“Grace fills empty spaces, but it can only do so because it is not able to enter where there is fullness.”
— Simone Weil[verifiable: Gravity and Grace, translated by Emma Craufurd and Arthur Wills (1952); the wording of this line varies in the notebooks]
Commentary
This aphoristic claim belongs to the notebooks published as Gravity and Grace, in which Weil thinks about the self's capacity to receive what it has not made. Grace, in her usage, enters only where the self has emptied itself of its own weight, and the image of the empty space makes receptivity the condition of divine action. Simone Pétrement (1976) describes how Weil's notebooks were assembled after her death by Gustave Thibon, who selected and arranged them with care. Eric Springsted's study (1986) links the notion of emptiness with Weil's account of decreation, the removal of the self's false sense of being. Robert Coles observes that the aphorism expresses Weil's understanding of humility as a condition of spiritual truth rather than a moral virtue. The sentence depends on an editorial arrangement, and the English translation should be consulted for its precise phrasing.
Commentary
This aphoristic claim belongs to the notebooks published as Gravity and Grace, in which Weil thinks about the self's capacity to receive what it has not made. Grace, in her usage, enters only where the self has emptied itself of its own weight, and the image of the empty space makes receptivity the condition of divine action. Simone Pétrement (1976) describes how Weil's notebooks were assembled after her death by Gustave Thibon, who selected and arranged them with care. Eric Springsted's study (1986) links the notion of emptiness with Weil's account of decreation, the removal of the self's false sense of being. Robert Coles observes that the aphorism expresses Weil's understanding of humility as a condition of spiritual truth rather than a moral virtue. The sentence depends on an editorial arrangement, and the English translation should be consulted for its precise phrasing.