First and Last Notebooks

Introducing the Selected Works of Simone Weil Some of Simone Weil's most important thinking was done through the medium of her notebooks. She used them in several inter-related ways. First, she used them to note things she had read and was researching. Far more often, they were workbooks where she worked through her ideas. Many of the ideas in her completed essays can first be found in her notebooks, and thus the notebooks are invaluable for adding context and nuance along with a sense of development to the reading of those later essays. Finally, her notebooks simply contain Weil's aphoristic writing at its best in its most striking presentation. For that reason alone, the last two notebooks, which she wrote while in New York and London in 1942-43, published in French as "La Connaissance surnaturel" ("Supernatural Knowledge") have been read as books of great wisdom. This volume also includes her first notebook from the year 1934, not long after her time in the factory and its subject matter reflects this period in her life. SELECTED WORKS: First and Last Notebooks: Supernatural Knowledge / ISBN 978-1-4982-3919-6 Seventy Letters: Personal and Intellectual Windows on a Thinker / ISBN 978-1-4982-3920-2 Selected Essays, 1934-1943: Historical, Political and Moral Writings / ISBN 978-1-4982-3921-9

Simone Weil (1909-1943) was one of the twentieth century's most profound thinkers. In her early years, she was known for her brilliant and biting social commentary, and especially for the year she spent working in three Paris factories. After three profound religious experiences, she did not abandon her work on social problems, but also began to write truly original and penetrating religious and philosophical works that still bear on our times, writings that were only published after her death.