Simone Weil

Simone Weil was a French philosopher, educator, revolutionary, and advocate for human rights. She devoted much of her life to the plight of the working class, teaching free classes to workers, donating time and money to their fight for social and economic equity. Weil fought as an anarchist soldier in the Spanish Civil War in 1937 and spent her final years in England, working with French political leader Charles De Gaulle for a liberated France. Weil was an avid writer all of her life; much of her work on society, religion, and politics was published posthumously in the editions La pensanteur et la grâce (Gravity and Grace, 1947), L’enracinement (The Need for Roots, 1949), Attente de Dieu (Waiting for God, 1950), and Oppression et liberté (Oppression and Liberty, 1955).