Episode #175 - Simone Weil - Vessels of God
Simone Weil - Vessels of God
This episode explores Simone Weil’s view on self-transformation, contrasting the Western emphasis on willpower and discipline with her deeper focus on cultivating attention. While will is effective for physical action and routine habit-building, Weil argues it falls short when it comes to moral clarity, inspiration, and spiritual depth. Attention, for Weil, is not passive but a disciplined openness to truth, beauty, and obligation—qualities she sees as reflections of a higher moral order, which she calls God. Crucially, Weil believes that goodness only becomes real when individuals act as vessels for this universal good, through conscious participation in the world. The episode also outlines three pathways to developing attention—love of beauty, love of neighbor, and religious or transcendent experience—and emphasizes the need for humility and lucid thought as safeguards against ego-driven moral blindness, especially in times of collective conflict.
Further Reading:
Waiting for God by Simone Weil (1951)
Gravity and Grace by Simone Weil (1952)
The Ethics of Attention: Engaging the Real with Iris Murdoch and Simone Weil by Silvia Caprioglio Panizza (2022)
See the full transcript here.
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