Simone Weil: For an Ethics of Altruism and Care

Abstract

The paper analyses the central point of the short text ‘The Person and the Sacred’ by the French philosopher SimoneWeil. Reflecting on theWeil’s critique of subjectivity, we will try to formulate an ethical prospective based on altruism and the healing of suffering humanity. Weil thought that an ethics based on the personal subject run the risk of being abstract and individualistic. She believed that, in order to have a real ethical encounter with others, it is pivotal to first put our ego in a second place. The ‘I’, according to Weil, is an idol; where there is something, which say ‘I’, there is also the sin. Goodness, justice, beauty, love, and truth are not personal but impersonal, they are not an abstract and codified law directed at an abstract person, rather they are an interior calling and a concrete and unwritten ethical and spiritual code.