Simone Weil

Simone Weil was a French philosopher, political activist and mystic whose writings on attention, affliction, labour and the sacred became influential after her early death. Born into a secular, assimilated Jewish family in Paris, she was of documented Jewish ancestry, though she never converted and remained drawn to Christian mysticism. Her posthumous books, including 'Gravity and Grace' and 'The Need for Roots', shaped 20th-century religious and social thought.