Citat - Om uppmärksamhet och skönhet

Attention
is a quiet nongrasping openness
to the world and other beings

Attention
enables us to see what is really in front of us
including the humanity of the other being
where before
we percieved only
the projected images of our own terrors
or the phantoms
conjured by propaganda and indoctrination

Weil characterizes attention
as an attitude of detached and patient receptivity

Attention
does not involve the active search for solutions
or right answers
but instead
an alert contemplation
through which the subject opens to
the reality before him or her

Weil theorizes
as the basis of liberation from violence
the reflexive capacity to recognize
the humanity of the other
through attention

to discern
in the other's suffering and helplessness
not an invitation to destroy him or her
but the tragic qualities
that mark our shared
humanity

Beauty
offers access
to the mode of awareness
characteristic of true
attention

Thus
it is not incorrect to suggest
that beauty saves us
spiritually
and perhaps also
politically

Beauty
teaches us to look and wait
to content ourselves
with a joy that does not require
exclusive possession


ur: Alexander Irwing (2002) Saints of the Impossible. Bataille, Weil and the Politics of the Sacred p. 60-65