Abstract

The burden on intellectuals to define and account for their social role as well as their philosophical and historical position has never been so painfully borne as in the modern age. From the First World War to the advent of the Second, Europe saw its writers, artists and academics struggle to integrate their work, specifically the critique of a capitalist social order and its positivist ideology, and their own personal involvement in that society. The inter-war decades were ones of experimentation and disappointment, the result of a quest for many gods, all inevitably destined to fail. In discussing one intellectual's journey to God, a search which pervaded every aspect of Simone Weil's work and life, we gain insight into the intellectual trap of absolutism to which this generation was particularly prone