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The Supernatural

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

David Cockburn
David Cockburn
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, St David's University College, Lampeter, Dyfed, SA48 7ED
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Extract

The final chapter of Peter Winch's book on Simone Weil discusses Weil's idea of supernatural virtue. Weil uses this language in connection with certain exceptional actions: actions of a kind which are for most of us, most of the time, simply impossible. She is particularly struck by cases in which someone refrains from exercising a power which they have over another: in which, for example, someone refrains from killing or enslaving an enemy who has grievously harmed him and who is now at his mercy. We could also speak of cases in which someone helps an enemy, or a stranger, at very real cost, or risk, to himself. In such cases Weil speaks of the ‘supernatural’ as being at work.

Type
Research Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 28 , Issue 3 , September 1992 , pp. 285 - 301
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

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References

1 Winch, Peter, Simone Weil: ‘The Just Balance’ (Cambridge University Press, 1989).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Weil, Simone, First and Last Notebooks, trans. Rees, Richard (Oxford University Press, 1970), pp. 146–8.Google Scholar

3 Winch, Peter, ‘Meaning and Religious Language’, in his Trying to Make Sense (Basil Blackwell, 1987), p. 122Google Scholar. Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Philosophical Investigations, eds. Anscombe, G. E. M. and Rhees, R., trans. G. E. M. Anscombe (Basil Blackwell, 1968)Google Scholar, §580.

4 For a more detailed presentation of this view of Wittgenstein's thought see Winch, Peter, ‘Eine Einstellung zur Seele’ in his Trying to Make Sense, and David Cockburn, Other Human Beings (Macmillan, 1990)Google Scholar, Part One. My summary here will be no more than a sketch; and so will be potentially misleading in certain respects.

5 See Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Zettel eds Anscombe, G. E. M. and von Wright, G. H., trans. G. E. M. Anscombe (Basil Blackwell, 1967)Google Scholar, §540–1.

6 See Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Philosophical Investigations, p. 178.Google Scholar

7 In an unpublished paper on ‘Order and Necessity in Simone Weil’.

8 Wittgenstein writes in the Tractatus (6.372): ‘Thus people today stop at the laws of nature, treating them as something inviolable, just as God and Fate were treated in past ages.’

9 I am grateful to John Stokes for this comment – with which, I should perhaps say, I have enormous sympathy.

10 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Zettel, §541.

11 I am grateful to Maureen Meehan, John Stokes and those who attended seminars which I gave at Abo Akademi for extremely helpful discussions of the issues raised in this paper.