Sacrifice and Obedience. Simone Weil on the Binding of Isaac

Abstract

Sacrifice and obedience are two concepts that are central to the thinking of the French philosopher Simone Weil. She does not always relate these concepts, and even in her references to the Akedah – the “binding of Isaac”, the story in Genesis 22 – where one would expect both concepts to occur, she only makes the connection between them in a split way: She focuses on the sacrificial aspect in one entry in her Cahiers, and on obedience in another. In Gen. 22 God commands Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac. Weil refers to this narrative only very rarely; those two of these mentions that will be addressed in this paper seem very different at first glance – not least because one is about sacrifice, the other about obedience – but it will eventually become apparent that, from Simone Weil’s point of view, they belong together in a systematic way.