Interpreting Simone Weil: Presence and Absence in Attention

Author(s): Ann Pirruccello

Source: Philosophy East and West, Vol. 45, No. 1 (Jan., 1995), pp. 61-72
Published by: University of Hawai'i Press
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INTERPRETING SIMONE WEIL: PRESENCE Ann Pirruccello
AND ABSENCE IN ATTENTION

In the context of discussingTanabe Hajime'sconcept of Absolute Noth- AssistantProfessor

ingness, Kyoto School philosopher Hase Shdto points out that an of Philosophyat the
awareness of the absence or nonexistence of the object of faith is a Universityof San Diego
conditionof both the purityof faithas the desireforthe ultimate,and the
presence or fulfillmentof the object of faith.' Simone Weil-a French
philosopher not unknown to Hase-embodies similar concerns in her
own work. Weil feels that the essence of prayer,what she calls "atten-
tion," must reveal the absence of its object at the same time that it con-
veys its presence.
If we look at what Weil says about the fulfilling intuition of the
higherforms of attention,we find a synthesisof divine absence and di-
vine presencethat is both purificationand completion,both an emptying
and a filling of the human being. In this essay, I want to draw from Ha-
se's work in approachingWeil's notion of attention,and to considerhow
the variousformsor degrees of attentionare fulfilled.An importantgoal
will be to show how the symbolic qualityof its fulfillingintuitionsallows
attention to contain these complementarymoments of presence and
absence.

I. Attentionand Nothingnessof Self and God

Simone Weil sometimes describesthe perfectionof the spirituallife
as the consent to be nothing.2 In some measure, this means that the
sanctified human being is the one who realizes and accepts that any
personal, social, or ontological identitypreviouslyregardedas the truth
of one's existence is merely an illusion produced by the imaginationin
contingentcircumstances.Such a realizationis a kind of death, as Weil
describes it, for what is understoodand accepted is that whomever and
whatever we took our self to be is merely "a dead thing, something
analogous to matter.... [T]he thing we believe to be our self is as
ephemeral and automatic a product of external circumstancesas the
formof a seawave."3 In Weil's view, it is only supernaturalgrace work- Referencesare
ing within the human being that allows this knowledge and consent to explained under
occur, for the naturalhuman tendency is to preserve and inflate self- "Notes,"p. 71.
identitiesthroughthe use of the imagination(GG, pp. 16-17).
PhilosophyEast& West
Relatedto Weil's notionof attention,one could say thatthe power of Volume 45, Number1
consent to self-diminishmentmentioned above is one of the aspects of January1995
the loving expectation of goodness that is the core of attention.4Forat- 61-72
tention is the activity of waiting, of expecting in a way that embodies ? 1995
self-diminishment.Only when one has suspended a way of seeing that by Universityof
has the values of the personal self or ego as its interpretativeprinciple Hawaii Press

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 can one approach reality instead of illusion. Such a suspension is the
heartof attention.5And accordingto Weil, the consent to self-diminish-
ment is a manifestationof the love that is God's consent in the act of
creationto be diminished,on the one hand, and the echo or resounding
Imageof that consent, the true meaning of Necessity or world-ordering
principle,on the other (ICG,p. 185). The humanbeing who consents to
his or her own nothingnessin the self-emptyingstance of attentionis a
tiny likenessof thatgreaterimage.As Weil writes,"ourconsent can only
be a reflectionof that of the Christ"(ICG,p. 195).
Yet the fulfillmentof attentionmust involve a deepening realization
not only of the nothingnessof the personalself, but of the nothingnessof
God as well. Attentionprogressesin its course by revealingthat God is
nothing,practicallyspeaking,because God is otherthan existingor nat-
ural goods. Ultimately,attention sees that God is "absent" from the
worldthatcan be represented(GG, pp. 99-100). To realizethis absence
of true Good fromthe realmof all imaginablehumanends is to come to
behold the world undistortedby the self-aggrandizingimagination,to
see it as "necessityand not purpose"(SWR,p. 466). Inotherwords, it is
to realize that all things that exist are simply what is broughtabout by
impersonalcauses ruled by an inflexible, impartialorder. No naturalor
existingthing can ever representa final good or purpose(SWR,p. 466).
Truegoodness or God dwells on a differentplane. The ultimateis absent.
Moreover,what we persist in regardingas good "here below" is con-
tingentupon forces that are indifferentto our self-centereddesires.Yet it
is upon these goods that our personalidentitiesdepend.
To embrace this double truth-the absence of ultimategood from
the domain of existence and the contingencyof existing"goods"-is the
other side of the coin of the humanbeing's consent to her own nothing-
ness. For the realizationthat the Good is other, that the world has an
orderthat is wholly indifferentto our personalends and perceived iden-
tities, is to realize the dependency of these identitiesupon externalcir-
cumstances. In contrast,the still unattentiveego-self sees the world as
orderedaccordingto its own purposes,and confuses Good with worldly
goods (SWR,p. 462; ICG,p. 175). It is only when this illusion is shat-
tered, when a human being can no longer locate the ultimategoodness
she craves in the world of her naturaldesires,thatshe realizeshow much
her own existence, what she took herselfto be, is an affairof the imag-
ination.
So if the loving attentionthat is at the heartof faith and prayerfor
Weil is to have a fulfillingmoment that is genuine and not imaginary,
that fulfillmentwill include the realizationthat the object of its love is
nothing that exists in "any ordinary sense." It includes a profound
awareness of absence, and it is a love for what has no ordinaryex-
East&West istence, even while it endeavorsto uncover God's realityhere below.
Philosophy

