Simone Weil (1909–1943),

a French philosopher,

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Today’s sharing from the Blue House of Via-HYGEIA, is the seventh part of our sampler, dedicated to the memory of French Philosopher Simone Weil, with the subject of the ‘Divine Mediation, or The Three Mysteries of Human Life‘. The first excerpt is from ‘Intuitions Pre-Chrétiennes‘ (Pre-Christian Intuitions) published by La Colombe, Editions du vieux Colombier, Paris 1951. From page 164 to 167.

The second excerpt is from ‘La Source Grecque‘-Editions Gallimard, Paris 1953-and are notes from her readings of Plato’s ‘Phaedrus‘ and ‘Symposium‘. Even though they are un-processed fragments of her notebooks, they are like glowing coal surging in her thoughts, or lightning-like intuitions & revelations she experienced; and they are very impressive! From page 139 to 146. A Via-HYGEIA English translation from the original French.

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Excerpt 1

…Pain, says Plato, is the dissolution of harmony, the separation of opposites; joy consists in their reunion. The crucifixion of Christ had almost opened the door, had quasi severed-on one side, the Father and the Son- and on the other side the Creator and creation. The door had slightly opened. Resurrection closed it. Those who had the immense privilege to participate through their whole being to the Cross of Christ crossed that door, entering the place where God’s very secrets are to be found.

But, more generally, any kind of pain and especially any sort of pain that is well tolerated makes us cross into the other side of the door, makes us see a harmony revealed in its true face; that one face, which is turned towards above, tears one of the veils that separate us from the beauty of the world and from God’s. This is what the ‘Book of Job‘ shows us; at the end of his despair, against the appearances he actually did overcome this trial, Job receives the revelation of the beauty of the world.

There is, eventually, a kind of equivalence between joy and pain. Joy also is the revelation of beauty. Everything pushes forwards the person who keeps his sight focused on this key. Only, we must discover it.

There is in the human life three mysteries, and every human being, even the most mediocre, are more or less aware of them: One is beauty. Another one is the operation of pure intelligence applied to the contemplation of the theorical necessity in understanding the world, and the incarnation of purely theorical conceptions into technique and work. The last one, are the lightnings of justice, compassion and gratitude that appear sometimes in the middle of hardship and the metallic coldness of human relationships.

These are three openings that give, directly, access to the central door, who is Christ. Because of their presence, there is no possibility in this life, to live a profane life-or a natural one-that is innocent. There is only faith-implicit or explicit-or betrayal. We ought to succeed to see beyond the heavens, and through the universe nothing else but divine mediation, and every mediation is God. God is mediation between God and God, between God and Man, between Man and Man, between God and the things, between the things and the things-and even between every soul and it-self. We cannot pass from nothing to nothing without passing through God. God is the unique road. He is the Path. Path was His name in ancient China. (A Via-Hygeia note: Dao, 道).

Man cannot conceive this divine operation of mediation; he can only love it. Therefore, his intelligence may conceives it, but in a perfectly un-proper manner as a degraded image: it is relationship. There is nothing else in the human thought but relationships. Even sensible objects, as soon as we analyze their perception in a rather rigorous manner, we recognize that we call with this name a bunch of relationships that impose themselves to the thought through the intermediary of the senses. It is the same for the feelings, for ideas, for the whole psychological content of human conscience.

We have in us and around us nothing but relationships. Within the quasi-darkness in which we have been thrown, everything is relationship-like the light of reality, everything is in itself divine mediation. The relationship is divine mediation glanced within our darkness.

This identity is what Saint John was expressing by calling Christ with the name of this very relationship, λόγος, logos, and this is what the Pythagoreans were expressing by saying: ‘Everything is number‘.

When we know this, we know that we live live within the divine mediation, not like a fish in the sea, but like a drop of water in the sea. In us, out-side of us, down here, in the Kingdom of God, there is nothing else, elsewhere. And mediation is exactly the same thing as Love.

The supreme mediation is that of the Holy Spirit uniting through an infinite distance the divine Father with the also divine Son, but emptied of his divinity and nailed into a point withing space and time. This infinite distance is made of the totality of space and time. The portion of space and time around us, limited by the circle of the horizon, this portion of time between our birth and our death that we live second after second, this is but a fragment of this infinite distance entirely crossed by divine Love. The being and the life of each one of us is but a little fragment of this line, of which extremities consists in two Persons and one and only God-this line, on which circulates Love, which is also the same God. We are nothing else that a spot through which the divine Love of God for Himself passes. Therefore, everything in us that appears to be ourselves becomes more indifferent and remote in comparison to this un-interrupted passage of divine Love.

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Excerpt 2

Notes upon

Plato’s ‘Phaedrus’

Hestia and το εν (to en, the One). Philolaus says: ‘The One has for a name, Hestia‘. The Circle and the Trinity. Circle and Pole: Unity and Trinity. Trinity inscribed in the Heavens. See Galileo.

The iron-like necessity. The supernatural: what is, at the same time contrary to the necessity of nature, but also not arbitrary. A proper necessity, like everything that is real. Very important. (criterium). It feeds on opinion.

God comes seeking Man. Beauty, is nothing else but God coming to seek Man. There is a descending movement that is not gravity.

