A relação entre existência e transcendência em Simone Weil: a percepção, o trabalho e a leitura como possibilidades de acesso ao Bem

Abstract

This research aims to understand how Simone Weil (1909-1943), through her investigations into perception, work and the notion of reading, developed in one of her last texts, tries to explain the relationship between existence and transcendence. We understand that this problem involves the author formulating a synthesis between materialism and idealism in which the dialectical relationship between spirit and matter is seen as being subject to a transcendent order consisting of the Good itself. Therefore, to question the precedence of matter for thought is a mistake, just as reducing the subject to matter or enclosing the inclination and possibility of the Good in the domain of material things is. Based on this, he analyzes the active participation of the spirit in knowledge that occurs through perception, especially perception in work. This, in turn, allows us to know this materiality that surrounds us and which is constituted as a necessity, in the same way that it allows human beings to recreate their conditions of existence. Work also has a spiritual function in that it awakens individuals to their real condition, which is not one of domination of things, but of obedience and conformity to the same order that governs matter. Finally, he presents the notion of reading, through which he reinserts the supernatural into the world. The notion of reading that he presents is analogous to textual reading, which is why it is given this name. The world is like a text and the mind must actively receive the meanings hidden in objects. This process is active because it irrevocably involves the body, since it is related to work. It is through this that objects are understood not as ends in themselves, but as signs of this supernatural reality.