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 Each form of attention,from intellectualto supernaturalprayer, is
completed by an intuitionof some aspect of Necessity-the principleof
world order. In Christianand Stoic terms, Necessity is the logos; in ear-
lier Greek terms, it is the peras or limiting principle that defines the
extent of all naturalforces (ICG,pp. 153-155, 184-185). Intuitionsof
Necessity are intuitionsof the real,accordingto Weil, and are contrasted
with conceptions and perceptionswhich are tainted by the human im-
agination in its fantasizingmode (ICG,pp. 178-185; GG, pp. 46-47).
The realities revealed in attention are made manifest through an im-
personal creativitythat characterizesattention (ICG,p. 188; WG, pp.
147-149; GG, p. 106). And they convey both the presence and absence
of truthand goodness.
We can connect this absence/presenceof Good in the fulfillingmo-
ment of attention with the help of Japanese philosopher Hase Shoto.
Hase points out in the context of discussingTanabe'sconcept of Abso-
lute Nothingnessthat an awareness of the absence or nonexistence of
the object of faith is a condition not only of the purityof faith as the de-
sire for the ultimate,but of the presence or fulfillmentof the object of
faith.Thisfulfillment,moreover,representsthe unificationof subjectand
object, where the act of desire is no differentfrom its fulfillment(SF,
pp. 90-91).
LikeWeil, Hase pointsout thatfor faithto be trulypure,the object of
faith, practicallyspeaking, cannot be any being, only nonbeing. To in-
troducesomethingbeing-likeas the object of faith is to reducethe object
of faith to the nonultimateby introducingan object of heteronomous
desire (SF,p. 92). Hase is indicating,like Weil, that desire for any possi-
ble or existing good entails-practically speaking-that the object is
apprehendedpersonally,as an attachmentor condition of existence of
the personalself or ego. In otherwords, it is the promiseof personalful-
fillmentthat is the condition of any existing or possibly existing being's
appearance as desirable.A human being can embody a truly free and
selfless desirefor good only if the object of desire is, practicallyspeaking,
nonexistent.This is to say that the good desired must be desired as irre-
trievablyabsent or impossible, as good that cannot be possessed or in
any way supportiveof the ego-self's illusorybeing.
Butthe object of faith,or in Weil's language,the object of attention,
mustbe nonexistentfor anotherreasonas well. As we mentionedearlier,
the spirituallife is perfectedin attentionmade of God's love for God. The
subjectand object of attentionmustbe identical,and this means thatthe
fulfillmentof attentionis identicalwith the activityof attentionitself.As
Weil puts it, "if there is real desire, if the thing desired is really light,the
desire for light produces it" (WG, p. 107). And Hase explains that with
naturalor existing things, "there exists a gap between their desire and
their possession which can be filled up only with time and space" (SF, Ann Pirruccello

