Noemi Faustini

Bio: Noemi Faustini is a Ph.D. student in Philosophy at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, where she has been working under the guidance of Professor Simone D’Agostino since 2022. Her research focuses on the Kabbalistic influences on Simone Weil’s concept of “decreated” being. The Brenninkmeijer-Werhahn Fellowship at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a PhilOfr researcher at École Normale Supérieure of Paris facilitated the international scope of her investigation. Building from Rabi’s thesis, Faustini’s research explores novel points of convergence between the French author and Jewish mysticism by tracing the notions she absorbed during her time in Marseille. By examining Weil's original manuscripts and the archives present in Israel and France, Faustini aims to uncover the extent of Jewish mysticism's influences on Weil’s context and how they are at play in her thought.

Abstract: Faustini's dissertation project, Kabbalstic Influences on Simone Weil's Concept of Decreated Being, starts from the assumption that Weil’s metaphysics isn’t reducible to any single source. What it proposes is that there’s a traceable, historically plausible reception of Kabbalistic ideas in her thought, refracted through the culture she inhabited and the education she received. Her concept of décréation, in which God "renounces" being all so that creatures may exist is not only conceptually similar to Tsimtsum. It may also be the product of a shared philosophical grammar circulating through early 20th–century mystical and esoteric currents in France. At the same time, Weil’s theological unorthodoxy and mystical ideas didn’t always travel through the same channels. She was a deeply original thinker with a wide range of sources, from Plato and the Gospels to mathematics and Pythagoras. Thus, while she is firmly Christocentric in her theological commitments, she was also open to borrowing from mystical and esoteric traditions, often in unexpected ways.

The main thesis then argues that the structure of Weil’s décréation, according to which the self must be undone, emptied, or given up so that divine love can take root, closely mirrors the Lurianic Kabbalistic vision of self-withdrawal. It affirms that even if Weil wasn’t a Kabbalist or a Jewish philosopher in the strict sense, her thought was shaped, at least in part, by ideas that originated in Jewish mysticism. To argue this claim, the dissertation is organized in three main sections. The first examines Weil’s complex and often controversial relationship with Judaism, unpacking the political, historical, and theological dimensions of her critiques. It sets the stage by showing how that relationship has long overshadowed serious consideration of how Jewish ideas may have influenced her. The second section forms the heart of the argument. It offers a detailed comparison between Weil’s décréation and the cosmological framework of Lurianic Kabbalah, then maps the possible channels of transmission, through figures like Spinoza, Hegel, Guénon, and the network around Les Cahiers du Sud. The final section zooms out, analyzing the other sources of the concept of decreation, reflecting on how Kabbalistic motifs were absorbed into broader currents of Christian and esoteric thought. What this research suggests is that Weil’s metaphysics may have been shaped indirectly by Jewish mystical structures, especially where she talks about divine withdrawal and human suffering. Weil wasn't secretly a Kabbalist, and she should not be read as a Jewish thinker in the strict sense. But her core theological ideas may owe more to the Kabbalistic legacy than scholars have previously considered.