Simone Weil Quote
Herein is a capital truth. It is not the natural capacity, the congenital gift, nor is it the effort, the will, the work, which in the intelligence as sway over the energy capable of making it fully efficacious. It is uniquely the desire, that is, the desire for beauty. This desire, given a certain degree of intensity and purity, is the same thing as genius. At all levels it is the same thing as attention. If this were understood, the whole conception of teaching would be quite other than it is. First, one would realize that the intelligence functions only in joy. Intelligence is perhaps even the only one of our faculties to which joy is indispensible. The absence of joy asphyxiates it.
Herein is a capital truth. It is not the natural capacity, the congenital gift, nor is it the effort, the will, the work, which in the intelligence as sway over the energy capable of making it fully efficacious. It is uniquely the desire, that is, the desire for beauty. This desire, given a certain degree of intensity and purity, is the same thing as genius. At all levels it is the same thing as attention. If this were understood, the whole conception of teaching would be quite other than it is. First, one would realize that the intelligence functions only in joy. Intelligence is perhaps even the only one of our faculties to which joy is indispensible. The absence of joy asphyxiates it.
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About Simone Weil
She was born in Paris to an Alsatian Jewish family. Her elder brother, André, would later become a renowned mathematician. After her graduation from formal education, Weil became a teacher. She taught intermittently throughout the 1930s, taking several breaks because of poor health and in order to devote herself to political activism. She assisted in the trade union movement, taking the side of the anarchists known as the Durruti Column in the Spanish Civil War. During a twelve-month period she worked as a labourer, mostly in car factories, so that she could better understand the working class.
Weil became increasingly religious and inclined towards mysticism as her life progressed. She died of heart failure in 1943, while working for the Free French government in exile in Britain. Her uncompromising personal ethics may have contributed to her death—she had restricted her food intake in solidarity with the inhabitants of Nazi-occupied France.
Weil wrote throughout her life, although most of her writings did not attract much attention until after her death. In the 1950s and '60s, her work became famous in continental Europe and throughout the English-speaking world. Her philosophy and theological thought has continued to be the subject of extensive scholarship across a wide range of fields, covering politics, society, feminism, science, education, and classics.