Reading and Performing: Interpreting Reality According to Simone Weil and Luigi Pareyson

Abstract

This contribution aims to shed light on two hermeneutical perspectives of the twentieth century which, although developed in different contexts and through distinct languages, share not only certain conceptual affinities but are both grounded in a relational ontological framework. The first is the notion of reading (notion de lecture) elaborated by the French thinker Simone Weil (1909–1943), particularly during her time in Marseille (1940–1942); the second is the idea of reading as “performance” or “execution” (esecuzione) proposed by the Italian philosopher Luigi Pareyson (1918–1991) within the framework of his aesthetic theory of formatività (1954). The aim of this study is, first, to outline the essential features of both perspectives and resonances and, subsequently, to highlight their points of convergence and original features. The goal, however, is not to propose a systematic comparison between the two authors, but rather to show the theoretical fruitfulness of a dialogue between Weil’s and Pareyson’s reflections on aesthetics and hermeneutics, from which a profile of “renewed thought” in a broad sense can emerge, opening up to a fruitful inter- and trans-disciplinary dialogue rooted in the search for truth as a shared horizon.

1. Introduction

[Dieu] aime cette perspective de la création qu’on ne peut avoir que du point de vue où je suis

(Weil 1997, pp. 489–90).

Ogni persona è una singolarissima prospettiva sulla realtà: porta con sé una chiave per interpretare il mondo, propria a lei sola, diversa da tutte le altre

(Pareyson 1950, p. 277).

The aim of this work is to offer—without any claim to exhaustiveness—a presentation of the most significant aspects of how the French thinker Simone Weil (1909–1943) and the Italian philosopher Luigi Pareyson (1918–1991) conceive the concept of reading. What justifies and motivates this “encounter” between these two different authors is the fact that, in both cases, the term is employed within a hermeneutic-relational framework, understood as an interpretation of reality in its more profound and transcendent human dimension.

For Simone Weil, the notion de lecture is a provisional formula, developed in particular during her stay in Marseille between 1940 and 1942, through which she designates a new way of understanding human perception or sensation and the reception—through and beyond perception—of the multiple revelations coming from the external world. Although these reflections remain fragmentary and unfinished—as is often the case in Weil’s oeuvre—they nonetheless constitute a fertile and penetrating core of thought, at once philosophical, theological, and mystical, which can be reconstructed thanks to the intense speculative and spiritual production of those years.

In the case of Luigi Pareyson, the concept of lettura emerges within his reflection on art, developed organically over the course of a long theoretical and teaching activity (1945–1964), and reaching an initial maturation in the collection of essays published in his Estetica. Teoria della formatività (1954).1 From this perspective, the reading of the work of art is conceived not only as an aesthetic category, but as an original form of “practical hermeneutics,” capable of illuminating the very meaning of interpretative experience across all dimensions of human activity. This approach proves, moreover, to be deeply consistent with the various phases of the hermeneutic reflection of the Turin-based thinker, in which the transcendent aspect has always played a prominent role.

The concept of reading thus presents itself as a possible speculative common ground between Weil and Pareyson, allowing for the identification of significant points of contact. These extend well beyond hermeneutics in the strict sense, involving broader implications for contemporary thought. In particular, we believe that this encounter may offer valuable insights for a philosophical elaboration capable of embracing the complexity of human experience, according to an interdisciplinary and integral paradigm attentive to the constitutive unity of the person in its various dimensions—historical, relational, and transcendent—aimed at the person’s full realization, in the light of their universal vocation or, as Weil liked to say, their “eternal destiny” (cf. Weil 2013, p. 113).

We therefore propose, first of all, to synthetically outline these two hermeneutical perspectives—not in order to subsequently compare them in a systematic or oppositional way, but rather to allow them to engage in dialogue, in the conviction that such an encounter may open fertile horizons of reflection for contemporary thought, in accordance with that simple and authentic communicative dynamic which the young Pareyson, already in the 1940s, described as a “conjunction of truth with truth”. (Pareyson 1950, p. 90)2

2. Simone Weil’s Lecture

The notion of lecture in the proper sense emerges explicitly in Simone Weil’s mature thought, particularly during her stay in Marseille (1940–1942).3 However, as Robert Chenavier precisely observes, the first traces of it can already be found in her early reflections.4 It is above all in Essai sur la notion de lecture (Weil 2008, pp. 73–79) from 1941 that Weil clearly outlines, albeit still in an incipient form, the essential features of what some authors will recognise as an original hermeneutical reflection, in which ontology, phenomenology and theology meet and intertwine.5 In this work, we will focus mainly on the essay just mentioned, supplementing our reflection with other notes from Marseille—in particular those taken from her famous Cahiers—but also with later writings.

In the Essai, Simone Weil highlights the embryonic nature of her notion of lecture, even going so far as to say that it has yet to be given “a suitable name” (Weil 2008, p. 73).6 On the other hand, however, Weil is also categorical in stating that this notion cannot be fully defined, since it does not constitute an intellectual tool, but rather represents “a mystery” which, when contemplated authentically, can help “to grasp other mysteries in human life” (Weil 2008, p. 73). For Weil, in fact, the word mystery has never been synonymous with the impossibility of rational understanding, but rather a lever for thought, a call to exercise it with even greater intensity and radicality (cf. Weil 2006a, p. 174).7

As the term itself suggests, Simone Weil understands lecture as that mysterious human capacity to constantly “read”, in a unique and unrepeatable way, everything that comes from outside—that is, from the world and its countless stimuli—as if the universe as a whole were nothing more than a “text” that incessantly demands to be read. A text from which we cannot escape. This reading therefore always takes place, regardless of human will and—as we shall see—regardless of whether it is a correct or incorrect reading. In fact, according to Weil, it is impossible not to read: “As for not reading, it is impossible; one cannot look at a text printed in a language one knows, placed correctly, and read nothing” (Weil 2008, p. 75). In this sense, everything we touch, encounter or even “collide with” in the world necessarily becomes something we read.

What we read in appearances is not yet a true interpretation, according to Weil: “There is no one appearance and [then] one interpretation” (Weil 2008, p. 75). This is because Weil distinguishes between the appearance of what appears, defining appearance as a letter which, in order to fully understand it, we must discover the word in which it is found and, further, the sentence and context in which it is expressed: “what appears is something else that is to appearances, like a sentence is to letters” (Weil 2008, p. 76). We can therefore say that what appears is true and false at the same time: true, because—being something that reaches us from outside—it is not an invention of the ego or its imagination; but also false, because what we read is not what is, but something else that invites us to discover its truth by contemplating the contradiction inherent in it, as we will see in the following points.8

2.1. Reading and Action: Powers and Limits

Reading is something essentially linked to the body and the sensations it experiences, i.e., to its perceptions, and this fact necessarily also conditions the actions of the individual, with concrete consequences on reality. In this way, reading also has a clear moral dimension: “I believe what I read, my judgements are what I read, I act according to what I read, how could I act otherwise?” (Weil 2008, p. 77). Weil, however, clarifies that what is read are not sensations, but their meanings, which are in turn capable of provoking certain sensations and, subsequently, certain actions. Among the many examples Weil offers is that of the fear one feels in the face of apparent danger: “It is not accurate to say that we believe in danger because we are afraid; on the contrary, we are afraid because of the presence of danger; it is danger that causes fear; but danger is something I read” (Weil 2008, p. 76). If this danger, upon closer examination, proves to be unfounded, the fear automatically dissipates (cf. Weil 2008, p. 75).

