Simone Weil

A thought of detachment

Abstract

Detachment is a fundamental concept in Simone Weil’s theor-etical thought. At the level of thinking, it is qualified by the thinker as the “highest value” of philosophy. Based on this conception, the attempt of the present article is to eviscerate the profound meaning of detachment declined from its relation to philosophical exercise and seeking to delineate the essential features of Weil’s pensée détachée. A thinking that is positioned as an original critical  alternative to the “objectifying thinking” that has characterized in particular modern philosophy. Ultimately, we would like to highlight two figures ormodels that embody and ground in a paradigmatic way the dynamic of Weilian detached thinking. Figures who, being one masculine and the other feminine, can open us to further horizons of reflections about anthropological and ontological meaning of thinking as such.