ABSTRACT
Simone Weil received a superlative training in philosophy in the French lycées and at the Ecole Normale Supérieure, the grande école from which come the teachers of the upper lycées and universities, as well as a high percentage of France’s cultural, political, and intellectual leaders. In many respects, however, her pre-Ecole years as a student of the famous philosophy teacher Alain1 at the Lycée Henri IV from 1926 to 1928 were even more important to the development of her thinking. Alain’s influence is strongly evident in “Science and Perception in Descartes,” even though that work was a dissertation written for the diplome d’études supérieures at the Ecole Normale and was (at least nominally) done under the supervision of an Ecole professor, the philosopher Léon Brunschvicg. Weil, however, apparently consulted Brunschvicg little if at all, for she produced an “independent” piece of work that he did not like and to which he gave the lowest possible passing grade.