We thus see that, although human beings are endowed with the innate ability to read, this does not mean that they are able to immediately and correctly grasp the real meaning of the signs they read, nor their deepest truth.9 This constant tension between sign and meaning, inherent in reading, highlights its contradictory and mysterious nature.

On the other hand, reading also has its own power over the world—albeit limited—because, if it is true that human beings and their actions are effectively influenced and conditioned by the meanings they read, it is equally true that they—human beings—can, in turn, “modify” these meanings through action. Weil explains:

I have a certain power over the universe, which allows me to change appearances, but indirectly, through work, not through a simple wish. […] This power is limited by the limits of my physical strength. I may also have the power to change the meanings I read in appearances and which impose themselves on me; but this power is also limited, indirect and exercised through work

(Weil 2008, p. 78).

So, while reading influences the way we act, action, especially systematic and methodical action—the most complete example of which is work (travail)—, can also change the way we read the world. Along these lines, Weil notes in one of her Cahiers: “The world is a text with multiple meanings, and we move from one meaning to another through work. Work in which the body always plays a part, as when we learn the alphabet of a foreign language; this alphabet must enter in the hand through repeated tracing of the letters. Apart from that, any change in the way we think is illusory” (Weil 1994, p. 295).10 Methodical action is therefore useful for setting in motion the long apprenticeship necessary to form and elevate one’s reading, refining it more and more.

But methodical action alone is not enough to achieve a correct reading of things. There is, in fact, an improper way of transforming the meanings of what one reads, especially when one acts on others for purely selfish purposes: “Action on oneself, action on others consists in the transformation of meanings. […] War, politics, eloquence, art, teaching: every action on others consists essentially in changing what men read” (Weil 2008, p. 78).

Weil is categorical in arguing that the effort to change a particular reading is legitimate only when exercised on oneself, while the use of force on another human being to induce them to change their reading of things is in no way justifiable—even when motivated by good intentions—for the simple fact that “others can only read the truth through their own efforts” (Weil 1994, p. 315). Furthermore, the use of force (the extreme case of which is war11), although it can effectively change the interpretation of others, can never elevate it. For a reading to be elevated and achieve a better perspective on things, an inner, non-coercive movement is necessary. At most, force—if used in a purely negative sense—can simply prevent the other person from carrying out an erroneous action due to their misreading.12

Reading, therefore, whatever form it takes, is never harmless: it always involves actions with practical consequences, which can be edifying or degrading for the individual and for society. Similarly, because of its inherent limitations, no particular reading is ever absolute or definitive. As we have mentioned, it is always conditioned, both by the external context and by the internal disposition and intention of the reader. Consequently, every reading can be good or bad, or even good from one perspective and bad from another.13

Another key element of any genuine reading—which we find above all in the Cahiers—is its essential link with the present. In fact, reading can only be valid if it is carried out by a consciousness fully rooted hic et nunc: “Reading and reading at the same time one’s own reading, the notion of reading [notion de lecture], the necessity […] of this particular reading, at this moment, in this place, in this state” (Weil 1994, p. 318). This is why a reading that may be legitimate in a given context and moment may be inappropriate if automatically applied in a different context or time, even if similar to a previous experience. Similarly, to be authentic, reading must be practiced in a state of detachment from both past experiences and future expectations or aspirations.14

2.2. Elevation of Reading: Attention, Beauty and Malheur

As already mentioned, the elevation of reading is not possible neither by force nor by action alone. It rises exclusively through the exercise and training of one’s capacity for attention, which comes into play every time we are “bitten” by the beauty of the world and called to contemplate it. Beauty, in fact, as Weil writes in her Marseille essay Dieu dans Platon (1942), is capable of “speaking to all hearts” (cf. Weil 2009a, p. 178). Similarly, she later reiterated in a London essay that beauty is the silent voice of truth “that bites our hearts every time we are sensitive to the beauty of the world” (Weil 2013, p. 347).15

It is therefore beauty—even when it does not initially appear as such, as we will see in a few paragraphs—that, in various forms, strikes our senses and invites us to read beyond appearances. And this applies not only to the elevation of our own reading, but also to that of others. In this vein, Weil argues that it is possible to elevate the reading of others through education and teaching based on example or testimony,16 since these are, in effect, manifestations of beauty (cf. Weil 1994, p. 296).17

In Lettre à un religieux (1942), written during her brief stay in New York (after the Marseille period and before her arrival in London, where she would die in 1943), Weil lists other elements useful for the apprenticeship of reading through attention: “In the same way, God facilitates human apprenticeship by giving them religious practices and sacraments in social life, and beauty in the inanimate universe” (Weil 2019, p. 293). These elements have been already described in detail in the famous Marseilles work Formes de l’amour implicite de Dieu (1942), in which they are presented—together with love of neighbour and friendship—as implicit manifestations of God’s love for humanity.18 In each of them, God is secretly present through beauty, which is an infallible sign of the divine for Weil. Indeed, it is its incarnation: “Beauty is truly, as Plato says, an incarnation of God” (Weil 2006a, p. 369).

Since beauty is the hidden sign of God’s love in the world, the capacity for attention to the beauty is likewise shaped by that same love which ‘pulls upwards’: “It is not only the love of God that has attention as its substance. The love of one’s neighbour, which we know to be the same love, is made of the same substance” (Weil 2008, pp. 261–62).

In another contemporary essay, Weil also uses the term “substance” to refer to the cross as “the very substance of life” (Weil 2008, p. 361),19 which is irremediably exposed and subject to the laws of necessity, willed by God Himself. With this, Weil indicates that even suffering—or malheur—hides and at the same time reveals divine love in existence, as she explains in her 1942 essay L’amour de Dieu et le malheur (Weil 2008, pp. 346–74). Learning to read therefore means learning to recognise God’s love behind the appearances of the world, whether beautiful or unhappy (malheureuses).20 But this, as we have seen, is neither an easy nor an automatic task. This is why Weil states clearly: “God’s love requires an apprenticeship” (Weil 2009a, p. 292).

