Oblique Paths to Truth – Myth and Bodily Elements in Simone Weil, Jeanne Hersch and María Zambrano

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyze in which way Simone Weil, Jeanne Hersch and María Zambrano relaunch bodily elements both in the rational search for truth and in the language they use for expressing it. In particular, the focus is on these women philosophers’ reflection on well-known myths and mythical stories which show how bodily elements precede consciousness and reason. In these stories, it emerges the impossibility of knowing the Truth directly through the objects and the necessity of elaborating indirect paths to transcendent truth. This paper should shed light on the endeavour to reintegrate the human bind to the marginal world, which is peculiar to women philosophers in the History of Philosophy, thus indicating a path to the human search for meaning that is alternative to the mainstream Western male philosophical one.