Part 2/9:
Simone Weil was born on February 3, 1909, in Paris, into a cultured bourgeois Jewish family. Her upbringing was steeped in secular education, provided by her agnostic parents. Among her siblings was André, a mathematician of great renown. Surrounded by a world of intellectualism, Weil demonstrated exceptional intelligence from an early age, paired with a fragile constitution that often kept her unwell.
As a child, her parents enforced strict protective measures due to her health issues, which resulted in a lasting reluctance for physical contact with others. This isolation shaped her uncompromising stance on moral and ethical conduct, evident during her years at one of Paris's most prestigious high schools, where she was humorously dubbed "the categorical imperative in a skirt."