Experience, malheur and love. Autognosis and knowledge of God according to Simone Weil

Abstract

After historically contextualizing Simone Weil's thought and then drawing some comparisons in the field of thought, I examine, first, the effective possibility for every person to seek autognosis, and how that effectiveness is truncated once suffering and uprooting have caused affliction (malheur) in the soul. In a second moment, after exploring some anthropological consequences of the philosophical analysis of affliction, I situate the problem of the possibility of a descent of God as one of the legitimate ways to know God authentically. Presented with proofs or demonstrations that try to make explicit the coherence or logical or metaphysical necessity of God, Simone Weil appeals instead to the rescue that Christ, the wretch of the cross, wins for those who have been torn apart by violence and evil. On the way through the experience of affliction, Weil finds a safeguard against falsified or idolatrous forms of self-knowledge and divinity.