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 p. 94). If an existing or natural object is posited that preexists faith, rather
than being developed originally out of faith itself,
... the subject-objectsplitthus introducedintofaithcannotbe overcome.The
effortof the subject to become one with the object located outside of itself
evokes passion, and supposingeven that in this passion the split of subject
and object is temporarilyovercome, since the object stays locatedoutsidethe
subject, under the outwardappearanceof unity a fissure is broughtabout
withinthe personalitywhich may lead to the collapse of the core of the per-
son. Over againstthis, a keen awarenessof the fact that the object of faith is
not being but absence or nonbeing,overcomes the passion inherentin faith
and makesthe realizationof a trueunityof the personin faithpossible. (SF,p.
94).
And it is possible, according to Hase, that if we desire nonbeing-a good
that is nonexistent-our faith can be such that it produces the image of
the absent good, and "the image expresses the reality and core of the
object in its absence" (SF, p. 94). Hase could be speaking for himself and
Weil when he says

because of its absence, the desire for the Good and its possessionare linked.
In this vein, we can say that the object of faithshows, in a highersense, the
characteristicsof the image. To call the object of faith an image is not con-
sideringit to be illusory.Itdenotes, on the contrary,that in humanlife there is
a realmthatopens up only throughimages. (SF,p. 94)
In Weil's work we find that the fulfillment of attention comes with
the intuition of realities that depend on the very act of attention for their
manifestation. These realities possess the characteristics of what Hase
calls the image or, as I would prefer to say, the symbol. For their ap-
pearance indicates the absence or practical nonexistence of their refer-
ents while making present that reality at the same time.6 Before going
further, let us be clear that this is not to say that attention is fulfilled by a
product of the human imagination. Rather, the attention is fulfilled by an
intuition that is not spun by the imagination. But the realities intuited
themselves possess the characteristics of a symbol or likeness. This is
because, while not losing their character as real themselves, they refer to
something else, something absent, of which they are an articulation. In
this way, the intuitions that fulfill the attention can be understood in part
as the realization of absence-the absence of the desired good. It may
be that "God can only be present to us under the form of absence," but
this absence must be indicated by a present reality that points to it (GG,
p. 99). And since those realities intuited have no existence apart from the
activity of the thought that thinks them, and this thought is an operation
of grace, their appearance represents the unity of subject and object that
characterizes God's love for God. God's creative love working in atten-
PhilosophyEast& West tion makes God present either implicitly or explicitly (WG, pp. 13 7-215).

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 It may be helpful, then, to track the progress of attention as the
deepening awarenessof absence or nonexistence of the object of atten-
tion. We will see that this kind of awareness is the condition of the in-
creasing purityof attention,as well as of the emergence of ever more
explicit "symbols"of God.
II.Attentionin ItsVariousForms
Weil indicates that attention,what we described earlier as the pa-
tient expectationof truthand goodness that is the essence of prayer,de-
velops over time from lesser to more perfectforms (WG, pp. 105-116,
137-215). Ifwe examine the developmentof attention,we can see that it
approachesperfection,in part,as an increasingapprehensionof the ab-
sence of the Absolute.Attentionbegins by realizingthe absence of what
are little fragmentsof particulartruths,each of which is precious as "a
pure image of the unique, eternal, and living Truth..." (WG, p. 112).
And attentionends by realizingthe complete absence of pureTruthand
Goodness fromthe world.
IntellectualAttention.At the start,we know that Weil thinksthat atten-
tion can be developed beginning on the level of intellectualstudies. In
applyingoneself to intellectualexercises, one can come to an apprecia-
tion of truthas somethinguniversaland necessary.Studiesteach us that
a suspensionof our selves-our own opinions and imagination-is pre-
requisiteto the apprehensionof necessary and universaltruths.Mathe-
maticalstudies are particularlyhelpful in this regard.The intelligence is
forced to recognize and manipulatenecessary relationships,which are
resistantto imaginativeattemptsto invent truth. Specific relationships
must be obeyed, and rules must be rigorouslyapplied in orderfor such
intellectualexercises to be successful (WG, p. 112).
One importantthing to note here about intellectualattentionis that
what it expects when it is turnedtowardthe data of a geometryproblem
or a line of poetry is an object that has no existence in the empirical
sense at all; it is ideal. In other words, intellectualattentionseeks neces-
sary relations and meanings that are inseparablefrom the activity of
thought (WG, pp. 169-170; GG, p. 43; ICG,p. 188).7 They are absent
from the world of materialexistence. Moreover,unlike productsof the
personalimagination,these entitiesremainunmanifestas long as the will
is functioningin the imagination.The momentthe mind begins actively
to seek or imagine,to function in an egocentric way, these relationships
recede from intuitivesight.
It is also possible for the intuitedobjects of intellectualattentionto
have an explicitly symbolic quality as well. Weil believed that in some
traditionsmathematicalentities were rightlyrecognized as symbolic of
supernaturaltruths.The Pythagoreans,for example, used geometryas a
"double language, which at the same time provides informationcon- AnnPirruccello

