Simone Weil's Apologetic Use of Literature

Book excerpt: After an unexpected mystical experience, the philosopher Simone Weil (1909-43) read the Greek classics from a Christian perspective, as this original study shows. To the intellectual agnostics of her day she wanted to show that the classics they loved could only be fully understood in light of Christ. To the Catholics she wanted to demonstrate that Christianity is much more universal than they thought, since Greek culture already embodied the Christian spirit before the incarnation of Christ.