher plan.

The narcissist may seek to transform greatness and therefore be excluded from it, and find revelry in the negative discourse produced in his beliefs. As Weil says, for the narcissist “History will always be there to shield his spirit from all the ravages of suffering and death.” An obstacle to the way of the narcissist only adds weight to his internal master discursive narrative and “will not stop him from feeling himself to be a superb figure.” Even though the narcissist lives the life of the master, and through the discourse of domination and self-aggrandizement demonstrates ways in which Weil practiced Metaxu in her perspective on the philosophy of history and human development. Joan Copjec (1989) expresses the Lacanian understanding of the narcissist’s desire in the following way:

Narcissism, too, takes on a different meaning in Lacan, one more in accord with Freud’s own. Since something always appears to be missing from any representation, narcissism cannot consist in finding satisfaction in one’s own visual image. It must, rather, consist in the belief that one’s

own being exceeds the imperfections of its image. Narcissism, then, seeks the self beyond the self-image, with which the subject consistently finds fault and in which it constantly fails to recognize itself. What one loves in one’s image is something more than the image (p. 70).

What Copjec portrays as Lacanian, the need to love something beyond one’s own image, is a similar theme as that of Weil’s position. No matter the fate of Hitler he would become a piece of historical importance. “Whatever Hitler is made to suffer, that will not stop him from feeling himself to be a superb figure.” This further informs Weil’s notion of the narcissist and can move her in the position of one of the greatest philosophers during the war period.

Weil is aware of the nature of language and how it defines the real for the populace. The propagandizing nature of the present reality during wartime brings about the unlevel political playing ground that the narcissistic society feeds off of, and certainly this happened in the Second World War. In Germany, and in groups sympathetic to the Reich, there was a power relation in the language that was used, which was the master’s discourse Weil disputed, as well as in her criticisms of certain language about revolution. Revisiting a passage from Weil’s which shows similarity with Lacan, text which shows a similarity between Weil and Lacan, I explore again how Weil viewed propaganda. That which is considered is the text from Weil’s (1977) essay entitled, “The Power of Words,” which shows how propaganda works, perhaps as a reaction to the growing phenomenon of nationalism, which helped propel Hitler into power:

But when empty words are given capital letters, then, on the slightest pretext, men will begin shedding blood for them and piling up ruin in their name, without

effectively grasping anything to which they refer, since what they refer to can never have any reality, for the simple reason that they mean nothing. In these conditions the only definition of success is to crush a rival group of men who have a hostile word on their banners; for it is a characteristic of these empty words that each of them has its complementary antagonist. It is true, of course, that not all of these words are intrinsically meaningless; some of them do have meaning if one takes the trouble to define them properly. But when a word is properly defined it loses its capital letter and can no longer serve either as a banner or as a hostile slogan; it becomes simply a sign, helping us to grasp some concrete reality, or concrete objective, or method of activity. To clarify thought, to discredit the intrinsically meaningless words, and to define the use of others by precise analysis-to do this, strange though it may appear, might be a way of saving human lives. (pp 270-271)

Of course in her approach of developing the notion of Metaxu, Weil speaks about balance of power, “for it is a characteristic of these empty words that each of them has its complementary antagonist.” Weil also balances the divide between words being empty and words not being intrinsically meaningless. Weil’s understanding of the role that language should serve also demonstrates Metaxu as a bridge in the words “simply a sign, helping us.” Language should be a means for understanding truth. Turning words into ends is to give them a capital letter and thereby empty them meaning. Of words Lacan warns “I would ask you not to be too hasty in overloading them with meanings, for if you do you will only succeed in sinking them” (S XI, p.246). Weil (1977) echoes the same

Master’s Discourse

S1  S2

__ __

$ a

sort of sentiment, “If we grasp one of these words, all swollen with blood and tears, and squeeze it we find it empty” (p.270).

Weil again was critical of the kind of discourse which propelled doctrines and propaganda within political force. Weil fought against political ideas in many areas of thought. Bracher (1993) speaks of “identity-bearing words” in the following, “Just as a nation can achieve unity and identity . . . so too can the subject attain a unity and identity through its representatives: signifiers” (p. 25). Weil points out clearly the discourse of the master that posits itself in the midst of those for whom the “only definition of success is to crush a rival group” and that this diatribe includes a “hostile word on their banners.” Those who would die for the sake of these “empty signifiers,” the “capitalized words,” fail to see that they have no truth in them, “they mean nothing.” These phrases signal Lacan’s idea of the master signifier (S1). Fink (1998) calls it “the nonsensical signifier, the signifier with no rhyme or reason” (p. 31).

Within the discourse of the master, the subject $ is in the hidden position of truth; there is no individual just the “group of men” represented by one “banner” or another. The product is the object a, which represents that which is present in the experience of a reality, but can never be fully understood. The object a is the excess of or surplus jouissance which points to the mix of suffering and joy. Violence (suffering) becomes the product of the masses that would follow the master signifier of the capitalized words. Those who shed blood over the empty words find a sense of significance (joy) in an ideal that has no reality because it is simply and ideal (can never be known). Lacan says discourse is really driven by the position of the hidden truth, below the bared line, under the agent.

Hysteric’s Discourse

$  S1

__ __

a S2

University Discourse

S2  a

__ __

S1 $

The master signifier S1 of speech acts and propaganda is sustained by the individuals that make up the masses search for meaning in the midst of their suffering. It is important to know that the subject in the position of truth is a split subject and therefore is not fully aware of their suffering. One does not know the cost of discipleship or nationalism when the object of our desire uproots us from our subjective experience. When this rhetoric is found then personal meaning is lost for the sake of presumed objectivity. They avoid emptiness and alienation by attempting to obtain meaning, but at the cost of losing personal investment in their own lives. A fuller understanding of this process can be found in Lacan’s concept of alienation. Huguette Glowinski (2001) defines it this way, “Alienation is linked to division, to the splitting of the subject, the split referring here to the choice between meaning (produced by the signifier) and being. By choosing meaning, the being of the subject disappears” (p. 10). Weil follows certain words into a place of meaning in order that she may lose herself in an investment or greater cause which is other than her. This theme will be explored fully in the Decreation chapter.

Weil, as a hysteric, wants to question and expose the empty nature of the capitalized words (S1). This is the hysteric’s discourse with the product being knowledge (S2). It follows that as an academician and a political voice, Weil suggests a possible solution that can be seen as the university discourse, which has knowledge as the agent. Weil is writing she says, “To clarify thought, to discredit the intrinsically meaningless words, and to define the use of others by precise analysis-to do this, strange though it may appear, might be a way of saving human lives.” The product is the subject $, “human lives,” and meanwhile,

the master signifier S1 is moved to the position of the subverted, in the silenced position of truth, it “loses its capital letter.”

As Evans (1996) explains, “The master signifier is that which represents a subject for all other signifiers; the discourse of the master is thus an attempt at totalisation” (p. 109). This is a theme that Weil (1977) clearly identifies and challenges in the following passage from an essay entitled “The Power of Words”:

Our lives are lived, in actual fact, among changing, varying realities, subject to the casual play of external necessities, and modifying themselves according to specific conditions within specific limits; and yet we act and strive and sacrifice ourselves and others by reference to fixed and isolated abstractions which cannot possibly be related either to one another or to any concrete facts. In this so-called age of technicians, the only battles we know how to fight are battles against windmills. (p.271)

Viewed through a Lacanian lens, it becomes clear that in Weil’s understanding of Metaxu, the attempt to reify the ego is undercut by the fluidity of the impressions that stand behind representation or symbolization. Evans (1996) continues to say that these attempts always fail “because the master signifier can never represent the subject completely; there is always some surplus which escapes representation” (p. 109). Weil implies that likewise the signifier cannot possibly set fixity to “changing, varying realities,” the fluidity of the sensory world leaves its impressions upon the field of experience we call ego, which is an illusion, a product of these impressions as they interact with the subject.

Metaxu as the social-bond. Weil was fierce against the hegemony of her time; once again Weil challenges such power relations in propaganda, words of war, and personal relationships as in the text below, which is about interactions with the other. The following juxtaposed passages are from the chapter, “Readings,” in Gravity and Grace. Gustav Thibon makes an editor’s footnote that for Weil, the word readings are the “emotional interpretation, the concrete judgment of value. For instance, I see a man climbing over a wall: instinctively, and perhaps wrongly; I ‘read’ in him a robber” (p134). Weil understands readings to be the way in which the other is perceived. Weil with an insight which has correlations and characteristics that match themes relevant to social justice observes, for example speaking for the other:

Others. To see each human being (an image of oneself) as a prison in which a prisoner dwells, surrounded by the whole universe (p. 134) . . .

We read, but also we are read by, others. Interferences in these readings. Forcing someone to read himself as we read him (slavery). Forcing others to read us as we read ourselves (conquest). A mechanical process. More often than not a dialogue between deaf people. (p. 135) . . .

Readings. Reading—except where there is a certain quality of attention—obeys the law of gravity. We read the opinions suggested by gravity (the preponderant part played by the passions and by social conformity in the judgments we form of men and events). With a higher quality of attention our reading discovers gravity itself, and various systems of possible balance. Superposed readings: To read necessity behind sensation, to read order behind necessity, to read God behind order. (p.136)

Weil starts the discussion by honoring the body, implicitly, in the field of life and language. The body is a barrier (Metaxu), the “prison in which a prisoner dwells.”As Hamilton (2013) investigates Weil’s hypothesis is as follows: “It is those troubled bodies, however, which I want to argue draw us closer into, knit us into, the divine narrative of a troubled God and more than that, it is those troubled bodies that offer a way into that Divine One for others” (p. 89). A troubled body is that which Weil approaches God with (as Hamilton affirms); Weil was troubled in body; her theology, expresses this thoroughly.

The metonymy of the prison indicates a dualism, but not the dual ex-sistence or symbiosis with mOther-child. Lacan’s notion of “ex-sists” explains the insistence-to-be of something which is in the real. Symbiosis designates for Lacan the state in which one experiences oneness with the mOther. The not so separate individual is in-the divide-of the dual, to experience symbiosis, where the dual has broken-down into a state before the realization of separateness. This state is that which ex-sists before the entrance of the father, master signifier. Weil states that a human being is “an image of oneself.” To see ourselves in the other/Other, is to delve into the wish to be in symbiosis, but not to be able to because we see/construct an ego, moi, I. Writing with the lens of Platonism, and the division between ψύκη (psyche) and σόματός (body), was that which demonstrates the action of gravity and grace. These drew Weil toward the Catholic Church and the priest, Father Perrin.

The next phrase from this section of Weil’s text raises the question of power, knowledge, and efficacy as interlopers of intersubjectivity, named such because the first and foremost of all commissions is to love and decreate as Weil says, that is, to create a

space for the other to be, live, exist. Another typical standard bearer for intersubjective relationality is a nonjudgmental approach. Weil suspected a scrutinizing gaze in the determination and instantiation of the self. This portion of Weil’s text goes like this: “We read, but also we are read by, others.” I take these words to indicate something akin to the Foucauldian gaze, that is the meaning of reading is dual, in terms of power and knowledge; it is apparent that in reading or sizing-up the other the gaze can introduce a power relationship. This can be attested to in the words of Maxine Sheets-Johnstone (1994) as follows:

It might be observed that were the look or the glance not thrown, one might be undaunted by the exposure and its abusive, even frightening, character, undaunted perhaps even to the point of trusting the Other, since indeed by not looking over one’s shoulder or by not glancing at the tower [of the nature of Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon], one would appear fully to entrust oneself bodily to the desires and intentions of the Other, whatever they might be. In either case, of course, one remains a docile body [emphasis added]. Whether acknowledged by a look or a glance, or not, surveillance by another is not easily dismissed. Indeed, so long as the mere possibility of another’s gaze exists, an Other is unremittingly present. (p. 343, n. 26).

Again the object in question according to Sheets-Johnstone is the body. This same body, the objectified one, is that which one has power over another concerning one’s position in the hierarchy of the social order.

Sheets-Johnstone has studied power-relations among primates and humans alike and has found that there is a direct relationship between the gaze and the body. In the

words of Sheets-Johnstone one finds great similarity to Foucault and his understanding of power and knowledge; the question remains as to whether or not this same analog is applicable to Weil and her words concerning the body and the gaze. Are the words of Weil, “We read” and “we are read by, others” to be understood in the same vein as the words of Sheets-Johnstone, “abusive, even frightening” and even “daunting”? Sheets-Johnstone makes clear how necessary it is to know and to come to grips with the apparatus of Weil’s language throughout her work and as they are instilled in six words, “We read” “we are read by.” Ragland (2015) points to the tangible impression of the Other on us, “from the start of life we are gazed at. As others gaze at us, fondly, jealously, with aspirations, and so on, we begin to be named and to have our desires constructed by the Other –by what the Other has or lacks” (p.122). Therefore, there is the need for a way to dismantle power relations in Weil’s world.

In Weil there are the “interferences” which break-up power relations and set forth power relations. To stay with Weil’s text, without comparing it with other philosophers of any era, it is clear that her contribution is more than significant. Weil makes a direct relationship between the way in which one views another and the power relation that exists. Weil clearly insists that “forcing someone to read himself as we read him” has the result of the one viewing himself as becoming slave, and in fact this relation can be found in Lacan’s discourse. To undress the Oedipal myth and see the structure of Weil’s depiction of the power relation is important for a Lacanian reading. It seems to be clear that Weil is constructing something akin to Lacan’s Name-of-the-Father which is the Lacanian structure beneath Freud’s myth. In Weil I see what I consider to be the ocular and the internal method of force in the words, “forcing others to read us as we read

ourselves (conquest).” Here the gaze is internalized and the symptom is produced, the symptom is transference of paranoia.

Weil, diverting back to the master’s discourse and necessity, insists that this process of reading and being read is a “mechanical process.” “Superposed readings: To read necessity [emphasis added] behind sensation, to read order behind necessity [emphasis added], to read God behind order” (p.136). Putting an emphasis on three terms: necessity, order, and God, shows the thread of meaning throughout these texts which is the notion of being imprisoned. This is characterized by “reading others” and “being read,” which essentially demonstrates the terms as being “bound by necessity.” These ideas ultimately find ground in the greater theme which Weil puts forward throughout much of her work, namely gravity. “Reading . . . obeys the law of gravity,” Weil says. One can only escape reading by breaking the law of gravity, which is of more than a metonymic value in Weil’s writing. She enlightens many on the way that love and truth work, but more on the way grace works. Weil writes that “with a higher quality of attention our reading discovers gravity itself.”

Weil expresses her belief about socialization and the bonding it brings for humans. “Reading others” and “being read” is imprisoning because each person has no choice but to do this reading of others in order to survive and as being cast-together in a social bond which is inescapable, reminiscent of Jean-Paul Sartre’s play entitled Hell is Other People. It is to be remembered that for Lacan the structure that is holding discourse together and from which our desire emanates, is also the under-pinning and social-bonding which associates all persons in the milieu or the membership of humanity. Weil believes that speaking to others is “a dialogue between deaf people.” Weil’s term,

necessity, as a physical law and social law, shows how things are and determines how the cosmos works. This is found in Weil as a determining social force, reminiscent of the social-bond of language. Accordingly Doering (2010) writing of Weil, extends that “force is an inherent part of social interaction.”

What is also to be considered now is the likeness of the imprisonment of the social-bond to the master’s discourse. Lacan says our speech always comes from the place of the Other. Weil clearly identifies otherness as a source and as an intention within the social order to show the bond as necessary. Evans points out that the differing view of Kojève (1947) who says that, “the dialectic of the master and the slave is the inevitable result of the fact that human desire is the desire for recognition. In order to achieve recognition, the subject must impose the idea that he has of himself on another” (p. 109). I do not believe what Kojève says is correct, for it brings in the dynamic of the master/slave dichotomy, which is only alluded to by Lacan. In this context, Weil’s text above, the social-bond is not about power relations, but it is about significations and gaze. This is related to a defining of the other and one’s own self-defining. What is suggested is that the social-bond happens through the projection of the ideal-ego onto the other with the exception of his statement “the subject must impose the idea that he has of himself on another.”

Metaxu as means versus ends. Weil interestingly and unwittingly accounts for the ideal-ego that in Lacan’s theory is the projection of the ego upon the other. Weil wrote the following text keeping in mind her experience of not being desired by the other. Weil (2002a) tends to sum-up this desire for the other’s love in the metonymy “hunger and repletion”: “All our desires are contradictory, like desire for food. I want the person I

love to love me. If, however, he is totally devoted to me, he does not exist any longer and I ceased to love him. And as long as he is not totally devoted to me he does not love me enough. Hunger and repletion” (p. 146). Food is basic for Weil and essential for psychoanalysis, in terms of bonding with the Other, and eventually with the other, in respect to socio-psychological and ontological position in the world. According to Ragland (1986), Lacan emphasizes in an example, “the breast as a primordial cause of Desire either yields something or nothing” (p.73). This connects directly with Weil’s “desire for food” as being problematic. Interestingly, Ragland states, “Orality later attaches itself to objects—food, drink, sexual acts, and so on – or to nothingness as in anorexia” (p. 73). One of Weil’s anorexic moments comes in the words “hunger and repletion’ and as seen in Weil’s next text “desire is evil.” Weil was attracted to the beauty of food and desire in its contradiction, whereas Lacan, according to Ragland, “emphasized the maternal and corporeal nature of primary identification in its link to food” (p. 73). This link between breast, food, and desire has contradictory and negative implications for Weil’s (2002a),

Desire is evil and is illusory, yet without desire we should not seek for that which is truly absolute, truly boundless. We have to experience it. Misery of those things from whom fatigue takes away that supplemental energy which is the source of desire. (p. 146)

Weil’s signification of desires being contradictory matches Lacan’s position concerning desire and constancy as being a tragedy. Ragland (1986) explains, “the tragedy of the human condition is implicit in Lacan’s theory that both the object and goal of the drive toward constancy converge in the Desire to be desired: in other words, to be recognized

by the mother says that the infant feels one with her” (p.73). Weil’s principled predilection is in her expression, “all our desires are contradictory.” As I have argued repeatedly , Weil uses contradiction as a way to search for truth. Weil points to the normal state of affairs about the human of condition.

Human desire has ends, results, and consumption. Weil is pointing toward that which she cannot have, which is reminiscent of jouissance and the ungraspable.

All created things refuse to be for me as ends. Such is God’s extreme mercy toward me. And that very thing is what constitutes evil. Evil is the form which God’s mercy takes in this world. This world is a closed door. It is a barrier. And at the same time it is the way through. (p. 145)

Again it seems that Weil offers a contradictory insight; certainly Metaxu is found in the closed door as a barrier and at the same time as a way through, with the ultimate experience through to a meta range in the representation of the object a, also called the object cause of desire. Lacan (2013b), with a Freudian emphasis, says that “if we continue to follow Freud in the text such as Civilization and Its Discontents we cannot avoid the formation that jouissance is evil. Freud leads us by the hand to this point: it is suffering because it involves suffering for my neighbor” (p 184). This quote from Lacan resonates with Weil’s notion that “evil is the form which God’s mercy takes in this world.” The notion of mercy as being evil is construed by Weil with this language to indicate the frustration of desire never being satisfied. Desire is the window into transcendence as means, and not ends. This is consistent with her determinism and low theology. Ragland (1995) astutely points to Lacan’s determinism as “a pre-determinism, then, both more brutal and more hopeful than others from past history. . . They aspire to

Analyst’s Discourse

a  $

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S2 S1

unity or Oneness via ideologies: the fixicity of ego fictions and jouissance repetitions” (p. 111). For it is only through the eyes of the theologian at heart, it seems, who can really understand the ideas altogether. There is reasoning and an intellectual assent which abides with this notion of means, which cannot by the nature of humans be understood or grasped. The message of the impossibility of achieving any satisfaction of desire, or an ends, is not intellectually accessible. To say it another way, this understanding goes against the master narrative and therefore likely to be labeled “evil.”

Weil (2002a) writes on means in a way that puts “means” in a theological framework in an interesting manner:

Only he who loves God with a supernatural love can look upon means simply as means. Power (and money power’s master key) is a means at its purest. For that very reason it is the supreme ends for all those who have not understood. (p. 146)

As she speaks, as the hysteric, Weil considers only that which is open, the “means,” and not the closed, the “ends.” For resonating with the means would include a significant amount of openness, which would be more comfortable for someone who would want to question beyond what is given, which is the case with the hysteric. The need for openness produces knowledge and, for the hysteric, a constant seeking for the truth perpetuates. Weil’s hysteria has led her to what she seemingly considers to be a truth, “Only he who loves God with a supernatural love can look upon means simply as means.”

The effect of psychoanalysis is explained as the speech act directed toward another. Each speech act is spoken from the position of an agent toward another. In this sentence an

understanding of the analyst’s discourse can be significantly applied, and suitable for the challenge of the text itself. For the analyst’s discourse the surplus jouissance, “a,” which is “supernatural love,” is speaking in an attempt to speak beyond any future questioning, the way of reducing experience to knowledge and knowledge to truth, in order to cure the hysteric of her continuous questioning, represented here by the subject, $. This is the foundational discourse that appears to be functioning in Weil’s understanding of Attention. In the case of the analyst’s discourse the product is the master signifier, S1. Fink (1998) states that this is a “new master signifier,” in this case it is “means simply as means.” Slavoj Zizek (2004) explains what happens to the old master signifier in the following way: “The ex-master who is now hystericized, since the agent questions his position by way of ‘producing,’ deploying only, explicating as such, the Master-Signifier and thus rendering it inoperable” (p. 396). Weil states clearly that with the words “for all those who have not understood” that the inoperable master-signifier is, namely “power and money” as “supreme ends.”

Weil’s new master signifier, “means simply as means,” can be demonstrated as the Metaxu, as a movement to the holy. According to Weil (2002a), “it is the temporal seen as a bridge, a metaxu” (p. 147). In an effort to explain how viewing means as simply means and not more that means, Weil states that, “the essence of created things is to be intermediaries. They are intermediaries leading from one to another, and there is no end to this. They are intermediaries leading to God. We have to experience them as such” (p. 146). In Weil’s conceptualization the means was looking and the end was eating; therefore, it makes sense that Weil would only gaze upon the sacrament and not eat it. The hysterics goal is to keep lack unfulfilled, hunger unsatisfied. She maintained

her position of not being converted because she wanted to be identified with those outside the church. Weil wanted to maintain the position of being a comrade to the outsider, across the board. She leaves the host as a means for devotion, “supernatural love” to gaze upon, not an end of which she partakes.

The wrong union of opposites: good versus evil. The next text is one of Weil’s most perplexing passages about the relationship between good and evil. Indeed, Weil may be leaning toward a mystical union of good and evil into some form of good that lies on a higher plane. However, I think that there is more here than can be explained beyond painting Weil as a mystic.

Good as the opposite of evil is, in a sense, equivalent to it, as is the way with all opposites.

It is not good which evil violates, for good is inviolate: only a degraded good can be violated.

That which is the direct opposite of an evil never belongs to the order of higher good. It is often scarcely any higher than evil! Examples: theft and the bourgeois respect for property, adultery and the ‘respectable woman’; the savings-bank and waste; lying and ‘sincerity’.

Good is essentially other than evil. Evil is multifarious and fragmentary, good is one, evil is apparent, good is mysterious; evil consists in action, good in non-action, in activity which does not act, etc.—Good considered on the level of evil and measured against it as one opposite against another is good of the penal code order. Above there is a good which, in a sense, bears more resemblance to

evil than to this low form of good. This fact opens the way to a great deal of demagogy and many tedious paradoxes.

Good which is defined in the way in which one defines evil should be rejected. Evil does reject it. But the way it rejects it is evil. (pp. 70-71)

Weil, as the hysteric, is not satisfied with the typical dichotomy, setting evil as an opposite to good. Weil does Metaxu using contradiction to ask how the opposite is true. She finds that “Above there is a good which, in a sense, bears more resemblance to evil.” Weil admits that “this fact opens the way to a great deal of demagogy and many tedious paradoxes,” for it does not make sense when approached from the typical Western philosophical or theological positioning of these terms. As seen before, the word “above” indicates that there is a higher plane, a view from which one can accept this new dialogue about good. Weil also states that good is “equivalent” to evil, “as is the way with all opposites.” This is reminiscent of a Lacanian concept of the Mobius strip, which is that opposites such as evil and good in this case are not on two sides of the same coin, rather on the same surface.

Not accepting paradox as an answer correlates directly with the teaching of Lacan. If the understanding is that there is some sort of paradox involved, Weil would say this is through the inability of words to say what they mean, because she supports contradictions without closed ended answers. As Verhaeghe (1995) explains, in “Lacanian theory, there is no such thing as a truth which can be completely put into words; on the contrary, the exact nature of the truth is such that one can hardly put words to it”(p. 5). I intend to say that when one attempts to reinvent some paradoxical understanding from a traditional perspective, one misses the full implication of the evil

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that should be rejected, our preconceived biases. Weil is cautious not to be fooled by her biases stating, “Evil does reject [the good]. But the way it rejects it is evil.”

Weil (2002a) continues with her discussion of evil and poignantly, almost urgently, tries to get the reader to realize what she is trying to express. Weil in an almost frustrating manner asks the obvious, for her,

Is there a union of incompatible vices in beings given over to evil? I do not think so. Vices are subject to gravity and that is why there is no depth or transcendence in evil. (p.71)

The union of contradictories only happens on a higher plane. The evil of this plane (the plane of our experiences) has no validity as the way of rejecting good, also good, on a higher plane cannot be violated. Explaining these matters Weil indicates there is also no defining evil as separable from good as a direct opposite, but good (on a higher plane) is separate from evil and good. Weil says above, “that which is the direct opposite of an evil never belongs to the order of higher good” and that higher good is “essentially other than evil” but “bears more resemblance to evil.”

In this next text Weil looks for additional ways to identify good and evil. Weil explains the existential nature of good and evil by identifying them with the labor one does; labor is an essential part of her life and philosophy. In addition she determines her low view of humanity. Weil also iterates light which drives away evil and evil doing:

We experience good only by doing it. We experience evil only by refusing to allow ourselves to do it, or, if we do it, by repenting of it. When we do evil we do not know it, because evil flies from the light. (p.71)

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Because of Weil’s low view of humanity she refers to us as “earth-worm(s).” Weil quotes the Lord’s Prayer in this very way, “‘Our Father, he who is in heaven.’ There is a sort of humour in that. He is your Father, but just try to go and look for him up there! We are quite as incapable of rising from the ground as an earth-worm” (p. 95). The magnitude of such a statement challenges any anthropocentric theology, or even view of nature. Weil absolutely understood the deity to be far more transcendent than those in her era who wanted there to be an imminent relationship between the divine and the human, whereby there could be a theology of interventionism, and thus solve theodicy. Weil was in search of the real and sought to elevate the dispossessed, and remind the haughty or powerful of their status as earth-worms. Chevenier (2012) explains Weil’s search “in the imaginative part of the soul, is to wake up the real to the eternal, to see the true light” (p. 23). This demonstrates a like goal with the critical nature of analytic discourse and its benefit in understanding Weil. According to Verhaeghe (1995), it is clear that “the analysis of discourse is a very useful instrument within the framework of historical research on the evolution of power” (p. 110). Power, deity, humanity, inequality, and injustice were all phenomena which Weil contemplated and considered to be important.

