Beholding and Being Beheld: Simone Weil,Iris Murdoch,and the Ethics of Attention

Although they would be unlikely to formulate their interests in these terms, Simone Weil and Iris Murdoch are both extraordinary explorers of the relationship between psychology and the Other. For Weil, the faculty of attention is a key condition for beholding what is there, in the world. Murdoch, drawing significantly on Weil's seminal insights, underscores the profound challenge entailed in doing so: owing to the ever-present intrusion of the ego, the world often remains veiled, obscured. Beholding the Other thus requires what Murdoch calls “unselfing,” divesting oneself of ego and thereby letting world emerge (1970 Murdoch, I. (1970). The sovereignty of good. London, UK: Routledge. Google Scholar], p. 82). One path of unselfing is through developing one's powers of attention. Along these lines, it might be said that sharpening and developing one's powers of attention is a prerequisite for beholding the Other, whatever it may be. Another path of unselfing—or another moment in the dialectical process being considered—is through encountering those “objects,” both human and nonhuman, that can serve to disrupt and displace one's own egocentric energies. Taken together, these two paths—beholding and being beheld—lead in the direction of an “ethics of attention.”