[100 Challenge] Roberta Gattel_46

Iliad or the poem of strength, Simone Weil, 1939 - 1940

Often, when you have experienced a series of difficult situations, and yet another disappointment comes, you wonder, "Why?"

It is not the case that you are searching for. It is a purpose.

In the Iliad or the Poem of Strength, Simone Weil discusses the meaning of life and its link with beauty. For her, life is as empty of purpose as beauty. People recognize the beauty of life even if they cannot join it with the pain that comes with its lack of meaning.

Necessity (the “Destiny” for the Greeks, as Weil reports) indifferently and unpredictably hits the “just” and “unjust,” giving life and taking it away. Its plan is mysterious, and all of nature is subjugated to it. People suffer, and they suffer without a reason.

Disgrace, which follows Necessity, throws the defenseless person into a state of humiliation and prostration. For Weil, who takes up the lesson of pre-Christian thought, only by going through one's total annihilation can one enter into the “Truth.”

Humiliation reveals people's miserable nature their temporary and destitute being; suffering brings an awareness that offers steps to rise. Ancient Greeks meant exactly that with the phrase “πάθει Μαθός” (“learning through suffering”). For Simone Weil, the search for Truth was born as an attempt to save people.

However, the two entities that present themselves as significant researchers of truth, philosophy, and religionbetray their promises. Philosophy fails to embrace everything, even Necessity itself, with rationality alone; it absolutizes the Truth and relativizes life. Religion fails when recognizing Necessity; it asks people to accept it as the will of the Lord and even asks them to love it.

In the vision of the French philosopher, faith begins right here, where Philosophy and Religion stop.

Her faith is giving up understanding the cause of evil with reason while continuing to love. Giving up understanding means abandoning hubris (ὕβρις) and recognizing one's limits; continuing to love doesn’t mean loving the evil that bends you, but everything evil is a part of.

This is Simone Weil's faith: assent, not consent.