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 cerning the forces that are in action in matter, and talks about the
supernaturalrelationsbetween God and his creatures."8Mostsignificant,
in Weil's eyes, is the Pythagoreanconcern with the mean proportional,
which is "in theireyes the image of divine mediationbetween God and
his creatures"(NR, p. 278). Weil lamentsthat a concern for the symbol
has disappearedfrommodernscience and believes that in some areasof
contemporarymathematicsone could find "symbolsas clear, as beau-
tiful and as full of spiritualmeaningas that of the circle and mediation"
(NR, p. 279).
To summarize,in intellectualstudiesthe mind is consciouslyturned,
perhapsfor the firsttime, towardthat which does not have empiricalor
imaginaryexistence-ideal relationshipsand meanings-but which can
be thoughtand made presentto the mind when a self-diminishingdesire
for such entities is produced.What becomes presentto attendingmind
and is inseparablefrom it are relationshipsthat can be symbolic of su-
pernaturaltruths,and this in some cases indicatesthe absence of God
while presentingGod's likeness mathematically.Moreover,intellectual
attentionis the activityof intellectuallyfree mind, of mind that consents
to allow the relationshipsto be thought and is not determinedto think
them. The humanbeing is freedfromthe externalforcesthataccompany
merely personal thoughts-thoughts contaminated by the fantasizing
activityof imagination:

So long as Mansubmitsto havinghis soul takenup with his own thoughts,his

personal thoughts, he remains entirely subjected, even in his most secret
thoughts,to the compulsionexercisedby needs and to the mechanicalplay of
forces. If he thinksotherwise,he is mistaken.Buteverythingchanges as soon
as, by virtueof a positive act of concentration,he empties his soul so as to
allow the conceptions of eternal Wisdom to enter into it. He then carries
within himself the very conceptions to which force is subjected. (NR, pp.
277-278)

Thisfreedomon the level of the intellectis on the cusp of the naturaland

the supernatural,as Weil puts it, and it produces a "semi-reality"(FLN,
p. 90).

SupernaturalAttention.Ifwe move up the scale of attentionto the forms

of supernaturalattentionthat intend God's presence in the world im-
plicitly, love of the orderof the world and love of neighborare perhaps
the most accessible. The attentionthat revealsGod's presence as beauty
and the attentionthatcreatesGod's presence as free and selfless consent
must also include an awareness of the nonexistence of the object of
attention.
Inthe case of the orderof the world,or beauty,we have the beautiful
East
Philosophy & West experienced as one of the faces of Necessity. As Weil describes it:

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 Ifthe soul is set in the directionof love,the morewe contemplate
necessity,
the morecloselywe pressitsmetalliccold and hardnessdirectlyto ourvery
flesh,the nearerwe approachto the beautyof the world.(WG,p. 177)
The reasonthat a realizationof the world's impartialor indifferentorder
and an awareness of its great beauty are linked is because beauty and
harshnessare just differentways of experiencing the same Necessity.
Beautyappearswhen we contemplatethe necessaryrelationsthat com-
pose the indifferentorderof thingswith a sense of love (NR,p. 281).
But attentionthat reveals the world in its splendoror beauty repre-
sents a high degree of purityof faith in Hase's sense. This is because the
awareness of beauty involves, as a necessary condition, a keen aware-
ness of the absence or nonexistence of the Good. Accordingto Weil, if
we examine our desire for beauty, an importantinterpretationof that
desire comes to light.Whetherwe are attendingto the universalbeauty
embodied in the order of the world, or the faint echoes of this beauty
suggested by particularthings or people, what beauty arouses is a long-
ing for "finality."By "finality"Weil means an end or intrinsicgood (WG,
p. 166). The importantpoint is that Weil interpretsthis desire for finality
arousedby the imageof beautyas the desireforthe ultimate,forthe Good
that would make us complete when we are somehow assimilatedto it.
But Weil agrees with Kant'sview that the finality beauty actually
possesses involves no objective beyond itself (WG, p. 165). That is, the
good that beauty provides is only the beauty itself and not something
additional(WG, p. 167). The finalityof beauty does not bringa tangible
good that satisfieshuman longing. Rather,beauty providesan end or fi-
nalitythat is merely beauty itself,a good that appearsonly in the act of
attention,froma reverentialdistance, and thereforeoffersus nothingthat
we can possess or appropriatewithoutdestroying.This kindof good that
attractsus withoutgiving us anythingtangibleensuresthatthe experience
of beauty arousesour feeling of incompleteness,and while enjoyingthe
good that beauty does provide,we cannot help being referredto an ab-
sent goodness, an impossiblegoodness of which we possess no idea. We
desire this absent good, but withoutan object on the level of concepts.
When Weil describesour relationshipto beauty, she says:
We aredrawntowarditwithoutknowingwhatto askof it. Itoffersus itsown
existence.We do notdesireanythingelse, we possessit, andyet we stillde-
siresomething. We do notinthe leastknowwhatit is. Wewantto getbehind
beauty, butit is onlya surface.Itis likea mirror
thatsendsus backourown
desireforgoodness.It is a sphinx,an enigma,a mysterywhich is painfully
We shouldliketo feed uponit butit is merelysomethingto look
tantalizing.
at;it appearsonlyfroma certaindistance.(WG,p. 166)
We can see that for Weil, the attentionthat revealsthe beauty of the
world, and which she believes representsa high degree of spirituality,is AnnPirruccello