Metaxu as the impossible good. As I hope to have demonstrated in the above sections, Weil was very interested in approaching the real and contradiction, as she identified it in her understanding of suffering, justice and theodicy. When the human hope for an explanation of difficult subjects came about Weil was bold. Weil knew the human yearning to solve contradictions; however she insists that this is not where truth is to be found and writes: “The contradictions the mind comes up against --- these are the only realities: they are the criterion of the real. There is no contradiction in what is

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Impossibility

Agent  other

__ __

truth product

imaginary. Contradiction is the test of necessity” (p. 98). This seems to be the only requisite for necessity. The imaginary is also a key idea for Weil that I will continue to take into consideration. The next move Weil makes addresses the problem of human beings coming to terms with the transcendent. Along with further discussion of the real and imagination Weil discusses possibility and impossibility. In Lacanian discourse, there is the impossibility for the agent to speak the truth to the other. In the hysteric’s discourse, there is the impossibility for the subject (in the place of the agent) to communicate the truth fully to the master signifier (in the place of the other. This is because the subject is split, not being able to know itself or its projections fully and cannot speak the truth for whom it is impossible to access, because of the nature of truth.

Weil uses Metaxu to negotiate the dialectic between impossibility and possibility. Weil announced that “every affirmation we put forward involves a contradictory affirmation . . . Contradiction alone is proof that we are not everything. Contradiction is our wretchedness” (p. 95). In the hysteric’s discourse there is incongruence, which is what Weil resides in with her attempts to understand the real and contradiction. That which lies behind the notion of impossibility leads to jouissance, which is found in Weil’s statement, “the links that we cannot forge are evidence of the transcendent” (p. 95). Weil’s need to know more and more alerts her sensibilities by which she makes it clear that “the good is impossible. But man always has enough imagination at his disposal to hide from himself in each particular case the impossibility of good” (p. 94). Weil writes “it is enough if for each event which does not crush us ourselves we can veil part of the evil and add a fictitious good” (p. 94). Weil, as a pessimist, did not see “good”

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in everything, but stated that “on every occasion, whatever we do, we do evil, and an intolerable evil” (p. 97). Weil’s struggle and accomplishment, her recognition that there is no dialectic between good and evil, leads her to say of “the impossibility of good: ‘Good comes out of evil, evil out of good, and when will it all end?’” (p. 94).

Weil understands that human life is impossible, but it is only affliction which makes us feel impossibility and often hopelessness. Weil has a hard line on this and is rather deterministic. Weil admits to the pros and cons of impossibility. She goes so far as to question her idea of impossibility; its limits and potential she discusses in the following text:

The good is impossible. But man always has enough imagination at his disposal to hide from himself in each particular case the impossibility of good (it is enough if for each event which does not crush us ourselves we can veil part of the evil and add a fictitious good—and some people manage to do this even if they are crushed themselves). Man’s imagination at the same time prevents him from seeing ‘how much the essence of the necessary differs from that of the good,’ and prevents him from allowing himself really to meet God who is none other than the good itself—the good which is found nowhere in this world. (p.94)

She declares that “The good is impossible,” and begins to explain how imagination is hiding from the subject the ability to see what good really is. Her position makes sense from a Lacanian perspective, which asserts that truth can never be fully spoken and the subject can never know itself by the sheer fact that it is split: firstly, it cannot be reflexive upon itself, and secondly because it is partially unconscious. The subject can be reflected in a mirror only as other, and cannot truly see its reflection in another, because the other

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does not tell the subject what it wants to see about itself. This is a production of the Lacan’s imaginary order, in that the process happens outside symbolization (the subject never gets designated) and is never fully within the real. It stands to reason, considering this inability and impossibility of the subject to know itself fully, or even at all, that, as Weil has said:

Man’s imagination at the same time prevents him from seeing “how much the essence of the necessary differs from that of the good” and prevents him from allowing himself really to meet God who is none other than the good itself—the good which is found nowhere in this world. (p. 94)

The necessary is the only option; it is the etched in stone here and it is fixed. Necessity precedes obedience; necessity is the Hebraic nature which yields fortune capriciously. This thinking is quite what prevents Weil from conversion to Catholicism. Weil refuses to join with any social group, for that matter, because she wants to be true to the “real” or the “good,” “God,” “grace,” “higher plane” and “impossibility,” which she only sees in glimpses, which is the impossible or rather jouissance.

I turn my focus now on Weil’s concept “real” and Lacan’s concept “real.” It is for me difficult not to equate the two; however, it is the case that these concepts only cross at points of the shadows they cast, the likeness of the signifier’s real. Without distinguishing what reality is, precisely because it does not exist for Lacan, he considers the real to be experienced as imaginary and found only in the symbolic or signifying-chain. For Weil, real is something that escapes her, because Weil says, “As soon as we know that something is real we can no longer be attached to it” (p. 14) and in another place “obedience to God, which, since God is beyond all that we can imagine or

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conceive, means obedience to nothing” (p.96). I see the similarities between Weil and Lacan in the preceding quotes. For Lacan, the conscious refuses to submit to the unconscious, because it wants to navigate the world with its own efficacy, not driven by hidden forces. For Weil submitting to the truth, understanding it to be substantial, is required.

Weil says the following to demonstrate contradiction and how it opens the door to impossibility; for contradiction is directly related to impossibility, because if one notes the use of contradiction, then one cannot avoid its impossibility:

Contradiction alone is the proof that we are not everything. Contradiction is our wretchedness, and the sense of our wretchedness is the sense of reality. For we do not invent our wretchedness. It is true. That is why we have to value it. All the rest is imaginary.

Impossibility is the door of the supernatural. We can but knock at it. It is someone else who opens. (p.95)

Again Weil emphasizes that “contradiction alone is the proof that we are not everything” and “the links that we cannot forge are evidence of the transcendent.” There is something more, in the impossible. For Weil that which is real is indeed contradiction; this should be recognizable, but often it does not always become apparent. Lacan (1981) points out that,

when we look at it more closely, we see that something new comes into play --- the category of the impossible . . . This function of the impossible is not to be approached without prudence, like any function that is present in a negative form. I would simply like to suggest to you that the best way of approaching these

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notions is not to take them by negation. This method would bring us here to the question of the possible, and the impossible is not necessarily the contrary of the possible, or, since the opposite of the possible is certainly real, we would be led to define the real as the impossible. (pp. 166-167)

Weil and Lacan are both concerned about the impossible and its implications for the real. In fact, Weil seen through the Lacanian lens demonstrates that she needs for there to be more or excess, hence her hysteric tendencies. Weil will not accept a limit of any kind. Weil is an excellent example of a hysteric.

In the deconstruction of the drive both Weil and Lacan indicate the serendipity that is invoked by human endeavor. Weil (2002a) writes about this in the following way: “our life is impossibility, absurdity. Everything we want contradicts the conditions or the consequences attached to it . . . All our feelings are mixed up with their opposites. It is because we are a contradiction---being creatures---being God and infinitely other than God” (p. 95). Weil’s questioning here indicates her concerns about something more ultimate than human experience. As such there can be a direct link made between Weil’s problem here and the way Lacan understands drive and satisfaction. Between the two terms, Lacan (1977) explains, “there is set up an extreme antinomy that reminds us that the use of the function of the drive has for me no other purpose than to put in question what is meant by satisfaction” (p. 166). Weil’s concern with force (or drive) can be seen as an extension of the problem Lacan points to here in his lecture. Weil (2002a) writes further “consciousness of this impossibility forces us to long continually to grasp what cannot be grasped in all that we desire, know and will” (p. 96). When Weil comes to these difficult passages she begins to write in beautiful prose.

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Poetically descriptive writing is what I find in this next passage, which is the initial entry into her writing about gravity and grace. For gravity is that which weighs on everything and grace is the impossible made accessible to humanity. Weil’s adeptness at hooking the reader into her world often precedes many of her discussions of theological matters. In a section of Gravity and Grace in Weil explains the movements of gravity and grace, describing them as laws:

To come down by a movement in which gravity plays no part . . . Gravity makes things come down, wings make them rise: what wings raised to the second power can make things come down without weight?

Creation is composed of the descending movement of gravity, the ascending movement of grace and the descending movement of the second degree of grace. Grace is the law of the descending movement. To lower oneself is to rise in the domain of moral gravity. Moral gravity makes us fall towards the heights. (p. 4)

The “descending movement” and the “ascending movement” are written in almost clashing proximity on the page, yet in a complimenting juxtaposition. Her syntax is imperfect, allowing her to poetically confront the reader with these opposites. Weil precedes to look for the right union of contradictories. The idea that gravity results in descending, and grace results in ascending is easily understood. Her insertion of a second descending movement, which is also the result of grace, and not gravity, is what is perplexing. Here grace is in one dimension rising away from humanity and on a “higher plane,” the “second degree,” descending toward humanity. This is the expectation she has with the “right union of opposites.” Instead it is grace in two degrees or states which makes possible Weil’s seemingly contradictory statement: “what wings raised to the

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second power can make things come down without weight?” (p. 4). Gravity goes only one way; grace is multi-faceted in moving both ways.

The whole nature of things is that we do not lower ourselves, humans are already, by Weil’s estimation as worms. Weil says, “To lower oneself is to rise in the domain of moral gravity” (p. 4). The lowering that Weil writes about is about recognition of the status of humanity, humility is central and essential in Weil’s work. Weil says that “We must prefer real hell to an imaginary paradise” and “Humility has as its object to eliminate that which is imaginary in spiritual progress. There is no harm in thinking ourselves far less advanced than we are” (p.53). Weil initially presents the power of grace as causing things to rise and “To lower oneself is to rise in the domain of moral gravity. Moral gravity makes us fall towards the heights.” Here seems to be a dichotomy, and “this is a subject for endless contemplation” (p. 104). Weil also writes, “creation: good broken into pieces and scattered throughout evil” (p. 69). This is also the nature of the manner in which Weil thought of incarnation, that a good as broken comes into the world. Such an impossible dream could have only come from the transcendent. Weil insists that, “It is necessary to touch impossibility in order to come out of the dream world. There is no impossibility in dreams—only impotence” (p. 95). I have shown that impossibility is a theme within Weil’s work, just as is contradiction.

The impossibility and contradiction of divine being in the world, for Weil, was the most palpable truth in church history. The transcendent entering the lowly demonstrates, I think Weil would say, the falling to the heights, which is what the divine does; as Weil demonstrably explains in the following.

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How should he for his part come to us without descending? There is no way of imagining a contact between God and man which is not as unintelligible as the incarnation. The incarnation explodes this unintelligibility. It is the most concrete way of representing this impossible descent. (p. 95)

I think that Weil uses the incarnation to demonstrate the power she sees in this doctrine, which is so foundational to the church. The notion of the incarnation exploding the unintelligibility of the church and its doctrines in my opinion may be at the center of any Christian theological positions, as Weil would entertain. The incarnation, the contradiction that it is, Weil seems to understand to be the essential doctrine on which all other teaching of the church stand, and considering this I can understand why the transubstantiation of the Eucharist deeply affected Weil’s perspective on matters close to her. As I have already noted the gaze and food was indicative of Weil’s idea of eating or not-eating, which seems to be central to her understanding of the economy of interest and consumption. Production (labor) and consumption (eating) seems to be intrinsic to Weil’s understanding of the human (especially the poor or proletariat) condition.

The hysteric in Weil was seeking knowledge, which her relationships with Catholics proved to be productive, but Weil still saw herself both too close to and yet far from allowing herself to join. Weil did not want to join the church for gain or secondary gain. The idea of joining any organization with any doctrines she could not accept would be difficult as Weil wanted to remain on the outside looking in. Pétrement (1976) explains that Weil had developed a friendship with a Catholic which was receptive to Weil’s idiosyncratic thought,

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Hélène Honnorat was a fervent Catholic; she discussed religion with Simone. Simone told her, “I am as close to Catholicism as it is possible to be without however being a Catholic.” She was to tell her just before her departure from Marseilles, “I never thought that I could draw closer to Catholicism, and yet I have drawn much, much closer.” (p. 394)

Weil did not picture the God of the Old Testament as being anything other than detestable. She believed that the papacy and the Old Testament kept Christianity trapped in the Roman context. In the same way, Weil believed that the Gnostics kept Christianity closer to its origin, which was Hellenistic and not Roman. The mystical nature of Christianity had been lost according to Weil’s depiction, which Pétrement documents, also implying Weil’s regret that the church had moved away from Plato and the Greeks (p. 395).

Metaxu and right action. Weil understands rigidity as a sort of nuisance incumbent upon humankind because of the nature by which we think, which itself is wretchedness. Weil (2002a) writes,

In contemplation, the right relationship with God is love, in action it is slavery. This distinction must be kept. We must act as becomes a slave while contemplating with love. (p. 50)

This is a foreshadowing of Attention, which is the next of Weil’s concepts to be addressed. This is the opposite of viewing our “chief as a thing” and it is because good is in dichotomous relation with evil, grace is other than gravity. This is the very thing which Weil’s Attention addresses:

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We are drawn towards a thing because we believe it is good. We end by being chained to it because it has become necessary. Things of the senses are real if they are considered as perceptible things, but unreal if considered as goods. Appearance has the completeness of reality, but only as appearance. As anything other than appearance it is error. Illusions about the things of this world do not concern their existence but their value. The image of the cave refers to values. We only possess shadowy imitations of good. It is also in relation to good that we are chained down like captives (attachment). We accept the false values which appear to us and when we think we are acting we are in reality motionless, for we are still confined in the same system of values. (p. 51)

Using our energy to do “good” is equivalent to drawing near to the God of whom Weil awaited; even though we have become chained to ideas within the tradition. Error is all humans are capable of, less so in thinking toward the work one does rather than the work itself. That which draws one closer to transcendence is the realization of the futility in acting and being human:

Error as an incentive, a source of energy. I think I see a friend. I run towards him. When I come a little nearer I see that it is someone else towards whom I am running—a stranger. In the same way we confuse the relative with the absolute—created things with God.

All particular incentives are errors. Only that energy which is not due to any incentive is good: obedience to God, which, since God is beyond all that we can imagine or conceive, means obedience to nothing. This is at the same time impossibility and necessary—in other words it is supernatural. (p.96)

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Weil is explaining what may be the most mystical things she will say, here in these passages. For the “nothing” of God can be likened to the language of St. John of the Cross, Rumi, or even the Buddha. St. John of the Cross says in Ascent of Mount Carmel, Book One: “To reach satisfaction in everything, desire satisfaction in nothing. To come to possession of everything, desire the possession of nothing. To arrive at being all, desire to be nothing. To come to the knowledge of everything, desire the knowledge of nothing.” One does not find this experience of jouissance in money, mechanization, or science, as Weil clearly states a message of good news for those who have little and realize that little is enough.

In the modern world the predicament, according to Weil, is caused by the destruction of the relationship of “the sign and the thing signified,” is manifest. There is the exchange between signs such that the multiplication of these relationships is demanded; and so Weil concerns herself with very practical matters of work, in that she feels that this demand complicates the internal relations between effort and results. A close look at Weil’s meaning here is warranted, after which will come a deeper inquiry into her language and process related to these matters:

Money, mechanization, algebra. The three monsters of contemporary Civilization . . . The relation of the sign to the thing signified is being destroyed, the game of exchanges between signs is being multiplied of itself and for itself. And the increasing complication demands that there should be signs for signs. . . . Among the characteristics of the modern world we must not forget the impossibility of thinking in concrete terms of the relationship between effort and the result of effort. There are too many intermediaries. (pp. 152-153)

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Accordingly, within the distinctiveness of the text itself Weil does understand that we construct reality. Weil says, “The relation of the sign to the thing signified is being destroyed, the game of exchanges between signs is being multiplied of itself and for itself. And the increasing complication demands that there should be signs for signs.” Weil’s economy of destruction, taking things a step further than deconstruction, is not as negative as one might think, but is as she says a necessity (necessity being Weil’s term which points toward the obligation of the laws of the world to work as they do). Much like deconstruction, the fruits of our construction are of vain attempts. Though since being left to our own devices is vanity, and here one sees Weil’s deterministic side; she sees no other way than to accept God’s laws. Weil derides many things, almost all things, except the sovereignty of deity, prayer, liturgy, and the Eucharistic.

Weil’s language of sign and signified are an iterative form of similarities she shares with Lacan. For Lacan a sign is that which “represents something for someone” and a signifier is that which “represents a subject for another signifier.” Lacan states that these are structured, which very interestingly conjures-up questioning about how the unconscious being structured like a language has structured our world. Interestingly enough Weil and Lacan converge on this point, Lacan with an answer and Weil with a question. Lacan’s answer is that the unconscious is structured like a language, which underlies all of our constructs. Lacan discusses truth, in terms of the distinction between appearance and essence. Humans are trapped in the imaginary and the symbolic, as Lacan teaches in The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, and are unable to discern the real or truth, because of the juxtaposition of the lure and unseen structures of the unconscious, as well in meaning and the symbolic order. Charles Freeland (2013) says,

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Lacan thus situates Freud’s concepts of truth and error not only in the subject of knowledge and science, and certainly not in terms of the ‘truth value’ of a proposition, but also in the subject of desire. This puts the domain of truth not in the field of the proposition and its relation to an object, but in terms of desire and the objects of desire. Thus, there is a further emphasis in Lacan’s teaching on the interplay of truth and semblance. (p. 81)

Lacan does not remain in the field of the abstract. He also indicates that the meaning and “truth value” remain squarely situated in the world, about “desire and objects of desire.”

Weil returns to a very practical matter, not the exchange of capital, but the very nature of money. Weil also understands how the material world of signs and machines shapes life, making [sic] the “slave” of “inventions.”

As in the other cases, this relationship which does not lie in any thought, lies in a thing: money. As collective thought cannot exist as thought, it passes into things (signs, machines . . .). Hence the paradox: it is the thing which thinks and the man who is reduced to the state of a thing. There is no collective thought. On the other hand our science is collective like our technics. Specialization. We inherit not only results but methods which we do not understand. For the matter of that the two are inseparable, for the results of algebra provide methods for the other sciences. To make an inventory or criticism of our civilization—what does that mean? To try to expose in precise terms the trap which has made man the slave of his own inventions. (p.153)

Weil has doubts about the human ability to produce what could be considered progress, and she was deterministic and/or pessimistic, at the least realistic. Weil lives this out in

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University Discourse

S2  a

__ __

S1 $

her hysteria, whereby she seeks truth and the semblance indicated in the words “the original pact between the spirit and the world,” which Lacan points to. She proclaims in The Need for Roots (2002b), “The actual significance of [human] collectivities has well-nigh disappeared, except in one case only˗˗that of the nation” (p. 99). As far as collectivity, science is one but not for human influence, as Weil posits, “To sum up, Man has placed his most valuable possession in the world of temporal affairs, namely, his continuity in time, beyond the limits set by human existence in either direction, entirely in the hands of the State” (p. 100). Mick Markham (1999) adds “those who promote themselves as masters of the truth . . . are walking on shaky ground. Since ‘truth’ for Lacan is a cultural construct” (p. 68). Weil says that “To try to expose in precise terms the trap which has made man the slave of his own inventions” with the belief in progress and inventions and their linear path to success.

Weil says that “we inherit not only results but methods which we do not understand” this is the trap of what Lacan called the university discourse, which is language that is used to designate superior knowledge. The multiplied signifiers and man’s “own inventions” are words that indicated knowledge (S2) in the position of agent. Humans in the position of other have been turned into just a thing (a), the object cause of desire. Humans have become slaves to machines, not of the machines of our desire but those which “think” and reduce us to a thing. “As collective thought cannot exist as thought, it passes into things (signs, machines . . .). Hence the paradox: it is the thing which thinks and the man who is reduced to the state of a thing.” The product is the confusion that results from the split subject, which is a split between unconscious and conscious. Weil states “How has

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unconsciousness infiltrated itself into methodical thought and action?” Humans have so embedded themselves in their inventions and inventiveness, according to Weil, so that all searches for reason and truth have been undermined. The hope that Weil demonstrates in the university discourse of the text on capital letters, analyzed earlier in this chapter, stating:“to define the use of [words] by precise analysis. . . might be a way of saving human lives” (p.217), in this text is shown to be inadequate. She continues her hysteric searching for truth and finds a new method of Attention, which demonstrates the analyst’s discourse. Weil’s understanding and use of Attention is the focus of the next chapter.

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Chapter Three

Attention: Captured and Silenced

Weil’s unyielding search for truth leads her to acknowledge the importance of both beauty and good. Whereas Metaxu describes the active hysterical searching for truth through questions and finding contradiction, which comes naturally for Weil, Attention is the method which is the centerpiece and prerequisite for the knowledge which is pure. This method, she states, is passive, though she embraces and intertwines a respect for the role that physical labor can bring to this method of learning. Weil also states that Attention is difficult to exercise and must be practiced to gain greater skill. This practice of Attention can begin with all work and school studies, regardless of topic or level of understanding. The usefulness of Attention is transformational in respect to the way in which it connects Weil’s social and political thought with her spiritual ideas and experiences. An understanding of the Lacanian analyst’s discourse is foundational to and operational in parsing-out Attention. The Lacanian orders of the real, symbolic and imaginary will also be explored to bring understanding to this concept of Attention. According to Bracher (1993) the analyst’s discourse is the “most effective means of achieving social change by countering psychological and social tyranny” (p. 68). Weil demonstrates a commitment to Attention as she challenges the social issues of her day and seeks the good or justice in the troubling situations.

In the following quote from Weil (1977) provides a definition of Attention:

Attention consists of suspending our thought . . . Our thought should be in relation to all particular and already formulated thoughts, as a man on a mountain who, as he looks forward, sees also below him, without actually looking at them, a great

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many forests and plains. Above all our thought should be empty, waiting, not seeking anything, but ready to receive in its naked truth the object that is to penetrate it. (p. 49)

Weil is interested in the movement of the psyche toward a re-enchantment of everyday life, as Thomas Moore (1996) calls it, awareness of the beauty of the real, as one is struck by the beauty of the terrain described in the quote above. The inexpressible, but palpable real is that which Lacan speaks of in his Seminars. In The Need for Roots, written during the last year of her life as she worked in England during war times, Weil (2002b) elucidates and clarifies how “the problem of a method for breathing an inspiration into a people is quite a new one” (p. 185) in the period of her lifetime. In Gravity and Grace the vision which Weil (2002a) develops is that the driving force which underlies the historical process is beauty. In terms of discourse being more than the spoken word, but the social bond, it could be said that “beauty” should be allowed to do the talking, which is best illustrated by the analyst’s discourse.

In the analyst’s discourse the object a is in the position of the agent, the a is the object cause of desire (the unattainable cause of desire) and is, according to Bracher (1993) the unarticulated substance which lingers briefly as the remnant of pleasure. This is where beauty is considered jouissance, the fleeting presence of elation with the intensity of an orgasm, in the sense it leaves something of the transcendent. Accordingly Weil (2002a) explains that “Beauty is the harmony of chance and the good. Beauty is necessity which, while remaining in conformity with its own law and with that alone, is obedient to the good” (p. 135). Caranfa (2016) explains, “beauty is thus a finite or a concrete embodiment of the Good—a union of inspiration and the forces of Necessity or

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Gravity. Creativity flows from this” (p. 72). Caranfa (2016) continues by expressing that Weil’s attentive education is a radical methodology: “Creativity has no time, no quantifiable measures, no beginning, no identifiable stage, and no ending” (p. 98). Not having these qualities is a measure of the eternal; thus, there are unquantifiable measures to time in Weil’s work. Caranfa cites Weil, “beauty is beyond words” (p. 85).

In the chapter “Attention and Will” from Gravity and Grace, Weil sets-forth to announce an application of Attention she considered to be aesthetic. As a way of being objective about a particular topic or matter of study Weil suggests an initial distancing from it, which is “To draw back before the object we are pursuing. Only an indirect method is effective. We do nothing if we have not first drawn back” (p. 117). Attention to beauty is passive, “drawing back.” Weil, as explained in the Metaxu chapter, in her absurdist approach often uses dichotomies to make her point. On first appearance this prescription for Attention appears to call for a different approach. Weil writes: “We should be indifferent to good and evil, when we are indifferent, that is to say when we project the light of our attention equally on both, the good gains the day. This phenomenon comes about automatically. There lies the essential grace [emphasis added]. And it is the definition, the criterion of good” (p. 119). Notice that Weil does not abandon the distinction between good and evil, but calls for one to “project the light of our attention equally on both”; this may be a way of saying to fully consider and investigate both. It is apparent that Attention is a process that is stripped of presuppositions and not influenced by internal or external states.

As that which is free of presuppositions Weil explains the need for Attention to be considered in lieu of will, for “we have to try to cure our faults by attention and not by

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will. That will only controls a few movements of a few muscles, and these movements are associated with the idea of the change of position of near-by objects” (p. 116). Physical effort (which is different from physical labor or work discussed latter) cannot reap the benefits that Attention gives and the will cannot draw one near them either. Weil explained the role of desire in Attention and truth, “It is only effort without desire (not attached to an object) which infallibly contains a reward” (p. 117). Weil looks at contradiction, as she so often does, by stating that “attention is bound up with desire. Not with the will but with desire” (p. 118).

Attention involves the dissolving of the self, with its powerful ego and narcissism, in order for one to enter entirely into a state of focus. There is not devaluation on Weil’s part, but rather an affirmation of what is possible outside the self-centered position, outside of narcissism. As David Lewin (2014) explains, “Weil wants to maintain some separation of attention from will. She suggests that the personal will, with its concern to fix itself on a particular problem, constitutes a dependency at odds with the purity of desire for which the infinite is the only pure object of desire” (p. 364). It is the university discourse which this quote describes, which Weil discredits here, likely from years of experience as an academic, seeking after truth herself in this way at times. Caranfa (2016) explains, Weil’s idea of education and “method of learning—to look, not to interpret, and to pray, not to search—is a path to be striven for, but it should be pointed out that it is so terribly difficult to attain because it involves detachment, waiting, solitude, and the death of the self” (p. 64). Nonetheless, Weil is able to accomplish this type of learning.

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In Weil’s analysis of the psyche she concludes that there is what she calls impersonality; the lack of an agent or a will. Robert Chenavier (2012) reminds us of Weil’s experience that “In fact, ‘God is neither personal like us nor impersonal like a thing.’ The rejection of personalism plays a role in this conception. ‘The person within us is our participation in error and sin’ that part which lays claim to autonomy in its existence” (p. 47). Lacanian thought can inform Weil’s texts by virtue of the cause of desire and the subject or the hole in the real. Impersonality will play a major role in Weil’s notion of Decreation. These concepts will be explained in the next chapter.

Weil, who is always seeking balance, takes note of the active physical aspect of Attention. I find Weil’s somatic life as being central to the formation of her theoretical position, and I see how her emphasis on spirituality is directly related to Weil’s understanding of work, her ergonomics. It seems that Françoise Meltzer (2001) identifies strongly with Weil’s understanding of doing; working or activity based reality, and says “For Weil, work is a metaphysics that bridges the gap between the conscious subject and the fixity of the world” (p. 616). Weil has a continual impression that the material world and the body play a great role in what we are, as Desmond Avery (2008) attests, “Her dissertation for the aggregation was about Descartes’ account of science and perception. . . . was criticized for being too materialistic; perhaps because it challenged the orthodox view that Descartes was solely concerned with reason” (p. 210). Her dissertation stressed that something was missing in Cartesian thought. Weil (2002a) spoke of the way scientific knowledge through Attention could be discovered in a mystical venue “the most commonplace truth when it floods the whole soul, is like a revelation” (p. 116). Weil did not divorce the body from language about the forms or spirit. As the very

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concluding statement in her work entitled The Need for Roots, Weil (2002b) proclaims that physical "labor should be the spiritual core of a well-ordered society" (p.298).