From this perspective, the apprenticeship of reading must be guided and accompanied by attention: a genuine instrument for the elevation of reading, both one’s own and that of others, since—having love as its substance—it is capable of predisposing the spirit to accept the truth that is revealed. In this regard, Chiaretto Calò describes Weil’s attention as “a privileged function for receiving reality” (Calò 1996, p. 26) and a “mediating faculty, placed between the natural and supernatural worlds” (Calò 1996, p. 27). It is an essential tool in the notion of reading, as it allows for the recognition of different levels of reality (which is, in fact, natural and supernatural). Calò also reiterates that attention is not a faculty of intelligence, but rather its “guest” (cf. Calò 1996, p. 78). Intelligence, therefore, must gradually become transparent, “self-eliminating” through its own exercise. It is not, therefore, a question of renouncing the use of intelligence, but of “run out” it, so that the partial reading of the universe can finally reach a universal and non-perspectival level, outside one’s own limited point of view. This is what Weil calls non-reading (non-lecture), which, as we shall see, represents not only the highest level of reading, but also its fulfilment.21

However, it should be clarified that what is revealed to us in “non-reading” is not what is read in appearances, nor is it the result of purely rational reflection. In this sense, Weil affirms in her Essai:

A man tempted to appropriate a deposit will not refrain from doing so simply because he has read the Critique of Practical Reason; he will refrain from doing so, perhaps even, it will seem to him, in spite of himself, if the very appearance of the deposit seems to cry out to him that it must be returned. Everyone has experienced similar states, where it seems that one would like to do wrong, but cannot”.

(Weil 2008, p. 79)22

Unlike reading, what we “do not read” is neither something that comes from the outside world, much less something produced by the self. It is something transcendent which, thanks to the faculty of attention, we are able to recognise, even when it appears logically incomprehensible and contradictory from a human point of view.23

2.3. Levels of Reading

We have seen, therefore, that reading is called upon to rise to the highest level in order to grasp as fully as possible the reality as a whole, which presents itself as a harmonious interweaving of relationships on multiple levels. Let us now try to deepen our understanding of this by briefly listing the levels of reading according to Simone Weil, which are closely and essentially interconnected. As we read in a note in the Cahiers, there are basically three levels: “Juxtaposed readings: reading the necessity behind the sensation, reading the order behind the necessity, reading God behind the order” (Weil 1997, p. 373).24

2.3.1. First Level: Reading the Necessity Behind Sensation

The first level of reading is that of sensation or perception, through which we “read the necessity” that reigns over the world. The protagonist of this stage is the body, the first instrument of encounter with reality and its necessary laws. Through its senses, the body immediately—and therefore pre-reflectively—grasps the incessant bombardment of meanings coming from outside, to which, as mentioned at the beginning, man is inevitably exposed. The body is what Weil calls the “blind man’s stick” (bâton d’aveugle) of human beings: the point of contact with reality and a guide on their interpretative journey.

The image of the “blind man’s stick”—taken from Descartes and already present in her 1930 Mémoire d’agrégation under the title Science et perception dans Descartes (Weil 1988, pp. 161–221)—is, according to the Parisian philosopher, the most appropriate to describe this first level of reading. As it does not yet involve any real intellectual reflection, it is not “true reading”, but a necessary step towards it, as Weil notes in capital letters in another passage of the Cahiers: “MAKE THE FIRST READING A BLIND MAN’S STICK. THE TRUE READING: SECOND READING” (Weil 1994, p. 316).25

The body and the perceptual experience of the world, therefore, must never be ignored, at the risk of falling into an illegitimate reading: they are indispensable tools for authentic contact with reality and for its knowledge.26

2.3.2. Second Level: Reading the Order Behind Necessity

The second level is that of true reading, which every human being, as a rational being, can and is called upon to perform. If at the first level we read necessity, here we read order, or rather the harmonious link between the various relations that make up the different planes of existence. At this level, thanks to a balanced combination of perception and intelligence (whether discursive, logical, mathematical, demonstrative, artistic, etc.), a progressive transition from the particular to the universal begins.27

Through this gradual “intelligence of relations” (cf. Weil 2002a, p. 265), we can trace back to the frontier that separates the natural world from the supernatural world (cf. Weil 2002a, p. 405): a threshold that intelligence, however, cannot cross on its own. Through practice, reason comes to perceive an essential—and at the same time contradictory—correlation between the immanent and transcendent planes.28 The loss of one’s own perspective, which began with the overcoming of the first level, reaches its maximum inflexion point here (cf. Weil 2002a, p. 182). This is the necessary condition for intelligence to be subsequently transported “into the higher reality of being” (cf. Weil 2002a, pp. 251–52), thus opening access to the third and final level of reading, which is no longer based on a particular or human perspective, but on a transcendent and all-encompassing view.

2.3.3. The Level of Non-Reading: Reading God Behind Order

The third level, which we have already mentioned, is that of non-reading (non-lecture). It is no longer a question of the simple partial conjugation of the relations read, but of a global and harmonised vision of the entire fabric of the universe, in which the infinite particular and contradictory readings find a synthesis. This point of view lies outside the order of the material and necessary world, and is therefore inaccessible to human beings. Yet Weil speaks of the possibility of recognising it for “brief instants” (cf. Weil 1994, p. 318). In those moments, natural reason gives space to supernatural reason, which, in the “space of a flash”, illuminates it in a new way, allowing an intuition to appear within a discursive or creative process.29

In fact, when faced with an impossible harmony (such as that between immanence and transcendence), intelligence cannot read it, but it can recognise it by experiencing it. This is the “running out” of intelligence that we mentioned earlier, what Weil alludes to when she states: “You have to read to achieve non-reading” (Weil 1997, p. 444; cf. Weil 1994, p. 342); that is to say, one must read in order to reach that which has neither name nor form (cf. Weil 1997, p. 206). Every reading, in fact, is a reading of a form. Non-reading, on the other hand, reads the “non-form”, that is, the unity of all forms (cf. Weil 1994, p. 342).30

Finally, non-reading is conformity (convenance) with the order of things. It presents itself as “evidence” not posited by the human intellect but which, through the openness generated by attention, comes as the fruit of an intervention external to the self. Or, as Simone Weil liked to say, of a grace similar to that of the divine incarnation.31 At this level, the “blind man’s stick” is no longer just a tool for contact with the outside world, but becomes a means of “touching God”, “touching eternity” (cf. Weil 1997, pp. 356–57). We thus come to read “God behind order” and in “all appearances” (cf. Weil 1997, p. 317).32 And since “only God knows God” (cf. Weil 1997, p. 364; 2006a, p. 172), this last degree of reading can only belong to Him, as Author and sole “Reader of the true text”:

To think of a true text that I do not read, that I have never read, is to think of a reader of that true text, that is, God; but immediately a contradiction appears, because I cannot apply this notion of reading to the being I conceive when I speak of God. Moreover, even if I could, this would not allow me to order the texts that I read according to a hierarchy of value.