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 in partthe awareness of the absence or nonexistence of the good. Yet
beauty is the present realityof God as the logos or principleof world
order, manifestonly in the activityof attendingto Necessity with love.
This love for Necessity which reveals beauty again representsa unifica-
tion of subjectand object, for it is God's love in attentionthat articulates
the symbolic realityof beauty, which refersback to the nothingness,to
the absent good that created it.

Love of Neighbor.In the formof attentionthat Weil calls love of neigh-

bor, the realitythat is manifestedin the act of attention is the human
freedomor personhoodof the humanbeing we are attendingto. Realiz-
ing this freedom, moreover, is no differentfrom allowing that human
being to realize it in him- or herself.
Ifwe are in a positionto help anotherwho is in distress,we can only
do so with truejustice, Weil thinks,if we see what is invisible.We have
to give our attentionto "whatdoes not exist in the anonymousflesh lying
inertby the roadside"(WG, p. 149). In otherwords, what attentionsees
thatthe ordinaryregardis blindto is the dignityof another,the humanity
that is grounded in the other's capacity to consent freely to what the
other is going through(WG, pp. 146-149).
Butthis consent or freedom is not an ordinaryattributeof a human
being. It is a little bit of the human being that is without naturalex-
istence, and which is not always discovered by oneself or others. It be-
comes manifest and effective, like other products of attention, the
moment it is recognized through pure attention, the moment one is
seen as a person possessing free consent. The freedom of another is
broughtto awareness in attentionin two ways. First,as a realitypertain-
ing to that other to whom one is attending,and second, as the real lim-
itationof the attendinghuman being's own will. This limitationis what
lends effectivenessto the other'sfreedom;it is what allows human dig-
nity to take the formof action (WG, pp. 147-150).
Moreover,the limitationone feels while attendingto another is ex-
pressed in actions that amount to a requestfor the other's consent. To
treatanotherwith compassionand respectallows the one treatedin this
way to come to an awarenessthat, in this case of human exchange, at
least, he or she has the abilityto accept or rejectwhat is being proposed.
This is the subjectiveawarenessof one's own freedomthat comes only
fromthe activityof determiningone's own will (WG, p. 150).
Relatedto Hase's earliernoted remarksabout the purityof faith re-
quiringa nonexistingobject of faith,we find that in recognizingfreedom,
one is recognizingsomethingwith no positiveor empiricalexistence, as
Kanttaughtus, and one is referredto a good that is not of the some na-
ture as the existingforces of the world. Neighborslinkedthroughatten-
PhilosophyEast& West tion "recognizeat the same time, with all theirsoul, that it is betternot to

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command whereverone has the power to do so. If this thoughtfills the
whole soul and controlsthe imagination,which is the source of our ac-
tions, it constitutestrue faith. For it places the Good outside this world,
where are all the sources of power..." (WG, p. 148). Freedompoints to
a goodness that is the negationof naturalforce, to somethingthat idola-
tryof force excludes at the outset. Moreover,if one had found some good
in anotherthat was not freedom,one would be compelled to seek it, on
the one hand, and what one would have found would be somethingless
than the freedom that is the essence of God, on the other. The loving
attention that comes down from God to human beings in loving our
neighboris genuine, egoless love that uniteswith, and produces, its own
realityas freedom (WG, p. 150).

