Gabriel Marcel

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Gabriel Honoré Marcel

Full name Gabriel Honoré Marcel

7 December 1889
Born
Paris, France
8 October 1973
Died
Paris, France
Era 20th-century philosophy
Region Western Philosophy
School Continental philosophy/Existentialism
Main interests Ontology · Subjectivity · Ethics
Notable ideas "the Other"
Influenced by[show]
Influenced[show]
Gabriel Honoré Marcel (7 December 1889, Paris – 8 October 1973,[1] Paris) was a
French philosopher, a leading Christian existentialist, and author of about 30 plays. He
focused on the modern individual's struggle in a technologically dehumanizing society.
Though often regarded as the first French existentialist, he dissociated himself from
figures such as Jean-Paul Sartre, preferring the term Philosophy of Existence to define his
own thought. The Mystery of Being is a well-known two-volume work authored by
Marcel. In addition to being a playwright and philosopher, Marcel was also a music
critic.

Contents
[hide]
 1 Early life and education
 2 Existential themes
 3 Influence
o 3.1 Main works
 4 See also
 5 Works by Marcel in English translation
 6 Footnotes
 7 Further reading

 8 External links

[edit] Early life and education

Marcel obtained the agrégation in philosophy in 1910, at the unusually young age of 21.
He taught in secondary schools, was a drama critic for various literary journals, and
worked as an editor for Plon, the major French Catholic publisher.

Marcel was the son of an atheist, and was himself an atheist until his conversion to
Catholicism in 1929. Marcel was opposed to anti-Semitism and supported reaching out to
non-Catholics.

[edit] Existential themes

He is often classified as one of the earliest existentialists, although he dreaded being
placed in the same category as Jean-Paul Sartre; Marcel came to prefer the label "neo-
Socratic" (possibly because of Søren Kierkegaard, the father of Christian existentialism,
who was a neo-Socratic thinker himself). While Marcel recognized that human
interaction often involved objective characterisation of "the other", he still asserted the
possibility of "communion" - a state where both individuals can perceive each other's
subjectivity.
In The Existential Background of Human Dignity, Marcel refers to a play he had written
in 1913 entitled Le Palais de Sable, in order to provide an example of a person who was
unable to treat others as subjects.

Roger Moirans, the central character of the play, is a politician, a conservative who is
dedicated to defending the rights of Catholicism against free thought. He has set himself
up as the champion of traditional monarchy and has just achieved a great success in the
city council where he has attacked the secularism of public schools. It is natural enough
that he should be opposed to the divorce of his daughter Therese, who wants to leave her
unfaithful husband and start her life afresh. In this instance he proves himself virtually
heartless; all his tenderness goes out to his second daughter, Clarisse, whom he takes to
be spiritually very much like himself. But now Clarisse tells him that she has decided to
take the veil and become a Carmelite. Moirans is horrified by the idea that this creature,
so lovely, so intelligent, and so full of life, might go and bury herself in a convent and he
decides to do his utmost to make her give up her intention... Clarisse is deeply shocked;
her father now appears to her as an impostor, virtually as a deliberate fraud...[2]

In this case, Moirans is unable to treat either of his daughters as a subject, instead
rejecting both because each does not conform to her objectified image in his mind.
Marcel notes that such objectification "does no less than denude its object of the one
thing which he has which is of value, and so it degrades him effectively."[3]

Another related major thread in Marcel was the struggle to protect one's subjectivity from
annihilation by modern materialism and a technologically-driven society. Marcel argued
that scientific egoism replaces the "mystery" of being with a false scenario of human life
composed of technical "problems" and "solutions". For Marcel, the human subject cannot
exist in the technological world, instead being replaced by a human object. As he points
out in Man Against Mass Society and other works, technology has a privileged authority
with which it persuades the subject to accept his place as "he" in the internal dialogue of
science; and as a result, man is convinced by science to rejoice in his own annihilation.[4]

[edit] Influence
For many years, Marcel hosted a weekly philosophy discussion group through which he
met and influenced important younger French philosophers like Jean Wahl, Paul Ricoeur,
Emmanuel Levinas, and Jean-Paul Sartre. Marcel was puzzled and disappointed that his
reputation was almost entirely based on his philosophical treatises and not on his plays,
which he wrote in the hope of appealing to a wider lay audience.

[edit] Main works

His major books are Mystery of Being (1951), the Gifford Lectures for 1949–50, and
Man Against Mass Society (1955). He gave the William James Lectures at Harvard in
1961–62, which were subsequently published as The Existential Background of Human
Dignity.
[edit] See also
 Christian existentialism
 Existentialism
 Personalism