Attention is a method of exploration and scientific endeavor which one cannot leave out of any inquiry about the facts of an empirical reality. Weil was critical of science putting the distinction between mental and physical processes, as under Cartesian influence. Meltzer (2001) writes, “Weil critiques modernism on the grounds that modern life makes the mind and body strangers to one another so that the ‘spirituality of labor’ is lost” (p.616). The manner in which Weil uses Attention, through physical labor in the factory and field, to complete scientific inquiry demonstrates much about the formulation of her philosophy. Weil taught that empirical science needs Attention in order to conceptualize free of presupposition. Bartomeu Estelrich (2010) explains that Weil starts “from [the] problems that reason rejects as insoluble” (p. 9), and aspires to a direct contact with the reality that supports it. In order to approach the divine, one has to come up against the horizon of one’s reality. As Weil (1970) explains,

There is no entry into this transcendent until the human faculties--- intelligence, will, human love--- have come up against a limit, and the human being waits at this threshold, which he can make no move to cross, without turning away and without knowing what he wants, in fixed, unwavering attention. (p. 50)

Here Weil introduces her concept “Attention” as fixed and unwavering. Sylvie Weil explains that “like the rabbis, [Simone Weil] examines different cases, inspects them from many angles and, like the rabbis, and integrates the notion of charity into a mystical journey which goes far beyond the simple practice of charity” (p. 15). Weil questions endlessly, as Moulakis (1998) points out,

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Her hopelessness was born from the tension between the conviction that contact with the suspected ground of reality is an essential part of humanity and the impossibility, felt in her own person, for a particular person to establish this contact through readily comprehensible skills and modes of knowledge. (p. 224)

Weil comes in contact with the ground of physical reality and as such finds impossibility.

Differing understandings of Weil’s politics help to attribute to the richness and variety of her thought. Weil searches for truth, her true hysteric’s way of seeing through the masquerade of the master’s discourse. As Thomas Lynch (2014) points out, “the hysteric is onto the master’s game” (p. 220), and is one who seeks beyond truth. Weil owned her political and philosophical viewpoints by wearing them on her sleeve. In an effort to appropriate Weil, Craig T. Maier (2013) explains that,

The Need for Roots deals specifically with the challenge of liberating France from the Nazi occupation, Weil’s work poses challenging questions in a moment of precarity […] Weil asks us to consider whether our rhetorical environment can truly support the discursive life we want. (p. 229)

A large part of Weil’s life is a project to develop thinking which established social justice and peace. Fiori (1989) asks, “Do we or do we not want to look matters in the face, to set the problem of war or peace in its entirety? This is her (Weil’s) anguished question [emphasis added]” (p. 141-142). Weil’s yearning is to represent war accurately and with an objective means, according to Daniel P. Liston (2008):

In war, Weil observes, both victim and victor believe that the exercise of force is the only option and the heroic route. She believes both to be deluded. For Weil, the Illiad’s central character is not the warrior but force itself. In the Illiad, as in

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life, force seduces, diminishes, destroys, and prevails; and war represents the extreme, not the exception, in human interactions. (p. 388)

Before the backdrop of the Hitler fascism in Germany, Weil challenges the way in which the master’s discourse instrumentalizes war and nationalism as ends in themselves. Weil’s philosophy and political theory, indeed, reveal her as a hysteric. For by Lacan’s definition, the hysteric identifies with lack and sees through social masquerades. Weil saw reforms in working conditions and educational practices as being instances of change and did not buy into the idea of a revolution. Weil’s Attention comes into its own as a prolific concept and a concerted effort in practice.

Work which is done with Attention contributes to the cause of the social reform. Thereby it is noted by Be Scofield (2010) that, “For Weil an analysis of societal oppression must begin with examining the nature and quality of work-something that both Marxism and capitalism mostly ignored. It was easy for her to apply a critique equally because both systems emphasized the maximization of production, albeit for different reasons. For Weil this led to the alienation of the worker.” Attention is a central concept in her political philosophical ideas which Weil used to combine the mind and the effort of workers within the proletariat. Rosen (1979) says, “Simone Weil continually emphasized in her early writings, namely the abolition of the separation of intellectual and manual labor which Marx wrongly thought would disappear with the proletarian revolution” (p. 306). As Meltzer (2001) understands that which Weil concerns herself with is the defense of humankind against being fed in the service of machines (p. 614). She defends humans against “crushing fatigue and (mostly the) inability to think” (p. 614). Meltzer (2001) states that Weil’s “own factory work was

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intended to demonstrate to herself her conviction that assembly line work prevents Attention in her sense, indeed, prevents thought altogether” (p. 614). When Weil works in a factory or on a farm she is living in the very milieu of which she writes about; she is more than a theorist.

Her understanding was upon the individual worker. Blum and Seidler (1989) write that Weil demanded as a “politically serious and conscientious person she herself not maintain distance from what was regarded as the true locus of human oppression—the work place, especially the factory” (p. 90). In addition to direct experience of working class conditions, Weil also sought direct contact with the individual student or worker. McLellan (1990) points to Weil’s perceptiveness, because of the way in which she identified how oppression would be in the world as long as regimes, no matter what type, would be hegemonic and conclusively subordinating to the individual. Weil aimed to defend the rights of not the proletariat, per se, but the individual through the practice of Attention. There are several examples of the way she attends to the persons in these places in which she put herself. Weil appreciated and was confident about the trustworthiness of the working proletariat with whom she worked and sweated in factories by her own choice. Weil worked not in an ancillary role, secondary to her intellectual practice, but as a way of getting in touch with the workers. Weil saw potential for learning and intellect in many, as Thibon attests in his introduction to Gravity and Grace: “I remember a young working-class Lorraine girl in whom she thought she had detected signs of an intellectual vocation and to whom she poured forth at great length magnificent commentaries on the Upanishads. The poor child nearly died with boredom, but shyness and good manners prevented her from saying anything” (p. x),

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and also he adds “moreover she would put the same enthusiasm and love into teaching the rudiments of arithmetic to this or that backward urchin from the village” (p. x).

Weil accounts for Attention requiring loss of self in order to complete the process by which Attention can be accomplished by the student or worker. She embraced a loss of self literally to embark on her Attention to the working class. In appreciation of the battlefront soldiers at war time, Weil was honoring their diligence and sacrifice with her eating habits. In Weil’s work away attitude and demeanor, one could only imagine the young woman succumbing to factory labor in all her thinness. Her strength is her need to delve deeper into the process of hard labor. Weil, unlike Marx, worked in the factory with the working class and philosophized from a subservient position. This is largely why she denied her rearing and education in order to work, in her short life, for a brief period to understand the sweat that workers had on their brow. Weil sees the quality of self-denial which she writes about as a lived experience of a few workers, and sees the potential for her theory about the individual worker’s life put into context and action.

If laborers were to practice Attention in the work place, the power of it would transform and enlighten. Weil put much emphasis on Attention and its affect on work and working conditions; she was ultimately seeking a way to liberate the proletariat, working class, the exploited, by offering an idea about work and scientific endeavor which would lift the lower class out of theoretical quagmire. In Oppression and Liberty, Weil associates self-transcending education with a small “elite” among the working-classes. Moulakis (1998) explains:

At the outset the picture of the elite is indebted solely to Weil’s ouvrierisme. [The glorification of manual laborers, often in opposition to the leadership of labor or

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socialist movements.] “The working class still contains, scattered here and there, to a large extent outside organized labor, an elite of workers, the proletariat, ready, if need be, to devote themselves wholeheartedly, with the resolution and conscientiousness that a good workman puts into his work, to the building of a rational society.” (p 101)

Weil emphasizes and attributes hard work with the appropriate level of Attention as a type of mindfulness and conscientiousness to tasks in one’s lifework, and to the development of the working class. These along with the very kind of consciousness raising, or Attention, which leads to appropriate use of labor for the benefit of humankind. As Meltzer (2001) explains “Attention then (which in its highest form is prayer) entails great energy, toil, struggle, fatigue” (p. 612). Note Meltzer thinks that Weil considers Attention to be passive although toil is in the definition of the appropriate kind of Attention and attitude Weil prescribes. “It is described, in other words, in the language usually associated with labor or work” (p. 612).

The extent of Weil’s politics can be summed up with her emphasis on Attention to work and education. Weil had an interesting approach to the matter of addressing the disparity between bourgeoisie and proletariat; she stressed strongly the education through Attention in study as an apparatus of liberation. Weil believed that where language was concerned educated men who use it wisely proved its indispensability to human progress. Giving workers literacy would help achieve equality between the classes. Weil continually emphasized that the proletariats’ learning is important to prevent the revolution from becoming an authoritarian rule. For Weil empowering rather than subverting the working class worker could happen through the educational practice which

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required that one was investing Attention and energy. Peter Roberts (2011) points to the transition Weil envisioned for education, as well, in which it becomes a force which would empower the working class. As Roberts (2011) says “She spent nine months working in an automobile factory to gain more direct experience of working class life but was forced to leave due to illness” (p. 316). Weil believed that workers needed education and that the appropriate education is found through Attention.

Attention for Weil is part of thorough education. The cognitive process and learning experience are of utmost importance for Weil; again, as a hysteric these proved to be an obsession for Weil. In Weil’s view, according to Roberts (2011), “Students should, to be sure, attempt to complete a task correctly and well, but the deeper purpose underlying all such efforts is the development of the habit and power of attention” (p. 321). One learns from Weil that there is a connection between redemption and education. Roberts (2011) reports that one of the “keys to seeking the kind of redemption Weil advocates is attention, and education has a potentially pivotal role to play here” (p. 320). Learning is a sacred and holy task, it is through the “blind necessity” of this world which the student or worker would learn anything about what is sacred. In her work, she defines the “creative faculty in man,” as “attention [that is] far more rigorous and intense form of meditation” (p. 612). As I understand it, in Weil’s (2002a) writing, the nature of the discipline known to her as Attention always “constitutes the creative faculty in man” (p.117). This Attention seems to Weil as applicable to theology as prayer. Weil explains that “attention taken to its highest degree is the same thing as prayer. It presupposes faith and love” (p. 117).Weil often mixed spiritual matters with her political and philosophical understandings, this demonstrate a wholeness of thought. It is important to be aware that

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Weil also criticized Marxist political theory on the grounds that it is based on materialism and did not have a spiritual and/or cognitive dimension. Weil was compelled to educate many about how revolution is the opiate of the masses and to create a knowledge driven working class. Weil promotes a spiritual model of reform that does not necessarily intersect with a modern state. For example, Weil stated in Gravity and Grace that “Workers need poetry more than bread. They need that their life should be a poem. They need some light from eternity. Religion alone can be the source of such poetry. It is not religion but revolution which is the opium of the people” (pp.180-181). There is a personal and a political statement here; reminiscent of Hanisch’s original work entitled The Personal is Political. This casuistic remark about Revolution becomes a central theme in Weil’s discourse on Marxism. Weil was profoundly cognitively oriented and this theme against Revolution became a trademark of Weil’s work.

The concept of Attention is crucial in Weil’s spiritual and theological expressions, and is connected to implications for justice. As Mark Freeman (2015) explains, “Simone Weil and Iris Murdoch both . . . found in attention an important vehicle for strengthening moral and ethical life” (p.160). Weil’s politics shed more light on her cause for others. Much like her text entitled The Need for Roots, Weil demonstrates her contribution to political causes in France, as McFarland (1983) attests to when saying,

Weil saw the task of the Free French as one of rerooting. The traditional forms of rootedness having been destroyed, the Free French, she argued, needed to learn how to discover ‘a method for breathing an inspiration into a people” (187, NR), how to facilitate a people’s reconnection with the real of value. (p. 152)

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The nearness to work was the determinant of human life; on an ontological level work was equivalent to human predicament, that is, one becomes the work that is done, for example, and one becomes potatoes if one works plowing potatoes. Blum and Seidler (1989) explain that Weil considered “the ways the labor could be transformed in order to restore work to its proper place in human life. And thus it is that she granted labor a central position in her thought” (p. 144).

McFarland (1983) enumerates indicators of this as such; “That connection, she believed, is for the most part made through one’s physical roots, through contact with the storehouses of traditional wisdom and inspiration which are the heritage of a given culture’s past. The loss of the past, thus, is the most serious of all the causes of uprootedness, for it is ‘equivalent to the loss of the supernatural’” (p. 151). Maier (2013) explains that Weil’s response to power is as follows: “her critique of the idolatrous power of ideology, vehement rejection of colonialism, and passionate defense of the dispossessed provides tremendous resources . . . For the precariat, Weil makes a potentially compelling guide whose critical sensibilities acknowledge their shocking sense of dislocation, frustration, and anger but whose spiritual commitment can help to reorient their struggle” (pp. 227-228). Weil with all intent to liberate the worker found a fundamental truth in the need for an Attention which includes a spiritual aspect. Weil did in fact find something to this in the mindful and direct interrelation which Attention points to in many ways.

Maier (2013) explains also how spirituality of work looks for Weil:

While Weil is a spiritual writer, she founds no “church.” Life in an uprooted moment may be painful, but roots cannot be created overnight. Weil believes that

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we must be prepared to wait for our roots, even as she recognizes the difficulty this waiting necessarily entails. Consequently, Weil’s message to the precariat is resolutely open-ended; though she outlines the problem and the rising action, she leaves the ending to be written by others. (p. 230)

Weil led her life as a cause for many others and she concentrated on her work to the extent that it made her live a sacrificial love, with a faith to sustain her through her hysteria, constant searching for questions, answers, and knowledge. Weil was empathic and bold enough to step foot in a factory with the proletariat, and sweat with them in physical labor beyond the abilities of her size and features. It is important to be attentive to the social nature of discourse, as one comes to realize solitariness in the process; for if one is to notice justice in what is being written then the text becomes relevant to relationship. This is supported by Lacan (1998) in Seminar XX for he says that “discourse is a social link” (p. 17). Attention is studying and being awakened to the real, pouring the subject into the cause of desire. In the case of the Attentive student or worker there is, as Chenavier (2012) indicates, the “interior need for coherence” (p.1). Attention fulfills a need or fills a void, and yet there is a sense of not yet knowing, indicated by Lacan’s object a. This is the truth of enjoyment that is present and not quite graspable. Attention reveals a truth that cannot fully be spoken in words.

As it is apparent in the reading of Simone Weil’s work critically analyzing from a Lacanian approach there are a number of terms that need to be defined to help the reader. Therefore, I offer the section below to define some of the salient terms. Included below are reminders of Lacan’s ideas and various terms used by Weil as well. It is helpful to have definitions of all of the terms below, before moving on.

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Key Ideas

These key ideas underlie Weil’s concept of Attention and prepare the reader in understanding how I go about applying Lacanian theory.

Analyst’s discourse. In the position of the agent within the analyst’s discourse is objet a, the residue just mentioned; in the position of the other lays the subject, a wanting-to-be (Kojeve). In this scenario there appears (by virtue of the relation of the positions themselves) the barrier of impossibility, causing there to be a tension about which the trace of what could be and the wanting-to-be formulates. This tension is an anomaly, because it is between two notions which seem to mean practically the same thing. In this discourse the place of truth (which is hidden, but drives the discourse) is knowledge, usually a chain of signifiers but here, knowledge and knowledge of the impossible, is unknown. True knowledge is the knowledge that the full truth cannot be spoken. Knowledge puts itself in the hidden place within this particular discourse, in which case ideas are something that Weil (2002a) straightforwardly states is “a fruit which we look at without trying to seize it” (p. 150). Attention is implicated to discern beauty, because Attention can distance itself and perceive that beauty is impossible to signified or be spoken.

Real order. The real is that part of experience which resists symbolization; it is the experience one has which is seemingly tangible yet escapes into symbolization the moment it is realized to be “there.” The real is an order which for Lacan is available to the senses yet is somehow quite unreachable therewith. Eyers (2011) writes, “it is only through an attention to the conceptual genesis of the category of the Real that the materialist potential of Lacanian theory may be fully realized” (155).

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Symbolic order. It should be recognized that the Symbolic order is not just language, but that it is the very culture itself and laws, and is the way we conceive all of life. Libbrect (2001) states that “the shift in focus from the pre-eminence of speech and language over the supremacy of the signifier in language as structure to the symbolic order as grounded by the signifier” (p. 198). The symbolic is the order of representation, that place where the real occurs once it immediately escapes our experience. As mentioned above, the Real Order is that according to Lacan is available to the senses yet is somehow quite unreachable therewith. Things in the Symbolic only represent through signs and symbols that which is in the Real Order.

Imaginary order. Evans (1996) states: “Imaginary in Lacan is quite different from the typical use of the word implies. The imaginary exerts a captivating power over the subject, founded in the almost hypnotic effect of the specular image” (p. 83) and the imaginary is quite different from the traditional use of the word in English, in that it does not represent some fictitious place or scopic world. Evans also says that “The imaginary is rooted in the subject’s relationship to his own body (or rather to the image of his body). . . .it imprisons the subject in a series of static fixations” (p. 83).

Impossibility. Impossibility appears in the mathemes delimiting the effectiveness on the communication between the agent and the other. Therefore, the communication between is never complete. This incompleteness of communication is foundational for Lacan. This applies to Weil’s “need to reach the limit,” in that we need to reach the limit of our faculties, and find this as the case with Attention. We recognize the impossibility and have no other resort than to fall to our knees in frustration (and look upward). For Weil the impossible has contradictions that can never be explained, or

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reframed into paradox. For Lacan language is always going to fail at defining or capturing “the real,” and communication from the agent to the other fails also.

Higher plane. Weil (2002a) says “Only the contemplation of our limitations and our misery puts us on a higher plane. ‘Whosoever humbleth himself shall be exalted.’ The upward movement in us is vain (and less than vain) if it does not come from a downward movement” (p. 93). It seems the great equalizing premise alliterated by Weil is the notion that some things need to be considered as on a plane above typical thinking or reasoning. I do not believe that Weil always thought of this plane to be metaphysical, but at times as an aspect of the way we approach grand and specific notions in respect to perhaps supposedly more mundane notions, hence Weil (2002a) can illustrate the “right union of opposites is achieved on a higher plane. Thus the opposition between domination and oppression is smoothed out on the level of the law” (p. 101). Therefore, no matter whether metaphysical or not, a higher plane can help to rid one of the notion that all things should be conceived of as equally relevant terms.

Energy. Weil (2002b) very concretely defines energy for the peasant in the following way, “Man in the form of food or drink, passes into his muscles and spends itself on preparing the soil. Everything connected with Science can be situated around this cycle, for the notion of energy is at the heart of everything” (p. 87). Though refined to this rudimentary understanding, energy has a particular significance for Weil in her psychodynamic economy of desire. Weil (2002a) says particularly that, “We have to have experienced (desire). Misery of those beings from whom fatigue takes away that supplementary energy which is the source of desire” (p. 146). In regards to the connection between spiritual and then sexual energy, Weil (2002a) states that “sexual

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energy constitutes the physiological foundation, and the false imitation of mysticism which, without changing the natural orientation of this faculty, gives it an imaginary object upon which it stamps the name of God as a label” (p. 56). The nature of energy therefore takes on a different connotation depending on the context, but certainly crosses the sphere of sexuality to that of spirit in Weil’s communication about desire.

Education. Sian Miles (2000) indicates that, Weil was a professor with an unorthodox and nontraditional style and content of teaching. Weil taught Lycee at Le Puy for a short stint, having been placed there by her Dean, who saw to it that she was as far away possible. At Le Puy Weil spent time bringing unemployed workers into council meetings to demonstrate her point of view about workers rights (Weil, 2000, p. 8). Liston (2008) noting what many others have seen, reports that: “Weil elaborates the qualities of ‘attention’ and the role it plays in developing a spiritually and deistically oriented attentive love . . . For Weil, attentive love serves as a sort of antidote to the force, power, and gravity that pervade our material lives” (p. 388). Weil certainly spent the most part of her life having compassion for others, the oppressed. However, she did not teach on women’s rights. According to Blum and Seidler (1989) Weil was loved by her students, but often “offended” administration and school officials (p. 3). Weil taught her students a deliberate state of mind focused upon the object of study. Liston (2008) reports a type of teaching which Weil employed, “Attentive love in teaching is frequently a struggle and a sacrifice. It is a struggle and a sacrifice to see beyond our egoistic selves so as to see our students more clearly (p. 389).

Desire. Liston (2008) argues that Weil’s concept of desire was that which she was never able to appease through worldly objects; the human heart, “a desire that may not

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Hysteric’s Discourse

$  S1

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a S2

always be consciously present and certainly conflicts with other desires and needs. But it is a yearning that defines, in part, what it means to be human” and “is sacred” (p. 389). Desire drives the agent from the position of truth. The perfect scenario for Weil is the hysteric’s discourse:

Desire through the position of truth drives the agent, in this case the subject ($), to speak to the other, which in Weil’s case is the master signifier. The master signifier (S1) creates the signifying-chain (S2); the subject questions the chain as it defines the knowledge. The desire to question and the need for more knowledge than is produced is characteristic of the hysteric.

Textual Analysis

Beauty and the real. Weil continues to use the concepts which became prominent in the previous chapter: the good, contradiction, and necessity. These are expressed as Weil understands in her own poetic-philosophical thought. If Weil ever attempts a synthesis of gravity and grace or necessity and the good it is with the concept of beauty. Weil (2002a) writes about the matter in the following way:

Beauty is the harmony of chance and the good. Beauty is necessity which, while remaining in conformity with its own law and with that alone, is obedient to the good. (p. 148)

The beautiful is a carnal attraction which keeps us at a distance and implies a renunciation. This includes the renunciation of that which is most deep-seated, the imagination. We want to eat all the other objects of desire. The beautiful is that which we desire without wishing to eat it. We desire that it should be.

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We have to remain quite still and unite ourselves with that which we desire yet do not approach. (p. 149)

Weil says “beauty is the harmony” indicating a unity or at the very least a working in cooperation. “Chance” is akin to “necessity” because both are blind; this fits Weil’s discourse as she continues to have chance (necessity) juxtaposed with the good. As explained in the Mextau chapter the deity puts the blind laws of necessity in place as a shield from its holiness, which would “evaporate us like water from the sun.” Beauty is necessity which is obedient to the good. However, Weil likely would argue that all of necessity is obedient to the good, which hints at the role of perspective, point of view and the act of looking, all key aspects of the study of aesthetics.

The distinction between necessity and the good in above text can be explored more fully with an understanding of the three Lacanian orders. The subject only has awareness of the symbolic and the imaginary, the real is fleetingly exposed to the subject, and then only as that which is the remnant, which is jouissance, or as the object a. The beauty of the carnal, of that which is the result of nature’s making, is only apparent in the symbolic order and in the imaginary. Beauty is in fact only fleeting, as is all subjective experience; though beauty leaves a residue or a semblance which lingers only in the temporality of human existence. Weil makes this significant contribution regarding beauty, “there is as it was an incarnation of God in the world and it is indicated by beauty” (p. 150). While the real is fleeting, Weil offers something tangible: beauty. Weil brings out the materiality of beauty, in much the way Lacan pointed to the real, in a materialistic way. Johnston (2013) describes the real, within Lacan’s register system as, “accessible to the direct experiences of first-person awareness;” (2.1.3) which is an

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embellishment of the Lacanian understanding of the real. Lacan advanced a “real” which is illusory and ungraspable. Rather more accurately, “Lacan stresses again and again, an ‘impossibility’ vis-à-vis reality” (2.1.3), and this is the most real that the subject experiences. This poverty of language to express the real is akin to Weil pointing that “Beauty is the harmony of chance and the good.” Weil’s concept Attention is a mindful and concentrative manner of accessing beauty. There is reciprocity whereby Attention and beauty coalesce, making a wonderful connection.

Within the practice of Attention beauty captures and holds the subject’s awareness, “The beautiful is a carnal attraction.” Though beauty captures and holds the subject’s awareness, like necessity, it “keeps us at a distance.” This distance is part of Attention, and is defined well in Weil’s discussion of beauty. The distance between necessity and the good persists and in this way serves to preserve the beautiful (or the good) as demonstrated with the words: “without wishing to eat it. We desire that it should be.” Weil states this “implies a renunciation.” Weil develops her discourse on “renunciation” in her ideas of impersonality and Decreation, which are explained in the following chapter. Weil (2002a) continues:

We unite ourselves to God in this way: we cannot approach him. Distance is the soul of the beautiful. The attitude of looking and waiting is the attitude which corresponds with the beautiful. As long as one can go on conceiving, wishing, longing, the beautiful does not appear. That is why in all beauty we find contradiction, bitterness and absence which are irreducible. (pp. 149-150)

For Weil, Attention involves the manifestation of God, the realization just as “Distance is the soul of the beautiful.” With the practice of Attention the desire is to keep beauty as

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transcendent, undefiled, and distanced; this sustains the conceived connection with God. In this vein Weil says, “as long as one can go on conceiving, wishing, longing, the beautiful does not appear.” This sentence is directly speaking to the renunciation of “the imagination” which is required. Weil writes that “In all beauty we find contradiction;” beauty captures the true real, which for Weil is contradiction, and is only in signified in the symbolic. In order to appreciate the contradiction in all things the use of Attention is required. “We have to remain quite still and unite ourselves with that which we desire yet do not approach.” This is how Weil hangs beauty and contradiction together. Weil certainly emphasizes the elements of a working definition of jouissance in her work, through this text. The hysteric’s goal in life is to keep lack unfulfilled, which correlates with keeping beauty at a distance. If beauty fulfilled the hole in the hysteric’s life there would be no more need for the hysteric to question and search, which contraindicates the nature of the hysterics approach to everything.

Joy and pain cannot be separated. The Lacanian concept of jouissance is worth further explanation here. Beauty is a translation of jouissance, but jouissance is not restricted to such a definition. Jouissance becomes apparent when Weil equally speaks of pain and joy, affliction and Attention.

The following quote from Gravity and Grace illustrates this phenomenon well:

Poetry: impossible pain and joy. A poignant touch, nostalgia. Such is Provençal and English poetry. A joy which by reason of its unmixed purity hurts, a pain which by reason of its unmixed purity brings peace. Beauty: a fruit which we look at without trying to seize it. The same with an affliction which we contemplate without drawing back. (p. 150)

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Any time Weil writes about beauty, or in this case poetry, she is speaking of that which can be ascertained, only noticed briefly, with Attention; that is a “joy which by reason of its unmixed purity hurts, a pain which by reason of its unmixed purity brings peace.” Understanding the stark reality of pain is a way in which Attention helps us understand the good in these things. “Beauty: a fruit which we look at without trying to seize it.” Beauty is the vehicle of truth; and “the same with an affliction” if one can “contemplate without drawing back;” hence the unity of joy (or beauty) and pain, as seen in jouissance. Weil says,

It is not joy and sorrow which are opposed to each other, but the varieties within the one and the other. There are an infernal joy and pain, a healing joy and pain, a celestial joy and pain. By nature we fly from suffering and seek pleasure. It is for this reason alone that joy serves as an image for good and pain for evil. Hence the imagery of paradise and hell. But as a matter of fact pleasure and pain are inseparable companions. (p. 83)

Weil illustrates the complete understanding of how despite their seeming opposition “joy and sorrow” hang together, “inseparable companions,” as the nature of the orgasmic experience, jouissance. This is Weil’s acceptance of contradiction, without the need to describe the realities as a paradox.

Weil says, “This is why in all beauty we find contradiction, bitterness and absence which are irreducible.” Similarly, as shown above, Lacan’s jouissance, which ranges beyond human possibility, is a vibrant phenomenon just outside the grasp of the subject. Poetry, and beauty is “a poignant touch, nostalgia” capturing jouissance and leaving it

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unknown. Weil says, “poetry: impossible pain and joy . . . a joy which by reason of its unmixed purity hurts; a pain which by reason of its unmixed purity brings peace.” Beauty seen in Weil’s terms is quite unknowable and flirts with impressions which humanity can only fleetingly experience and ironically write about; Weil discusses this impossibility and the impossible. For Lacan it is impossible to communicate a real which can never be changed by human effort.

