Simone Weil Essay Prompts + Minor Discussion

[Ghost!]

Hey there amatuer philosophers!

I've been given a SAC to do at home in consideration of the limited time we have to cover Simone Weil and have four possible essay topics to write on. I thought I'd share these as practice essay topics for VCE Philosophy are beyond scarce and may be of interest to you!

So, without much further rambling here they are, feel free to comment with any discussion/thoughts/arguments/critiques/opinions/plans you have for this essay, or perhaps if you post your whole essay other VN philosophers may help you out with them! Anyway, here they are!


1. Outline and Evaluate Simone Weil's philosophy in 'The Needs of the Soul'. Offer your position and views on Weil's ideas, relating to her views on what is required for humanity and society in general.

2. Can the Good Life ever be attained, or is humanity and society always seeking something better? Consider this question and make reference to Simone Weil's 'The Needs of the Soul', any other of the set texts and other ways of thinking that can be applied to the concept of attaining the Good Life.

3. Taking into account the Ancient Greek concept of Eudaimonia and The Good Life, and Weil's 'The Needs of the Soul', offer your view of how this could be applied to, and have relevance in relation to an contemporary global issue or current debate.

4. Compare and contrast the views on morality and the future of humanity of Nietzsche and those of Weil. What are the similarities and differences? Discuss how their perspective philosophies relate to the concept of 'living the Good Life'.

Good luck with your studies and happy philosophizing everyone!

[krith]

Finished Weil a week or so ago, found her ridiculously tough, good luck for the SAC. Personally, I'd outline her garden analogy in the essay as it's vital to her philosophy, humans as the plants and society and the collectivities as the roots, etc. She also talks about power and uses a heap of examples from history and the abuse of power(the time period she was in just exemplifies this). The thing with Weil is, I've found, it's really hard to condense her ideas, so if you guys had any ideas on her main points, please let me know In the SAC I did, it was a comparitive essay with Weil and Aristotle, so I'm not sure about the essay topic with Weil and Nietzsche, but for Weil and Aristotle(if you're interested), the differences in the soul argument(also Weil's eternal destiny and Aristotle's function argument-and how Aristotle views the soul as biologically organised and split into three parts) and the different 'mean' arguments(Aristotle's golden mean and Weil's mean-balancing of antithetical pairs). We've just started Nietzsche and so far just from the background on him, looks like it's going to be really interesting

[Tobias Funke]

How is this new book?

I quite enjoyed Murdoch last year even though I found her to be the hardest, thought it was a shame that you guys aren't doing it this year

[raxecarical]

Hmm, just found this thread. Quite interesting, I like the idea of associating the idea of Eudaimonia to Weil's views. I certainly found Weil the most interesting. My SAC was a comparitive essay between the Philosophies of Weil and Plato's Callicles on distinguishing needs and desires/wants and did quite well. My teacher quite liked it when I pointed out Callicles hippocracy on distinguishing the natural and the conventional.
Krith, I like the garden analogy, I think I used it but didn't phrase it that way. And on the topic of the soul, I tend to, as a materialist to sidestep it and focus more on the idea of morality coming from an obligation to respect people, and now I'm wondering whether it will come back to bite me... Thanks for your insight though, helpful.

[krith]

It's interesting that you call yourself a materialist, particularly because I have a SAC tomorrow(another comparative) between Descartes and Armstrong At first I favoured Armstrong over Descartes but then I felt as though neither proposed a sound and complete account for the nature of the mind, but that's just my opinion How's everybody going for Unit 4 so far?