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.