Simone Weil: attention and action as recognition of existence

Abstract

Extreme affliction provokes social degradation and uprootedness. Those who experience it are not only non-existent, anonymous and despicable for society, but they also become accomplices of their own affliction. According to the French philosopher Simone Weil, the afflicted are liberated from their status of non-existence when someone turns a “creative attention” to them. Through this attention, which is inspired by divine love, the existence of the other, particularly that of the afflicted, is recognized and affirmed. To achieve this, it is essential to consent to renounce the “self” –which is always determined to be the center of the world–, in order to turn the gaze to those who are afflicted and identify their real needs. This is how one can act in favor of them through a “non-acting action”, emptied of the mark of the “self” and which permits the existence of the other.