The Socrates Express: In Search of Life Lessons from Dead Philosophers

by Eric Weiner

Attention is not concentration. Concentration can be coerced—listen up, class!—while attention cannot. Observe what happens to your body when you concentrate. Your jaw tightens, your eyes narrow, your brow furrows. Weil found this sort of muscular effort ridiculous. Concentration constricts. Attention expands. Concentration tires. Attention rejuvenates. Concentration is focused thinking. Attention is thinking suspended. “Above all our thought should be empty, waiting, not seeking anything but ready to receive in its naked truth the object that is to penetrate it,” Weil writes. If that statement isn’t perplexing enough, Weil goes further, declaring that “all errors arise from a lack of passivity.”