Simone Weil scholarship runs through a French quarterly journal, an English-language e-journal, reference entries and multi-author handbooks. This guide describes each resource as its own pages present it and suggests how a reader can move from one to the next.
For the primary texts that this research discusses, start with these simone weil books, then return here to see where the scholarly conversation takes place.
Where scholarship on Weil is published
Weil wrote across philosophy, politics, religion and literature, so research on her is scattered. The sections below take these in turn. Each description relies on the resource’s own pages, and nothing here speaks for any of them.
These resources differ in language, format and audience. The French quarterly is tied to an association and to its annual meetings, while the English e-journal is an independent publication with a broad readership of general readers and students. The encyclopedia is written by a single credited author and revised over time. A reader who knows which kind of source is in hand can judge how much weight to give a claim, and can see why two resources may describe the same idea in different terms.
It also helps to remember that none of these resources replaces Weil’s own writing. They offer interpretation, context and debate, and the best use of them is alongside the texts they discuss, checking each interpretive claim against the passage it refers to.
Cahiers Simone Weil and the association behind it
The Association pour l’étude de la pensée de Simone Weil describes its history on its own site. According to that page, its statutes under the French law on associations were officially filed on 5 December 1973, and the first issue of a liaison bulletin for its members appeared in May 1974. From the June 1978 issue, the same page says, the bulletin became a quarterly journal titled Cahiers Simone Weil (the Simone Weil notebooks, not to be confused with Weil’s own Cahiers, her working notebooks).
The association’s site also states that the Cahiers Simone Weil is a quarterly review that publishes the proceedings of the association’s annual colloquia. This makes the journal a record of conference papers as well as a place for articles, and it is a usual starting point for scholars working in French. The page that describes the association is at its history page, and issues are listed on the same site.
- Cahiers publishes colloquium proceedings: quarterly
- ATTENTION aim: aim
- ATTENTION shuns hagiography: quote
- Routledge Companion: editors
- Bloomsbury Handbook: editor
ATTENTION, an English-language e-journal
The English-language ATTENTION e-journal says in its own “About” statement that it is a semi-monthly e-journal, launched in May 2021, dedicated to exploring and illuminating the life and legacy of Simone Weil. The statement sets out its aim of learning from Weil’s life experiences and writings in ways that clarify her thought without ignoring any possible shortcomings in that thought. It adds that the journal wants to proceed with a sobriety that shuns hagiography, meaning it does not aim to turn Weil into a saint.
The journal’s home page lists the kinds of material it carries: essays, book reviews, commentaries and resource updates. At the time of reading, the resource updates named two reference volumes, The Routledge Companion to Simone Weil, edited by Deborah Casewell and Christopher Thomas, and The Bloomsbury Handbook of Simone Weil, edited by Lissa McCullough. Anyone who wants to cite them should take the details from the publishers’ own pages.
Reference entries and bibliographies
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Simone Weil is organised by topic and carries sections on her philosophical development, epistemology, ethics, metaphysical and religious philosophy, aesthetics, and reception and influence. It ends with a bibliography divided into cited works by Weil, other works by Weil and selected secondary sources. The entry also points to an enhanced bibliography at PhilPapers, which gives readers a database to search for further articles.
The entry’s reception section reports that Weil’s concepts carry a legacy through contemporaries and heirs, and that her influence on the French post-structuralists was limited. Its bibliography is also a quick way to see which English translations scholars cite. For a fuller map of her works and translations, see the guide to simone weil bibliography, which treats the major titles one by one.
Journals and titles that are easy to confuse
Several names overlap. The Cahiers Simone Weil is a modern scholarly journal. Weil’s own notebooks are a primary source, listed in the encyclopedia’s bibliography as First and Last Notebooks. Cahiers du Sud is a different French literary periodical altogether: the Stanford entry notes that one of her essays appeared there under the anagrammatic pseudonym Emile Novis, a detail taken from the same encyclopedia entry. Keeping these three apart avoids a common citation mistake.
Titles of books can also cause confusion. The book Gravity and Grace is covered in the guide to the gravity and grace book, and a reader should treat it as a work by Weil rather than as a journal issue or a study of her.
Reading a scholarly article on Weil
Scholarly articles on Weil usually take one of a few shapes. Others compare her with another thinker, and others place a passage in its historical setting. Telling these apart before reading helps a reader decide whether the piece will clarify a term, test an argument or supply background.
A useful habit is to read the footnotes or reference list first. The sources that a scholar cites show which editions and translations the argument depends on, and they point to the debates the author is entering. Because Weil’s religious and political positions are contested, it also helps to notice whether an author states a view as settled or attributes it to a particular reading. The encyclopedia entry, for example, reports the limited influence Weil had on the post-structuralists as a matter of scholarly interpretation, not as a fixed fact.
Handbooks, journals and encyclopedias each answer different questions. A handbook gives a wide survey, a journal offers new arguments and a reference entry offers a stable summary. Using all three, in that order of depth, gives a reader a sense of both the consensus and the open questions around her work.
How to use these resources
A reader new to Weil can use the encyclopedia entry for orientation and the handbooks for breadth. Someone with French can read the Cahiers Simone Weil for conference papers, while the English-language e-journal offers essays and reviews in a looser, more general style. When quoting a scholar, a reader should check the original journal page, since reprints and summaries can differ from the published text.
This site is an independent educational guide. It is not affiliated with the journals, associations or publishers named above, and it describes them only as their own pages describe themselves.
Frequently asked questions
What is the Cahiers Simone Weil?
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It is a quarterly journal, issued by the French association devoted to Weil’s thought, that publishes the proceedings of that association’s annual colloquia.
Is there an English-language journal on Weil?
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Yes. ATTENTION describes itself as an e-journal dedicated to the life and legacy of Simone Weil, carrying essays, reviews and commentaries.
Where can a beginner find reliable background?
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Reference works such as the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry give a topic-by-topic overview and a bibliography of secondary sources.
Are Cahiers du Sud and Cahiers Simone Weil the same publication?
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No. They are separate French periodicals with different histories and purposes.