Affliction.The perfect purityof attention,of course, is achieved in the

one who undergoesafflictionsupernaturally.The radicalexperience of
harsh necessity that is the essence of afflictionimpressesupon the hu-
man being the truththat "the world is necessity and not purpose (SWR,
p. 466). The dominantmeaning of afflictionis absence, absence of the
goodness that one expects and cries out for fromthe cradle to the grave
(SWR,p. 315). The one who is "capable not only of cryingout but also
of listening"will hear the very Silence of God, and this silence is Christ
(SWR,pp. 466-467).
It is in afflictionthat attentionencountersthe presence and absence
of God in the most explicit way. The brutalityof the naturalexperience
of afflictionand the revelationof attentionin afflictioncome togetherin
perfectinga being who participatesin the naturalcausal nexus as a cre-
ated thing, on the one hand, and participatesin perfectfreedom,on the
other.
In the firstplace, the naturalexperience of afflictionbringshome to
the human being the total indifferenceof Necessity. Weil is clear that
one of the meaningsof afflictionis just the complete overcomingof the
ego by violence. The fragileand ultimatelyillusoryequilibriumbetween
the ego's command of force and the indifferenceof the world is elimi-
nated as superiorforce swings decisively to the side of what opposes the
ego's desire. What the human being experiences is a world that is pure
evil, thatcontains no good whatsoever,for all of the ego's attachmentsor
supportshave been torn away. The sensible nature of the one under-
going afflictionreceives no replyto its cry for justification(ICG,p. 198).
But the human being undergoingafflictionsupernaturallyhas other
levels of awareness of the world as well. That person may contemplate
the orderof the world as a tissue of necessaryrelationsthat appearwhen
the intellectualattention is engaged. This is prerequisiteto consent to
Necessity. But affliction can also be the occasion for the attention to
reach its highestformas pure love for God in God's absence (GG,p. 24). Ann Pirruccello

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 In other words, the supernaturally afflicted continues to love and de-
sire God even while experiencing complete evil here below. This love
enables such a human being to perceive God's presence through an
attentive and accepting experience of extreme evil, "for the absence of
God is the mode of divine presence which corresponds to evil-absence
which is felt. He who has not God within himself cannot feel his ab-
sence" (GG, p. 24).
Weil indicates that this attention to God through evil, which reveals
the absence that is also God's presence, is completed in an intuition of
Necessity that has two aspects. First, Necessity is experienced as con-
taining a full ratherthan empty silence, and second, it is encountered as
pure obedience to God. Both aspects of this experience refer back to the
absent one whose reality they present, yet both are full of the presence of
the Image itself.
Referringto the afflicted soul, Weil writes:
If it does not renounce loving, it happensone day to hear, not a replyto the
question which it cries, for there is none, but the very silence as something
infinitely more full of significance than any response, like God himself
speaking.It knows then that God's absence here below is the same thing as
the secret presence upon earthof the God who is in heaven. (ICG,p. 199)
And the one who has consented through loving attention to Necessity in
all its indifference to the personal self sees the world of necessity in its
obedience to God:

So long as we thinkin the firstperson,we see necessityfrombelow, from in-

side, it encloses us on all sides as the surfaceof the earthand the arc of the
sky. Fromthe time we renounce thinkingin the first person, by consent to
necessity, we see it from outside, beneath us, for we have passed to God's
side.... The side which it presentsafterthis operation,to the fragmentof our
mindwhich has passedto the otherside, is pureobedience. We have become
sons of the home, and we love the docility of this slave, necessity, which at
firstwe took for a master.(ICG,p. 187)
Simone Weil tells us that "when a man loves an object it is either
because he has in thought lodged a portion of his past life in it, some-
times also a desired future, or else because this object refers to another
human being. One loves an object which is a reminder of a beloved
person..." (ICG, p. 183). In the intuition of Necessity as obedience, su-
pernatural attention reveals a reality that points back to, reminds one of,
a beloved person who is absent. The world is seen as an object, finally,
that belongs to God. The obedience that points to God depends on
God's absence in order to appear and is God's only way of appearing to
us.
But the obedience that is the substance of this Image is also the pure
PhilosophyEast& West love that is the identical twin of the love that poured itself out in an