(Weil 2008, p. 79)33

2.4. True Reading and Divine Mediation

Weil’s thinking is not, however, pantheistic. She strongly asserts that transcendence and immanence are not two mixed planes, but infinitely separate. If there is the possibility of an “impossible agreement” between the two, this is due solely to the intervention of grace, which is communicated through the mediation of the divine Logos as incarnate grace: he who, by lowering himself (kenosis), became incarnate since the creation of the world, thus “imprinting” the whole existence of divine life.34

To put it more clearly: the idea of mediation in Simone Weil—inspired by the Greek (particularly Pythagorean and Platonic) and Christian traditions—is based on a relational and Trinitarian conception of being, and has at its centre the figure of the incarnate Logos as the supreme Metaxy35 between the necessary world and that of the absolute Good (cf. Weil 1997, p. 331). He is, therefore, harmony, the unity of contraries, the order and beauty of the world, the key to supernatural knowledge (cf. Weil 2002a, p. 158).36

This is why, for Weil, reflection on beauty—that is, aesthetics—is “the key to supernatural truths” (Weil 2002a, p. 356); because beauty, as the authentic incarnation of the divine, is nothing other than the manifestation of the incarnation of the Logos in creation, thus becoming an irrefutable sign of the harmony between the universal and the particular: “In God, the universal and the particular are identical. Here below, they are locked together by harmony. The Incarnation is this harmony. We must live by this harmony ourselves. This harmony is true life” (Weil 2002a, p. 334).

Weil’s mediation must therefore be understood in the light of the Christological event which, for the Parisian philosopher, does not remain a purely historical fact, but takes on a fundamentally ontological and, with it, gnoseological meaning.37 Aesthetic experience and knowledge of truth, in this sense, are equivalent, since they are two different “types of contact” with the same transcendent good: “Beauty is the contact of the good with the faculty of perception. (The real is the same thing.) True is the contact of the good with the intellect” (Weil 2006a, p. 125).

Following this line of thought, Christ, as the incarnation of the Logos and eternal Wisdom, represents not only the law that animates the necessary relations of the external world, but is also the same transcendent law hidden in the heart of every human being, in the uncreated and infinitely small part of the human soul: “It is this presence of the higher order in the lower in the form of an infinitely small. Christ is the point of contact, of tangency, between humanity and God” (Weil 2002a, p. 258; cf. Weil 1997, pp. 324–25, 348; Weil 2002a, p. 73). Christ is thus the source of pure good which, providentially, guides human beings from within—a “within” that is transcendent38—in their sincere search for beauty and truth. And it is He again, as divine Wisdom, who stimulates the full exercise of human intelligence.

Finally, as we read in À propos du Pater (1942) it is from the uncreated source of the soul that man’s supernatural consent to the natural order of things springs forth (cf. Weil 2008, p. 340).39 Once this tacit “agreement” between the soul and the transcendent has been reached, what Simone Weil calls “de-creation” takes place: the emptying of the personal self to make room for the divine self—which is Christ himself—through whom God’s universal gaze is actualized and works concretely in history: “A good act is one that, in a given situation, would be performed by God incarnate” (Weil 2002a, p. 209).

Good action, therefore, is not the result of the will of the self, but manifests as con-formity to the good. In Weil’s terms, it constitutes a “non-agent action” (action non agissante): “To act not for an object, but out of necessity. I cannot do otherwise. It is not action, but a kind of passivity. Non-agent action” (Weil 1997, p. 507). Every non-agent action is, consequently, an action of the Logos. In this vein, Weil writes: “To silence within oneself motives and incentives, and to act: this is a miracle analogous to that of the Incarnation” (Weil 1997, p. 351).40

Returning to the notion of lecture, we can understand how it is from this gradual de-creation of the human being that his capacity for attention becomes increasingly refined, allowing for a progressive elevation of his reading. The last level of lecture therefore coincides with the culminating point of de-creation, in which the individual, imitating Christ’s kenosis, becomes a “new incarnation” and, as such, “the image of Wisdom” (cf. Weil 2002a, p. 128), reaching the fullness of his being as a thinking creature (which is joie pure41): “The soul in its state of perfection is the very image of Christ” (Weil 2002a, p. 396).

As Trabucco writes, for human beings, “it is a question of reaching the truth of God and of oneself in imitation and identification with God” (Trabucco 1997, p. 209). Weil summarises the essence of this transformation in Formes de l’amour implicite de Dieu:

Every time a man rises to a degree of excellence that makes him, by participation, a divine being, something impersonal and anonymous appears in him. His voice is enveloped in silence. This is evident in the great works of art and thought, in the great deeds of saints and in their words.

(Weil 2008, p. 313)42

3. Reading as Performance in Luigi Pareyson’s Aesthetic Reflection

The term “reading” is also central to Luigi Pareyson’s (1918–1991) reflection on art, developed in particular in the early 1950s. The work on which we will base our analysis is specifically Estetica (Pareyson 2010), first published in 1954, which brings together the Turin-based thinker’s fundamental and canonical essays on art and artistic creation. It has the subtitle Teoria della formatività (Theory of Formativity) and is part of what Pareysonian critics identify as the second phase of Pareyson’s hermeneutic elaboration.43 Pareysonian aesthetics thus stands halfway between the early and later thought of the Turin philosopher.44

According to Pareyson, aesthetics, understood in a broad sense, represents a meeting point between experience and thought, and for this reason constitutes a privileged and fertile field for philosophical meditation.45 In his specific case, it takes the form of a place par excellence for the theoretical verification of his interpretative reflection, in particular of what is known as ontological hermeneutics.46 In this sense, the author has repeatedly emphasised that aesthetics does not properly represent the original terrain of his concept of interpretation, but rather constitutes “the greatest verification of its original and omnivalent character”.47

Against this backdrop of Pareyson’s aesthetic reflection—which in turn fits into the broader horizon of his interpretative and hermeneutical thought—we will now try to understand what he means by “reading” and what role it plays in his discourse on art and beauty.

3.1. Form, Reading and Artistic Performance

By linking art and existence, Pareyson defines reading, simply and essentially, as execution or performance (esecuzione): a definition that gives a very particular nuance to his notion of interpretation. For Pareyson, in fact, “to read means to execute” (Pareyson 2010, p. 221), and “to execute means, first and foremost, to interpret” (Pareyson 2010, p. 226).

In this context of art as an interpretative event, the reader is the artist, but it can also be the art critic, the public or, in a broader sense, anyone capable of appreciating and contemplating the work of art and the beauty it emanates. Ultimately, for Pareyson, interpreting is equivalent to knowing because, in fact, “there is no knowledge for man except as interpretation […] because interpreting is grasping, capturing, seizing, penetrating” (Pareyson 2010, p. 180).48

And what does the artist read or interpret? The form. More precisely: the form of the work of art, to the point of almost identifying himself with it. This is possible because “the work is a form”, just as “the person is a form” (Pareyson 2010, p. 184). In this vein, he wrote in Philosophy of the Person (1958), which was later published in the third edition of Esistenza e persona: “The most meaningful definition of interpretation is that it is knowledge of forms by persons. Only form can be interpreted, indeed it demands to be interpreted, and only the person can interpret, indeed it demands to be interpreted” (Pareyson 1966, p. 191). In this sense, Pareyson argues that the artist necessarily thinks, feels, sees and acts through forms; which is equivalent to saying that he thinks, feels, sees and acts by forming (cf. Pareyson 2010, pp. 23–24).49 Ultimately, formativity is a dynamic synthesis between invention and production, where “to form means to do, but to do in such a way that, while doing, one invents the way of doing” (Pareyson 2010, p. 196).50

But what is form? It should certainly not be understood in the Aristotelian sense. As Blanco Sarto rightly observes, “Pareyson is not referring here to the illemorphic theory of the composition of matter and form enunciated by Aristotle and taken up by Thomas Aquinas, but uses the term ‘form’ in a different sense” (Blanco Sarto 1998, p. 64). The Turin philosopher distinguishes between two types of form which, in essence—as we shall see—are one and the same: the forming form (forma formante) and the formed form (forma formata). The first one is the “internal norm of [artistic] work aimed at success” (Pareyson 2010, p. 75). This is the law that, from within, guides the entire creative process, ensuring that the artist “does what he must do”, i.e., that the work he is creating conforms to its most authentic form, that it is what it must be.

