Avskapelse och livsglupskhet : Helig självsvält och oheligt ätande hos Etty Hillesum och Simone Weil

Sammanfattning: This essay investigates the philosophies and practices of Simone Weil and Etty Hillesum from the viewpoint of their relation to eating. By analyzing them aided by Renée Girard’s theory of mimetic desire, I discuss similarities and differences between Weils and Hillesums work and spiritual development. Entering their thinking through Robert Daly’s notion of a phenomenology of redemption, which describes the form of  mimetic desire that counters, rather than produces, violence, I discuss, guided by Susan Bordo’s work on eating disorders as well as Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of perception, how Weil and Hillesum can be said to engage in this respectively. By contrasting Weil’s decreation with Hillesum's compulsive overeating, or “life-gluttony”, my analysis argues that Hillesum's diaries depict how she copes with violence by practicing a kind of radical self-love, through which she becomes able to reconcile with both herself and her outside world. As for Weil, I argue that the self-destructive ethics that her decreation consists in prevent her from reaching a full reconciliation, insofar as it constitutes only internalized violence, and not a refusal of violence as such. Thus, my conclusion is, Hillesum's philosophy might be said to be an expression of a more complete redemption, as I formulate it taking my departure in Daly's concept, than Weil's.