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originalself-negation.9Thatis, while the Imagethat is Christpointsto an
absence, it is also the overabundantpresence of the love that refusesto
rule whereverit is possible; it is the love that consents to sufferforce.
The Imagethat is heard as a full silence likewise refersto an absent
person. Forthe Silence heard remindsus that he whom we must love is
absent (GG, p. 99). Butthe absence of God means the condition of the
presence of the word of God, and it is the vibrationof this word that we
hear (SWR,p. 467). This silence is the harmonioussound of the bond
that unites God with God.
Inafflictionundergonesupernaturally,we find Hase'sconcern put to
restthat no existing or naturalobject introducea split between the sub-
ject and object of faith. For the Silence and obedience are the purest,
most egoless of objects. This is because they represent,fromthe natural
point of view, the total absence of any existing or personal Good. As
Weil tells us, afflictioncauses the soul to find nothing in the world to
love (SWR,p. 442). When the world can be loved under these condi-
tions-conditions that mean the annihilationof every supportthe ego
could possibly have in its thirstfor solidity-we find the soul loving the
obedience of the world with the very same obedient love that ensures
the obedience of creationto God, on the one hand, and the annihilation
of the ego, on the other. The human being has become the locus for
the original Imageto be projectedwithout losing any of the purityand
unity of subject and object found in the original.A deep awareness of
the distance between the point where one is and the perfect good
prevails, but it is a distance that is only the occasion of an absolutely
perfectunity.

NOTES

Abbreviationsare used in the text as follows:

FLN Simone Weil, Firstand LastNotebooks(cited note 7).
GG Simone Weil, Gravityand Grace(cited note 2).
ICG Simone Weil, Intimationsof Christianityamong the Ancient
Greeks(cited note 4).
NR Simone Weil, The Need for Roots(cited note 8).
SF Hase Shoto, "The Structure of Faith: Nothingness-qua-Love"
(cited note 1).
SWR Simone Weil, The Simone Weil Reader (cited note 3).
WG Simone Weil, Waiting for God (cited note 5). Ann Pirruccello

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 1 - Hase Shbto, "The Structure of Faith: Nothingness-qua-Love," in The
Religious Philosophy of Tanabe Hajime: The Metanoetic Imperative,
ed. T. Unno and J. Heisig (Berkeley: Asian Humanities Press, 1990),
pp. 90-96.
2 - Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace, trans. Emma Crauford (London:
Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1952; Ark Paperback, 1987), p. 30.
3 - Simone Weil, The Simone Weil Reader, ed. G. Panichas (Mt. Kisco,
New York: Moyer Bell, 1977), p. 458.
4 - Simone Weil, Intimations of Christianityamong the Ancient Greeks,
ed. and trans. E. Geissbuhler (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul;
Ark Paperback, 1987), p. 188.
5 - Simone Weil, Waiting for God, trans. Emma Crauford (1951; New
York: Harper and Row, 1973), pp. 147ff.
6 - For a rich discussion of the symbol that draws from contemporary
and historical sources, see Louis Dupre, The Other Dimension: A
Search for the Meaning of Religious Attitudes (New York: Seabury
Press [Crossroad], 1979), especially pp. 105-153. Related to our
discussion, Dupre's chapter is interesting because it argues for a
conception of symbol as something which does not simply refer to a
preexisting reality, but actually forms a part of that reality and ar-
ticulates it. The symbol does refer to an absent and "original" reality,
but that reality is actually negated and transmuted in the symbol. In
Weii's theory of creation, a theory consciously intended for the hu-
man and hence limited intellect, God negates himself in the act of
creation, and the meaning of that negation is present in Christ as
logos or Necessity (WG, p. 145). Necessity is thus symbolic of God's
love and self-negation while also being inseparable from that nature.
Necessity avails itself to the human mind only when the creative
activity of grace is present, suggesting that the very presence of the
symbol is a supernatural event.
7 - See also Simone Weil, Firstand Last Notebooks, trans. Richard Rees
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970), p. 90.
8 - Simone Weil, The Need for Roots, trans. A. Wills (London: Rout-
ledge and Kegan Paul, 1952; Ark Paperback, 1987), pp. 278-279.
9 - See note 6 above.

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