PROFESSION OF FAITH: STUDY FOR A DECLARATION OF OBLIGATIONS TOWARDS HUMAN BEINGS         Simone Weil

Écrits de Londres et derniéres lettres, Gallimard, 1957, pp. 77-84, and pp. 49-60 of Anthology Profesión de Fe in www.institutosimoneweil.net site (in pdf). Editorial note : Italics have been added in the translation that do not appear in the original in French. An effort has been made here and there to compensate for Simone Weil’s traditional use of the word “man” as inclusive of both genders.  

There is a reality to be found beyond this world, beyond space and time, beyond man’s mental universe, beyond every territory that human faculties are able to penetrate.

 To this reality corresponds, at the center of man´s heart, a quest for an absolute good that is always there and which never finds an object in this world.

         This reality is also revealed down here by the absurdities, the insoluble contradictions that human thought runs up against whenever it moves in this world exclusively.

Just as the reality of this world is the only foundation for facts, equally so the other reality is the only foundation for the good.

It is from it and from it alone that there comes into this world all the good that is bound to exist; all the beauty, all the truth, all the justice, all the legitimacy, all the order, all subordination of human conduct to obligations.

The only intermediary through which the good is able to descend from its realm to that of human beings are those, among men, who maintain their attention and their love turned towards that other reality.