Weil points out a validated statement about most humans, characterized by modern psychology, which is, “By nature we fly from suffering and seek pleasure.” But, as in the case of sadism, masochism and religious flagellating, this statement may not be true. Nevertheless, this transitions the text into speaking of good and evil. Weil points out an error that is often present when thinking about good and evil. Because we by nature “fly from suffering and seek pleasure. . . joy serves as an image for good and pain for evil. Hence the imagery of paradise and hell.” In searching for truth Weil refuses to accept our typical notions of these kinds of distinctions. Explaining the way in which opposites carry with them a trace of each other, Weil says “Evil is the shadow of good. All real good, possessing solidity and thickness, projects evil. Only imaginary good does not project it” (p. 102). This is an example of what Weil says about contradictions, but indicates that evil cannot exist without good.

Joy is needed to know suffering. Just as Weil states that evil cannot exist without “real good,” she demonstrates similar thinking about joy and suffering. She reports:

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Thus 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. What does suffering take from him who is without joy?

And if we conceive of the fullness of joy, suffering is still to joy what hunger is to food.

It is necessary to have had a revelation of reality through joy in order to find reality through suffering. Otherwise life is nothing but a more or less evil dream. We must attain to the knowledge of a still fuller reality in suffering which is a nothingness and a void. In the same way we have greatly to love life in order to love death still more. (p.84)

Here it is “fullness of joy” which helps one better understand the significance of suffering. Weil uses the word “purer” and “more intense” as indicates drawing closer to the truth that she perpetually seeks. Weil continues to explain the role that joy and suffering play in attaining knowledge of reality. This comes as a “revelation” when it is brought to us through joy, much like beauty and love, those things which can’t be fully explained. Although one must know joy first in order to appreciate suffering, the knowledge that comes by way of suffering is of a “still fuller reality,” which is “nothingness and a void.” These become the topic of exploration in the next chapter, which is about Decreation.

Weil (2002a) uses cultic stories to tell more about the relationship of joy and suffering to knowledge:

Suffering and enjoyment as sources of knowledge. The serpent offered knowledge to Adam and Eve. The Sirens offered knowledge to Ulysses. These stories teach

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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. (p.83)

As a practice of Attention, knowledge is not sought in pleasure; rather there is an element of suffering and an endorsement of work, hard work. This work became the responsibilities of the parties involved as the protagonists of these stories, indeed in the story of Adam and Eve. Instead of knowledge lighting on them, work did instead. Physical labor does play a key role in Weil’s method of Attention as will be discussed later in this chapter. Weil, continuing to reveal her hysteric nature, highlights that it is suffering which makes us seek knowledge: “it is permissible to seek that only in suffering.” Although joy or pleasure is required to appreciate suffering, if we only know pleasure our soul will be lost.

Suffering is needed to know more. Affliction and suffering are needed to aide in the search for a mystical union and maintain the lack which the hysteric expects; this means that these two phenomena exist in a concrete, positive manner. Weil continues about the relationship between joy and suffering,

Joy is the overflowing consciousness of reality. But to suffer while preserving our consciousness of reality is better. To suffer without being submerged in the nightmare. May the suffering be in one sense purely exterior and in another purely interior. For this to be so it must be situated only in the feelings. Then it is exterior (as it is outside the spiritual part of the soul) and interior (as it is entirely concentrated on ourselves, without being reflected back on to the universe in

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order to impair it). Affliction compels us to recognize as real what we do not think possible. (p. 81)

For “joy” to be the “overflowing consciousness of reality,” in my interpretation of Weil, is about how dedicated one is to Attention, how intentional one is about not involving will, judgment nor distraction: “To suffer without being submerged in the nightmare.” In order to experience joy, which is the “overflowing of consciousness of reality,” there must be the recognition that the captivating forces of grace, gravity and beauty are ordered by necessity. It seems that a return to Weil’s notion of “the right union of opposites” would best be applied to the text here in gaining a better understanding of what Weil’s discourse is about and so that it can be grasped. Weil writes, “The right union of opposites is achieved on a higher plane” (p. 101), this is to speak of a limit or impossibility. Returning once again to affliction, I will discuss its nature in the context of regarding Weil’s Attention. “Affliction compels us to recognize as real what we do not think possible.” For Lacan (1998) the status of truth comes upon a limit: jouissance (p. 92). Truth is restrained in Weil’s contrariety, justly so are joy and suffering examined in the same context. For Weil the limit comes at the edge of the “interior” and the “exterior,” Weil indicates that “only in feelings” is “suffering” contained and is within the interior. “May the suffering be in one sense purely exterior and in another purely interior.”

The phenomenon of coexistent and contradictory concepts is accounted for by St. Paul and Rudolph Otto, as Springsted (1996) writes,

When St. Paul employs the term "mystery" in his writings he generally does so in order to discuss what is revealed in Christ. Common parlance, however, often

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inverts Paul's sense of the term by making mystery refer to what is opaque and yet to be revealed and understood. The twentieth century, though, has seen important work that is designed to recapture the original religious sense of mystery. Rudolf Otto, for example, in The Idea of the Holy, has argued the mysterium is “the wholly other, that which is quite beyond the sphere of the usual, the intelligible and the familiar . . . filling the mind with blank wonder and astonishment.” (p. 13)

Springsted’s explication and solution to the problem rings true with paradox or mystery, but does not line-up with Weil’s ideas about contradiction. Weil accepts contradiction prima facia, for the value which she sees in it, for the appreciation and inescapability of contradiction; as opposed to viewing incompatibilities as paradox, mystery or solution, which dismisses the richness of allowing the natural negative repulsion of contradiction. For Weil, the union of opposites is the radical acceptance of what we cannot change and the incompatibility of ideas that humans must value. Though the paradox that Rudolph Otto explains is beautiful, from Weil’s point of view contradiction in and of itself is beauty, necessity. Again, as Weil (2002a) wrote, as a matter of fact pleasure and pain are inseparable companions (p. 83).

In this text Weil begins to delineate the difference between suffering and affliction. Weil (1977) explains the delineation in the following way:

In the realm of suffering, affliction is something apart, specific and irreducible. It is quite a different thing from simple suffering. It takes possession of the soul and marks it through and through with its own particular mark, the mark of slavery. (p. 439)

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Affliction is prolonged and has a physical component, it can kill the soul and after which one can never be the same. Weil says that, “as I worked in the factory . . . there I received forever the mark of a slave” (p. 14). Weil (2012) understood that “in an epoch like ours when affliction is suspended over all of us, bringing help to the soul is only effective to the point of preparing it for affliction” (p. 34). In that time all of Europe was living through the war and shared a common experience of affliction.

In explaining Attention Weil (2002a) expresses the nature and integrity of this process with a statement of warning about the momentary realization of “horror” and our frailty to nakedness that we experience as a result of the process. Weil names the “character of suffering” as that which leaves an unresolved impossibility and horror which brings will and intelligence “to a standstill.” Weil demonstrates how to “suffer while preserving our consciousness of reality” (p. 81) in the following passage in which she identifies a posture of hope in the midst of suffering as a response to the deity and the questioner:

The irreducible character of suffering which makes it impossible for us not to have a horror of it at the moment when we are undergoing it is destined to bring the will to a standstill, just as absurdity brings the intelligence to a standstill, and absence love, so that man, having come to the end of his human faculties, may stretch out his arms, stop, look up and wait [emphasis added]. (p.112)

“Look up and wait” demonstrates that the question will remain about the nature of human suffering and God’s justice concerning human suffering. Weil’s explanation and answer to this line of questioning is sometimes seemingly opaque; Weil often speaks of something esoteric or mystical, but should not leave her reader wanting. Quite the

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opposite, Weil confronts the problem of evil head-on with no reservations about how she thinks about it. Weil speaks of the joy that accompanies being conscious and the necessity of suffering to sustain it. There is a saving grace in the realization of that suffering. At that “moment” of Attention to suffering, when it is realized that the integrity which one experiences is utter impossibility, one cannot do much more, “having come to the end of his faculties,” than to attend, “stop, and look” to the awareness that he "stretch(es) out his arms” to receive.

That moment of “horror” is reminiscent of the realization one can reach through Attention. As Joan Dargan (1999) points out, “modern technology has sealed off the abyss Pascal, in his terror, proclaimed: now it is our shallowness that quite literally drives us to distraction” (p. 57). It is a kind of terror or horror that brings one into such a realization, or that one experiences in the light of realization. Philosophers are in need of Attention in order to enter such a moment, because of the seeming “absurdity” that advances one’s “intelligence to a standstill.” Considering the war time Weil lived in, this era only contextualized Weil’s writing. As De Kesel (2013) grapples with the work of Lacan and Weil, it must be understood that Lacan and Weil were not in a vacuum and both were influenced by the language and experiences of their time, such as “horror.” In light of this “horror,” curiously enough, Weil (2002a) says that the “extreme greatness of Christianity lies in the fact that it does not seek a supernatural remedy for suffering but a supernatural use for it” (p.81).

Impossibility is a theme (see chapter one) that runs in Lacanian theory which states there is desire driving misrecognition. In the process, content is confronted with “impossibility” between the agent and the other, causing a problem. Verhaeghe (1995)

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Analyst’s Discourse

a  $

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S2 S1

explains this problem: “communication is always a failure: moreover, that it has to be a failure, and that’s the reason why we keep on talking. If we understood each other, we would all remain silent” (p. 111). This is Attention returning to the scene in the form of silent unadulterated reflection, in that “we would all remain silent.” Weil advocates apparently for Attention through a line of observation which is very similar to the discourse of the analyst. In the clinical use of this phenomenon, this is evidenced by the object a listening for truth, that is, the analyst listens to what the analysand has to say in the form of slips. Weil (2002a) says, “The attention turned with love towards God (or in a lesser degree, towards anything which is truly beautiful) makes certain things impossible for us” (p. 119). Attention puts certain behavior out of the question; visiting beauty with Attention dissolves the influence of the self, which drops out of existence (no will, no desire). This accounts for why Bracher (1993) can assert that the analyst’s discourse is the “most effective means of achieving social change by countering psychological and social tyranny” (p. 68).

Attention as a process for change. With the goal of social change it is evident that Attention is about justice and right action; here we see this in Weil’s ideas concerning a proper response involving a spiritual transformation and a change in moral response to the challenges of life. Weil (2002a) relates the role of Attention in the process of taming desire and morality in the following:

When a struggle goes on between the will attached to some obligation and a bad desire, there is a wearing away of the energy attached to good. We have to endure the biting of the desire passively, as we do a suffering which brings home to us

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our wretchedness, and we have to keep our attention turned toward the good. Then the quality of our energy is raised to a higher degree. We must steal away the energy from our desires by taking away from them their temporal orientation. (p. 120-121)

In this text the moral is indicated by the word “obligation.” Attention is central, and if we and keep it “turned toward the good,” as opposed to a “temporal orientation,” then “our energy is raised to a “higher degree.” “Suffering” and knowledge of “our wretchedness,” the limit, continue as two qualities indicated as necessary for Attention to take place. It is important to understand desire brings about suffering and wretchedness, or “[enduring] the biting of desire” without acting on it, “passively.” This dynamic renders itself useful in Weil’s theological considerations. Weil did not prefer the theology of the Hebrew Bible, however her thought was certainly influence by this as a gestalt. Weil discusses the “inclinations,” a Hebrew concept of morality, (good inclination and bad inclination) within understanding of Jewish theology when she writes about the “energy attached to good” and “keeping attention turned toward the good.” Weil generally endorses a Greek conception of good; however, in this instance a Jewishness is evident.

In what follows Weil expresses her ideas regarding taming desire, in a Christian, abstract and yet dynamic way. Weil puts her understanding in the following way:

Our desires are infinite in their pretension but limited by the energy from which they proceed. That is why with the help of grace we can become their master and

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finally destroy them by attrition. As soon as this is being clearly understood, we have virtually conquered them, if we keep our attention in contact with this truth. (p. 121)

The desire which Weil identifies is quite elucidating. By stating “Our desires are infinite in their pretension,” Weil indicates that desire can encompass many layers of meaning on multiple “planes.” Therefore, it can be surmised that desire is pervasive and central to the movement of life. This is a key concept in Lacanian understanding. Desire exaggerates the process of Attention, as Lacan (1977) defines it “phenomenology that emerges from analytic experience is certainly of a kind to demonstrate in desire the paradoxical, deviant, erratic, eccentric, even scandalous character by which it is distinguished from need” (p. 286). As much as Martin Heidegger understood anxiety to be a basic component of all sentient beings, Weil and Lacan make desire to be the lynchpin which holds together human experience.

Attention and impartiality. Attention, in the form of concentration, is critical for the development of the educated, learning, individual, in order to see reality clearly; perhaps to drift into the Other and for the self to drift away, which would be the fulfillment of Weil’s mysticism. Weil shows that Attention has intentionality; just as it draws back it has the property to suspend thought and be empty, waiting not seeking. Weil (1977) says:

Attention consists of suspending our thought. . . . Our thought should be in relation to all particular and already formulated thoughts, as a man on a mountain who, as he looks forward, sees also below him, without actually looking at them,

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a great many forests and plains. Above all our thought should be empty, waiting, not seeking anything, but ready to receive in its naked truth the object that is to penetrate it (p. 49).

I note here that suspending thought is the intuitiveness necessary to apply poetry and beauty to life. The poetic metaphor Weil uses to demonstrate the act of Attention illustrates the kind of freedom of view that happens in the life with poetry. The worker would be much benefited by the ability to see knowledge and beauty. For Weil this knowledge through Attention aides one in seeing the necessary terrain on which one is to traverse in order to arrive at enlightenment, and the true knowledge hysteric Weil wishes that poetry would offer the worker. Weil understands the need for the worker to see “below him, without actually looking at them, a great many forests and plains.” In other words, it is enlightenment when the worker “sees,” with Attention, all which is necessary to carry out the revolution in the mind and heart, enabling knowledge and care, in a world full of injustice, war and oppression.

Weil also advocates suspending judgment, as the contradictories of good and evil are a continued topic for Weil; she attends to them without preconceived notions. In the face of clear visibility the good and the evil are seen together as a tandem of associated contradictory notions, which Weil considers together and not distinctly apart. In the text below, Weil understands that the “good gains the day” only after Attention has projected “light” equally to the matter of this tandem, which I consider Weil’s acceptance of contradictories; neither of which is capitalized in an attempt for one to gain any significance over the other or to be considered transcendent phenomena together or apart from one another:

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We should be indifferent to good and evil but, when we are indifferent, that is to say when we project the light of our attention equally on both, the good gains the day. This phenomenon comes about automatically. There lies the essential grace. And it is the definition, the criterion of good. A divine inspiration operates infallibly, irresistibly, if we do not turn away our attention, if we do not refuse it. There is not a choice to be made in its favour, it is enough not to refuse to recognize that it exists. (p.119)

By Weil suspending her judgment and practicing Attention, neither good, beauty nor truth is capitalized by Weil; this indicates that these notions are not to be used for power and advantage in the shedding of blood. “A divine inspiration operates infallibly, irresistibly, if we do not turn away our attention” identifies the connection between the divine and Attention, which Weil (1977) often reiterates when she says, “the faculty of attention which, directed toward God, is the very substance of prayer” (p.45). Weil states that the results of impartial Attention come about “automatically” as an “essential grace,” which highlights the non-action that is part of Attention. The results of Attention cannot be forced by the will. It is not a matter of evaluating good and evil and then making a “choice” of one over the other, but the results, the knowledge that comes by way of Attention, comes from the higher level and only needs to be “recognized” and not refused.

Weil (2002a) describes this process which the practice of Attention automatically brings to us knowledge of what is right in good in the following text:

That action is good which we are able to accomplish while keeping our attention and intention totally directed towards pure and impossible goodness, without

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veiling from ourselves by any falsehood either the attraction or the impossibility of pure goodness. In this way virtue is entirely analogous to artistic inspiration. The beautiful poem is the one which is composed while the attention is kept directed towards inexpressible inspiration, in so far as it is inexpressible. (p.97)

Contradiction is implied in Weil’s ideas as she again returns to an “impossibility” that is explained in the earlier text about coming to a limit. Just as Attention brings the student or worker closer to horror (impossibility or limit) it is in that in which beauty comes forth. Again this is that unity of the suffering that is an essential part of joy or the beautiful. The suffering is referred to when Weil states that we must attend or receive the knowledge that results from Attention “without veiling from ourselves by any falsehood.”

When Weil pushes contradictories Springsted (1996) identifies Weil’s contradictions as “problems” (p.15), but I continue to hold that Weil considers contradictories not be resolved by identifying them as “paradox,” but rather to use them to disarm the master narrative in every situation possible. Again it is the Lacanian hysteric’s discourse which describes this default thinking of Weil. In this framework the hysteric speaks to the master seeking real and potential knowledge with the impossibility of ascertaining anything of truth except a trace. Weil does not stop here but she recognizes that trace as the “pure and impossible goodness,” and calls for one to always keep their “attention and intention totally direct toward” this trace. This is her move to the analyst’s discourse in which it is the “object a” that is in the place of the agent. It cannot express itself in words and that is why we must look at it.

Attention and politics. For Weil the political landscape at her time led her to conclusions in response to the many voices in the dominant discourses and she addresses

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the master signifier in several areas, one of which is in the area of aesthetics. Here she speaks of human ability to reach a higher plane, a more holistic response to the theorists around her. Weil (2002b) connects the notion of the complexities of the art and aesthetics to politics in the following:

Politics have a very close affinity to art---to art such as poetry, music and architecture. Simultaneous composition on several planes at once is the law of artistic creation, and wherein, in fact, lies its difficulty. (p.214)

This text is about human experience as being on “planes.” This may be an indication of the “higher plane” from which the knowledge that we gain by Attention comes from or it may just be an acknowledgement of the complexity there is in human relationship. In a similar vein Weil (2002a) says “only real objects have three dimensions” and the imagination “does away with multiple relationships” (p.17). Weil (2002b) goes into great detail and uses her analytical process to illuminate complexity of poetics for the reader:

A poet, in the arrangement of words and the choice of each word, must simultaneously bear in mind managers on at least five or six different planes of composition. The rules of versification --- number of syllables and rhymes--- in the poetic form he has chosen; the grammatical sequence of words; the logical sequence from the point of view from the development of his thought; the purely musical sequence of self-contained in the syllable; the service big material rhythm form by pauses, stops, duration of each syllable and of each group of syllables; the atmosphere with which each word is surrounded by the possibilities of suggestion it contains, and the transition from one atmosphere to the other to another as fast as the words succeed each other; the psychological rhythm

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produced by the duration of words corresponding to such and such an atmosphere or such and such a movement of thought; the effects of repetition and novelty; doubtless other things besides; and finally a unique intuition for beauty which gives all this a unity. (p.214)

Weil speaks at length about the way in which a poet uses different aspects of persona, wisdom, love, or whit, to craft poetry. Weil uses the notion of several or more planes to distinguish the manner in which the poet goes about constructing a work in order to reach the desired level of aesthetic value the work can illicit. From the choice of words to the designation of syllables and rhymes, Weil makes it abundantly clear that the poet dances with a number of possibilities to address in the work, and bring it to a “unity.”

Weil writes, “A poet, in the arrangement of words and the choice of each word, must simultaneously bear in mind managers on at least five or six different planes of composition.” Marion Michel Oliner (1988), in explaining how Lacan was complex, and in my opinion poetic, states that “Lacan is confusing . . . . (which confronts) the reader with two choices: a posture of modesty in the face of a complexity that exceeds one’s own intelligence. . . or a rejection of Lacan’s complexity because it hides confused thinking and fundamental errors” (p. 118). These two choices are very similar to what Weil says everyone must decide when seeking out truth. Weil appreciates the complex thought, as the poet might balance and the politician needs to negotiate, and thereby advocates a posture of modesty. Here what Weil writes is contextualizing in the following terms: “Simultaneous composition on several planes at once is the law of artistic creation, and wherein, in fact lies its difficulty.” This difficulty is an acceptance of impossibilities that are ever present in trying to honestly seek out truth and goodness.

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In the following quote, Weil (2002b) shows the role that Attention plays in the ability to negotiate complexity.

Inspiration is a tension on the part of the soul’s faculties which renders possible the indispensable degree of concentration [emphasis added] required for composition on a multiple planes.

Whoever finds himself incapable of such concentration will one day acquire the capacity for it, if he perseveres humbly and patiently, and if he is impelled by violent and unshakable desire. (p. 214)

“Inspiration” is that which comes from the higher plane, which Weil says “is a tension,” or as was just explained an acceptance of impossibility. It is this which makes Attention, “concentration,” possible; and it is this Attention which is required for creating something beautiful. Again the unity of suffering or “tension” with beauty. Weil insists that this ability for “concentration” or Attention is a gift, not achieved by willing it to happen, and indeed comes with humility and patience and a “unshakable desire” for it. This is Weil’s unyielding desire for truth.

Weil continues to explain the connection she sees between Attention, complexity and politics in the following:

Politics, in their turn, form an art governed by composition on a multiple plane. Whoever finds himself with political responsibilities, if in his heart he hungers and thirsts after justice, must desire to possess his faculty of composition on a multiple plane, and consequently is bound, to receive it . . . .

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To the extent which human language fall short of divine beauty, to that extent Man’s sentient and intellectual faculties fall short of truth, and the necessities of social life fall short of justice. Consequently, politics cannot but be as much in need of efforts of creative invention as our arts and science. (p.214)

Weil draws the parallel that the politician must truly desire “justice,” as well as desire the “faculty” to create beautiful good social change. This requires the humility and patience of accepting the limits of impossibility. For Weil these impossibilities are evidence of truth and therefore she is always seeking them out and refusing to reason them away or be distracted from them, thereby preventing truth from being turned into an end for its own sake, and it remains a vehicle for pursuing the good, which is transcendent. In my conclusion I demonstrate the effects of the combinatory nature of Metaxu, Attention, and Decreation. Here the means (rather than ends) by which Metaxu (through vehicular means) works with Attention to create beautiful social change. For justice to happen each worker must practice humility, rarely seen among those who desire change. Weil (2002a) expresses her love of truth in the following, “Love is the teacher of gods and men, for no one learns without desiring to learn. Truth is sought not because it is truth but because it is good” (p. 118). In Gravity and Grace Weil clarifies the application:

The poet produces the beautiful by fixing his attention on something real. It is the same with the act of love. To know that this man who is hungry and thirsty really exists as much as I do—that is enough, the rest follows of itself. (p. 119)

Weil demonstrates this kind of “love” throughout her life, with a constant eye of compassion on people around her who were suffering.

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It is worth noting that part of what Weil indicates finally is about impossibility and says “To the extent which human language fall short of divine beauty, to that extent Man’s sentient and intellectual faculties fall short of truth” [emphasis added] (p.214. Considered within the structure of Lacanian discourse, with the agent being the speaking position, and the position of truth just under the agent, it can be seen that Weil’s notion of “Man’s” inability to attain ultimate “truth” bespeaks the limitations of all human discourse. Just as the Lacanian notion of impossibility explains that the agent can never fully express (or know) the truth because of the limits imposed by language, Weil connects this impossibility of communication to justice and politics in the words “the necessities of social life fall short of justice [emphasis added].” Weil is making a call to listen to beauty and love, in all domains of life, because it contains a transcendent goodness that our language and reasoning and political ideologies fall short of apprehending.

Weil’s personal application of Attention to politics. Weil grew increasingly frustrated with politics, the individuals and systems. Weil was a tireless hysteric who always wanted to have furthering of her knowledge beyond that with whom she was engaged in discussion. Weil’s contribution also lay in the fact that she could hold an argument with Leon Trotsky with courage, fortitude and acumen on her own. This hysteric energy drove Weil to speak most frankly about the workers’ conditions. Blum and Seidler demonstrate that Weil’s interest was in worker(s) and not revolution.

Weil began to develop a theory informed by the work that she had done; this became apparent in her writings, especially those theoretical, theological and philosophical writings that are examined in my work about Weil. The essence of work,

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knowledge, and beauty build into one the ability to realize all three of these through Attention. According to Blum and Seidler (1989) “in what she read about the Soviet Union, Simone Weil saw evidence for her contention that so often ‘the essential task of revolutions consists in the emancipation not of men but of productive forces’” (p. 124). Power would in essence change hands but would corrupt the new hierarchy that would be established in which there would be all new bureaucrats and a new working class. This is not an acceptable solution for Weil, who sees through the Master Signifier or narrative of the day. In her own attempt to gather information about how to solve the workers’ problems she uses the method of Attention, collecting data through the lived experience of working as the workers worked, both in factory and in the field. Initially she may have thought she would come upon a simple practical solution to be implemented, but she walks away from this Attention project with much more.

Returning to Weil’s jouissance moment is where she does not allow there to be a separation between affliction and joy, but on the other hand understands there to be a tension such that one is reminded of something just beyond reach, cognitively and spiritually speaking. First this experience of factory work especially changed her whole subjectivity. In her biography of Weil, Pétrement (1976) states, “it seems to me, something changed in her character or in the feeling she had toward herself and her life; and this change seems to have prepared the ground for those ideas of hers that will appear some years latter” (p. 215). She goes on to quote a letter Weil writes to Father Perrin, “the affliction of others entered into my flesh and my soul. Nothing separated me from it, for I had really forgotten my past and I looked forward to no future, finding it difficult to imagine the possibility of surviving all the fatigue. . . .There I received forever the mark

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of slavery” (p. 215). Weil’s way of identifying depriving conditions for the worker was kindled in her from her work in factories. Weil writes of her notions of necessity and beauty, holding these two together as demonstrated in the previous texts in this chapter. Weil (2002a) writes:

The great hardship in manual work is that we are compelled to expend our efforts for such long hours simply in order to exist. The slave is he to whom no good is proposed as the object of his labour except mere existence. . . .

To strive from necessity and not for some good—driven not drawn—in order to maintain our existence just as it is—that is always slavery. In this sense the slavery of manual workers is irreducible. Effort without finality. It is terrible—or the most beautiful thing of all—if it is finality without an end. The beautiful alone enables us to be satisfied by that which is. (p.180)

Weil makes the confusing statement “it is terrible—or the most beautiful thing of all,” which echoes the strange quote examined in the Metaxu chapter that “relentless necessity, wretchedness, distress, the crushing burden of poverty. . . all these constitute divine love” (Weil 2002a, p. 32). This returns to Weil’s refusal to deny either affliction or joy, insisting on holding them together; this is not easy or natural, but the union of these, and the good that is to be found in them comes through the process of Attention. Weil comes to the understanding that physical labor is a fine tool for developing this level of Attention because it puts the body directly in contact with the blind necessity that God has graciously put into place. Weil states “The spirituality of work. Work makes us experience in the most exhausting manner the phenomenon of finality” (p. 179).

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The land naturally is theirs, no ownership by another, no boundaries, no utter form is the land formed by in the finite world. The workers have nothing between themselves and good, nothing separates them from participating in wholeness, and a land owned by the terrestrial lords cannot be called the workers’ land. In talking specifically about the rural farm workers Weil states:

No terrestrial finality separates the workers from God. They alone are so situated. All other conditions imply special aims which form a screen between man and pure good. But for them no such screen exists. They have nothing superfluous of which they have to strip themselves. (p. 180)

“No terrestrial finality separates the workers from God,” but for them there is nothing which separates them, and the work they do situates them outside of a spiritual or theological. The transgressor of the owned terrain: by virtue of the fact that the worker plows it sets the worker in the place of the transgressor. So as an agent, utopia (good- topos = good area of land) or the heavenly or beauty (a) is talking to the subject ($) and the product is the usual according to the analyst’s discourse, which best describes Weil’s prescription for Attention. The master signifier (S1) is in the position of the product in this discourse and knowledge (S2) is hidden in the position of the truth. The focus on Attention here involves a deterministic portion of Weil’s work, involving signifying; likewise, Lacan understands the same phenomenon as indicated. Lacan (1993) says, “Without this fundamental duality of signifier and signified no psychoanalytic determinism is conceivable” (p. 120).

