Abstract
This paper examines Weil's dissertation written for the diplome d'etudes superieures at the Ecole Normale, "Science and Perception in Descartes" (1930). The purpose of the examination is to clarify her early thought and to prepare for the interpretation of her late, deeply religious thought, such as the world as a blind mechanism, the obedience of human beings, and a non-acting action (action non aggisante). In this dissertation Weil regards the real world as the interaction of powers, and understands human beings and things as the nodes of powers. Human beings, by using this power consciously in the imagination, find themselves anew in the world. Weil calls this usage "work" (travail) or "perceiving work" (le travail percevant), whose meaning is so broad as to include a very ordinary bodily action. Moreover, she views true science as the continuation of this "perceiving work." Thus human beings are situated in the same way as things in the network of powers, but on the other hand, through perceiving work they take the world (including themselves) as it is. This understanding is the beginning of her late world view, where she thinks that human beings are captured by the cruel network of necessity but belong to the network voluntarily through obedience to it.
