Weil: lectures on philosophy

At present, I skim through Lectures on Philosophy, by Simone Weil. The book consists of the lectures Weil held as a lycée teacher in 1933-4. It is one of Weil's students that arduously transcribed them. These are, however, really good texts on many subjects of philosophy and somehow I feel I get a better grasp of some of Weil's thoughts. But I must confess that it is really hard to believe that Weil actually addressed seventeen year old kids. "The state is the worst of all evils." "All human progress consists in changing constraint into an obstacle." "So the whole of morals is to be found potentially in mathematics; one has to overcome one's tendency to allow oneself to depend on chance, which is the sin of sins, the sin against the Spirit. And there, in mathematics, one is not helped by anything." I wonder what I would have thought - if anything at all - about this at the age of 17. The book is excellent, but I doubt that Peter Winch, who wrote the introduction, is right when he says that it could be used as an introdoction book on philosophy alongside "that valuable old war-horse", Bertie Russell.