The Mediating Possibilities of Absence in the thought of Simone Weil

Abstract

Throughout her writings Simone Weil explores the concept of mediation. We find it, for instance, in her ongoing discussion of whether encountering God through people, culture and nature eclipses the divine or exalts the intermediary. Another recurrent theme in her thought is the ‘absence’ of God from the world. This article argues that mediation and absence belong together for Weil. Her profound sense of God’s absence is cast as mediatory, first of God’s existence and then, further, of some aspects of God’s nature. This is subject to a theological critique and positioned relative to a wider ‘theology of mediation’.