Summary

This piece explores that connection between divine love and affliction, one of Weil’s signature ideas. To begin, Weil makes a crucial distinction between suffering and affliction. Suffering is almost exclusively physical, while affliction includes physical and psychological dimensions. Affliction is a type of extreme, all-encompassing suffering. It takes possession of the soul and leaves a peculiar mark, a mark that Weil identifies with the mark of slavery. It is an “uprooting of life” (68) in which physical pains are correlated with mental and emotional torment. The acute state of mind brought about by affliction is comparable to the experience of a person who, being condemned to death, is forced to stare at the instruments of her demise (e.g., a guillotine) for hours prior to her execution.

The great enigmatic mystery of life, for Weil, is therefore...