Abstract

What lies at the heart of Simone Weil’s existential and spiritual journey is the view of a world and a history dominated by force. The Greeks understood this perfectly, and illustrated it in their Iliad, in their tragedies and in Plato’s reflections on the misfortune to which everything is subjected. Yet, they also glimpsed the presence of signs of an absolute Good in the world and throughout history, a Good radically different to everything that is subject to necessity and force, and they went so far as to attempt to build bridges that might connect the world and Good. Weil believed that all traces of this were lost after Plato but then re-emerged in the Gospels, Gnosticism and Catharism. One decisive point in such a construction is the intuition that Good create by retreating to make room for the creature. So, as far as the creature wishes to exist, it finds itself within a context of injustice, far from God and subjected to necessity and misfortune. But, if it comprehends that the Good which inhabits it involves de-creating itself in order to correspond to God opens up new possibilities for a history removed from necessity, a history that is free and good.