Philosophy, at least in Hadot’s reconstruction, thus rediscovers its original purpose: it is a discipline, or spiritual exercise, that trains your character to mesh with a set of moral principles.

Work, in contrast, is the business of, well, one’s hands: when they engage the world, hands are the extension of one’s thoughts. Rather than being acted upon by the world, which is the lot of the laborer, the skilled worker shapes, with thought and deliberation, the material she finds in the world—an insight that also applies to the intellectual wh

The idea of collectivity resembles Hannah Arendt’s later notion of “thoughtlessness,” the condition she associated with Adolph Eichmann.

“We must keep from falling into inertia, believing that the liberation will be carried out by others. Each of us must know that one day it will be his duty to take part in it, and hold himself in readiness . . . We must think of the precious things we allowed to be lost because we did not know how to appreciate them, things that we have to regain a

Weil’s factory experience taught her that, among the toxins produced by modern industry, thoughtlessness was most dangerous. But it was not just factories that manufactured this poison; nearly all organizations and institutions, by smothering the vital bond between language and meaning, make and keep us thoughtless.

This goes to the heart of Weil’s enterprise: the corollary to another’s needs is our obligation to recognize them, regardless of conditions.

Attentiveness entails the difficult task of waiting, not for the world to take note of us, but for us to take note of the world.

In the opening lines of her first letter, Weil set the tone: “I am tired of talking to you about myself, for it is a wretched subject, but I am obliged to do so by the interest you take in me as a result of your charity.”12

We are always already social creatures, our selves formed and informed by the community into which we are born and in which we are raised. There is, quite simply, no self without society.