The formed form, on the other hand, is the completed, successful work, i.e., the work that has been able to embody and fulfil its own law.51 As the ultimate result of the forming form, the successful work can only be, for Pareyson, form: an exemplary form, capable in turn of becoming a model and a point of reference for formation, capable of arousing infinite new ideas and readings and executions—that is, interpretations—in its viewers/contemplators (esemplarità).52 In this regard, Pareyson writes:

The work is the same, and remains unchanged in its perennity, giving rise to infinite interpretations in readers and suggesting infinite ideas in artists, so that in this sense it can be said that the source is unique, without the ideas being the same, because in front of that work, which remains one and the same, the reactions have been different, and the starting point for new formations has also been different.

(Pareyson 2010, pp. 129–30)

In this vein, Pareyson goes on to specify the intrinsic character of form as “interpretable and interpretanda”, i.e., capable of requiring interpretation and, at the same time, of stimulating it (cf. Pareyson 2010, p. 240). Form therefore possesses a dynamic and generative essence and is present throughout the entire creative process: from the first idea to the last “stroke of the chisel”. It can therefore be said that it is always “already and not yet” present in artistic execution. Pareyson writes: “On the one hand, form already exists before execution, on the other hand, only after it, so that execution proceeds there with certainty along a traced path, and here blindly until its successful completion” (Pareyson 2010, p. 72).53

Like a doing that incessantly invents its own way of doing, the artist’s forming is understood by the philosopher as “poiein” (cf. Pareyson 2010, p. 7; Pareyson 1966, p. 196). From this continuous tension between forming form and formed form, the work of art, as it has its own internal norm, in some way makes itself and, at the same time, is made by the artist. Artistic activity thus becomes a continuous “attempt at form”: one does not follow a predefined external rule, but executes what the form, or the work itself, dictates and suggests to the artist at every moment of the creative process. Ultimately, “the law of reading is the work itself as it appears in its forming, operative and legislative aspect” (Pareyson 2010, p. 254).

3.2. Matter and Formativity

In addition to the forming form and the formed form, there is a third condition sine qua non for a work of art to take concrete form and thus reach its fulfilment: this is matter, which will be shaped by the artist’s unique and unrepeatable style, i.e., by his “personal way of forming” (Pareyson 2010, p. 53).

This shows that when Pareyson states that art, as pure formativity, is “form and nothing but form” (Pareyson 2010, p. 27), he does not mean a purely abstract or metaphysical idea. Formativity, in fact, always requires a matter to be formed, a concrete sphere in which “to bring form into existence” (Pareyson 2010, p. 27), thus realising the proper vocation of matter, which is precisely that of becoming form. Every matter, therefore—whether it exists concretely or in abstract form, as in the case of music—necessarily possesses a formal vocation. Pareyson explains:

Therefore, only something that has physical reality and material existence can hope to be pure form, that is, form and nothing else, i.e., a work of art: to make a work of art, that is, a form that is nothing but form, means to make a physical and material object, as is evident from the fact that there is no art that is not practiced by adopting a physical matter, such as words, which are sound as well as meaning, sounds, colours, marble and stones, and the human body itself, as in mime or dance

(Pareyson 2010, p. 42).

The artist, therefore, in shaping matter, must not only execute what is dictated by the formative form, but must also, at the same time, engage in a constant dialogue with matter, which, among other things, also “demands” to be interpreted. This dialogue, according to Pareyson, consists above all of questioning and listening, in which a fruitful tension is established between the artist’s freedom and the limit—or resistance—imposed on him by the matter.54 In this way, the interpretative requirement of the matter does not contradict the artist’s formative intention; on the contrary, the two complement and support each other:

The formative intention arises only when it seeks and demands, indeed chooses and adopts its matter, and tends to take shape in that very specific matter, which can only be its own; and the matter enters the artistic process only insofar as it places its own nature at the disposal of the formative intention, that is, only insofar as its characteristics are given a formal vocation. […] The conformity and adaptability of the matter to the formative intention is certainly established by the latter, but in such a way as to prolong the very nature of the matter in some way. The artist adopts the matter in order to tame it and make it his own, but he succeeds only if he ensures that it almost comes to meet him”.

(Pareyson 2010, p. 45)

In this giving and receiving together, matter and formative intention meet and call to each other, establishing a fruitful collaboration aimed at the fulfilment of the formed form, which—ultimately—is nothing other than formed matter (cf. Pareyson 2010, p. 46). This is why Pareyson categorically states: “To want to distinguish the work from its matter would be like wanting to dissociate the work from itself” (Pareyson 2010, p. 46).

3.3. Self-Availability and an Attentive Regard for Beauty

For there to be correct execution, Pareyson emphasises the need to overcome certain attitudes that hinder full understanding of the work of art.55 Among the attitudes to be abandoned, the Turin philosopher singles out judgement (in the sense of condemnation and prejudice), distraction and presumption (cf. Pareyson 2010, p. 209). Such attitudes obscure the gaze (sguardo) which, being closed in on itself, cannot see the form and therefore can never become an interpreting gaze (sguardo interpretante). In this regard, Pareyson writes: “a gaze that bends and poses in these ways, torn between distraction and presumption, will never be able to become visionary and contemplative, because it renders itself incapable of that interest and respect which alone make possible the attention and conversation necessary to interpret things” (Pareyson 2010, p. 210).56

On the other hand, the thinker also insists on the fundamental need to know how to “attempt form” without wanting to pre-figure the path to be taken, as well as on the ability to welcome the unexpected, going along with the play of circumstances. This requires not so much a renunciation of oneself as an attitude of detachment—both from oneself and from external situations. In this perspective, Pareyson describes the artist as an “improviser” fully rooted in the present, and it is precisely thanks to this rootedness that he is able to train himself to grasp inspiration, which is also always sudden and unpredictable (cf. Pareyson 2010, pp. 86–89).

