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.

Weil reminded her students of a simple truth: “If one stops oneself from thinking of all this, one makes oneself an accomplice of what is happening. One has to do something quite different: assume one’s place in this system of things and do something about it.”

What Murdoch took from this “admirable Platonist” was the conviction that seeing well is tantamount to doing well. Discerning the Good—the way the world truly is—whittles down our range of choices to just one.

She berates herself for falling short of a goal or failing to grasp a clue, declaring, “I’m stupid . . . An example of my stupidity. Analyze it.”27 Thus the reminder to herself that at “every blow of fate, every pain, whether small or great, say to oneself: ‘I am being worked on.’”

In short, the way in which we read the world turns on our particular location—moral, social, political, and economic—within the world. And the world, of course, is what humankind makes of it.

It is only by getting the words right—describing the world as it is—that one can act rightly and resist on behalf of others and oneself.

The meaning of “collectivity” tends to shift from one text to the next, as does the word itself; at times, Weil applies the label of “blind social mechanism.” But the fundamental conception remains constant, pointing to the convergence of the political, social, cultural, and economic forces that dictate our lives.

Normally, when we pay attention to someone or something, we undertake what Weil calls a “muscular effort”: our eyes lock on another’s eyes, our expressions reflect the proper response, and our bodies shift in relation to the object to which we are paying attention. This kind of attention flourishes in therapists’ offices, business schools, and

Reverence is the work of attention. In fact, reverence is attention.