San Antonio College Library

In Simone Weil, du Plessix Gray vividly evokes the life a patriot, mystic, and activist, a pampered intellectual who believed in the redemptive value of manual labor, an ascetic who craved sensuous beauty, the daughter of a secular Jewish family who yearned to enter the Catholic Church, Simone Weil died at the age of thirty-four after a long struggle with anorexia. But her tremendous intellectual legacy foreshadowed many of the twentieth century's...

"Rene Descartes is the philosophical architect of our modern world. In metaphysics, he established the view that mind and body are distinct substances, a position foundational for any belief that the human soul is immortal. In mathematics, he invented analytic geometry - the basis of calculus - which makes physics as we know it possible. Descartes perfected the method of proposing and testing hypotheses with experiments that anyone can repeat, which...

Philosopher Simone Weil wrote on a wide range of topics including theology and politics, and influenced figures such as T.S. Eliot, Pope John XXII, Pope Paul VI, Camus, and Trotsky. Her life and thought, particularly her understanding of God, are introduced in this volume by Methodist minister Plant.

A biography of the theologian/scientist/philosopher who became famous for his archeological research and for his efforts to reconcile religion and science through a synthesis of evolutionary theory and Christian doctrine.

During her lifetime, Weil was only known to relatively narrow circles; even in France her essays were mostly read only by those interested in radical politics. Yet during the first decade after her death, Weil rapidly became famous, attracting attention throughout the West. For the 3rd quarter of the twentieth century, she was widely regarded as the most influential person in the world on new work concerning religious and spiritual matters. Her philosophical,...

From a description of Sartre's hitherto unknown father to the painful last moments of Sartre's declining years, this biography incorporates previously untold aspects of Sartre's private and political life.

Jean-Paul Sartre dominated the cultural and literary life of post-war France. He believed from an early age that he had a mission to be a writer and proceeded to realise this as a novelist, philosopher, screenwriter, playwright, literary and art critic, biographer, essayist, polemicist and journalist.

"They are one of the world's legendary couples. We can't think of one without thinking of the other. Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre - those passionate, freethinking existentialist philosopher-writers - had a committed but notoriously open union that generated no end of controversy. With Tete-a-Tete, Hazel Rowley offers the first dual portrait of these two colossal figures and their intense, often embattled relationship. Through original interviews...

A biography of the philosopher and activist who was for thirty-five years, the most influential thinker of France and the West.