Il prisma dell’attenzione. L’alterità nel pensiero di Simone Weil

In Simone Weil’s thought, the other may manifest in particular through three emblematic figures: the suffering enemy, God as the Absolute Other, and the friend in their irreducible singularity. In each of these forms, authentic relationship is made possible only through an attentive gaze, capable of suspending any will to dominate. Attention, understood as a gesture of self-emptying, becomes an ethical and spiritual act that opens to the presence of the other in their truth, without appropriation or judgment. In the face of the force that reduces the human being to a thing, Weil posits an ethic of disarmed contemplation, which recognizes dignity precisely in the place of affliction. Love, friendship, and even the relationship with God require the creation of an empty space that welcomes without invading: a space in which the other may appear as they are, in their vulnerable inviolability.