Abstract / DOI
Faithless Belief:Treatments of Emptiness by Simone Weil. Where unbelief is regarded as the strict opposite of faith, talking about religious doubts in their existential dimensions remains something of a taboo. Simone Weil's reflections remove this strict separation between faith and unbelief. On the one hand, this can be seen in the descriptions of her turn towards Christianity: here, she emphasizes the continuities between her agnostic and her Christian attitude, which she chiefly anchors in her ethical orientation. In the reflections on her mystical experiences, on the other hand, she outlines unbelief as part of a way into an emptiness in the abyss of which Christ is encountered. She associates this emptiness, in turn, with the experience of the malheur she went through during the time of her work in the factory. Once the strict boundaries between faith and unbelief are thus removed, the boundaries between the Christian and the non-Christian do not only become permeable, but Weil also makes the religious doubt fruitful as a source of humanity.