Online Zoom Forum: Simone Weil: the Spiritual, Ethical, and Social Vision in Her Life and Work.
Date: Wednesday 21 January 2026.
Time: 7pm-9pm (UK time).
Event Description:
Format: There will be five talks, each of 12 minutes, followed by discussion among the speakers and the chair, followed by Q & A.
Chair:
Simon Barrow:
Bio: Simon Barrow is a writer, commentator, poet, educator and researcher with wide experience in politics, public issues, media, organisational change, ethics and religion/beliefs. He was director of the think-tank Ekklesia from 2005-2024. Before that he worked in media and adult theological education. From 2000-2005 he was assistant general secretary of Churches Together in Britain and Ireland. His latest book is Beyond Our Means: Poetry, Prose and Blue Runes (Siglum, 2025) and will be followed by Against the Religion of Power: Telling a Different Christian Story (Ekklesia Publishing, April 2026). He also writes for the Edinburgh Music Review.
Speakers:
Prof Benjamin P. Davis:
Title: Simone Weil's Political Philosophy.
Description: Benjamin P. Davis will discuss his book, Simone Weil's Political Philosophy. He will suggest what he sees as the three most important elements of Weil's political philosophy for the present: her self-critical or reflexive approach; her combination of religion and politics; and her emphasis on political friendship.
Bio: Benjamin P. Davis is an Assistant Professor of Africana Studies and Hispanic Studies at Texas A&M University. He is also a fellow at the Center on Modernity in Transition, a think tank leading conversations on planetary social change, and President of the American Weil Society, a scholarly organization devoted to studying the mystic and philosopher Simone Weil. Davis is the author of three books: Simone Weil’s Political Philosophy: Field Notes from the Margins, from 2023, as well as Choose Your Bearing: Édouard Glissant, Human Rights, and Decolonial Ethics, also from 2023, which is the prequel to his 2025 Another Humanity: Decolonial Ethics from Du Bois to Arendt, from Edinburgh University Press.
Dr A. Rebecca Rozelle-Stone:
Title: Simone Weil on the Temptation and Evil of Escapism.
Description: Simone Weil’s ethical vision was centered on the importance of attending to reality and being present with others—even and especially in contexts of suffering and force. The tendency to distract ourselves and avoid difficult truths is as ubiquitous as it is problematic; our flights from reality (aided by intoxicants, technologies, spectacles, religious ideologies, nostalgia, consumerist fantasies, and more) may originate with deep dissatisfaction with the state of affairs but such escapism only exacerbates moral disasters. Contrary to our representation of good and evil in popular culture, Weil’s ethical philosophy helps us to appreciate that evil is unoriginal, predictable, and unremarkable (given its source in the ego), while real goodness is surprising, new, and worthy of our attention
Bio: A. Rebecca Rozelle-Stone, Ph.D. is Associate Dean in the College of Arts and Sciences and Chester Fritz Distinguished Professor of Philosophy & Ethics at the University of North Dakota. She earned her B.A. in philosophy at Birmingham-Southern College and her M.A. and Ph.D. in philosophy at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Rozelle-Stone served as the President (2014-2016) of the American Weil Society, and she has co-edited The Relevance of the Radical: Simone Weil 100 Years Later, co-authored Simone Weil and Theology, edited Simone Weil and Continental Philosophy, and most recently authored A Very Short Introduction: Simone Weil. She currently serves as a committee member on the board of the Society for Women of Ideas. Aside from Simone Weil, her research interests include phenomenology, feminism, the ethics of attention, and the growing field of fatigue studies.
Dr Cynthia R. Wallace:
Title: Simone Weil, Hunger, and Samaritan Love.
Description: For Simone Weil, hunger was a fundamental expression of human need and a fundamental call to human responsibility. In Weil's thought and life, hunger also has profound spiritual significance, but this spiritual hungering is always linked to the moral obligation to offer literal, material food if we have any food to share, and to structure society so that everyone is fed. In this way, hunger is at the core of Weil's united spiritual, ethical, and social vision.
Bio: Cynthia R. Wallace, PhD, is Associate Professor English and Director of the Irene and Doug Schmeiser Centre for Faith, Reason, Peace, and Justice at St. Thomas More College, University of Saskatchewan. She is author of the books Of Women Borne: A Literary Ethics of Suffering and The Literary Afterlives of Simone Weil: Feminism, Justice, and the Challenge of Religion.
Prof Inese Radzins:
Title: Weil’s Spirituality of Labor.
Description: This talk will focus on Weil’s understanding of the category of labor as shaping not only individual life, but social and ethical worlds. The paper explores her suggestion that "the creation of a civilization founded upon the spiritual nature of work” would provide an “antidote to suffering." I explore what the creation of this kind of civilization entails for Weil and then turn to explaining how it might prove efficacious in addressing various forms of suffering. (If you need a footnote, the quote is from Need for Roots, 98)
Bio: Inese Radzins is Associate Professor of Philosophy at California State University, Stanislaus. Her research spans the broad area of social and political philosophy and focuses on the work of Simone Weil. She is interested in Weil’s developments of Marx’s idea of labor as a category through which to understand life and is currently working on a book, entitled The Spirit of Labor: Simone Weil’s Political Theology.
Dr Kathryn Lawson:
Title: The Radical Implications of Decreation.
Description: This talk will consider Weil’s cosmological event of Decreation in contrast to Christian notions of Creation, arguing that this difference produces two radically distinct ontologies that can converge in the Dark Night, the Cross, and ethical actions but then carry on into their profoundly different telos.
Bio: Dr Kathryn Lawson is a faculty fellow at the University of King's College, Halifax, NS. Her book Ecological Ethics and the Philosophy of Simone Weil was published with Routledge's Environmental Ethics series in 2024 and she is co-editor of a collection on Arendt and Weil, Unprecedented Conversations (Bloomsbury, 2024) and Jean Luc Marion, Breached Horizons (Rowman & Littlefield, 2017). She has a number of peer reviewed chapters and journal articles.
An archive recording will be made for the EICSP archive.
NB: There will be no refund if you cancel your booking.
Booking: By Paypal.
Contact: Neill Walker, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
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