Everything that partake to beauty in the world is like an incarnation. And in everything that gives us the feeling of beauty there is the real presence of God (the ordering Word). Αυτο, this. The pure admiration of the authentic and unsoiled beauty is a sacrament. But, danger: Because Nero…

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Notes upon ‘Phaedrus’ & the ‘Symposium’

Upon Phaedrus, (development of the preceding fragment).

1.  Hestia remain in her dwelling. Philolaus says: ‘The One has for a name, Hestia’. The Earth-stone, central and divine place of the house. Central fire of the Pythagoreans. ‘Sentinel of Zeus‘. Zeus feeding upon reality: trinity. Hestia, who remains: unity. Concurring metaphors. The Fire is the Spirit, who is the union of the persons.

Circle: and act directed towards one-self and immobile. Cercle and Pole. Trinity and unity of God inscribed in the Heavens. Circular and uniform Movements, the foundation of the Greek mechanics.

2.  Fall. ‘An iron law is…‘ The supernatural is what is contrary to the natural necessity. But, it is not arbitrary. In the natural things there is also a necessity that is proper to them. No reality without necessity. Necessity provides the discrimination between the imaginary and the real.

3. The soul, unable to cross to the other side of the heavens, because it is unable to feed upon truth, feeds upon opinion.

Plato has opinion in horror. Haunted by the sensation that we live in a dream.

4. There is a descending movement from the Heavens towards earth and it is not gravity. This is God’s movement coming to seek out Man. It is God coming towards Man, and not Man towards God. Beauty is the presence of God within us. ‘Beauty, was then shining (on the other side of Heaven)…and down here we seize it, itself in its so manifest splendor.’ Strength of the word ‘itself‘. Real presence of God in beauty. Sacrament. (True, but dangerous).

5.  Reminiscence. Meaning of this comparison. Resemblance between inspiration and souvenir. Past is a reality (completely not imaginary), but absent; and we have no means to go towards it. It must come to us. We can only look-back towards it.

‘Cold water that springs from the lake of Memory.’

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Upon the ‘Symposium’

Orphic dialog. (note this: two loves, one divine, the other demonic.)

Love appears first as the Orphic Love, creative and organizing, the author of Harmony.

Eryximachus (an Hippocratic figure, one of the main protagonists of the ‘Symposium’) says: ‘This Great and Marvelous God is involved with everything, in the divine matters, as much in the human one‘.

‘To things that are enemies and opposites, Love imprints Concord (ομόνοια, omonia or συμφωνία, symphonia). Hence, medicine, agriculture, gymnastic, music comes from it. ( From ‘Symposium’, 186 a and b, 187 c and 188 b-d)

(See, Prometheus; see ‘Philebus’).

‘Music is the science of love that concerns harmony and rhythm.’

Heraclitus says: ‘The One, carried in opposite direction, meets itself in the same direction, alike the harmony of the bow and the lyra.’

(A Via-Hygeia note: Another version-not from Simone Weil-of the quote is : ‘The One coincides, by differing itself from itself, and there is a back-stretched stringing, just like of the bow and lyre‘. This is fragment number 80. ‘By invoking the “back-stretched stringing” (παλίντονος ἁρμονίη) of the bow and lyre, Heraclitus may have a symposiastic framework in mind. The force of the comparison between the bow and lyre is that, while on the surface they appear to be different instruments with different and opposing purposes, conceptually they are similar because they are stringed in the same way’. Source: Derek Collins, 2004. ‘Master of the Game: Competition and Performance in Greek Poetry‘. Hellenic Studies Series 7. Washington, DC: Center for Hellenic Studies ).

Love organizing, cause of the harmony of the seasons, of the stars, etc…

‘Love presides to sacrifices and to omens; because it is the natural association between Gods and mankind.’

‘An omen (divination) is the ‘laborer of friendship‘ between the Gods and mankind‘.

Agathon (best known for his appearance in Plato’s Symposium’, here, 196 b-c, 197 d): Love is perfect. Perfectly just.

‘The most important, is that Love commits nor bears any injustice, not in the divine realms or down here among mankind. If anything suffers force, love does not suffer it, because force does not reach it. If anything uses force, love does not, because everyone willingly obeys love in everything. The concord, where in both sides there is an agreement, is just, according to the laws of the Royal City’. (The Horror of force).

(A Via-Hygeia note: it is here interesting to look up to Simone Weil treatise, ‘L’Iliad, or the Poem about Force‘, in which she dissects the disastrous effect it had in our culture, through the highlighting of Homer’s poem. We have some excerpts here).

Love is perfectly moderate.

‘Moderation is the mastery of pleasures and desires. No pleasure has more strength than Love. The pleasure are thus dominated by Love, and Love dominates them, and in doing so, is absolutely moderate‘.

Love is perfectly valiant, perfectly wise (taught all of the arts to mankind: poetry, medicine, divination, metallurgy, weaving). Also Love taught Zeus the ruling of Gods and mankind.

‘Master of sacrifices, spreading kindness, merciful to the virtuous people.’

Socrates: Love, neither good nor beautiful. Mediator. Genealogy. Love is poor (virtuous). See Dante.

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Sources

Excerpt 1

Excerpt 2

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