Sudden inspiration thus seems to take the form of a sort of “reward” for the effort of the artist who has been able to prepare his soul to welcome it.57 A characteristic of inspiration is its “extraordinary happiness of start” and “exceptional facility of operation” (Pareyson 2010, p. 88); but this Archimedean joy of discovery is not pure chance. Pareyson argues that its real meaning lies in the “balanced union of receptivity and activity”, which is achieved precisely “when man feels all the more free and creative the more open and available he is to forces which, far from inducing him to inertia, rather urge and stimulate him to action” (Pareyson 2010, p. 89).58

Finally, we can say that joy and facility are two faces of inspiration which, not being the result of pure human will, is, according to Pareyson, the “miracle of a transcendent gift” that simply, suddenly and gratuitously happens to every attentive and receptive gaze: “for genuine attention is not forcing the gaze, but remaining open and receptive to total and profound consent” (Pareyson 2010, p. 90). In other words, these are true “moments of grace, in which the idea comes to us and captures and possesses us even before we are ready to receive and deserve it” (Pareyson 2010, p. 90).

We thus see that the artist’s gaze is neither presumptuous nor self-absorbed but, in Pareyson’s words, “a gaze of a lover [uno sguardo di innamorato] and a faithful person who wants to see everything as it really is, from the viewpoint that suits the object in question, from the perspective desired by the intimate nature of the thing, in the relationship required by the true essence of what is being interpreted” (Pareyson 2010, p. 188), until it becomes “all eyes [tutto sguardo], not lost in the object, but an eye that scrutinises and investigates and fixes itself, and truly ‘lookes’ in order to truly ‘see’” (Pareyson 2010, p. 188, our italics).59

Interpretation thus reveals itself as a movement that constantly seeks to grasp the true meaning of things, “it is an effort of attention, and therefore a tense and restless gaze” (Pareyson 2010, p. 195, our italics). But it is also, paradoxically, stillness and contemplation, a pause and a break capable of generating new movements, new formations: “Movement is directed towards grasping, towards enclosing itself in forms, and therefore tends to calm down, and stillness is a pause which, by including and calming a movement, pushes it towards new beginnings” (Pareyson 2010, p. 192).

In contemplation, the gaze becomes “seeing” of form and, in so doing, possesses and enjoys it in its harmony and internal perfection, established by the law of coherence that governs it. This enjoyment of form as “balance and mutual adequacy between the parts and the whole” is, precisely, beauty: “beauty is the contemplability and enjoyability of form as form, which offers itself to the gaze that knows how to become clairvoyant and contemplator” (Pareyson 2010, p. 196).

Beauty, therefore, is what is ultimately contemplated in every successful interpretation. Its most distinctive sign is joy, “a quiet and serene joy” (Pareyson 2010, p. 202), which stimulates and “facilitates” new performances.

3.4. “Everything Is Form”: Relational Foundation, Exemplarity and Artistic Mediation

To sum up, interpretation is a movement between searching and finding that culminates in contemplation, only to start again from there in a continuous and infinite dynamic. The ultimate goal of this whole process is, as we have seen, the knowledge of things as form: a knowledge that is nothing other than the contemplation of their beauty, understood as a harmonious union between the parts and the whole. Pareyson thus brings together knowledge and aesthetic contemplation: “to know things, and to know them truly, […] means to see things as forms, that is, to contemplate their beauty, so that there is always a moment when knowledge of nature becomes absorbed in the contemplation of beauty” (Pareyson 2010, p. 206). And it is precisely for this reason that “our knowledge of things would not culminate in a vision of forms if things were not themselves forms, that is, objects of interpretation and only of interpretation” (Pareyson 2010, p. 217).60

In this way, forming form and formed form coincide, establishing a correspondence between the interpreted and the interpretation, and thereby revealing that “there is only one form, that which makes contemplation always at once contemplation of something and contemplation of itself” (Pareyson 2010, p. 199, our italics). In this vein, Pareyson strongly asserts that “everything is form, living and defined form, with a centre that, by the law of coherence, holds the parts together, with its own autonomous life, endowed with an unrepeatable internal rhythm and universally recognisable in its unmistakable singularity” (Pareyson 2010, pp. 184–85). We see, therefore, that form is not only what is interpretable and stimulates its interpretability, but also the internal law that holds the parts together in a harmonious way.61

As mentioned at the beginning, this form of knowledge is not limited to artistic experience alone, but applies to every sphere of human knowledge and action, thus revealing the co-essentiality of beauty, truth and good. In fact, already in the preface to his Estetica, Pareyson makes it clear that beauty coincides with truth and good, without however cancelling itself out or being reduced to them. He writes:

There is no confusion of values, and one can speak of the beauty of the good and the true, indeed of goodness and truth as beauty, that is, one can extend art to every activity and beauty to every work […]. In this formativeness common to all aspects of spiritual life lies the necessarily “artistic” side of every human operation.

(Pareyson 2010, p. 21)62

Since every human action is, in some way, necessarily artistic: “the series of infinite readings, interpretations and executions is therefore the very life of the work […]. Every interpretation is the work itself for those who perform it, but interpretation is always by someone at a moment in their life, and it brings the work to life by revealing one of its infinite aspects” (Pareyson 2010, p. 239).63

In light of this, in performing the work, the artist or performer is the one who makes it concrete and reveals it in a specific historical context, thus becoming a mediator between knowledge of form and the historical situation,64 and this not only in a vertical sense, but also in a horizontal sense. Pareyson clarifies this aspect through the example of public performance, in which the performer “intends not only to render and bring the work to life, but to ‘present’ it to the viewer or listener, suggesting or facilitating its understanding” (Pareyson 2010, p. 263).65 Every authentic performer or interpreter, therefore, is also called upon to “guide and facilitate the performance that the listener or spectator must give on their own behalf” (Pareyson 2010, p. 263).66

For this to happen, Pareyson argues that the interpreter must “increase the aesthetic evidence” of the work; in other words, he must be able to make evident its exemplarity or paradigmatic character, as we mentioned above. He explains: “the essential exemplarity of form consists in this capacity to stimulate operational purposes and regulate their respective realizations” (Pareyson 2010, p. 139). Therefore, the more the interpreter is “in tune” with the form, the more he will be able to interpret the work to the point of evoking and bringing out its intrinsic exemplarity in others (Pareyson 2010, pp. 144–45). Thus, “reading only makes sense as penetrating by performing, understanding by bringing to life, comprehending by rendering” (Pareyson 2010, p. 268).

In this way, performance belongs as much to the artist as to the audience that judges the work. Indeed, in its fullest sense, it is both interpretation and judgement (here judgement must be understood in the sense of evaluation of the work), without however confusing the different readings (that of the artist and that of the audience): “the artist must do what does not yet exist, and therefore must invent by performing, while the reader must grasp what already exists, and therefore must perform by recognizing” (Pareyson 2010, p. 249). The ultimate aim thus remains the same, that is

[…] recognizing and making the work of art recognized as such. This is possible if the emphasis on one aspect, both in the reading and in the work, is not at the expense of the others, but implicitly contains them all by means of internal and perhaps hidden references; because the process of reading as an execution that is both interpretation and judgement, is indivisible, and only in its indivisibility does it become recognition of the work, and the total unity of the work is indissoluble

(Pareyson 2010, p. 272, our italics).

