Gravity & Grace

Gravity & Grace

Rating

7.0

The Pequod Review:

Simone Weil (1909-1943) was a French philosopher and teacher, whose insights combined leftist politics, mysticism and religion. Gravity & Grace is one of her most famous books, a collection of various philosophical aphorisms. They are sometimes profound:

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.

But more often vague and mystifying:

Human existence is so fragile a thing and exposed to such dangers that I cannot love without trembling.

[...]

All the natural movements of the soul are controlled by laws analogous to those of physical gravity. Grace is the only exception. 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.

I prefer the clarity of Marcus Aurelius or Fernando Pessoa instead, or even Bertrand Russell for that matter.