A philosophy webcomic about the inevitable anguish of living a brief life in an absurd world. Also Jokes

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Simone Weil vs the Existentialists

Description: Sartre, de Beauvoir and Camus are sitting at a table drinking wine and having dinner, Simone Weil approaches.

de Beauvoir: "Hey Simone Weil, have some wine with us, we have some nice Camembert cheese and duck."
Weil: "Sorry, i can't now, de Beauvoir, i'm off to work at the auto factory."

Camus: "You work at a factory now? I thought you taught philosophy."
PERSON: "yes, Camus, six days a week."
Camus: "But...why?"

Weil: "If we say we believe in the liberating the working class, we must understand on a concrete level how they suffer! Intellectuals cannot pretend to know how to improve their lives without living them ourselves."

Weil: "Also i don't eat fancy cheese, because those suffering from hunger cannot afford such luxuries, so i deny myself them as well."

Weil: "I have to be off, I'm marching for increasing benefits to the unemployed before my shift."

be Beauvoir: "Wow, she really lives by her ideals, doesn't she?"
Camus: "Indeed, she is really the only great spirit of our times."

description: awkward pause.

Sartre: "Super annoying though, right?"
de Beauvoir: "Yes! I'm so glad you said that."
Camus: "Does she have to be ⁠ SO authentic all the time?"

Sartre: "Exactly, we have to be authentic about eating cheese now? Come on. there's a limit."
Camus: "Precisely. More wine?"
Satre: "Please."
Maybe we are authentic in our own way, alright? Maybe it is authentic to sacrifice nothing for your beliefs, okay?

Simone Weil was a 20th century philosopher who was greatly admired by her the existentialsts, who were contemporaries of her. Camus called her the "only great spirit of the age" because she lived a life 100% committed to the causes she believed it, to a far greater extent than perhaps any other philosopher in history, except maybe Diogenes.

I went on Revolutionary Left Radio to discuss her life and philosophy. Last time I was on the show to discuss Sartre and Camus's split, I briefly mentioned that Simone Weil was the one who lived the real existential life. That's because she had the rarest trait that I know of among humans: she behaved as though she actually believed her ideas.

In the episode on Weil we follow up with her biography, which I claim can be read as part II and III of The Brothers Karamazov, where Dostoyevsky planned for Alyosha to become a failed socialist revolutionary and experience real suffering, then, without naivety or ignorance, learns true religion. Simone Weil embodies perfectly Dostoyevky's idea of the existential hero: absolute commitment to their own ideas, full incorporation of science into the problems of life, a deep understand of the real human condition, and ultimately still retaining a faith in the transcendent.

In her brief life she:
- was one of only five women to get a philosophy degree at École Normale
- hosted and debated Trotsky in France
- worked for a year in a factory
- fought in the Spanish Civil war
- worked in the French resistance
- became an influential Christian mystica

All in all, she lived entirely the life of a Saint without contradictions, and always subjecting herself first to the suffering of the world, and is totally unique among all people that I know in that she lived as a saint for both the communists and the Christians.

Simone Weil was a 20th century philosopher who was greatly admired by her the existentialsts, who were contemporaries of her. Camus called her the "only great spirit of the age" because she lived a life 100% committed to the causes she believed it, to a far greater extent than perhaps any other philosopher in history, except maybe Diogenes.

I went on Revolutionary Left Radio to discuss her life and philosophy. Last time I was on the show to discuss Sartre and Camus's split, I briefly mentioned that Simone Weil was the one who lived the real existential life. That's because she had the rarest trait that I know of among humans: she behaved as though she actually believed her ideas.

In the episode on Weil we follow up with her biography, which I claim can be read as part II and III of The Brothers Karamazov, where Dostoyevsky planned for Alyosha to become a failed socialist revolutionary and experience real suffering, then, without naivety or ignorance, learns true religion. Simone Weil embodies perfectly Dostoyevky's idea of the existential hero: absolute commitment to their own ideas, full incorporation of science into the problems of life, a deep understand of the real human condition, and ultimately still retaining a faith in the transcendent.

In her brief life she:
- was one of only five women to get a philosophy degree at École Normale
- hosted and debated Trotsky in France
- worked for a year in a factory
- fought in the Spanish Civil war
- worked in the French resistance
- became an influential Christian mystica

All in all, she lived entirely the life of a Saint without contradictions, and always subjecting herself first to the suffering of the world, and is totally unique among all people that I know in that she lived as a saint for both the communists and the Christians.

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