Editing Simone Weil (section)

=== Attention ===
As Weil explains in her book ''Waiting for God'', attention consists of suspending or emptying one's thought, such that one is ready to receive—to be penetrated by—the object to which one turns one's gaze, be that object one's neighbour, or ultimately, God.{{r|n=Weil Waiting for God|r={{Cite book|last=Weil|first=Simone|title=Waiting for God|date=1973|publisher=Harper & Row|isbn=0-06-090295-7|edition=1st Harper colophon|location=New York|oclc=620927}}|pp=111&ndash;112}} Weil states that "the capacity to give one's attention to a sufferer is a very rare and difficult thing: it is almost a miracle; it ''is'' a miracle".{{r|Zaretsky|p=46}} Attention may be linked to compassion so that, with attention, one can identify with an afflicted individual letting go of ourselves and allowing the other person to have our attention. Weil contrasts this attention with pity describing pity as "it consists in helping someone in misfortune so as not to be obligated to think about him anymore, or for the pleasure of feeling distance between himself and oneself".{{r|Zaretsky|p=46}}

As Weil explains, one can love God by praying to God, and attention is the very "substance of prayer": when one prays, one empties oneself, fixes one's whole gaze towards God, and becomes ready to receive God.{{r|Weil Waiting for God|p=105}} Similarly, for Weil, people can love their neighbours by emptying themselves, becoming ready to receive one's neighbour in all their naked truth, asking one's neighbour: "What are you going through?"{{r|Weil Waiting for God|pp=114&ndash;115}} Weil connects attention directly to the moral and spiritual life. It is the foundation of love and justice, and also the essence of the way we apprehend beauty stating “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.”<ref name=":10">{{Cite book |last=Weil |first=Simone |title=Waiting for God |publisher=Harper Perennial Modern Classics |year=2001 |isbn=9780061718960}}</ref><sup>111</sup>
This attention is not a passive gaze, but an active, ethical engagement, a suspension of self (decreation) so that the reality of the other may come forward in its own truth (reflecting her view of beauty). In her essay ''Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God'', Weil offers one of her clearest formulations of this idea:<blockquote>“The love of our neighbor in all its fullness simply means being able to say to him: ‘What are you going through?’ It is a recognition that the sufferer exists, not only as a unit in a collection, or a specimen from the social category labeled ‘unfortunate,’ but as a man, exactly like us, who was one day stamped with a special mark by affliction. For this reason it is enough, but it is indispensable, to know how to look at him in a certain way. This way of looking is first of all attentive. The soul empties itself of all its own contents in order to receive into itself the being it is looking at, just as he is, in all his truth.”<ref name=":10" /><sup>64</sup></blockquote>Weil further equates aspects of attention to love stating "To empty ourselves (French: ''Se vider)'' of our false divinity, to deny ourselves, to give up being the center of the world in imagination, to discern that all points in the world are equally centers and that the true center is outside the world, this is to consent to the rule of mechanical necessity in matter and of free choice at the center of each soul. Such consent is love. The face of this love, which is turned toward thinking persons, is the love of our neighbor."<ref name=":12" /> Weil also equates attention to justice. In ''Gravity and Grace'', she writes: “Justice consists in seeing that no harm comes to those whom we have noticed as real beings.”<ref name=":412" /><sup>1</sup><sup>51</sup> Weil also states To harm another person is to receive something from him, gaining importance and expanding, filling an emptiness in ourselves by creating one in someone else.<ref name=":16" /><sup>50</sup>