ASTONISHMENT AND DIRECTED TIME IN SIMONE WEIL’S YOUTH WRITINGS

Abstract

In this article we analyze the attempt that young Simone
Weil made for thinking time and change, and for deciphering the participation
that the world and the mind may have in its configuration. To achieve this, we
set out to elucidate two concepts that we believe synthesize her approach: the
first one is astonishment, understood both in its quality of incessant intuition
that reveals the human impotence to understand the present, and in its quality
as a mediating instance between ignorance and approximate human science of
the phenomenal field. The second concept we analyze is that of directed time,
significant of the first Weilian philosophy in that it reveals the subjugation of
man to the present, the only tangible time. This determination allows us to
understand the meaning of the past as an abolished existence, and the future
as a virtual nucleus of possibilities towards which the human being prepares
his action and work thanks to his faculty to devise projects. Finally, we try to
show the problematic tension that young Weil discerned between the law of the
immediacy of the world, and the law of time that imposes intermediate steps to
the realization of all human activity.