Weil concludes that Attention, which is finding beauty in things, is essential to the proletariat and the needs of the workers. Attention is to be the key to satisfying work; as

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Weil says, “The beautiful alone enables us to be satisfied by that which is.” Thus submission in work is not lowly, but with Attention is good. Blum and Seidler (1989) suggest that:

Modern labor, then, not only involves servitude, it also disconnects workers from reality and thus from the social world. For Weil, however, work should do precisely the reverse. This is why it was so important for her to consider the ways the labor process could be transformed in order to restore work to its proper place in human life. And thus it is that she granted labor a central position in her thought. (p. 144)

Weil advocated for the education of the working class. Weil wished for the average worker to have the education needed in order to understand his/her position in life. Weil believed an educated working class would help bring them equality however we see her commitment to a more spiritual goal of education. According to Weil (2002b), “rural school teachers should know the peasants . . . a very large part of their training out to be devoted to the folk-lore of all countries, presented not as an object of curiosity, but as something ‘superb’” (p. 88). Weil’s goal is for these peasants to see the beauty in their way of life. Beauty and respect for the land in which they live and the customs that have been handed down to them. This is her concept of “rootedness.”

The importance of rootedness is implied in Weil’s (2002a) quote below:

Slavery is work without any light from eternity, without poetry, without religion. May the eternal light give, not a reason for living and working, but a sense of completeness which makes the search for any such reason unnecessary. Failing

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that, the only incentives are fear and gain—fear, which implies the oppression of the people; gain, which implies the corruption of the people. (p 181)

Rootedness is about finding beauty, the opening quote of the Metaxu chapter hints at this when it call it a “sacrilege” to destroy those “mixed blessings (home, country, traditions, culture, etc.) which ward and nourish the soul” (Weil, 2002a, p. 147). These are the things in life which cannot be put into words, that is why they don’t provide us with “reason”, but make “reason unnecessary” because they give us a “sense of completeness.” The words “eternal light” indicate that this understanding which only comes through Attention, comes from the transcendent good. This again is illustrated by the Lacan’s analyst’s discourse in which we let that which cannot be put into words (a) be in the position of agent, “reason” or knowledge (S2) is in the hidden position of truth and the result is a product of a “sense of completeness,” the function of the master signifier (S1). This text, with the words “failing this” seems to indicate that Weil views this as the only solution.

The proletariat needed something sacred about their conditions. Weil gives this sacredness a name, holiness or transcendental purpose; Weil calls this the “spirituality of work” (Weil, 2002a, p. 179). Weil (2002b) states that physical labor should be society’s “spiritual core” (p. 298). Weil (2002a) wrote the following in respect to and for the working class:

Workers need poetry more than bread. They need that their life should be a poem. They need some light from eternity. Religion alone can be the source of such

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poetry. It is not religion but revolution which is the opium of the people. Deprivation of this poetry explains all forms of demoralization. (pp. 180-181)

Poetry in this context implies beauty and knowledge, as well as education toward enlightenment. Weil’s deep respect for religious life on the practical level is practiced daily through help offered by Attention. Attention brings about the essential qualities and ingredients for the worker to realize their need for education. For Weil, workers need poetry and knowledge through education. To leave out the value of work for Weil would be a mistake; to leave out the inevitability of a spiritual component to work would also be a mistake.

Poetry, learning, and work within Attention are related to values and the transcendent’s transformational effect. Spiritual life would be bereft of value without the practice of some form of attentive process and experience. To gain the benefit of the educative process, this would leave a definition of aesthetic and therefore authentic pedagogy. Weil (2002a) addresses aesthetics’ “authentic and pure values” such as in her assertion that:

truth, beauty and goodness— in the activity of a human being are the result of one and the same act, a certain application of the full attention to the object. Teaching should have no aim but to prepare, by training the attention, for the possibility of such an act. All the other advantages of instruction are without interest. (p.120)

Experience of the transcendent: this seems contradictory, and yet the transcendent can be known only through contact since our faculties are unable to invent it. (p.121)

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“Truth, beauty and goodness” are equated with “the transcendent” in this text, and being able to fully attend to this should be the sole purpose of all education. Weil states that the transcendent can only be know through experience, or contact, “since our faculties are unable to invent it.” This again is to say that that the transcendent cannot be spoken of or even properly conceived of by the human mind, or in Lacanian terms it cannot be found in the symbolic or imaginary orders; it can only be known “through contact,” though these are often fleeting and brief.

Weil believed and practiced with “full attention to the object” and had the “experience of the transcendent,” which she thought, “seems contradictory.” Though Weil was an agnostic she held to “values” that were Christian in the face of “contradiction” and seems to have always lived with an attitude of appreciation for values that were Christian. Weil (1977) says “I might say that I was born, I grew up, and I always remained within the Christian inspiration. While the very name of God had no part in my thoughts, with regards to the problems of this world and this life I shared the Christian conception in an explicit and rigorous manner” (p. 11). In her spiritual autobiography, written to Father Perrin, Weil noted the contradiction of her life and the experiences with that which was totally Other to her.

Weil (1977) says “I had three contacts with Catholicism that really counted” (p. 14). All three of these were undergirded by some affliction which Weil suffered at the expense of her sensibilities. Weil notes that the contradictions in her autobiography were between her intellectual ascent and her spiritual experience. One was watching wives of fishermen singing hymns “of heart-rending sadness,” the second being in a chapel in Assisi where she felt compelled to kneel for the first time in her life and third at a Palm

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Sunday service where she was able to leave her suffering of a terrible headache to “find a pure and perfect joy in the unimaginable beauty of the chanting and the words.” Weil states in regards to this experience that she was able “to get a better understanding of the possibility of loving divine love in the midst of affliction” (p. 15). In Weil’s affliction she includes herself among slaves and indicates that she has “received forever the mark of a slave” (p. 14) as a result of her work in the factory. When reciting the poem Love, by George Herbert, she recalls the experience of “Christ himself came down and took possession of me” (p. 16).

Creativity. Weil’s spiritual experience indicates that Attention was necessary for her to recognize others in her own mystical experiences and it challenged her to create in the context of her religious life. In the next passage, Weil (2002a) elicits the power of creativity and with it an attestation to the need for Attention to achieve it:

Extreme attention is what constitutes the creative faculty in man and the only extreme attention is religious. The amount of creative genius in any period is strictly in proportion to the amount of extreme attention and thus of authentic religion at that period. The wrong way of seeking. The attention fixed on a problem. Another phenomenon due to horror of the void. We do not want to have our lost our labour. (p. 117)

Weil saw in human nature, with the aid of transcendent intervention, the possibility for creativity. It is important to note that Weil sees this creativity as “strictly in proportion” to “authentic religion;” it is making use of treading in the waters of “truth, beauty and goodness” those elements that are only to be found on the “higher plane.” The notion of grace is alluded to in the reminder, “The wrong way of seeking. The attention fixed on a

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problem.” It is not a matter of will and effort, but this is difficult to avoid because “we do not want to have lost our labour.” Weil (2012) puts it in another way in her essay, School Studies and the Love of God, “We can expend this type of muscular effort in studies. Because it ends in fatigue, we get the impression of having worked. This is an illusion” (p. 24). Lacan’s (1981) term “truth …that which runs after truth” ( is the pursuit of knowledge beyond that of the analyst, beyond that of the master signifier and signifying chain, it is the nature of the unconscious which is sought, the unconscious as described by Lacan (1998) here:

The status of the unconscious, which, as I have shown, is so fragile on the ontic plane, is ethical. In his thirst for truth, Freud says, Whatever it is, I must go there, because, somewhere, this unconscious reveals itself. And he says this on the basis of his experience of what was, up to that time, for the physician, the most rejected, the most concealed, the most contained, reality, that of the hysteric, in so far as it is—in a sense, from its origin—marked by the sign of deception. (p. 33)

The hysteric is in continual pursuit, though deceived that there is a place to go to find truth, that which is not there; it is always evasive and is a beyond that the hysteric seeks. Weil spent her whole life was to reach that point of extinction that she believed lay beyond all truth.

The following text from Weil will give insights into Weil’s thoughts on the science of history and documentation, and its relationship to power and human struggle. Those within the academy or university pose a problem which Weil wishes to lay out into the open; the manner in which documents are viewed is problematic for Weil, in that work with documents often involves eisegesis, rather than exegetical work. History has

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been the result of the possession of texts, grammar, and episteme, as Michel Foucault refers to the eras which have been written about and the general fissures between and among the records. In this portion of Weil’s text she makes a statement about how the discourse of the university assumes that there is linearity among and through documents that administer knowledge. Weil (2002b) asserts the following and describes the tone indicative of a literary approach to history:

History is founded upon documents. The professional historian won’t allow himself to form hypotheses which don’t rest upon something. That seems to be very reasonable; but in reality is far from being so. For, since there are holes in documents, a balanced judgment requires the hypotheses which haven’t any basis should be present to the mind, provided they be there in that capacity, and that there be several of them in connexion with each particular point. (p. 221)

With the above observation Weil is accomplishing and supporting her claims that “The professional historian won’t allow himself to form hypotheses which don’t rest upon something.” Each scholar brings to the document presuppositions which enjoin both the recognition of the presuppositions and the preoccupation or direction the historian is taking the document in; this move implies an end, but Weil emphasizes the means rather than the end in all areas of knowledge. Each document is specifically relevant to the “balanced judgment” Weil so keenly values.

Weil finds “holes in documents” which create a tension. “Tension” is a term which brings with it, from a Lacanian analysis, the dichotomous nature of university inquiry. Suggesting that there are “holes” in the document is related to Lacan’s hole in the real. Lacan explains that the real is no-thing, before anything is real-ized it slips into

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the symbolic and lingers in the imaginary. For Lacan, according to Zita Marks (2001), this is that algorithm, “the object of his desire, represents the object a, the missing object that is sought in the Other. It is precisely because this object is perceived as one of lack in the signifying process and in the Other that one becomes a subject of desire” (p. 126). For Weil and the hysteric, truth is never achieved, being ever in reach, yet when found is under interrogation. Marks (2001) also attests to this nugget of truth in the following way: “there is an inescapable division between the subject and knowledge at the moment the process of knowledge comes into play, at the moment of knowing that something is lost. This object of lack represents (the a)” (p. 126). In the phrase, “That seems to be very reasonable; but in reality is far from being so,” Weil is directly addressing and challenging the discourse of the university; in this case a review of the Lacanian university discourse is helpful.

Knowledge (S2), taking the position of agent, is speaking and is in the dominant place within the discourse. On the level of the unconscious, which is structured like a language, knowledge is predominant and is in a position of power. Knowledge, as the agent in the formula, speaks with authority to the other, which in this case is, a thing, the object cause of desire (a); it is objectified. The other is the object cause of desire; the other is the social bond which carries with it the indispensible knowledge about the existence of social relationships and power. The subject is in the position of the product, denying the opportunity for there to be knowledge because the subject is continually split. In this case the split designates the impossibility of communication, but most of all for Weil “the void,” which is a major

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concept for Weil’s notion of Decreation. The desire for knowledge always comes to a divided subject; divided and hidden.

In the fleeting moment the object a is not extravagant, yet it is alluring. For Weil this truth is the highly sought after object. The glimmer of “truth” which Weil (2002b) pursues so diligently is sought out through Attention as seen below:

All the more reason why when dealing with documents it is necessary to read between the lines, allowing oneself to be transported entirely, with a complete forgetfulness of self, into the atmosphere of the events recalled, keep the attention [emphasis added] fixed for a very long time on any little significant detail and discover exactly what their full meaning is. (pp. 221-222)

Weil’s “reading between the lines” is the hysteric’s way of getting at the truth of the statement. It is a way of looking for the truth that can be discovered through the words that have been lost, which is an exercise of creativity, requiring the work of the Attention, “fixed for a very long time.” Weil again challenges the existence of the hegemony and its narrative to arrive at knowledge beyond it, but never ending or fulfilling her questions.

In the university discourse, knowledge is what the historians have, and they speak it in whatever manner the wish. In this formula history (which is a) is treated as an object, a document, (in the place of the other). The documents are reified and objectified, made sterile and made sacred.

Weil offers as the alternative to the university discourse, namely, the analyst’s discourse. Weil “allow(s) oneself to be

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transported entirely, with a complete forgetfulness of self, into the atmosphere of the events recalled.” For Weil history was not a sterile document, but rather a body of sentient life or a place to visit the truest of souls in the truest times. Herein is the nature of Weil’s appeal and creativity. Pėtrement notes that Weil was one who always had a unique way of attending to documents. Weil’s creative thinking ability propelled her to a high level of achievement. Alain, Weil’s beloved teacher, also noted Weil’s uniqueness. Pėtrement (1976) explains how Alain wrote that Weil was “an excellent student who is capable of far-ranging ideas and whose appreciation of the best authors is of the utmost originality. The results are almost always of the first order, though not without a certain lees of obscurity from which she will eventually free herself” (p. 41). It seems clear that Weil, as a hysteric, found a way to account for her knowledge, and manage the way the master signifier developed history.

Weil writes, “the attention [emphasis added] fixed for a very long time on any little significant detail and exactly what their full meaning is,” this finding of full meaning must be the glimmer into the real which is jouissance, or that excess which momentarily fills the senses with delight, and for the hysteric grandiosity through knowledge. Weil (2002b) continues,

But the respect for documents in the professional spirit of historians does not incline their minds toward this kind of exercise. What is called the historical spirit doesn’t pierce through the paper to discover real flesh and blood; it consists in a subordination of the mind to documents. (pp. 221-222)

Weil here confounds the work of scholars, by subverting their methodology. In not using Attention the historians forego a thorough and insightful recognition of the text in mind.

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In order to understand “the subordination of the mind to documents,” it seems again likely that Lacan can be helpful. Fink (1998) describes the notion of dialectizing, as a goal of analysis in the following way: “The task of analysis is to bring such master signifiers into relation to other signifiers, that is, to dialectize the master signifiers it produces” (p. 135). Hence, it seems that dialectizing the master signifier “mind” to other phenomena, such as documents, words, or articles (which it produces) would mean to relegate its meaning to be equivalent to those concepts, and this would fulfill the goal of Lacanian analysis precisely.

Weil announces once more the precision and distinctiveness with which professional historians evaluate documents by her conclusion that “since there are holes in documents, a balanced judgment requires the hypotheses which haven’t any basis should be present to the mind, provided they be there in that capacity, and that there be several of them in connexion with each particular point” (p. 221). The “historians” of the documents and discourse which Weil discusses here demonstrate the very nature of discourse in the university and its positioning as to what matters within academia. Weil (2002b) indicates the history is not possible because of the position of the particular historian.

Now, according to the nature of things, documents originate among the powerful ones, the conquerors. History, therefore, is nothing but a compilation of the depositions made by assassins with respect to their victims and themselves. (p. 221-222)

Weil understands that the nature of the documents that originate from scholars, the academy or historian, lead to the disavowal and discrediting of time and logic. The

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phrase “History, therefore, is nothing but a compilation of the depositions made by assassins with respect to their victims and themselves,” involves power and force, a concept with which Weil is well acquainted.. It is apparent that even though the discussion is about the discourse of the university what drives this discourse is the master signifier. In Lacan, as according to Stijn Vanheule, An Lievrouw, Paul Verhaeghe, (2003) it is recognized that the relational distinction is that which the hysteric, Weil, calls into question. For the hysteric questioning the master’s discourse deconstructs the language and leaves begging the questions about power. Can power reach the subjective domain? Can the hysteric analysand be in the powerful, yet unfulfilled position? This would mean a large portion of the hegemony’s frame of reference would become available to the analysand, or the subject.

Attention calls for the ‘I’ or “ich” to be present, to recognize that it is “necessary to be read between the lines.” Weil’s phrase about the “complete forgetfulness of the self,” happens with the focused mind, and “fixed Attention,” there is strength gained by which the subject will discover a new and enlightening knowledge of impossibility. Another part of the Weil’s passage here states that “the complete forgetfulness of self, into the atmosphere of the events recalled, keep the attention fixed for a very long time on any little significant detail and discover exactly what their full meaning is.” This indicates the stringent emphasis on the forgotten or lost self which is necessary for Attention to be in existence. The disappearance of the “self” happens through the use of Attention.

Weil (2002a) makes a statement concerning Attention which sets the stage for my next chapter on Decreation. Weil gives an example of the way Attention fulfills for her

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the notion of “non-acting action” in the essential process of coming to glimpse into the real.

The attention turned with love towards God (or in a lesser degree, towards anything which is truly beautiful) makes certain things impossible for us. Such is the non-acting action of prayer in the soul. There are ways of behavior which would veil such attention should they be indulged in and which, reciprocally, this attention puts out of the question. (p. 119)

Attention gives Weil a connection to the existentiality of behavior, action or non-action, an ascetic lifestyle. An understanding of Attention is very well developed with the use of Lacan’s discourses. My understanding of Weil’s movement toward Decreation can best be anticipated by the Lacanian notion of lack, and the development of the ego. That which happens for Weil is the complete embrace of the loss of self in order to fully submit to the transcendent good.

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Chapter Four

Decreation: Rappelling Upward

In this chapter Weil’s passion and disdain for life are explored through the concept of Decreation and her personal life of protest. Decreation, for Weil, is the sacred act of a loving God, who makes the uncreated part of God’s personhood in order to make room for created life. Weil (2002a) relentlessly affirms the path to self-annihilation, “to reduce to the point we occupy in space and time, --- that is to say, to nothing” (p. 12). The notion of Decreation is a major and central concept for Weil, in her theology as psychology. I will explore the way in which Weil’s conceptualizations and views about human nature, and her continual search for truth, lead her to adopt a self-denying, anhedonic, oft-labeled pessimistic way of life. The stress, in this chapter, on Weil’s notion of Decreation will include Weil’s concepts of void, desire, and impersonality. Lacan’s concepts of lack, unfulfilled longing and desire or Lacanian drive, ego formation, and alienation (the relationship between meaning and being) will help to bring understanding to Weil’s writings. Weil’s theological understanding of the Decreation of God and the Kenotic Gospel are also key influences on her personal philosophy of Decreation and her acetic lifestyle. Weil (1970) considered the Gospel to contain a “conception of human life, not a theology” (p. 147). Weil accepts complete surrender and making space in this life, by personal Decreation, to be the only way to demonstrate the love this God deserves in return.

Decreation first came into early modern philosophical parlance, being used by Nathaniel Ward in 1647 as such: “As he is a creature, hee feares decreation.” Decreation was used as a diminution and often as the undoing of creation; depriving of existence.

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Weil (2002a) makes a distinction in her definition as she states, “Decreation: to make something created pass into the uncreated. Destruction: to make something created pass into nothingness. A blameworthy substitute for decreation” (p. 32). Weil’s distinction between Decreation and destruction, and her understanding of the “uncreated,” are critical in explaining how she is not as nihilistic as many have interpreted her. Alessia Ricciardi (2009) speaks of the significance of Weil’s uses of the term Decreation and the effect it has had upon other scholars in the following: “Although it is true that the concept has its roots in an ancient Catharistic- Kabbalistic tradition and that Péguy, Blanchot, and Lévinas make use of it in their work, Weil should be credited with having been first to recognize the term's importance for present-day reader” (p. 75). Ricciardi also says that “the genealogy of Agamben’s notion potentiality can be traced back to Weil’s development of the theory of decreation in her notebooks . . . Why does Agamben not acknowledge his source, given the importance of Weil’s contributions on the topic?” (p. 75).

Scholars and writers have varying thoughts on Weil and her idea of Decreation. Weil’s philosophy surrounding Decreation may be what she is best known for and most misunderstood about. Palle Yourgrau (2011) expresses the point of view that Weil’s writing is “dangerous” (p. 13). In contrast Reed (2013b) attributes an ethical foundation to her minimization of self stating Weil’s “uncompromising ethics, while it clearly originated in her activism, ultimately owes its primary inspiration to religious experiences that appear to be nothing short of mystical” (p. 516). Reed continues, “In Simone Weil, however, we find an ethics that requires no room [for self] at all, but one which,

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conversely, might be served quite well by a psychoanalytic that reduces the subject to a desire that cannot be satisfied in this life” (p. 519).

In the work of Claire Wolfteich (2001), it is suggested that Weil moves toward nihilism. Weil, who sequestered herself to a life of losing the self, wrote that the mistake of most parties is the notion of progress, and that which they work for is a future that is impossible. That which Reed (2013a) understands to be Weil’s extreme is when he says, “It is almost as though she wanted to ‘decreate’ decreation itself, to deny its existence as a well-defined philosophical notion” (p. 25), which circumvents the application of Decreation in much the same way deconstructionism has been misappropriated by those who want to do destruction. Kenneth Rexroth (1987) considers Weil an egregious writer who “assaulted biblical narratives” (p. 8). Thibon, in his contribution to Gravity and Grace, also states that “nothing is more certain than that she has misunderstood certain aspects of Christian piety” (p. xxxiii), and that she was “a mystic and not as a metaphysician” (p. xxxii). Douglas Robillard (2004) acknowledges Flannery O’Conner’s fair and insightful view of Weil:

Every instinct in her Catholic spirit told her [Flannery O'Connor], in an instant, to reach out to the Simone Weil who was seeking God. Who cares, really, what her ‘problems’ were? Who of us is without them? Who has, on the one hand, struggled so hard to tame pride? Simone Weil was more of an intellectual than many who claim to the word; yet, she detested both the word and the arrogance connected to some of its usage. (p. 189)

I consider Weil as having a positive influence with her notion of Decreation, and in no sense is she negative or nihilistic. I disagree that Weil views death as the only

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escape from a hideous world. Weil (2002a) is sincere when she states, “you could not have been born at a better period than the present when we have lost everything” (p. 177). Weil’s self-deprecation comes from sincere humility and an attempt to pay homage to an “absolute goodness” that she sees as evident. It must be noted though that this evidence is not found in elements of the universe that she loves to refer to, but the evidence she finds for this “absolute goodness” is found in the places of fleeting beauty, as discussed in the Attention chapter, and in the places where we reach our limit of understanding or energy or strength, as discussed in the Metaxu chapter. Dunaway (1984) states, “Few writers have taken more seriously their role of prophetic witness, and few have taken up the mantle of prophetic authority with more humility than Simone Weil” (p. 106). Doering and Springsted (2004) have the following understanding of Weil, she is one of those who,

truly want to love God [and] must create an empty space for him, or, as Eckhart more radically puts it, they must allow God himself to create that empty space in them. Weil bases her idea of self-emptying on a particular idea of God. We must imitate God as God empties himself in creating the world, and decreate ourselves. (p. 15)

Weil is writing in the way that demonstrates how her personal life and experience inform her thoughts. This is an unconscious process by which Weil is fulfilling the role of the hysteric who wishes to know beyond knowledge.

All things of earthly value have no credence with Weil or her understanding of a Self-focused God, who is all that exists, who only allows us to exist by Decreating, opening a space of emptiness. Weil (2002a) states clearly in fortitude that she

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understands human endeavor to be that which “evaporate(s) like water in the sun” (p. 33). It was explained in the earlier chapter of Metaxu that one of Weil’s central concepts is necessity, which incurs a sense of the way the world has to be, the way in which it is bound. It is Weil’s meditation which notes the world as structured. This structure is outside human reach, and is the way in which the world is signified. Reed (2013b) concludes that “Necessity is the face that shows itself to us in the ‘diamond-hard’ laws of the natural world—a necessity which, as we noted earlier, could easily be extended to include the rule of the Symbolic law of language” (p. 526). The Lacanian symbolic is only a description of an elusive world to which the subject is involved, a world of impressions only, which vaporize themselves the moment they appear. Finch (2001) corroborates that Weil understands the reality of what exists to include a similar illusory quality contained in the following quote: “Existence, or shadow reality [is] illusion, the imaginary, prestige, social power, gold, pride, lies, war, ideology, the appearance of justice, fame, opinion” (p.36). Weil (2002a) explains how these illusory concepts of reality get in the way of finding help from the transcendent as she says, “Grace fills empty spaces but it can only enter where there is a void to receive it, and it is grace itself which makes this Void” (p. 27). Weil says, “man always has enough imagination at his disposal to hide from himself in each particular case the impossibility of good” (p. 94). This impossibility is uncomfortable places where we find evidence of the transcendent or “absolute good.”

Weil identifies more ways we attempt to fill up the void, “We must leave on one side the beliefs which fill up voids and sweeten what is bitter. The belief in immortality. The belief in the utility of sin” (p 15). She states that we must not imagine eternal life,

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because it is untenable to conceive of it. In Weil’s words, “Belief in immortality is harmful because it is not in our power to conceive of the soul as really incorporeal. So this belief is in fact a belief in the prolongation of life, and it robs death of its purpose” (p. 37). Weil here calls on the human to be responsible for the conceptions produced, in that inventing, substantiating, or believing may be a detriment, being Jewish and quite existentialist. She pronounces, “We must be careful about the level on which we place the infinite. If we place it on the level which is only suitable for the finite it will matter very little what name we give it” (p. 55). In doing this she demonstrates her willingness to even subvert conceptions of faith, not because there is no ultimate meaning, but in a quest for receiving the ultimate meaning, or “absolute good” as she terms it.

Weil wants to get further than the “half-truth,” as Lacan would call it. Weil sought truth in its essence complete, or full. Weil was interested in going beyond belief and further into experience of the transcendent, particularly in the Eucharist. Weil poignantly discusses her appreciation and level of respect and awe she attributes to it: “He has descended; he descends in the act of creation; as also in the Incarnation, the Eucharist, Inspiration, etc. But the movement comes from above, never from below; it is a movement on God’s part, not on ours” (p. 47). Weil moves her view from anthropology to psychology, and thus the lowliness of body is seen as central to her thoughts on living. Pétrement (1976) quotes Weil thus: “I must say that for me the thought of transforming the efforts of my body and soul into potatoes and things of that kind among a people who may go hungry is the only thing that can excite me at this moment” (p.434-435). Issues around Weil’s eating were not solely symptoms of anorexia; she was known to refuse to

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sleep on a mattress, but rather often slept on the floor in the last few years of her life. Reed (2013a) writes,

For Levinas, [speaking on behalf of Weil] our bodies are material proof of an infinite ethical debt we incur simply in having been born, for embodiment means that we are created to be responsible for one another. This way of putting it could help clear Simone Weil of the charges of nihilism or lack of ethical freedom often leveled at her constant emphasis on inflexible material necessity. Necessity in fact becomes the very basis of the responsibility that makes us ethical subjects. (p. 39)

Weil (2002a) writes about human needs and justice. The following proceeds from her text: “To forgive. We cannot do this. When we are harmed by someone reactions are set up within us. The desire for vengeance is a desire for essential equilibrium. We must seek equilibrium on another plane. We have to go as far as this limit by ourselves. There we reach the void” (p. 8). As Weil also notes human gloating is not helpful, “The Pharisees were people who relied on their own strength to be virtuous. Humility consists in knowing that in what we call ‘I’ there is no source of energy by which we can rise” (p. 31). In De Kesel (2013) “Humans, Weil explains, try to have things under control and they try to be masters of their own lives. It is then that they meet life’s gravity, if only because things like control and mastery are easier said than done. Failing in these tasks, people feel the burden of the human condition. But they will meet grace” (p. 2).

In the beginning of Gravity and Grace Weil explains how gravity affects human behavior. Weil (2002a) writes about it in the following two ways: “We must always expect things to happen in conformity with the laws of gravity unless there is supernatural intervention” (p. 1); and again, “What is the reason that as soon as one

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human being shows he needs another (no matter whether his need be slight or great) the latter draws back from him? Gravity” (p. 1). Here Weil seems quite negative about humanity, much like the harshness that is seen in her description of “blind” necessity; however, in Weil’s understanding it should be noticed the anthropophilic principle is the love of humanity and that the only way to justice is through an encounter with the transcendent persona.

