1909–1943 · French philosopher, mystic & political activist
Simone Weil was a French philosopher, mystic, and political activist whose spare, intense writing on attention, affliction, and grace was mostly published after her early death in 1943. Attention — a disciplined, self-emptying openness to another person or to truth — sits at the centre of her thought, which is why the idea that attention is a form of generosity is so characteristically hers. Much of her work survives as notebooks, essays, and letters gathered posthumously into volumes such as Gravity and Grace and Waiting for God.