“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.”
— Simone Weil[verifiable: Letter to Joë Bousquet, 1942, published in Waiting for God (1951); translated by Emma Craufurd]
Commentary
This sentence, from a letter included in Waiting for God, names attention as the highest form of giving, a claim that reflects the centre of Weil's ethics. Attention, for her, is the suspension of the self in the presence of another, a form of love that asks nothing and receives the other as real. Simone Pétrement's biography, Simone Weil: A Life (1973, English translation 1976), shows how this idea grew out of Weil's experiences of factory labour and her reading of Plato and the Gospels. Eric O. Springsted, in Simone Weil and the Suffering of Love (1986), argues that attention is the basis of Weil's theology of love and of her account of the relation between the self and God. Robert Coles, in Simone Weil: A Modern Pilgrimage (1987), explores the sentence's practical meaning in her life of service. The letter is a dated and addressed source, and its wording in the English edition should be checked against the French.
Commentary
This sentence, from a letter included in Waiting for God, names attention as the highest form of giving, a claim that reflects the centre of Weil's ethics. Attention, for her, is the suspension of the self in the presence of another, a form of love that asks nothing and receives the other as real. Simone Pétrement's biography, Simone Weil: A Life (1973, English translation 1976), shows how this idea grew out of Weil's experiences of factory labour and her reading of Plato and the Gospels. Eric O. Springsted, in Simone Weil and the Suffering of Love (1986), argues that attention is the basis of Weil's theology of love and of her account of the relation between the self and God. Robert Coles, in Simone Weil: A Modern Pilgrimage (1987), explores the sentence's practical meaning in her life of service. The letter is a dated and addressed source, and its wording in the English edition should be checked against the French.