Weil is very certain of her belief in human depravity and how humanity needs something beyond itself to render any of its action as meaningful or good. Weil utters the nature of depravity in her understanding of Christian biblical theology; it includes something similar in effect as the Fall and the power of grace. Weil accounted for the way in which gravity leaves humans in a place alone away from transcendence. This seems a bit like Christian doctrine, but Weil relegates humans to a much lower position, as equivalent to earth-worms. Miklos Vetö (1994) designates the belief that “the basic vision of Weil’s metaphysics is the sinful condition of humanity” (p. 11). Weil (2002a) does speak of sin in the life of the human, as Vetö suggests, as she explains, “The self is only the shadow which sin and error cast by stopping the light of God, and I take this shadow for a being” (p. 40). However, in my opinion, Weil’s overarching view is of humanity’s impossibility of even seeking the deity. Weil speaks of human relationship to the transcendent in the following way: “He is your Father, but just try to go and look for him up there! We are quite as incapable of rising from the ground as an earth-worm” (p. 95). One must recognize one of the following similarities in the Weil’s and Lacan’s thought. Weil sees the self as a shadow, as production of sin and error blocking the light of God. Lacan sees the ego as an epiphenomenon, which is a delusion. Furthermore, as

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Johnston (2013) says, “Lacan views the ego as thoroughly compromised and inherently neurotic to its very core, as a passionate defense of a constitutive ignorance of the unconscious” (p. 18). This, in my understanding is more than a sentiment for Weil, but rather a fact about the nature of human capacity.

In a description of the lack of capacity, Weil (2002a) writes, “We can only know one thing about God—that he is what we are not. Our wretchedness alone is an image of this” (pp.121-122). In light of true good we fade: Weil says to celebrate God’s goodness then we must also contemplate on our own wretchedness: “If we find fullness of joy in the thought that God is, we must find the same fullness in the knowledge that we ourselves are not, for it is the same thought. And this knowledge is extended to our sensibility only through suffering and death” (p. 37). Weil writes, “Once we have understood we are nothing, the object of all our efforts is to become nothing. It is for this that we suffer with resignation, it is for this that we act, it is for this that we pray” (p. 34). Though Weil speaks in these quotes of how different humanity is from God she often identifies with Jesus, both God and man in Christian theology, as a co-sufferer and a role model in renouncing all things. Weil clearly states this contradiction in the following quote, “It is because of my wretchedness that I am ‘I’. It is on account of the wretchedness of the universe that, in a sense, God is ‘I’ (that is to say a person)” (p. 31).

In order to understand Decreation one must have a working knowledge of the Kenotic Gospel, which is accounted for in the assertion of a biblical text in the book of Philippians in the Christian Bible. This theological notion is the radical doctrine of κένωσις (kenosis) as the emptying of divinity by demonstrating God’s humility, in being a man, Jesus. Decreation involves will and personal power, as demonstrated by, not

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exercising all of one’s power. Weil (2002a) states “Not to exercise all the power at one’s disposal is to endure the void. This is contrary to all the laws of nature. Grace alone can do it” (p. 10). Weil’s call to endure the void is a call to imitate the void that Jesus/God endured. This becomes more apparent when Weil brings in the ancient and biblical Greek. Weil understood that God emptying Godself was practically the same as Decreation; that there is a strong relationship between Decreation and the Kenotic Gospel. Gustav Thibon, who knew Weil well, understands Decreation in the following way: “God consented through love to cease to be everything so that we might be something” (Weil, 2002a, p. xxii).

Weil was certain of the construction of propagandized life and literature. The way in which humans form governance most often involves hierarchism; this predilection in Lacanian terms can be understood as structure, and also as the construction of the Name-of-the-Father, which are in Weil’s case the cultural norms adhered to by the hegemony of the time. Pétrement (1976) quotes from Weil’s letter to Perrin:

When I think of the act by which I should enter the Church as something concrete, which might happen quite soon, nothing gives me more pain than the idea of separating myself from the immense and unfortunate multitude of unbelievers. . . . I don’t think in any case that I would ever enter a religious order, because that would separate me from ordinary people by a habit. (p. 451)

Weil desires to take the sacrament; she did not believe herself to be worthy of nor able to accept it, denying herself out of respect for church tradition. Weil continues to maintenance her lingering questions with this desire. Pétrement (1976) records Weil’s writing in her letters, “If I had my eternal salvation placed in front of me on this table,

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and if I only had to stretch out my hand to take it, I would not put out my hand so long as I had not thought I had received the order to do so” (p. 452). Weil continues throughout her adult life wrestling with her inability to accept the sacrament and give intellectual ascent to the dogma of the Church. Weil writes, not necessarily as a result of devotion, that she “feels that it is necessary and ordained that I should be alone, a stranger and an exile in relation to every human circle without exception” (Pétrement, 1976, p. 452). This is Weil’s personal Decreation.

The influence of the Eastern religious and philosophical traditions also come to life in Weil. This can be seen in the focus on the universal which is found in the impersonal that she exalts. In 1940 Weil shows a great interest in Hindu religious texts, she tells Father Perrin that she has read the Bhagavad-Gita. As an example of its influence on her one sees that Weil (2002a) writes, “God could create only by hiding himself. Otherwise, there would be nothing but himself” (p. 38), and there is the striking similarity to Advaita Vedanta’s playful hiding of deity from Godself through the illusory nature of the world. In resemblance to Weil’s use of Eastern ideas Edwin F. Bryant (2007) brings in the story of Krishna and the many poems of this lord and his affairs, “the magic of this poetry and its powerful ability to pull the reader or, in its more traditional context, listener into the world of divine lila, pastime, with its rich imagery and narrative strategies, such that one can almost experience the narrative as participant” (p. 10). Lila is the manifestation of play by God, whereby God plays by hiding from Godself. For Weil the deity is hidden behind the veil of necessity. Weil (2002a) states that “Holiness should be hidden too, even from the unconscious in a certain measure” (p. 38). God is

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hiding and interestingly enough Weil states that, “In so far as I become nothing, God loves himself through me” (p 34).

The Lacanian nature of Weil’s writing here is essential to notice. Weil’s Decreation correlates with the psychoanalytic notion of “lack,” particularly in Lacan’s teaching on the void as the hole in the Other. Weil understands humanity as being ordained to exalt the metaphysical, that which is above and beyond reach. This being beyond would be the object of the hysteric’s longing for more, and approximate to jouissance. In ex-sisting within the space the divinity has uncreated for us (we as created pass into the uncreated), Reed (2013a) defines Decreation in the following: “Decreation is the voluntary conversion of the second into the first, the acceptance of the real nullity of the created part as compared with the uncreated part” (p. 27). Where Weil sees ego as no source of energy, Lacan sees it as illusion, unsubstantial. This is indicative of Weil’s doctrine of impersonalism.

For Weil we evaporate in a seemingly literal way when exposed to deity. Weil (2002a) writes of the master signifier in the following way, in the chapter “He Who We Must Love is Absent,” “Consent to the good—not to any good which can be grasped or represented, but unconditional consent to the absolute good” (p. 110). Reed (2013b) quotes Weil as saying that one can be “‘no longer aware of oneself except as a thing vowed to obedience,’ whose life becomes a series of what Weil calls ‘non-acting actions’ or rather actions ‘without motivation,’ ‘without the I’” (p. 526). In terms of the Weil’s notion Decreation, Reed accounts for it by quoting Weil. Reed says that “In a late notebook, Weil explains: ‘God created because he was good, but the creature let itself be created because it was evil. It redeems itself by persuading God, by the power of prayer,

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to destroy it’” (p. 526). Reed uses this quote to support his claim that Weil conceives of the individual in deep prayer and Attention to the end that God takes back what has been given. Reed says it in the following way, “She calls it ‘decreation’: one implores God to take back the existence God has created one to have, because it stands in the way of God’s love for the other” (p. 526). There is only a minimal real that is experienced by the subject through the illusion it creates, namely the ego or “I.”

Although Lacan does not endorse the use of the notion of a self, he considers the ego to be the result of an internal misrepresentation. Reed (2013b) writes, as he makes a Lacanian connection:

I propose a measure derived from Simone Weil’s ethics of decreation: the subject accepts a “non-personal” symbolic understanding of herself that opens up space in her world of signifiers for all that is unknown, threatening, or demanding about the other’s desire. Lacan’s critics must therefore respond to Weil’s contention that ethics requires almost no “self” at all. (p. 515)

Weil speaks of the individual person with the notion of self. Lacan, by contrast, doubles down on the “subject” and “ego” discussion, understanding both as being products of something else. For example, the ego is an illusion which is the product of the unconscious. For Lacan the experiencing subject is an illusion put forward by the ego. Evans (1996) puts it the following way, “the subject is not simply equivalent to a conscious sense of agency, which is a mere illusion produced by the ego, but to the unconscious; Lacan’s ‘subject’ is the subject of the unconscious” (p. 198). Desire and lack is to be considered the essence of the subject. Weil (2002a) says perfect joy excludes feeling of joy, “Perfect joy excludes even the very feeling of joy, for in the soul

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filled by the object no corner is left for saying ‘I.’ We cannot imagine such joys when they are absent,” (p. 31). Weil understands the self as getting in the way of moral and ethical ways of life. Lacan’s critics are indeed misled; I agree with both Lacan and Weil in establishing the absence of a reified ego or self respectively. Nonetheless, a moral and ethical life flows from the absence of centrality and focus on the desire of the other.

The “I” does not matter, as Weil states: “Joy within God. Perfect and infinite joy really exists within God. My participation can add nothing to it, my non-participation can take nothing from the reality of this perfect and infinite joy. Of what importance is it then whether I am to share in it or not? Of no importance whatever” (p. 32). But can infinite joy exist? How would it be described? Reed (2013a) explains that “[Weil’s] desire for mystical union with God struck Levinas as merely a selfish pursuit of personal salvation” (p. 25). The pursuit of pleasure is ultimately realized yet remains out of reach and in the fleeting. Lavinas is missing the point; Weil does not wish to aggrandize herself, but to lower herself. As Tanis MacDonald (2015) explains, “Love, in Weil’s philosophy, may be found in nothing less than the offer of oneself to the devouring demands of the divine” (p. 213). Here again we see the resemblance of the pitiless God of Judaism, which Weil says she abhor, but is clearly influenced by. Weil envisions the self as in need of being relinquished, Decreated.

Key Ideas

These key ideas are intended to provide the reader with the necessary knowledge of Lacan’s terms in order to follow the textual analysis of Weil’s work on Decreation.

Master signifier. The master signifier is often, but not always represented by S1. The master signifier designates the positioning of major psychoanalytic dominant themes

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for all, who are controlled by it. Themes that appear in discourse, played-out as S1 are greater versus lesser, including domination versus submission. These encode themselves in texts, discourse and also act as indicators of identity, such as naming: “liberal,” “communist,” or “American.” According to Evans (1996) “the master is the master signifier (S1) who puts the slave (S2) to work to produce a surplus (a) which he can appropriate for himself. The master signifier is that which represents a subject for all other signifiers” (p. 109).

Fink (1998) expresses in the definition the capricious nature of the master signifier, by saying the following:

if one compares the Freudian primal father with the Lacanian Master signifier S1, the difference is very clear: with the first one, everybody sees an elderly

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greybeard before his or her eyes, roving between his females, etc. It is very difficult to imagine this greybeard using the S1 . . . which precisely open up the possibility of other interpretations of this very important function. (p. 2)

Thus the master’s discourse is the cultural “no.” It is that which delimits the narrative of the day, it determines what is undermined and what is left alive in language and communication.

The Name-of-the-Father. The Name-of-the-Father is the symbolic process that blocks mother from child. The Other which is the complete alterity, that which was lost during the process of the first trauma, which was the father saying “no,” whereby the mother lost her influence: henceforth designated “mOther.” The mOther desires what is beyond the capacity of the child to apprehend, complete knowledge. Weil would have nothing of either of them. She would not be dominated by the Name-of-the-Father, nor the absorption into the mOther. Weil resists the Nazi diatribe and a complete Marxist position, with all they entail. Weil also resists union with the mOther, which entails completion. The symbolic element of the Name-of-the-Father instructs and demands that the individual not endeavor to find answers that the mOther can utilize. Weil continues to question beyond the question which appears because the signifiers put in place by the father and the enveloping of the mOther. The psychotic would engage with the mOther and foreclose on the Name-of-the-Father in such a way as to enter into the bliss and completeness or wholeness of the symbiotic relationship with the mOther.

Weil’s terms are strikingly opposed to either the normative function Name-of-the-Father and becoming the tool of the mother. Though at times Weil appears to be psychotic, or in some way affected by a closing off of the Name-of-the-Father, in protest

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against that which would preclude her from entering into an ascetic union with the Other, for example when Weil (2002a) says “If only I knew how to disappear there would be a perfect union of love between God and the earth I tread, the sea I hear . . .” and “When I am in any place, I disturb the silence of heaven and earth by my breathing and the beating of my heart” (p. 42). Though Weil speaks of union with God it is not she who enjoys the union, but she assumes her own diminutive status. This demonstrates that Weil is not a psychotic. Weil does not give up on the Name-of-the-Father in the complete sense. Neither does she enter into a relationship with the mOther whereby she would experience completeness and complete irreversible knowledge to its end; rather she operates as the hysteric who always wants and an open-ended position of knowledge. At other times Weil is harshly critical of those who follow the culture demands of her time.

Weil’s life of protest against cultural permissions and delimitations explains why she has been characterized as ill. Though as a hysteric Weil ultimately does seek to be destroyed by the presence of the transcendent, which is all she can envision her union with God to consist of, total obliteration. In Lacan there is a hole in the Other, which is that place whereby alterity is symbolized. The symbolic is the place of radical alterity, which Lacan refers to as the other/Other. The Other transcends the illusionary otherness of the imaginary because it cannot be assimilated through identification. Radical alterity with language and the law and hence the Other is inscribed within the order of the symbolic. For Weil the term for God matches Lacan’s Other and indicates a potential absorption.

Desire. Lacan’s desire is a want-to-be; rather it is a desire for being. Lacan also understands desire as the continual desire for the other. Desire is not our own, but is the

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desire of the Other. Desire then is the surplus produced by the articulation of need in demand. Desire can never be satisfied, or desire is never trying to fulfill itself, but always wants to be desire. In this case jouissance is the object-cause-of-desire, and is fleeting in respect to the knowledge one has invested in it. Weil accomplishes complete obliteration of her own desire when she arrives at the conclusion that she must Decreate herself, and become replete to God’s presence. In this manner she becomes empty or nonexistence, nothing. This would be the result of her finding ultimate truth—an impossibility nevertheless sought. Alienation is when Weil is completely enveloped by God. Weil says that she will be obliterated and become nothing, allowing God to completely end her existence. The result of this is alienation as seen in the figure below: The black area is meaning (the Other) in this case, God.

Figure 2. Being and meaning.

The ultimate meaning and knowledge Weil desires, and she gets a glimpse of in the Other on this side of the veil (necessity), which is jouissance. She desires her complete obliteration and disappearance. This is the place where I find Weil iterating something akin to the destructive side of jouissance, yet as a positive act of the deity there is the allowing of the being and desire of another.

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Hole in the Real. There is something that cannot be known within any set; that is the hole in the real. The real cannot be fully known; therefore, it has a hole in it indicating the inability to be reified or objectified completely. According to Lacan (1998), “we see the correspondences that make the real an open [set] between semblance, a result of the symbolic, and reality as it is based on the concreteness of human life” (p.94). Lacan also says, “The apparent necessity of the phallic function turns out to be mere contingency” (p. 94). If one tries to look at the real without a contingency there is going to be something missing, therefore a hole in the real. Fink (1995) says, “Trauma implies fixation or blockage. Fixation always involves something which is not symbolized, language being that which allows for substitution and displacement ----- the antithesis of fixation” (p. 26). The (first) trauma is the realization by the subject that there is an Other that affects change which the subject cannot control.

Lack. Lacan considers lack of being to be about the emptiness humans own at a fundamental level. When one ventures through life with the impression made by the stage of development in which the sense of lack is predominantly experienced, in turn the human seeks to fulfill a monument in life to attempt to recover from the trauma. Lacan does not discriminate and understands this is a common experience for all humans. Lack is what is the rise of desire and according to Lacan (Seminar VIII) “the neurotic is [constituted by] unconscious desire---in other words, repressed desire---it is above all insofar as his desire is eclipsed by a counterdemand” (p. 207). The hysteric always has lack seeking more knowledge.

Weil’s void and Lacan’s lack. Weil’s suggestion for the human endeavor included the expectation to rid the universe of being, in particular her “self,” in order that

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the deity would have wholeness of being and to live in, with or through the universe. Weil’s hope was to eliminate desiring existence or in Lacanian terms “lack;” this is the connection between Weil and Lacan. This is where lack and void coincide by definition. Lacan’s lack is not to be filled with desiring, but lack and lack of desire have a metonymic relationship, and Weil’s void is not to amass the filler of the void.

Weil’s void is suffering, affliction, which is to be endured, it is definitive privation. We should not try to fulfill the void. There are many ways to fill the void and among them is our subjectivity, sense of importance/sense of self. The filler of the void is a grasping at something which is precarious and limited in existence. Weil says we fill the void with imagination. Weil says we must give up our “imaginary divinity” when she talks about impersonality. In Weil’s working to be sure not to fill the void, she strives at doing away with subjectivity. The “I” is always an attempt to fill the void. Void is Weil’s concept that resonates with and resembles Lacan’s lack. Springsted (2010) explains Weil’s concept void in the following: “We encounter that void when we seek an absolute good, the only thing that will fully satisfy us, and discover that our purposes and our hunger will never be satisfied in this world. It is here that Simone Weil does indeed have something true and lasting to say” (p. 13). That there can be a fulfillment of desire is negligible, leads desire’s pursuit to always be fulfilled by desire. There is nothing further for desire than desire itself; therefore, void is in relationship to desire, and lack of fulfillment is the nature of desire. There will always be void because desire will not be fulfilled or seek anything other than desire.

Impersonality. For Weil impersonality is sustained through isolation and intentional solitude. Impersonality is the renunciation of the ego. Because of Weil’s

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position on Attention and impersonality she was leery of Christianity and Catholicism with their emphasis on collectivity. This solitude led Weil to multiple mystical experiences of Christ or of Christian content. To develop impersonality was part of Weil’s life and was heavily influenced by her understanding of and experience with Decreation. Weil wished to be like the Christ of the kenotic gospel. Weil wished to denude the illusion of the ego. Weil (2002a) said that “Society is the cave. The way out is solitude” (p. 165).

The split subject. As Yannis Stavrakakis (2008) explains, “According to Lacan the subject of psychoanalysis is not the self-sufficient, ‘autonomous’ subject as it is constructed in the tradition of philosophy, that is to say, as corresponding to consciousness, to the conscious cogito, but the ex-centric subject, one structured around a radical split, a radical lack” (p. 1041). The subject is split between the conscious and the unconscious. This is the case and it follows that desire cannot fulfill itself with anything, desire just is; Copjec (1989) explains that “the subject is thus split from its desire, and desire itself is conceived as something- precisely - unrealized; it does not actualize what the law makes possible” (p. 61). The desire of the unconscious is hidden from the subject of the conscious world. Nonetheless, the subject seeks through the desire it knows , yet the result is never completion, as the unconscious sabotages the process, being that all that is necessary is desire. Though by its name the split-subject may seem destabilizing, it in fact ensures the secured movement of the psychic world, be though an illusion is that world.

According to Weil (2002a), “To love truth means to endure the void” (p. 11). Suffering and void are something every person will be confronted with in life, it is

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unavoidable. Weil states “In the case of a man in the uttermost depths, whom no one pities, who is without power to ill-treat anyone (if he has no child or being who loves him), the suffering remains within and poisons him” (p. 5). The void is considered by Weil to be a catalyst of the nature of the sacrament; indeed the one who faces the void has received the bread and the wine (p. 11). It is not a losing battle though, because “grace fills empty places.” (p. 10).

Textual Analysis

The exception to the rule. Weil (2002a) intends to position the law which effects human life in the following way:

All the natural movements of the soul are controlled by laws analogous to those of physical gravity. Grace is the only exception. We must always expect things to happen in conformity with the laws of gravity unless there is supernatural intervention. (p. 1)

Weil is a person of laws, a mathematician, a scientist, and a metaphysician. Weil respects natural laws that fall within “necessity,” Weil’s term for the known physical universe. In this text, “all the natural movements of the soul,” it is clear that Weil understands all aspects of human behavior as being within the control of gravity or laws analogous to it. In an editor’s note in Gravity and Grace, Thibon states “It is significant to notice that Simone Weil extends the determinism of Descartes and Spinoza to all natural phenomena, including the facts of psychology” (p. 104). Weil is consistent on this point throughout her works. Reed (2013a) says of Weil’s law, “Necessity in fact becomes the very basis of the responsibility that makes us ethical subjects” (p. 39). Necessity is impressively superimposed on the will of the human.

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In Weil’s passage under consideration here is also another clue to her ethical or moral grounding and that is her acknowledgment of grace, “grace is the only exception.” Grace being juxtaposed with gravity demonstrates that the laws of the universe can only be broken by an intervention from outside the universe, “supernatural intervention.” For Weil the ethical, spiritual and moral are not divorced from one another. In Weil’s (1981) essay entitled “Draft for a Statement of Human Obligations,” she begins with these words: “There is a reality outside the world, that is to say, outside space and time, outside man’s mental universe, outside any sphere whatsoever that is accessible to human faculties” (p. 5). Weil, as a hysteric, is always seeking for further truth. This exception of grace she has found by her method of Metaxu, always searching for the contradiction. However, she remains dualistic in that there is only gravity or grace. Weil (2002a) as a product of her time sounds very deterministic and arguably fatalistic in the following quote:

What is the reason that as soon as one human being shows he needs another (no matter whether his need be slight or great) the latter draws back from him? Gravity. (p. 1)

Whoever suffers tries to communicate his suffering (either by ill-treating someone or calling forth their pity) in order to reduce it, and he does really reduce it in this way. In the case of a man in the uttermost depths, whom no one pities, who is without power to ill-treat anyone (if he has no child or being who loves him), the suffering remains within and poisons him. This is imperative, like gravity. How can one gain deliverance? How gain deliverance from a force which is like gravity? (p. 5)

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Weil’s determinism is also seen in the principle that “as soon as one human being shows he needs another (no matter whether his need be slight or great) the latter draws back from him?” Weil is determining that which is particular to subjectivity, as desiring the other, but not getting fulfilled. This fulfillment may come about if we are hurting and then hurt someone else in turn. This would involve force; which is demonstrated in the Lacanian master’s discourse. In this discourse the subject is hidden under the master signifier and therefore sublimated, quite determinedly, and unwittingly by the authority or force of the master signifier.

It is interesting that Weil uses the word “communication” when speaking about how people treat one another: “whoever suffers tries to communicate his suffering (wither by ill-treating someone or calling forth their pity).” This demonstrates a similar understanding of communicating or discourse being more than words, but being a social bond. Determinism flows through Weil’s thought in her speaking about not being able to communicate, or the impossibility of mere communication, which is a Lacanian notion also. Weil puts it this way: “without power to ill-treat anyone (if he has no child or being who loves him), the suffering remains within and poisons him.” Again this principle is held together by gravity. Weil says, “This is imperative, like gravity” and “How gain deliverance from a force which is like gravity?” Weil asks the question how one is to be delivered from this determinism, but the tone of the question seemingly leaves a problem for an understanding of hope. This principle of people mistreating others Weil saw during her lifetime, during the war period.

Weil goes on to explain more of this phenomenon with the following quote:

To harm a person is to receive something from him. What? What have we gained (and what will have to be repaid) when we have done harm? We have gained in

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importance. We have expanded. We have filled an emptiness in ourselves by creating one in somebody else. (p. 6)

Weil’s concept of void is alluded to in the word “emptiness” and it is an attempt to fill this void by causing harm. The phrase “we have gained in importance. We have expanded” brings a major theme to the surface; the relationship of lack to ego formation. Filling the void, conceptually and theologically, has to do with ego formation and how we are seen by others. For Weil ego formation or the “I” is always in relationship with other people as we see in these previous texts and in her constant dialogue about social justice.

An understanding of the Lacanian concept of the mirror stage in the development of ego is helpful. When speaking about the ego, Evans (1996) considers the imaginary as “the realm of image and imagination, deception and lure. The principal illusions of the imaginary are those of wholeness, synthesis, autonomy, duality and, above all, similarity” (p. 84). The ego develops through the individual’s relationship to the other, which is the social. Accordingly, Raul Monkayo (2006) writes that the “image the child acquires of himself or herself is modeled after the other and the other’s object of desire” (p. 566). As is the case with Lacanian theory, as Evans (1996) understands it, the ideal ego, the image of the perfect person that one strives to be “originates in the specular image of the mirror stage; it is a promise of future synthesis towards which the ego tends, the illusion of unity on which the ego is built. The ideal-ego always accompanies the ego” (p. 53). The ideal-ego is located in the other, the object cause of desire, which one projects onto otherness in order to obtain one’s fulfillment of particularity in the world. For that matter the ego is

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a formation that, as Fink (1995) says that it “arises as a crystallization or sedimentation of ideal images” (p. 36).

The ego-ideal is an introjection of the symbolic nature, it is, as Evans (1996) puts it, “an internalised plan of the law, the guide governing the subject’s position in the symbolic order” (p. 53). The symbolic order is the part of our experience where alterity, difference, and relationship reflect. In Seminar II, Lacan (1988) states that in the “symbolic order the totality is called a universe. The symbolic order from the first takes on its universal character. It isn’t constituted bit by bit. As soon as the symbol arrives, there is a universe of symbols” (p. 29). For Lacan the symbolic is the place where symbols, words for our experience, appear in consciousness and indeed all relate and depend on each other, hence the term “universe of symbolic.” With the interrelationship of all the images in the symbolic “universe” there is a confabulation of images about what the ego is to be; for the infant is only a, as Fink (1995) says, “jumble of sensations and impulses” (p.36) are awaiting the coordination that the infant needs, as it desires the other in this respect, in order to become unified and coordinated.

Weil had a respect and passion for laws and this is expressed in the words, “We must always expect things to happen in conformity with the laws of gravity unless there is supernatural intervention” (p.1). In consideration of this it is noted that Weil’s principle laws are necessity and the exception. Necessity is a veil protecting creation and creatures from being evaporated by the Other, or the transcendent. This can be seen in the text originally examined in the Metaxu chapter. Weil (2002a) states:

Relentless necessity, wretchedness, distress, the crushing burden of poverty and of labour which wears us out, cruelty, torture, violent death, constraint, disease—

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Impossibility 

agent other

truth // product

 Inability

all these constitute divine love. It is God who in love withdraws from us so that we can love him. For if we were exposed to the direct radiance of his love, without the protection of space, of time and of matter, we should be evaporated like water in the sun; there would not be enough ‘I’ in us to make it possible to surrender the ‘I’ for love’s sake. Necessity is the screen set between God and us so that we can be. It is for us to pierce through the screen so that we cease to be. (pp. 32-33)

Necessity is the law that Weil explains to be the reality which exists in relationship to the Other. Weil states that this relationship is about love. “It is God who in love withdraws from us so that we can love him.” Both God’s love for us and our love in return to him is a “withdraw,” and this is the heart of Decreation. The remainder of the quote regarding the “I” continues to explain the mechanics of impersonality, a key component of Weil’s concept of Decreation, which is discussed later in this chapter.