In the execution or performance, therefore, interpretation and judgement proceed together and are recognised in the work itself, which, in its exemplarity, is capable of unifying and containing within itself all the particular views of it. Exemplarity, indeed, indicates precisely this unique synthesis between the singular and universal character of the work of art.67

Finally, it is worth noting that, unlike other writings by Pareyson—in particular Pareyson 1950; Pareyson 1972—the interpersonal aspect, although mentioned, is not systematically explored in his Estetica. However, it emerges en passant in the discussion on the importance of dialogue and recognition of the other in the interpretative process. In this vein, just as dialogue and listening to the matter are fundamental to giving physical form to the work, they are even more so in the encounter and confrontation with other people, where, according to Pareyson, “an effort of attention is more evident” (Pareyson 2010, p. 207).68 If things “demand” to be known, then people demand it even more. But for this encounter to be authentic, true communication is necessary, based on mutual respect and recognition of the person as an absolute, and not as a means (Pareyson 2010, 208 ff.).

3.5. Singularity and Universality of Form: Art as a Way to God

This relationality, both vertical and horizontal, is part of Pareyson’s reflection on the unity between the parts and the whole, mentioned above, further highlighting the relational foundation of his aesthetic thought. Thus, we read in the section entitled The Parts and the Whole (Pareyson 2010, pp. 106–21), where the whole results from the parts, linked together in that each is contained and imprinted by it:

[…] the relations that the parts have with each other do nothing but reflect the link that each part has with the whole: the harmony of the parts forms the whole because the whole establishes their unity. If the parts constitute and delineate the whole, and therefore the whole results from the parts and contains them, this is because the whole demands and disposes the parts, and therefore each part contains and evokes the whole

(Pareyson 2010, p. 107, our italics).

Pareyson does not mean by this that the whole is the simple sum of the parts, but that, having been constituted by the formed form, they irremediably refer back to the forming form that has harmoniously ordered them: “The whole […] results from their indissoluble unity only because it itself, even before existing as a formed work, demanded and ordered them by acting as a forming form during the course of formation” (Pareyson 2010, p. 108).69 The whole or the entire, therefore, lives in the formed work because, it first acted as a forming form, claiming the parts among themselves70 and thus referring to a deeper and more original dynamism and unity: “the only way in which a single part reveals the whole is not by referring to something beyond the sensible parts, but by calling back the other parts, that is, by attesting to an original alliance, a substantial bond, an indissoluble affiliation that binds the parts together” (Pareyson 2010, p. 119).

From this we can conclude that the authentic reader is someone who simply knows how to look at the world and appreciate all its manifestations, until he reaches that “love of nature” and that pietas that accompanies the sense of the sacred and the divine.71 A careful look at the particular allows us to glimpse its connection with the universal, with the whole that constitutes and sustains it, thus opening up to religious experience understood as contact with the primordial “author of form”.

Indeed, since every form is always “an expression of itself and of its author together” (Pareyson 2010, p. 282), even the ultimate form cannot but be an expression of the “great ‘Artist’ of the universe”, whom Pareyson ultimately identifies with God. In this perspective, art becomes for the philosopher a privileged “way of access to the secrets of nature and God” (Pareyson 2010, p. 278), a way that nevertheless never completely dissolves that indecipherable mystery sealed in every true work of art:

for works of art, however possible and necessary their reading, execution and interpretation may be—and however clear the purely human activity that created them—, always have something mysterious about them, and it would be a rough and crude reader who allowed himself to miss this aura of mystery that surrounds them and unites them with the unfathomable depths of nature”.

(Pareyson 2010, p. 279)72

4. Weil and Pareyson, Beyond Comparison: Horizons of a Relational and Embodied Thinking; A Challenge for Our Time

Having reached the end of our excursus, in which we have attempted to briefly outline the conceptual nuclei surrounding the meaning of the term “reading” in the hermeneutic and aesthetic reflections of Simone Weil and Luigi Pareyson, we would now like to summarise and propose, in concise form, some significant points of contact, as well as their respective original features. As already clarified at the beginning, this is not an exercise in mere parallelism or a systematic comparison (which would, moreover, be anachronistic and methodologically inadequate), but rather an attempt to highlight some theoretical junctures capable of opening up further avenues for reflection, not only in the field of hermeneutics in the strict sense, but also for a renewed exercise of thought in the broad and fundamental sense.73 With this in mind, we present, in a concise and non-exhaustive manner, some aspects that we consider central from the two philosophical perspectives examined.

4.1. Relational Foundation

Let us begin with what, in our opinion, constitutes the foundation that supports and gives shape and rhythm to the entire philosophical approach of Weil and Pareyson. As already mentioned, their hermeneutic perspective is based on a transcendent principle, which allows them to think of the relationship between the universal and the particular not in terms of opposition, but as a harmonious tension between plurality and unity. In both cases, therefore, it is a structurally relational way of thinking: In Pareyson, this structure emerges clearly in his reflection on the relationship between the parts and the whole and on the internal law that governs and unites them. It is this same law that—as he describes in his meditation on artistic creation—guides the artist (forming form) so that his work is successful (formed form), ensuring that matter and form coincide in the organic totality of the work of art, which in turn becomes an exemplary form. Pareyson thus recognises a substantial and dynamic kinship between the parts and the whole.

This same relationship—albeit with different accents—is also constitutive of the notion of reading in Weil, where there is a mysterious relationship between sensitivity, beauty and transcendent revelation, as she notes in a text written in Marseille: “God has enclosed within human sensitivity ‘a revelation’ […] available to all those who are capable of contemplating everything with attention and love” (Weil 2009a, p. 292). In this vein, we find in Weil a Trinitarian and Christological foundation, rooted in the Pythagorean-Platonic and Christian doctrine of mediation. If human beings can know and recognise an order and a link to something transcendent in existence, it is because this principle—the incarnate Logos—is already, and has always been, at the centre of their being, in its uncreated part, thus acting as a mediator (metaxy) between the immanent and the transcendent planes, between form and non-form, as she prefers to refer to the divine, emphasising its unobjectivity.74 This divine is pure Goodness, God-Trinity as an eternal relationship of love, whose substance—the same as attention—can never be grasped by the human intellect, but constitutes its deepest foundation.

Pareyson, for his part, although he does not explicitly speak of the Trinity or Christology in the work we have discussed,75 also conceives of God as the ultimate outcome of reading, understood as interpretation of form. Art, in fact, as the successful execution or performance of form, expresses the profound reality of the divine which, even for Pareyson, can never be objectified but remains a fruitful mystery for all artistic inspiration (and not only).

4.2. Beauty and Aesthetics as a Privileged Way to Access the Secrets of Being

For both Weil and Pareyson, beauty is given through careful contemplation of things and requires a “being there” that is fully rooted in the historical context.76 In both, contemplation is therefore not abstract or disembodied, but constitutes an experience that arises from the recognition and appreciation of concrete reality, i.e., matter, understood not as an obstacle but as a condition of possibility for thought itself and for action. The attentive gaze is thus that which conforms to the beauty contemplated.

