Abstract
On the eve of her death, the French philosopher and mystic Simone Weil (d. 1943) quoted passages in her Notebooks from The Mirror of Simple Souls, a text written by an anonymous 'fourteenth-century French mystic.' Weil makes note of The Mirror's 'image of fire and iron,' followed by a second quotation, 'exhaust the human faculties (will, intelligence, etc.) so as to pass over to the transcendent.' Weil's quotations from The Mirror address preoccupations central to her religious metaphysic, specifically her notion of 'decreation.' It was not until after Weil's death in 1946 that Romani Guarnieri reacquainted The Mirror with its true author, Marguerite Porete (d. 1310) a woman who was burned for heresy. Strong thematic parallels between the writings of Porete and Weil have been noted yet remain critically underexamined. Weil's engagement with Porete's Mirror as part of the matrix of thought in which she developed her ideas offers a vital opportunity for elucidating themes most pertinent to both Porete and Weil's corpora: affliction, 'decreation' and divine vision. A sustained, critical examination of the thematic affinities between Porete and Weil is an urgent area of research for three reasons: firstly, to consider Porete's mystical theology philosophically as religious metaphysics; secondly, to elucidate Weil's own religious philosophy; and thirdly, as an important study for the de-marginalisation of women's spiritual writings within the history of Western philosophy.
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