Weil (1981) presents the nature of human existence in saying that “the person in man is a thing in distress (p. 20); this can find its correlate, in Lacanian science, with the “split-subject” desiring the Other. The agent omits desire in the following way, as Johnston (2013) writes: “an essential characteristic of desire is its restlessness, its ongoing agitated searching and futile striving” (2.4.2) for the (m)Other, the object of desire, the other desired to be in the symbiotic relationship with, that which is the culmination of everything wanted. For Weil and Lacan desire to fill or abolish the void or lack comes at a psychological cost. Knowing at a cost is a privilege, according to Zizek (2006) and demonstrates the depth of

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another personality, this other is an abyss (p. 42). Keeping in mind that the agent in the formula for any discourse has a desire, this desire is impossible to communicate. This fact according to Lacan expresses that the field of social-bond is incomplete because of the inability to communicate.

Only the half-truth and the missed connection between the agent and the other, which is society, can be communicated. Verhaeghe (1995) states, “Suffice it to say that the bridge between agent and other is always a bridge too far with, as an important result, the fact that the agent remains stuck with an impossible desire [emphasis added]” (p. 6). It is within Lacanian theory that the limitations of the agent and of truth are recognized. When considering the link between product and truth one must take into account the disconnect of inability. The product, as a result of the discourse in the other, has nothing to do with the truth of the agent. Since the agent cannot verbalize full-truth to the other, then the truth cannot be known, and the product remains isolated (see diagram above from Paul Verhaeghe). The matheme or schema above demonstrates the findings of Lacanian theory which indicate this difficulty of communication.

Longing and desire. As Weil (2002a) says in the previous quote, “How gain deliverance from a force which is like gravity?” Her answer seems to be found in these words, “Attitude of supplication: I must necessarily turn to something other than myself since it is a question of being delivered from self” ( p. 3). Weil’s (1981), Draft for a Statement of Human Obligation explains further that this one exception to necessity is something higher. I believe it is clear that this exception for Weil is theological or metaphysical.

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There is a reality outside the world, that is to say, outside space and time, outside any sphere whatsoever that is accessible to human faculties.

Corresponding to this reality, at the centre of the human heart, is the longing for the absolute good, a longing which is always there and is never appeased by any object of this world (p. 5).

Like the relationship between two people, where one always draws back, and the desired sharing or communication is not fulfilled, this quote also contains “a longing which is always there and is never appeased.” The inability to be appeased is related to the phenomenon which Lacan calls jouissance. The relationship is based on the Lacanian notion which is continuously opens to both gain and loss. The object-cause-of-desire, object a, itself being (for Weil divine) bliss is fleeting, ineffable, and is endeavored by the human longing for the absolute good, as Weil says. Again, jouissance is about pleasure and pain; and is outside any sphere accessible to human faculties, except in a fleeting moment.

The “absolute good” Weil refers to is the cause-of-desire in that it can never be satisfied and it is the hole or undefined part of the set. Ochiai Hitoshi (2012) demonstrably states that “Weil also included in her target the application to theology of the general topology itself, created in the 1930s by making mathematical limit theory abstract” (p. 31). Searching for truth allows her to acknowledge that there is something more. In limit theory “something more” is missing as a set within a set; Lacan’s theory illuminates Weil here with the notion of the hole in the real. Imagine a sphere within which there is a hole; the sphere being necessity and the hole being impossibility. Impossibility is the set within the set, and when one considers it or falls into it they go

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through it, as through a wormhole, seeking the absolute good. This is the process of Weil’s philosophy that I am putting forth in this dissertation: find the impossibility (Metaxu), consider it (Attention), and fall through it (Decreation).

God as Creator and co-creator with humans work in jouissance both within terms of power and desire as Weil (2002a) indicates that “Desire contains something of the absolute and if it fails (once its energy has been used up) the absolute is transferred to the obstacle. This produces the state of mind of the defeated, the oppressed” (p. 8). “Desire contains something of the absolute,” desire contains jouissance, and in Lacanian terms, according to Zizek, enjoying your symptom is the result. Zizek (2013) writes:

The performative dimension at work here consists of the symbolic efficiency of the “mask”: wearing a mask actually makes us what we feign to be. In other words, the conclusion to be drawn from this dialectic is the exact opposite of the common wisdom by which every human act (achievement, deed) is ultimately just an act (posture, pretense): the only authenticity at our disposal is that of impersonation, of “taking our act (posture) seriously.” (p. 34)

Lacan, according to Reed, provides an explanation of being that inevitably assumes an ethic, even when there is only anticipation. Reed (2013b) explains that “As such, the Lacanian subject is clearly in no position to call very much of its own, not even its subjectivity or ‘self’ (actually a misnomer) ---hence the reservations of Lacan’s critics who see no room in so minimal a self for a genuine ethics” (p. 516). Lacan presents the epiphenomenon ego from the illusory subject; this minimality construes ethics in a dim light and offers a slight place for ethics, according to some. Nonetheless, it is enough to

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muster-up an ethics grounded in the only authenticity at our disposal, as Zizek says, “taking our act (posture) seriously” (p. 34). Weil (2002a) says:

Purification is the separation of good from covetousness. We have to go down to the root of our desires in order to tear the energy from its object. That is where the desires are true in so far as they are energy. It is the object which is unreal. But there is an unspeakable wrench in the soul at the separation of a desire from its object. . . . The void is the supreme fullness, but man is not permitted to know it. The proof is that Christ himself was at one moment completely unaware of it. One part of the self should know it, but not the other parts, for if they knew it in their base fashion there would no longer be any void.” (pp. 22-23)

A void is required. The following quote is like the previous quote about doing the other harm and thereby expanding oneself and gaining in importance. Weil states:

Like a gas, the soul tends to fill the entire space which is given it. A gas which contracted leaving a vacuum—this would be contrary to the law of entropy . . . Not to exercise all the power at one’s disposal is to endure the void. This is contrary to all the laws of nature. Grace alone can do it. Grace fills empty spaces but it can only enter where there is a void to receive it, and it is grace itself which makes this void. (p.10)

“Like a gas, the soul tends to fill the entire space which is given it. A gas which contracted leaving a vacuum—this would be contrary to the law of entropy;” Weil’s propensity and understanding of science and math was keen and once again she uses this knowledge to speak (this can be seen as the university discourse) of “the law of entropy.” Even though she spends this time in mathematical and analytical minutia she understands

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grace to be the exception to the laws she studies and explicates. Weil was demonstrating the potential of the religious life and how it is inspired, breathed into, when she speaks of grace. “Not to exercise all the power at one’s disposal is to endure the void. This is contrary to all the laws of nature. Grace alone can do it.” Weil holds to her deterministic point of view and her strong empirical approach, as much as she admires Hume. Nonetheless, with her approach she always ensured her understanding of the exception of grace, the transcendent; the saving master signifier who ultimately wields the power to create the void. Reminiscent of the blind necessities of this universe which “constitute divine love” is the understanding that “it is grace itself which makes this void.” It is the apparent absence of God, his withdrawal, which makes the void and this void is required: “Grace fills empty spaces but it can only enter where there is a void to receive it.”

Weil gives many examples of the ways the law of human nature leads us to try to fill this void; some of these have been explored in the Metaxu chapter. At the root of it Weil consistently says it is the imagination which works to fill the void. Weil reports:

The imagination is continually at work filling up all the fissures through which grace might pass. Every void (not accepted) produces hatred, sourness, bitterness, spite. The evil we wish for that which we hate, and which we imagine, restores the balance . . . .The imagination, filler up of the void, is essentially a liar. It does away with the third dimension, for only real objects have three dimensions. . . . In no matter what circumstances, if the imagination is stopped from pouring itself out we have void (the poor in spirit). In no matter what circumstances (but sometimes at the price of how great a degradation!) imagination can fill the void . . . We must continually suspend the work of the imagination filling the void

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within ourselves. If we accept no matter what void, what stroke of fate can prevent us from loving the universe? We have the assurance that, come what may, the universe is full. (pp. 16-18)

For Weil filling the void is not helpful, because when this filling happens it includes content, which is absolutely unacceptable in the eyes of Weil, who sought mystical experience. No matter the type of experience, she has knowledge of the transcendent, wanting more of this knowledge is what equivocates a search for simplicity, less that can complicate being. “Every void (not accepted) produces hatred, sourness, bitterness, spite,” demonstrates the necessity for vacuity through Decreation. Weil (1970) writes, “denude oneself of everything that is above the vegetative life” (p. 294). In Weil’s text considered here she says, “In no matter what circumstances (but sometimes at the price of how great a degradation!) imagination can fill the void.” That imagination can lead to degradation is stupendous, because this is how much power the imagination has in deterring spiritual experiences. The imagination is not where the religious experience is found; this is understood by great spiritual leaders. Weil is in the role of leadership here and leads her pupils and co-workers likewise. Weil adds “If we accept no matter what void, what stroke of fate can prevent us from loving the universe?”

Another way in which the void is filled is with the constructed time(s) in which humanity endeavors to live. Weil (2002a), in an effort to relate time to the study of gravity, grace and her ascetic thought writes:

The past and the future hinder the wholesome effect of affliction by providing an unlimited field for imaginary elevation. That is why the renunciation of past and future is the first of all renunciations. The present does not attain finality. Nor

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does the future, for it is only what will be present. We do not know this, however. If we apply to the present the point of that desire within us which corresponds to finality, it pierces right through to the eternal. That is the use of despair which turns the attention away from the future. When we are disappointed by a pleasure which we have been expecting and which comes, the disappointment is because we were expecting the future, and as soon as it is there it is present. We want the future to be there without ceasing to be future. This is an absurdity of which eternity alone is the cure. (p. 19-20)

“The past and the future hinder the wholesome effect of affliction by providing an unlimited field for imaginary elevation. That is why the renunciation of past and future is the first of all renunciations.” Just as jouissance takes as its subject the whole soul, being both great joy and death at once, so too is the nature of affliction. When speaking of the “wholesome effect of affliction” it is to be understood that there is both a positive and a negative aspect of affliction, it is the avenue which leads directly to the depths of the soul. At the depth of the soul is the signifying chain, the realization of social constructivity, whereby justice and injustice, love and death, or joy and death meet in the arrangement of the order of the soul as it enters the social. The “wholesome effect” considers there to be the division of between the value of the good and the negativity of the repression of the phallic indicator, which Lacan does not consider being a physical occasion. Both joy and death meet in a defining place for everyone, which is the chain of signification, determined greatly by the Name-of the-Father. Once the social situation of a subject is determined the course of effects on the ego occur. The signifier is in place and jouissance is not there completely, as Levy-Stokes (2001) puts forward, “it is only

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because of the signifier, whose impact cuts and forces an expenditure of jouissance from the body, that it is possible to enjoy the remains, the leftover from this evacuating” (p. 103).

Accepting the void is supernatural. To revisit the previous quote on the law of entropy Weil states “Not to exercise all the power at one’s disposal . . . . is contrary to all the laws of nature.” The following is Weil’s attempt to illustrate this from Greek mythology. Hitoshi (2012) quotes in English Weil’s work OEuvres complétes VI Cahiers 3. Paris: Gallimard as follows:

Should Prometheus and Zeus struggle with each other, all Zeus would have left is his puissance. Thus he must bring forth one who is more puissant than him. Puissance is the infinite we call “apeiron,” or in other words, something that can bring forth greater quantities without tiring. No matter how great a puissance may be, there is always the chance that a greater puissance is above it. Only the enlightened wisdom of God limits his puissance. (p. 251)

Puissance is power that is unending, limitless or non-compilable. The One who has puissance has the power to overpower One’s own power, ad infinitum. This is evident in that deity can hold back power as demonstrated in the act of Decreation itself, whereby God withdraws from self in order to even allow the world as we know it to exist. Weil (2002a) says that “Decreation is to make something created pass into the uncreated” (p. 32); the implication here is that deity allows the world to exist. Out of character of someone with absolute power or in this case puissance, God allows us to exist by reducing God’ self; the one who can use power to disengage one’s own power is pointedly implied by what Decreation really is in its mechanism. God can and does,

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through grace, which is the exception to the law of necessity, delimit any power that might be in existence. The void then could be filled, but we like deity, can psychologically or theologically, not allow the filler of the void have power. It is a gift of grace that any filler of the void is denied. Weil says to “denude oneself,” this is what humanity should do in response to God’s Decreation.

Weil has stated that it is grace which makes the void and grace which fills the void; in the following quote it is this same grace, she refers to as the “supernatural” which allows us to accept the void. Weil says:

To accept a void in ourselves is supernatural. Where is the energy to be found for an act which has nothing to counterbalance it? The energy has to come from elsewhere. Yet first there must be a tearing out, something desperate has to take place, the void must be created. Void: the dark night. Admiration, pity (most of all a mixture of the two) bring real energy. But this we must do without. (p.11)

Weil continues with her scientific discourse about energy and balance, using it to ask questions and investigate each situation. We find her exception of grace, or the transcendent, in the words “the energy has to come from elsewhere.” She continues with insisting on the void which is suffering or affliction demonstrated by the words “tearing out” and “something desperate.” And she reminds us of the imperative that “we must do without” the ways our minds attempt to fill this void, namely here “Admiration, pity.”

Here again it is noted the ability of the human connection with the supernatural as involving void or emptiness. Like with St. John of the Cross, finding God in the “dark night,” there is a duality of emptiness and filling-up; in the case of Weil’s theological language this is where we find the “second degree of grace,” explained in the Metaxu

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chapter. As the exception to the law of gravity, “wings raised to the second power can make things come down without weight” (p. 4). The graciousness that descends like a dove, but is “ascending” too, finds its way down to the human soul. Instead of deity carrying out moves of power: rage, anger, punishment, the result is different. That which comes down from the transcendent places is grace, but it always ascends to the transcendent again. It is the supernatural that holds back his power, and paradoxically this holding back, or hiding that God does, is experienced as void to us.

It is in enduring this void, this tearing out, this desperation that Weil finds a unity with Christ, and unceasing inspiration from the Kenotic gospel. Weil states that “Christ experienced all human misery, except sin . . . All sins are attempts to fill voids. Thus my life with all its stains is near to his perfectly pure one, and the same is true of much lower lives” (p 23-24). Weil describes the “supernatural” quality of enduring the void in the following: “Christ healing the sick, raising the dead, etc.—that is the humble, human, almost low part of his mission. The supernatural part is the sweat of blood, the unsatisfied longing for human consolation, the supplication that he might be spared, the sense of being abandoned by God” (p. 87). The total abandonment of God is much as the Psalmist in 22 writes and Jesus quotes during his crucifixion, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” This is a cry that can only be the response to an experience: “there must be a tearing out, something desperate has to take place, the void must be created.” One may feel abandonment, and it seems that Weil works to preserve this feeling of abandonment in her life.

Weil is persistent in the divine hiding from her or that she is unworthy of divine presence in her life. In Weil’s notebooks there is a dream-like story entitled Prologue,

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which is written in the first person about meeting a man that took her to a church and told her to kneel at the altar and shared some period of time eating and talking and resting with her in the small sunlit attic room. Then he told her to “go away.” She begged to stay, but he kicked her out and she was heartbroken having no idea where to find him again. She ends the story with these words (Weil 1970): “I well know that he doesn’t love me. How could he love me? And yet there is something deep in me, some point of myself, which cannot prevent itself from thinking, with fear and trembling, that perhaps, in spite of everything, he does love me” (p. 66). Weil expresses a sentiment that conforms to her ascetic ideation, in line with those ideas of a mystic. In doing so she applauds the undertaking of the mystic, the life of relational and intellectual isolation, in order to reach holiness.

To return to the idea of preserving the void Weil (2002a) makes the following theologically conflicted statement: “we have to tell ourselves insistently that he does not exist. We must experience the fact that we love him, even if he does not exist” (p.15). Weil carefully warns that salvation, or eternal life, or any of the good that comes from sharing with the deity of Christ should never be turned into the treasure that fills our void. She continues that God also works at keeping himself from being just a treasure, or object. Weil writes, “It is he who, through the operation of the dark night, withdraws himself in order not to be loved like the treasure is by the miser” (p. 15). Weil seems to insist for herself that her subjective experience of the void never be filled. If it were filled it would be the symbiotic relationship explained below. Yet in her hysterical desire to know this “absolute good’ that she longs for, she concludes that she must do away with all other longings.

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This as such is relational signification being from the Name-of-the-Father, the kindness of a parent. This invitation to be filled, or to envision the void or hole in the real, is quite different than refusing or foreclosing the Name-of-the-Father, which would be indicative of the case of psychosis. Foreclosure is a primordial radical refusal to include something (Name-of-the-Father) into the symbolic order, by refusing one finds oneself in a symbiotic relationship with the Other. The psychotic is always carrying an inflexible understanding of truth. This does not match the approach of Weil elsewhere, where as the hysteric she is always wanting more than partial-truth or truth as understood once and for all. Weil, with hysteric’s qualities, pursues more than truth, something beyond or something more.

A universalist aside. As was explored early on in this work I have made reference to the biblical text about one hating his family to follow the way of the divine. As Zizek (2000) has announced,

Christianity (and, in its own way, Buddhism) introduced into this global balanced cosmic Order a principle that is totally foreign to it, a principle which, measured by the standards of pagan cosmology, cannot but appear as a monstrous distortion: the principle according to which each individual has immediate access to universality (of nirvana, of the Holy Spirit, or today, of human Rights and freedoms): I can participate in this universal dimension directly, irrespective of my special place within the global social order. For that reason, Buddha’s followers form a community of people who, in one way or another, have broken with the hierarchy of the social order and started to treat it as fundamentally irrelevant: in his choice of disciple, Buddha pointedly ignored castes and (after

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some hesitation, true) even sexual difference. And do not Christ’s scandalous words from Saint Luke’s Gospel point in the same direction: ‘If anyone come to me and does not hate his father and his mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters--yes, even his own life--he cannot be my disciple’ (14:26)? Here, of course, we are not dealing with a simple brutal hatred demanded by a cruel and jealous God. (p. 120)

Weil uses St. Luke 14:26 mentioned by Zizek in an erudite manner, this text claiming its power and result upon the obedient one, asserts that human knowledge is destitute. This is the very nature of the Decreation of the ego (from personalism to impersonalism) which runs parallel to the Decreation by the Deity. Through this process the “individual has immediate access to universality,” partaking of the Sacrament is this, but for Weil this immediate experience of universality is much more accessible. As Weil (2002a) pronounces,

Let the soul of a man take the whole universe for its body . . . We should identify ourselves with the universe itself. Everything that is less than the universe is subject to suffering. Even though I die, the universe continues. That does not console me if I am anything other than the universe.” (p. 140)

Weil expresses that the importance of the impersonal, complete abandonment of the self, the total dismissal of the self in favor of the universal in which the personal evaporates. The self dissolves, is distilled from the universe by the abandonment as foreground and the complete and total identification of the universal, therein is impersonalism. Weil writes, “To desire one’s salvation is wrong, not because it is selfish (it is not in man’s power to be selfish), but because it is an orientation of the soul towards a merely

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particular and contingent possibility [emphasis added] instead of towards a completeness of being, instead of towards the good which exists unconditionally” (p. 143). (italics added) In order to embrace or be oriented to the absolute good, “the reality outside space and time” one has to let go of the particulars, including the self.

Weil writes “to desire one’s salvation is wrong” in order to set-up the notion of contingency from her manner of speaking. Weil expresses that “desiring” is “wrong” in respect to salvation. This sort of personal experience is distasteful for Weil (1981), who says that “the person in man is a thing in distress; it feels cold and is always looking for a warm shelter” (p.20). This looking, seeking, desiring is a formula with the prime ingredients for narcissism. Weil (2002a), we are reminded, states that “He who has not been able to become nothing runs the risk of reaching a moment when everything other than himself ceases to exist,” (p. 142) which is the definition of narcissism. This self-growth perpetuates the myth that one person can stand outside contingency. Weil breaks down this myth with her teaching about impersonalism. I said in the chapter on Attention that, in her effort to abort the self, the egocentrism and positivism of her times, it seems that she attends to void, though others exhaust all attempts to evade it. Weil discontinues the view of humankind as the center in the universe.

Impersonalism. Impersonalism is a term which indicates the lack of an essential self or “I.” As Weil (2002a) writes, “There is absolutely no other free act which it is given us to accomplish—only the destruction of the ‘I’” (p. 26). Weil also uses this mystical terminology in the following: “There is something impersonal in quasi-infernal affliction as there is in perfection” (p. 29). My introduction of personalism and impersonalism is a move of making a conjunction with Weil’s conjectures about

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emptiness and Decreation. For Weil personalism cannot be an accurate picture of human nature if the truth cannot be known; she insists on seeking truth beyond truth. Fixity and continuity of the person fades as one looks more closely at the teaching of Weil; the contingency of the person is the step I will take in a movement toward impersonality, as Weil states, “it is an orientation of the soul towards a merely particular and contingent possibility.” Weil has found those contingencies lacking. All that is left from Decreation is our sense of “I,” and Weil insists that we must make sure this “I” is not a hindrance. Weil calls forth impersonality, non-being, and indicates, “We possess nothing in the world—a mere chance can strip us of everything—except the power to say ‘I’. That is what we have to give to God—in other words, to destroy” (p. 25). The particular and contingent are reinforced by Weil’s approach to understand how to go beyond these and to realize the void. This void is “fuller than fullness,” and in my opinion is reminiscent of the Heart Sutra, which includes the words “emptiness is form, form is emptiness;” this implies the contingency of all things but mostly the non-clarity as to where to draw the line between that which is of materiality and that which is illusory. Weil explains that God fills the void or that grace fills the void. This notion of void is necessary in order to understand the impersonal. Cameron (2003) shares the opinion that “Weil’s contemplations on impersonality indicate a depth perception about a matter so alien to us that we barely have concepts for it, so quick are we to find repellant any attempt to eradicate egotism in terms this extreme” (p. 218). It is difficult to accept Weil’s sense of the impersonal in Western tradition, except in mystic traditions. As philosophically impersonality is difficult for the ears of Westerners this may contribute to Weil’s not being recognized in her career and writing. The Lacanian understanding of the subject

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being a production that is not real gives an alternative which dovetails, but does not imply equivalence, with Weil’s self as illusory.

The next text from Gravity and Grace demonstrates Weil vision impersonality as being a way to imitate the deity of the Christian kenotic tradition. Weil (2002a) lays out this message clearly and says that,

An imaginary divinity has been given to man so that he may strip himself of it like Christ did his real divinity.

Renunciation. Imitation of God’s renunciation in creation. In a sense God renounces being everything. We should renounce being something. That is our only good. . . .

He emptied himself of his divinity. We should empty ourselves of the false divinity with which we were born. Once we have understood we are nothing, the object of all our efforts is to become nothing. It is for this that we suffer with resignation, it is for this that we act, it is for this that we pray. May God grant me to become nothing. In so far as I become nothing, God loves himself through me. (p. 33)

Weil’s use of the word “divinity” demonstrates that humanity understands the self in high regard.

There needs to be an understanding that this is an illusion, of “imaginary” importance. The illusory nature of the self is better presented by Lacan’s understanding of the ego being an illusion and an epiphenomenon. Weil says, “The self is only the shadow which sin and error cast by stopping the light of God, and I take this shadow for a being” (p.

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40). Weil here is talking about the self as it inhabits the world through sin, and is using the metaphor of the shadow. This alerts me to wonder about the significance of the similarity in Weil’s and Plato’s language. The “I” (ego) is an illusion cast by the subject, as a shadow on the wall of a cave, which is defined in the following way. S. Marc Cohen explains:

In the allegory, Plato likens people untutored in the Theory of Forms to prisoners chained in a cave, unable to turn their heads. All they can see is the wall of the cave. Behind them burns a fire. Between the fire and the prisoners there is a parapet, along which puppeteers can walk. The puppeteers, who are behind the prisoners, hold up puppets that cast shadows on the wall of the cave. The prisoners are unable to see these puppets, the real objects, that pass behind them. What the prisoners see and hear are shadows and echoes cast by objects that they do not see.

The allegory mentioned above is a figure that represents Plato’s concept of the Forms, but it is quite helpful in understanding the “illusion” of the “I” or “ego” as spoken of by Weil and Lacan, respectively. Lacan ameliorated the “ego” from the position that Descartes placed it, being of a central position in the west, much as it is today in usual parlance. Lacan divorced the concept of the ego from the Freudian sense to one much like modern ego-psychology. However, for Lacan the imaginary can roughly be aligned with the formation of the ego which serves as the mediator (as in Freud) between the internal and the external world. For Lacan, as Verhaeghe (1995) demonstrates, “It is the master-signifier, trying to fill up the lack, posing as the guarantee for the process of covering up that lack. The best and shortest example is the signifier ‘I’ which gives us the

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illusion of an identity of our own” (p. 7). In Weil’s (2002a) own words, “Offering: We cannot offer anything but the ‘I’, and all we call an offering is merely a label attached to a compensatory assertion of the ‘I’” (p.26). This notion of a compensatory assertion can be seen in the words, “the being is reduced to naked, vegetative egoism. An egoism without an ‘I.’” Johnston (2013) writes, “One of the psychoanalytic and philosophical upshots of the mirror stage, a crucial one in Lacan's eyes, is that the ego is an object rather than a subject. In other words, the ego, despite conscious senses to the contrary, is not a locus of autonomous agency, the seat of a free, true ‘I’ determining its own fate” (section 2.2).

In the present text Weil says, “Renunciation . . . that is our only good.” Renunciation is what Weil did during her life; her values as an educated person, her ethnic heritage and her physical being were all a part of Weil’s protest. “God renounces being everything,” this is the nature of God’s Decreation and the nature of the impersonal. The first being an act of grace, the Deity’s endless form of power, and the second being a subtle strategic reaction to narcissism. Out of endless power Decreation was the first act of love for humanity. Weil even renounces the possibility for her to practice renunciation, “The ‘I’ belongs to non-being. But I have not the right to know this. If I knew it, where would be the renunciation? I shall never know it” (p. 97). With this reversal of beingness Weil puts forth that she can only know renunciation if its object first passes through deity. Weil (2002a) puts it this way, “We only possess what we renounce; what we do not renounce escapes from us. In this sense, we cannot possess anything whatever unless it passes through God” (p. 34).

Weil writes to establish a clear understanding of the relationship between God’s renunciation and God’s creation in the text involved here. Weil writes, “Renunciation.

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Imitation of God’s renunciation in creation. In a sense God renounces being everything. We should renounce being something. That is our only good.” In terms of renunciation, renouncing concreteness preambles Weil’s comment, “There exists a ‘deifugal’ force. Otherwise all would be God” (p. 33). If this were not the case there would be no need for ascetic practice or renunciation. It is the repetition of renunciation which creates the reality of the symptom. Lacan (1988) states that “The ego is structured exactly like a symptom. At the heart of the subject, it is only a privileged symptom, the human symptom par excellence, the mental illness of man” (p. 16). Weil lived her life perpetually with ink and sweat. Weil notes that metaphysical creating will not be reduced to a one time action. In Weil’s approach there is no relenting, and a career of refusing food led Weil to consume only the equivalent to the diet of soldiers she admired.

Weil (2002a) considers her(self) in the following, “May God grant me to become nothing. In so far as I become nothing, God loves himself through me” (p. 33). This is written in the spirit of Eastern thought, Weil borrows from Advaita Vedanta’s notion of Brahman seeking-out and finding himself in different aspects of the world. Weil writes “It is possible for us.”

to be mediators between God and the part of creation which is confided to us” (p. 40), and “I can easily imagine that he loves that perspective of creation which can only be seen from the point where I am” (p. 41). Weil continues with the Eastern approach mentioned above and understands that she is a vehicle of a divine process and is objectifying herself, considering herself as a thing.