This beauty is a manifestation of the harmonious order of things, which Weil calls Logos and Pareyson calls form. In both, albeit with different emphases, it represents the law that guides and holds together, in harmonious unity, everything.77 This unity is not, therefore, an intellectual construct, but has a transcendent foundation and is at the same time recognisable by a thought capable of incarnating itself in here and now, thus experiencing beauty as the manifestation and revelation of reality which, in its deepest sense, is also good and truth.

4.3. Contemplating in Order to Act and Acting While Contemplating

Contemplated beauty generates and stimulates an action which, as a translation of form (Pareyson) or non-form (Weil), takes the form of the embodiment and reflection of beauty itself. This is what Pareyson means by execution, and what Weil calls right or good action. In Weil, there is a more marked emphasis on the moral aspect: the purpose of authentic reading is to lead to right action (while wrong action is the result of misreading), which will necessarily also be beautiful and true. In Pareyson, at least in his aesthetics, the emphasis is instead on artistic creation: a reading-execution of form, that is, a dynamic contemplating-doing (poiein) that leads to the success of the work of art as an exemplary form. This aesthetic reflection, however, is not restricted to the purely artistic sphere: art, in fact, as a privileged field of experience with being, can and must extend and translate itself into every human activity. Finally, Pareyson also affirms that every beautiful activity is, at the same time, good and true.

4.4. Correlation Between Thought and Art

Taking into account what has just been said, it is clear that hermeneutics and aesthetics—and with them gnoseology and ethics—are inseparable in the interpretative reflections of Weil and Pareyson. For the Turin philosopher, in fact, the fact that art constitutes a testing ground for the confirmation of the contents of his hermeneutical philosophy demonstrates the irreducible link between philosophy and aesthetics: “And that aesthetics is speculative can also be seen from the fact that it is not a ‘part’ of philosophy, but philosophy as a whole insofar as it is committed to reflecting on the problems of beauty and art” (Pareyson 2010, p. 318).

In Weil’s case, we have seen that aesthetics is the key to accessing supernatural truths. In line with this, the Parisian philosopher reiterates elsewhere that not only is art inseparable from thought, but that it is even coeternal with it: “We have always philosophised. Philosophy is not like geometry, chemistry, etc., as far as we know, something that has a date. It is eternal, like art” (Weil 1994, p. 175).

4.5. The Link Between Particularity, Universality and the Relationship with the o/Other

Openness to the transcendent sheds new light on horizontal relationships, both in the interpersonal sense and in our relationship with things and nature. Looking at the other therefore becomes crucial in order to overcome our partial view of the world, which is always exposed to the risk of misinterpretation. This highlights the importance, as well as the necessity, of encountering and comparing different perspectives through dialogue. In Pareyson, this encounter is based on respect, interest and full recognition of the dignity of the person.78

Although Weil does not explicitly address this aspect in her notion de lecture, she devotes significant pages of her Marseille period to love for one’s neighbour (and, along with it, compassion) and friendship, understood as particular forms of God’s implicit love. For her, in fact, love is always a gift of divine initiative, a grace that makes authentic knowledge of things possible whenever we are able to look at them attentively, that is, with love.79 This is why attention is, for Weil, the only possible tool for elevating one’s reading and grasping what is revealed beyond mere appearance.

4.6. Suffering and Malheur: An Originality of Weil’s Thought

It is worth highlighting an original aspect of Weil’s hermeneutic-aesthetic reflection: her meditation on malheur, conceived as equivalent to beauty.80 This is because both, paradoxically, preserve the hidden presence of divine love in the world. However, this is not a tragic vision: malheur, like beauty, is a path to pure joy, a sign of the fullness of being. To access it, however, a gaze transfigured by God himself, that is, de-created, is necessary.

De-creation begins when intelligence recognizes its own limit and, freely stripping itself in imitation of Christ’s kenosis, opens itself to become a receptacle of the divine. Thus, the individual becomes, by grace, a new creature and the incarnation of God in the world. In other words: a mediator who actualizes God’s love for his creatures according to a Trinitarian dynamic.81

4.7. Shared Vocabulary and Suggestions for Further Study

Finally, we would like to emphasize that, beyond linguistic and stylistic differences, both authors use a vocabulary that is in some ways similar, sometimes even identical—albeit with different tones and meanings—starting from the very concept of reading, analyzed here, to terms such as attention, form, mystery, grace, action, contemplation, beauty, God, etc. This fact offers interesting avenues for further comparative and dialogical analysis between our authors and others, extending the analysis to other writings and phases of their thought.82

4.8. A Valuable Legacy for Current Philosophical Concerns: Final Pro-Vocations

Starting from these brief points, we would like to reiterate—beyond the inevitable stylistic, conceptual and contextual differences83—the existence of a profound speculative affinity between the interpretative thought of Simone Weil and that of Luigi Pareyson. This affinity, as we saw, is particularly evident in the relational foundation that unites their reflections, allowing them to offer a unified and positive reading of the various relationships of existence as places where reality manifests itself, understood as the profound truth of being that freely reveals and gives itself.

In this perspective, Weil and Pareyson offer us—each in their own way—an example of how philosophy can and must take seriously the human and the concrete world in which we live, inviting us to raise our gaze from our ego and turn it towards the world and those in front of us, recognising them as brothers and sisters who, together with us, are searching for the same truth. This, in turn, makes possible an embodied thought, rooted in historical reality and capable of concrete engagement, together with others, hic et nunc, for the good and justice.84

Finally, we would like to highlight how Weil and Pareyson’s conception of reading, developed in a hermeneutic key, opens up other areas of reflection and study. Their investigation, in fact, does not end in purely conceptual or technical meditation, but—as an exercise in relational and open thinking—opens up to a gnoseology that is at once moral and contemplative, political and religious, historical and spiritual, theological and mystical (the latter especially in Weil), etc. We believe that this inter- and trans-disciplinary openness and appreciation can also provide further stimulus for a renewed exercise of thought in a broader sense—especially in the contemporary era, in which it often appears fragmented and lacking in a deeper horizon of meaning. In this sense, the various sciences are also called upon to engage in dialogue and enrich each other in their specific and common research in favour of the human person, recognising and valuing his or her complexity and integrity in all its dimensions.

As a final remark, we wish to recognise our authors—drawing on the background underlying the relational rationality of Pareyson and Weil outlined here—as two sincere and authentic “seekers of truth”. This common reflective intention is what, in our opinion, has made it possible to bring them into dialogue here, allowing us to be inspired by this exchange. This fact also confirms their positions on the fruitfulness (or exemplarity, to use a now familiar term) of the essential truth that dwells at the heart of every true thinker’s reflection.

In this sense, it is striking what Pareyson wrote in 1948, inspired by a reading of Karl Jaspers: “I must not consider the truth of others as another truth, outside my own, but as the truth of another who is searching with me […]. Communication is therefore the conjunction of truth with truth” (Pareyson 1950, p. 89).85