Editing Simone Weil (section)

==Death==
After a lifetime of battling illness and frailty, Weil died in August 1943 from [[cardiac failure]] at the age of 34. The coroner's report said that "the deceased did kill and slay herself by refusing to eat whilst the balance of her mind was disturbed".<ref>{{cite book | author=McLellan, David | title=Utopian Pessimist: The Life and Thought of Simone Weil | url=https://archive.org/details/utopianpessimist00mclerich | url-access=registration | publisher=Poseidon Press | year=1990| isbn=0-671-68521-X }}, Inquest verdict quoted on p. 266.</ref>

The exact cause of her death remains a subject of debate. Some claim that her refusal to eat came from her desire to express some form of solidarity toward the victims of the war. Others think that Weil's self-starvation occurred after her study of [[Arthur Schopenhauer]].<ref>McLellan, David (1990). ''Utopian Pessimist: The Life and Thought of Simone Weil''. Poseidon Press., p. 30</ref> In his chapters on Christian saintly asceticism and salvation, Schopenhauer had described self-starvation as a preferred method of self-denial. However, Simone Pétrement,{{r|Pétrement 1988|p=592}} one of Weil's first and most significant biographers, regards the coroner's report as simply mistaken. Basing her opinion on letters written by the personnel of the sanatorium at which Simone Weil was treated, Pétrement affirms that Weil asked for food on different occasions while she was hospitalized and even ate a little bit a few days before her death; according to her, it was, in fact, Weil's poor health condition that eventually made her unable to eat.<ref>Simone Pétrement (1988); chpt. 17 'London', see esp. pp. 530-539.</ref>

Weil's first English biographer, [[Sir Richard Rees, 2nd Baronet|Richard Rees]], offers several possible explanations for her death, citing her compassion for the suffering of her countrymen in occupied France and her love for and close imitation of Christ. Rees sums up by saying: "As for her death, whatever explanation one may give of it will amount in the end to saying that she died of love."<ref name="Rees">{{cite book | last=Rees | first=Richard | title=Simone Weil: A Sketch for a Portrait | date=1966 | publisher=Southern Illinois University Press | publication-place=Carbondale | page=191 | author-link=Sir Richard Rees, 2nd Baronet | url=https://archive.org/details/simoneweilsketch0000rees | isbn=978-0-8093-0852-1 }}</ref>