The afflicted. Weil explains that once we understand we are nothing, we can suffer with resignation; however, if extreme suffering comes before we understand that

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we are nothing it can hinder our renunciation (pursuit of impersonality). Weil (2002a) states confidently,

Nothing in the world can rob us of the power to say ‘I’. Nothing except extreme affliction. Nothing is worse than extreme affliction which destroys the ‘I’ from outside, because after that we can no longer destroy it ourselves. What happens to those whose ‘I’ has been destroyed from outside by affliction? It is not possible to imagine anything for them but annihilation according to the atheistic or materialistic conception. Though they may have lost their ‘I’, it does not mean that they have no more egoism. Quite the reverse. To be sure, this may occasionally happen when a dog-like devotion is brought about, but at other times the being is reduced to naked, vegetative egoism. An egoism without an ‘I.’ (p. 26)

Weil sets the stage for the presentation of the ego. Though one has the power to say “I,” it can be robbed from us by affliction. Weil (2012) defines affliction as being “wholly different than simple suffering.” She continues, “Affliction grips the soul and marks it to the depths with a mark belonging only to itself; the mark of slavery” (p.31). It is in the definition and use of affliction in relationship to the ordering of the “I” in Weil’s writing which accomplishes the Decreation of the person. Psychologically taking on the method of the kenotic gospel, with a vision of how the deity has decreated from Weil’s perspective includes the acceptance of affliction. Acceptance is the key in this process, it is acceptance of the void, which Weil has established is supernatural. The above quote presents the case when affliction comes and “destroys the ‘I’ from outside, because after that we can no longer destroy it ourselves.” Weil (2002a) continues, “As long as we

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ourselves have begun the process of destroying the ‘I’ we can prevent any affliction from causing harm. For the ‘I’ is not destroyed by external pressure without a violent revolt” (p. 27). It is the violent revolt in contrast to the acceptance of affliction which gets in the way of Decreation.

This is continued discourse about ego formation here, because of the way in which affliction and ego are so closely tied, as explained earlier in this chapter. When someone wrongs another, balance is sought through the reassigning of that which was lost; this effort is movement toward balance. As demonstrated by Weil, “To harm a person is to receive something from him. What? . . We have gained in importance. We have expanded. We have filled an emptiness in ourselves by creating one in somebody else” (p. 6).

Union. Weil says, “The presence of God. This should be understood in two ways. As Creator, God is present in everything which exists as soon as it exists. The presence for which God needs the co-operation of the creature is the presence of God, not as Creator but as Spirit. The first presence is the presence of creation. The second is the presence of Decreation” (p. 38). In the process of Decreation the deity makes a space of nothingness out of Being; before Decreation all Being is deity. Joke J. Hermsen (1999) says:

Despite Weil’s criticism of the Jewish tradition, the doctrine of the creation, and especially the Zim-zum theme from the cabbalism of the Jewish mystical group of the chassidim, has a similar narrative structure. Zim-zum signifies contraction, a withdrawal of one thing to make way for the birth of something else. In the

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beginning, God created heaven and earth, but in this narration this did not occur as a kind of expansion, but as with Weil, as a withdrawal of God. (p 186)

The space of non-being is created in the Decreation process. As Weil (2002a) puts it, “Decreation: to make something created pass into the uncreated” (p. 32). Weil explains that Decreation of the subject “is made up only of his (the deity’s) waiting for our acceptance not to exist. He is perpetually begging from us that existence which he gives. He gives it to us in order to beg it from us” (p. 32). This is a low theology, but it is understood within Christian biblical literature; in the lowliness of becoming empty, the convert becomes of a like attitude with the Other that allows for such an opportunity. This reference is found in St. Paul’s letter to the Philippians, in the second chapter. Weil’s theological move, like many of her other concepts discussed in this study, has a clear relationship with Lacanian thought. Ehsan Azari (2011) explains that within Lacanian theory, “The subject finds his being in language, a being that is marked by lack. Being in language makes this subject a speaking and desiring being and enables him to find his lack of being in a metonymic illusion by way of his desire” (p. 61). Just as the convert Decreates, or minimizes self in the biblical traditions, Weil encounters, so too does Lacan’s speak of “lack of being,” or the illusion of desiring being; in this light Lacanian theory can inform, illuminate, and expand on Weil’s theme.

In the biblical tradition of Christianity, from Weil’s perspective, the Godhead is begging, desiring; through the myth of creation the Deity uses language to speak into existence the cosmos. This creation is through emptying according to Weil, and is best informed by the Lacanian perspective, nestled in the lack (desire) of the Other. I agree wholeheartedly with Aron Dunlap’s (2014) thesis drawing on religion to envision the

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loving God (as Other in my understanding) as a staying power in Lacan’s work, particularly later work, which indicates Lacan as a theologian (p. 141). For Lacan, God or religion has a great loving impact on the psyche, and with a distinction, as Dunlap says, from Freud’s negative connotation of this thought world. Weil (2002a) elaborates on Decreation as, a process by which “God can love in us only this consent to withdraw in order to make way for him, just as he himself, our creator, withdrew in order that we might come into being.” (p. 41). In the same way Weil (2002a) says that “There is absolutely no other free act which it is given us to accomplish—only the destruction of the ‘I’” (p. 26). This is how Weil makes the move from the theological to the psychological, in terms of the will of the human. Weil’s writing, when informed by Lacan, does not fetter-away the ego, but realizes the extent to which the ego has no freedom but to desire the Other, and thus the ego by emptying yet seeks the transcendent realm.

As Evans (1996) shows, “Lacan is very critical of the concept of the autonomous ego . . . He argues that the ego is not free but determined by the symbolic order. The autonomy of the ego is simply a narcissistic illusion of mastery” (p. 15). Weil (2002a) makes reference to what can be considered the split subject, in Lacanian terms, and says, “We posses nothing in the world ---- a mere chance can strip us of everything ----- except the power to say ‘I.’ That is what we have to give to God ----- In other words, to destroy. There is absolutely no other free act which it is given us to accomplish ----- only the destruction of the ‘I’” (p. 26).

Weil (2012) spells out the activity in and of transcendence in the following way:

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Across the infinity of space and time, the infinitely more infinite love of God comes to possess us. God comes in His time (lit. hour). We have the power to consent to welcome God’s love or refuse it. If we remain deaf, it returns and returns again like a beggar. But also like a beggar, one day it does not return any more. If we consent, God plants a tiny seed in us and then goes. From that moment, God has nothing to do, and neither do we, except to wait. We must only not regret the consent we have granted him through our nuptial ‘yes.’ This is not as easy as it seems, for the growth of the seed inside us is painful. Moreover, by virtue of the fact that we have accepted this growth, we cannot avoid the task of destroying whatever would hinder it, pulling up the weeds and cutting the quack grass. Unfortunately, the quack grass is part of our own flesh, so our garden-care is a violent operation. Nevertheless, after all, the seed grows all on its own. The day comes when the soul belongs to God; when it not only consents to love, but when truly, effectively, it is love. It must then take its turn in traversing the universe to go to God. The soul does not love like a creature loves. The love in it is divine, uncreated, for the love of God for God passes through it. God alone is capable of loving God. We can only consent to forfeit our own sentiments to allow the passage of love through our souls. This is what it is to deny oneself. We are created only for this consent. ( p. 43)

Weil (1957) says, “Our world is a kingdom of necessity. The appearance of justice is of this world. Real justice is not of this world” (p. 142). Two things at least come from the master signifier: structure and justice, which is to be made righteous, as is a judgment of his or her casting-down self upon the field of meaning-making, found in the signifying

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chain. So as meaning is concocted by the signifying chain, which is delineated and delimited by the master signifier, the master signifier pronounces the “unconscious” real. The real becomes known through the expression of structure as it is, in the unconscious. That which is made known in Weil’s text is that the “love of God comes to possess us.” This superior, as indicated by the preface “infinitely more infinite,” action of the master implies that though Weil struggled and was “awaiting God,” Godself would be made known in some way through the implicit structure of our inner world.

For Weil, however, there is usefulness for the conception of the deity, other than judgment. Indeed the reality of the transcendent is the power of love. This transcendent love requires action on her part, as Weil lays it out, “We have the power to consent to welcome God’s love or refuse it. If we remain deaf, it returns and returns again like a beggar. But also like a beggar, one day it does not return any more.” Again Weil demonstrates persistent contradiction in her words, the powerful master in the role of a beggar. This is an illustration of her definition of the supernatural being able to not use all of their power, to be able to leave a void or a vacuum, contrary to the laws of necessity, being able to descend without weight or gravity, the second degree of grace.

Weil identifies the necessity of the response to the presence of deity; one that seems a needed requirement in order to evoke a return of God. Here we see pathos in this text about God, as Weil understands God. As Abraham Heschel has said, God is in search of man. Welcoming the deity, which has been awaited for, indicates a passionate deliberation. The feeling here is one of urgency; a message of urgency to watch and listen, to recognize. To give the subject (or ego) power is not to identify this illusory, but must be spoken of, as powerful itself. Rather, this is to identify a gift from on high, from

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the transcendental realm. If not heeded the opportunity for communion will be sinfully omitted, unrecognizable.

Weil (2012) speaks in the following way: “If we consent, God plants a tiny seed in us and then goes. From that moment, God has nothing to do, and neither do we, except to wait” (p. 43). Accepting transcendence nourishes the seed that throws humanity into the de-centered position. The impersonal in Weil’s understanding creates a space whereby the human experiences of disharmony and dissonance are validated. The decentering of desire which Lacan endorses entails the splitting of the subject. Zizek (2000) notes about humanity: “only an imperfect, lacking being loves” Lacan speaks of the split-subject and presses forward what he wanted, that is the disturbance of the notion of the unified subject. Weil’s use of Decreation in respect to one’s imitation of Christ demonstrates taking humankind and oneself through an emptying process, a de-centering. Weil (2002a) announces that, “for in the soul filled by the object no corner is left for saying ‘I’ (p. 31).

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Chapter Five

Conclusion: Coherent Contradiction

In the late twentieth century and in the one hundred years following Weil’s death, as Dunaway (1984) expresses, “The most recent addition to Weil studies in this country is more evidence of the ongoing vitality of her writings and their capacity to excite the human mind and spirit across the years” (p 105). In and beyond the 1970’s Weil has been viewed with a renewed interest which grew into part of the literature around the critique of war. In the Western establishment and in the thought of continental Europe, Weil’s work had attracted the interests of scholars. McFarland (1983) insists that “there was virtually nothing published in America on her political writing until the late 1970s, at which point some serious studies of her social, philosophical, and political thought began to appear” (p. 168-169). Many years after her death, Weil has become considered an important figure. As I have argued, Simone Weil, though largely ignored, should be considered part of the Western canon of critical thought especially when her texts receive refraction and illumination through a Lacanian lens.

Through the lens of Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalytic theory and philosophy I have demonstrated how Weil’s works contribute to twentieth-century thought as well as how Weil’s labor has implications for the consideration of the pursuit of justice in the present development of theory. I find that through Lacanian theory it can be demonstrated that the structure within Weil’s thought, in spite of Weil’s disconcerting comments and distractible methodology, holds firmly to useful as well as elegant analyses; and these analyses bring understanding. Each part of Weil’s text is to be approached with an understanding of the how the language there produces gaps and difference, and seeing the

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way experience in the texts explored initiate an interesting event produced through Lacanian studies to the effect of an engaging movement on multiple levels. Lacan offers an approach to Weil which opens the way to the structure of unconscious and movement in the past, present and future of the reader. As Lacan states in his Seminar XX: “the notion of discourse should be taken as a social link (lien social), founded on language, and thus seems to be unrelated to what is specified in linguistics as grammar, and yet nothing seems to change” (p. 17). Weil’s whole life was about linking herself to others, to find individual and group subjectivities. With a Lacanian understanding, Weil’s words mean something significant about the just way to treat the other. Weil believed that the workers should be treated justly. What this social link, mentioned above, exposed in Weil helps, through the uses of literary approaches of Lacanian notice and import, is the connectivity to those of her readers within present life circumstances. Weil demonstrates deep and unique thoughts from an interdisciplinary perspective in a quest to, through her purity, give willingness to challenge all thought.

I have demonstrated the use of Lacan’s four discourses as they relate to Weil’s texts to reveal an underlying framework that enhances the understanding of the coherence and consistency of Weil’s philosophy. In chapter one, I gave a brief sketch of Weil’s biographical development which acknowledges the absence of difference between Weil’s own physicality and her portrayal of the spiritual, of which she conceives. This was followed by discussion of Lacanian science as it extrapolates discourse, including the particular ways Weil’s subjectivity and language are spelled out. By mentioning subjectivity I come to equate Weil’s devaluing the self’s formal existence and language as being inadequate to address this nonexistence. This triggered the case for the use of

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Lacan’s understandings of subjectivity and language. I briefly introduced and explained the elements of Lacanian theory, key Lacanian concepts that I have found helpful, because they reveal the anti-hegemonic politics of Weil’s concepts and practices of Metxau, Attention, and Decreation. The Lacanian concepts which were helpful in this regard are the following, but are not limited to these: the four discourses (the master’s, the university, the hysteric, and the analyst’s), jouissance, lack, the Name-of-the-Father, the master signifier, the orders of the symbolic, the imaginary and the real, and other Lacanian ideas.

Chapters Two, Three, and Four speak to Metaxu, Attention, and Decreation respectively. In Chapter Two, Metaxu is explained through a variety of texts about human suffering, psychology, slavery, the narcissism of Hitler, propaganda, good versus evil, human limitations, theology, and the effect of scientific progress. The understanding which has been gained through the analysis of these texts place Weil as applicable to our present day social conditions including: gun violence, human suffering, war, technological progress in the domain globalization. I write about Weil’s concept of “necessity,” her use of contradictions to search for further truth, and her views of means vs. ends, which can become tools for addressing social issues. I also showed that “necessity” is always conceptually linked to desire and suffering in Weil’s philosophy, which holds that nothing can fulfill human desire. This demonstrates that through Weil’s hysteria a true utopian vision is replete with complications. Here I am reminded that Weil was both dangerous and a nuisance, because she did not except the hegemonic positions (or Master Signifier) of Marx, Lenin, Hitler, Trotsky, and even her mentor Alain’s pedagogy.

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In Chapter Three, I explored Weil’s concept of Attention by examining texts that include the topics of aesthetics, theology, human joy and suffering, political leadership, education, will and desire, physical labor, and historical criticism. One of the main applications of Attention is to the educational process. Educational pursuit needs to be relentlessly pursued with attentive awareness and waiting. This takes education outside the traditional contexts of the formal system and helps to clarify the need for Attention in the lives of the poor, the unsophisticated, and laborers. Attention is Weil’s prescription for action, I argued with reference to Caranfa’s (2010) explanation that Weil’s idea of education and “method of learning—to look, not to interpret, and to pray, not to search—is a path to be striven for, but it should be pointed out that it is so terribly difficult to attain because it involves detachment, waiting, solitude, and the death of the self” (p. 64). This advocating for objective examination of all experience reprises the value of knowing that desire is can never be fulfilled. This also has an element of inclusiveness and engaging the other. As these are demonstrated, one is reminded of Alcoff’s understanding that “certain privileged locations are discursively dangerous” (p. 7). There is a direct correlation between the death of the self and privileged locations.

Attention is a concept and action which Weil uses as she expresses workers’ plight and, importantly, their spiritual needs, which Marxist thinkers habitually disregarded. Weil (2002a) states that “Workers need poetry more than bread. They need that their life should be a poem. They need some light from eternity” (p. 180). This is the direct connection between the spiritual and the material, which is outside the Western paradigm and are inclusive of the recognition that Eastern ideas and practices of

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mindfulness and mindful practice, such as “attentive waiting,” are validated. Weil’s holistic approach applies to healthcare, psychology, and authentic leadership.

In Chapter Four, I examined Weil’s active notion, she terms Decreation, which reflects void and emptiness, detachment, and impersonality. This is grounded in the recognition that God empties Godself, in the Western religious tradition of the kenotic gospel. The application that is seen here is the example of humility, and the hope that a person loves the other by declining to live in her space. “Do nothing out of vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves” (Philippians 2:3). This also shows that Weil is not nihilistic, but rather affirms the existence of the other. The individual makes a different space for the other, the other much like Lacan’s early version based on his reading of Kojève and Hegel. Lacan indicates the other person or otherness as the object. This has implications for theodicy, in that the Deity decreates an open space for the existence of the other without violating the other with presence, but rather is transgressed upon by the other. The formation of the self the otherness filling the void conceptually, psychologically, and theologically has to do with ego formation. Weil’s relevance for the postmodern person is seen in this process, in Lacanian terms, as the allowing of the other to live in the emptiness we leave behind, with no sheath of being left behind to shape or define the other.

Weil worked outside of the ways Western paradigms and knowing, producing material which I think proves to be a precursor to postmodernism. From a Lacanian approach to language, I listen closely to Jean-Francois Lyotard. It was Lyotard (1994) who recognized that “scientific knowledge is a kind of discourse. And it is fair to say that for the last forty years the ‘leading’ sciences and technologies have had to do with

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language”(p. 1). Weil realizes this specific charge with her passage on how words prove to have higher value once their first letter is capitalized. Weil takes liberty to forge a wedge in Western tradition. Weil is holistic, grounded in embodied somatic experience. Weil’s understandings are non-linear, non-dualistic, and in her work the spiritual is not divorced from the material world. This being the case, Weil could and should be understood as an early voice seeking to restore the processes of knowing that have been unappreciated and should be, in my opinion, of great importance to the Western canon of scholarship.

In what is below, I address texts from the point of view that considers the tripartite, Borromean knot-like, Metaxu-Attention-Decreation, relational structure which elucidates the beauty and coherence in Weil’s work, when seen through a Lacanian lens. Weil can be understood as addressing all three in a singular voice, Metaxu, Attention, and Decreation, a tripartite of terms. The full nature of the Borromean tripartite relationship of Weil’s key actions cannot be spelled-out here completely due the limited space given. This is a topic of another study whose birth and scope is not found in this dissertation.

Weil (2002a) indicates that “When the attention has revealed the contradiction in something on which it has been fixed, a kind of loosening takes place. By persevering in this course we attain detachment” (p.98). Here we notice immediately that Weil is discussing Attention; but within the quoted text we also find Metaxu and Decreation implied. Weil often explains Attention within the context of the depths of a mystical Christian experience. Weil explains that “Contradiction experienced to the very depths of the being tears us heart and soul: it is the cross” (p. 98). Contradiction revealed by Attention points

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to the possibility of the understanding and application of Metaxu as a way which facilitates the acceptance of the contradiction and its various sides or positions, whereas Decreation defines the extent to which “we” become detached (and nothing).

To say that “a kind in loosening takes place” indicates that the move Weil is inclined to discuss is towards Decreation, which is kenosis, toward the biggest event in history for many Christians; eating the remains of this event, is crucial to the heart of Weil’s atheology. As Weil (2002a) says just prior “Contradiction experienced to the very depths of the being tears us heart and soul: it is the cross” (p. 98). God would have to die in order for the Sacrament to take on such meaning and divine nature for Weil. Awaiting God who must return, return from the dead, but is forever like communication which Lacan speaks of, which cannot return to the speaker (the agent). Is it impossible, according to Weil, for deity to return? In this line of questioning one gets closer to Weil’s thinking. As in the letter to Timothy, we must bear the cross, our unbelief. Likewise, in this text from Weil, “By persevering in this course we attain detachment,” in this is found Decreation and Metaxu. How else could it be but for a dead God returning?

Weil exemplifies in this text the three fold application of Metaxu, Attention, and Decreation:

Relentless necessity, wretchedness, distress, the crushing burden of poverty and of labour which wears us out, cruelty, torture, violent death, constraint, disease—all these constitute divine love. It is God who in love withdraws from us so that we can love him. For if we were exposed to the direct radiance of his love, without the protection of space, of time and of matter, we should be evaporated like water in the sun; there would not be enough ‘I’ in us to make it possible to

Key:

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surrender the ‘I’ for love’s sake. Necessity is the screen set between God and us so that we can be. It is for us to pierce through the screen so that we cease to be. (pp. 32-33).

“Relentless necessity, wretchedness, distress, the crushing burden of poverty and of labour which wears us out, cruelty, torture, violent death, constraint, disease—all these constitute divine love.” In the presentation of these sufferings they appear in scrupulously set in chorus with the notion of divine love, but would likely seem juxtaposed over against divine love. For an exiled Jew who lived without belief in the deity of her tradition, as atheist, Weil (2002a) states: “in this sense atheism is a purification. I have to be atheistic with the part of myself which is not made for God. Among those men in whom the supernatural part has not been awakened, the atheists are right and the believers wrong” (p. 115). Necessity is that which protects humans from the blast of power, pouissance, that would destroy us, and the jouissance, a sip of which would only be available. These qualities of the divine are only through the suffering divinity, the emptied divinity, the Decreating divinity. Therefore, one would be taking on all of the plights of humanity: “wretchedness, distress, the crushing burden of poverty and of labour which wears us out, cruelty, torture, violent death, constraint, disease” in order to experience divine favor. Attention is needed once one begins, in Weil’s understanding, to experience a glimpse of the transcendent. Weil implicates Decreation when saying, “It is God who in love withdraws from us so that we can love him.” In her text Weil demonstrates the presence of Metaxu, “Necessity is the screen set between God and us so that we can be.” That which separates the human from the transcendent allows humans to “be,” that screen is, necessity, but also Metaxu. The dual nature and the

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chasm between the human and the divine exemplify the nature of Metaxu. “It is for us to pierce through the screen so that we cease to be,” this is the tearing of the veil, the curtain in the temple which reveals the one who holds all justice.

In The Love of God and Affliction, Weil (2012) links her concepts of Metaxu, Attention, and Decreation in such a way that makes clear that, rather being a smattering of unrelated ideas, constitutes a coherent philosophy of recognition leading to concrete action.

Affliction is a marvel of divine technique. It is a simple and ingenious device that gains entry into the soul of a finite creature with immense force—blind, brutal and cold. The infinite distance that separates God and the creature gathers entirely everything into one point to pierce the soul at its centre.

Those to whom such things happen have no part in this operation. They struggle like a butterfly pinned live to an album. But they can, through the horrors, continue to love. This is not an impossibility, not an obstacle—one can nearly say not a difficulty. For the greatest suffering, as long as it is short of fainting, cannot touch the point of the soul that consents to a good orientation.

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One needs only to know that love is an orientation and not a state of the soul. If we ignore this, we fall into despair at the first onslaught of affliction.

For the one whose soul remains oriented toward God while being pierced by the nail finds himself nailed to the very center of the universe. It is the true center—not in the middle—it is outside space and time, it is God. In a dimension that does not belong to space, that is not time, in a completely different dimension, the nail pierces a hole through creation, through the thickness of the veil that separates the soul and God.

In this marvelous dimension, the soul can cross the totality of space and time to come before the very presence of God, without leaving the place or the instant to which the body finds itself linked.

It finds itself at the intersection of the creation and the Creator. This point of intersection is the crossing branches of the Cross (pp 44-45).

There are other texts of Weil’s literature which point directly to the three themes. The following quote from Gravity and Grace illustrates the evidence of these themes in Weil’s work as well:

God wears himself out through the infinite thickness of time and space in order to reach the soul and to captivate it. If

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it allows a pure and utter consent (though brief as a lightning flash) to be torn from it, then God conquers that soul. And when it has become entirely his he abandons it. He leaves it completely alone and it has in its turn, but gropingly, to cross the infinite thickness of time and space in search of him whom it loves. It is thus that the soul, starting from the opposite end, makes the same journey that God made towards it. And that is the cross (p. 88).

That “God wears himself out” demonstrates the unwavering insistence of a deity who love’s humankind to the extent of demonstrating pouissance over against pouissance, unconceivable power against unending power, God experiencing Godself through affliction, hatred against love, pathos against eros, not through agape of some human construction, but pure transcendence that reaches the earth (from which they were made = humans). This apocalypse or renting of the veil, from which they were unmade, decreated.

One cannot but be captivated, held captive with Attention to the workings of God’s personhood, and to empty oneself likewise. Just to, perhaps in the moment of jouissance or surrender; to allow Godself to be emptied upon thee, and empty oneself in return (Philippians 2:7). Yet still God conquers us, “God conquers that soul.” One is sought out for transcendence to “reach the soul and captivate it.” The earth captivated, the soul arrested, the likeness of the deity brought back to its original form, emptiness, Awaiting God, ruah breathe psyche or pneuma. To “cross the infinite thickness of time and space” is to reach for many places, from earth to heavens, in a word Metaxu. Weil spoke often of the right union of opposites searching for truth in Metaxu, not quite though; Weil as the hysteric sought knowledge beyond knowledge. To know was not

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enough what lay beyond was only penultimate. Weil wanted to see beyond this close-minded world. In the right union of opposites: the “opposite end, makes the same journey that God made towards it. And that is the cross,” The means and the ends at odds; Weil wished to go to the cross, where few dare go during a time of persecution, accept the likes of Dietrich Bonheoffer. In this scenario the means were in themselves what they were, the infinite means. The end did not justify nor is justified by them; it is only likely that one live a real life by way of the cross or beyond it all. I would imagine that Weil would see the cross the as the means or the bridge cast toward eternity, which carries one and yet is carried, onward and onward.

As I reflect on all the passages quoted by and about Weil, the analyses, be they Lacanian or otherwise, even attempts of understanding how others thought about her or even how I might imagine Weil’s thought about herself, I am at awe at the spacious world of ideas that spanned such a short life. Given that I only touch briefly on Weil’s politics she was an outstanding thinker and leader in that arena. Weil was a very strong and fascinating personality, who held unswervingly to her convictions. Weil speaks about Metaxu in reference to both sides of a contradiction or about how to hold Attention on a resemblance of the transcendent, Weil spoke of Decreation on the heights of deity. Nonetheless, “Once we have understood we are nothing, the object of all our efforts is to become nothing. It is for this that we suffer with resignation, it is for this that we act, it is for this that we pray” (p. 34). Humanity is to seek suffering in reaction to the divine prevalence and seeking to follow God’s example, humans empty themselves, Decreation. Weil’s polemic was not just theological, but Weil’s theology speaks to the political: Decreation and the abolition of all political parties. Yet one more round with Weil, and

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including Lacan as a testimonial to Weil’s literary task of balance, Metaxu; reading, Attention; and deconstructing (almost, but rather destruction . . . bringing the created into the uncreated), Decreation. In a sort of choppy texture one sees with the mind’s eye the picture of this flow available.

Readings. Reading—except where there is a certain quality of attention—obeys the law of gravity. We read the opinions suggested by gravity (the preponderant part played by the passions, and by social conformity in the judgments we form of men and events). With a higher quality of attention our reading discovers gravity itself, and various systems of possible balance. Superposed readings: To read necessity behind sensation, to read order behind necessity, to read God behind order (p. 136)

As a final indicator of the rhythm of Metaxu, Attention, and Decreation, reading in this text I find the structure that Lacan might see, this grammar of Simone Weil (here her grammar being her theory----as spelled out in my work thus far). To be very Lacanian, “Reading . . . obeys the law of gravity,” structure implied here by the turn toward a systematizing word for Weil, gravity. A structure holding it all together, found in the very nature of Metaxu here, “gravity itself, and various systems of possible balance.” Weil (2002b) put it this way, about reading people, “The structure of the human heart is as much a reality as any other in the universe, neither more nor less than the trajectory of a planet” (p. 232). The human, the structure, was her own limit.

Reading people, for Weil, is structural, it is Metaxu. The balance of contradiction walking along erect in stature, human. Love/hate, not between, but together; peace/war, for Weil not between, but considered together. Dimensions of space/time, not between,

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but considered together. Looking further for the structure Lacan appreciates, balance is found with Attention. “With a higher quality of attention our reading discovers gravity itself, and various systems of possible balance.” I am left asking, where is the third term in the flow of this structure: namely, Decreation? It is “to read God behind order,” the decreated God, in transcendent void I find the final beat of the rhythm. Weil’s work is replete with texts and ideas that secure the rhythm of Metaxu, Attention, and Decreation.

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Defense of Insanity

Simone Weil and Jacques Lacan by: christopher peyton miller

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