 It is important to distinguish Weil’s ethics of attention from canonical conceptualizations of ethics. Attention is not motivated by a duty (although Weil thinks we are obligated to respond to others’ needs, whether of soul or body [see “Draft for a Statement of Human Obligations” in SWA, esp. 224–225]) or assessed by its consequences. In addition, through its sense of phronesis (practical wisdom), which Weil assumed from Aristotle through Marx, attention is arguably closer to virtue ethics than it is to deontology or consequentialism. However, it is separated from the tradition of virtue ethics in important ways: it often emerges more spontaneously than virtue, which, for Aristotle, is cultivated through habituation as it develops into a hexis; Weil’s emphasis on a “negative effort” suggests an active-passive orientation that militates against Aristotle’s emphasis on activity (it is more a “turning” than a “doing”, more orientation than achievement); it is excessive in its generosity, as opposed to being a mean, e.g., liberality; its supernatural inspiration contrasts with Aristotle’s naturalism; it does not imply a teleology of realizing one’s own virtuous projects—in fact, it is a suspension of one’s own projects; finally, for Weil, Aristotle lacks a sense of the impersonal good toward which attention is oriented (and in this respect she is, again, inspired by Plato).