A just and loving gaze

How a capacity to suffer can unite us all. The life of Simone Weil was one of unyielding self-sacrifice from her childhood to her early death, something that even led Albert Camus to describe her as "the only great spirit of our time." Deborah Casewell, a Humboldt Research Fellow in philosophy, explores how the ethics of the French philosopher, political activist and Christian mystic demand that we look beyond the personal and find the universal.