[edit] Works by Marcel in English translation

 1948. The Philosophy of Existence. Manya Harari, trans. London: The Harvill
Press. Later editions were titled The Philosophy of Existentialism.
 1949. Being and Having. Katherine Farrer, trans. Westminster, London: Dacre
Press.
 1950. The Metaphysical Journal. Bernard Wall, trans. Chicago: Henry Regnery
Company.
 1951. The Mystery of Being, Vol. 1, Reflection and Mystery. G. S. Fraser, trans.
London: The Harvill Press.
 1951. The Mystery of Being, Vol. 2, Faith and Reality. René Hague, trans.
London: The Harvill Press.
 1962. Man Against Mass Society. G. S. Fraser, trans. Chicago: Henry Regnery
Company.
 1962. Homo Viator: Introduction to a Metaphysic of Hope. Emma Craufurd,
trans. Harper & Brothers.
 1963. The Existential Background of Human Dignity. Harvard University Press.
 1964. Creative Fidelity. Translated, with an introduction, by Robert Rosthal.
Farrar, Strauss and Company.
 1967. Presence and Immortality. Michael A. Machado, trans. Pittsburgh:
Duquesne University Press.
 1967. Problematic Man. Brian Thompson, trans. New York: Herder and Herder.
 1973. Tragic Wisdom and Beyond. Stephen Jolin and Peter McCormick, trans.
Publication of the Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology and
Existential Philosophy, ed. John Wild. Northwestern University Press.
 1998. Gabriel Marcel's Perspectives on The Broken World: The Broken World, a
Four-Act Play, Followed by Concrete Approaches to Investigating the
Ontological Mystery. Katharine Rose Hanley, trans. Milwaukee: Marquette
University Press.
 2004. Ghostly Mysteries: Existential Drama: A Mystery of Love & The
Posthumous Joke. Katharine Rose Hanley, trans. Milwaukee: Marquette
University Press.
 2008. A Path to Peace: Fresh Hope for the World. Dramatic Explorations: Five
Plays by Gabriel Marcel: The Heart of Others/Dot the I/The Double
Expertise/The Lantern/Colombyre or The Torch of Peace. Katharine Rose
Hanley, trans. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press.
 2009. Thou Shall Not Die. Compiled by Anne Marcel. Katharine Rose Hanley,
trans. South Bank: St Augustine's Press.
[edit] Footnotes
1. ^ Gabriel (-Honoré) Marcel, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy'
2. ^ The Existential Background of Human Dignity, pp. 31-32.
3. ^ Homo Viator, p. 23.
4. ^ Ballard, Edward G. (1967), "Gabriel Marcel: The Mystery of Being", in Schrader,
George Alfred, Jr., Existential Philosophers: Kierkegaard to Merleau-Ponty, Toronto:
McGraw-Hill, pp. 227

[edit] Further reading

 Emmanuel Lévinas, Paul Ricœur and Xavier Tilliette, Jean Wahl et Gabriel
Marcel, Beauchesne, 1976, 96 p., ISBN 2701002400

[edit] External links

 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Gabriel (-Honoré) Marcel -- by Brian
Treanor.
 The Gabriel Marcel Society
 Gabriel Marcel's Collection at the Harry Ransom Center at The University of
Texas at Austin

 This page was last modified on 2 January 2011 at 07:29.

 Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License;
additional terms may apply. See Terms of Use for details.
Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-
profit organization.

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriel_Marcel"

26 January 2011

Gabriel (-Honoré) Marcel

First published Tue Nov 16, 2004; substantive revision Wed Jul 14, 2010

Gabriel Marcel (1889–1973) was a philosopher, drama critic, playwright and musician.
He converted to Catholicism in 1929 and his philosophy was later described as “Christian
Existentialism” (most famously in Jean-Paul Sartre's “Existentialism is a Humanism”) a
term he initially endorsed but later repudiated. In addition to his numerous philosophical
publications, he was the author of some thirty dramatic works. Marcel gave the Gifford
Lectures in Aberdeen in 1949–1950, which appeared in print as the two-volume The
Mystery of Being, and the William James Lectures at Harvard in 1961–1962, which were
collected and published as The Existential Background of Human Dignity.

 1. Biographical Sketch
 2. The Broken World and the Functional Person
 3. Ontological Exigence
 4. Transcendence
 5. Being and Having
 6. Problem and Mystery
 7. Primary and Secondary Reflection
 8. The Spirit of Abstraction
 9. Disponibilité and Indisponibilité
 10. “With”
 11. Reciprocity
 12. Opinion, Conviction, Belief
 13. Creative Fidelity
 14. Hope
 15. Marcel in Dialogue
 Bibliography
 Other Internet Resources
 Related Entries

1. Biographical Sketch
Marcel was born in 1889. His mother died when he was only four, and Marcel was raised
by his father and aunt, who later married. He excelled in school, but did so without
enjoying his studies prior to his encounter with philosophy. He associated with many of
the prominent philosophers of his day, in part due to his hosting of the famous “Friday
evenings.” Paul Ricoeur, Emmanuel Levinas, Jean Wahl, and Jean-Paul Sartre were
among the many noted philosophers who attended these gatherings at one time or
another. These informal gatherings were an occasion for engaged thinkers from a variety
of perspectives to discuss together various philosophical themes, frequently ones Marcel
himself was working on that week. After passing his agrégation in 1910, he taught
philosophy intermittently in Sens, Paris, and Montpellier; however, his main professional
occupations were that of drama critic (for Europe nouvelle and later for Nouvelles
littéraires) and editor (for the Feux croisés series at Plon).

Marcel's philosophical legacy includes lectures, journal entries and dramatic works in
addition to more orthodox philosophical expression in essays. Of these various genres,
Marcel was perhaps most pleased with his dramatic works. In fact, reading between the
lines of his autobiographical remarks, one can discern some puzzlement and no small
amount of frustration at the success of his philosophical works and the relative obscurity
of his dramatic works. Complicating the diverse expression of his ideas is the fact that
Marcel was a consciously unsystematic philosopher, something he realized as early as the
publication of his Journal métaphysique (1927). [1] Nevertheless, while the diverse
expression of his thought and the related lack of systematicity cause some difficulty for
those interested in Marcel's work, the main themes of his thought are present in many of
his works. Especially noteworthy are: The Mystery of Being, Creative Fidelity, Homo
Viator, Being and Having, Tragic Wisdom and Beyond and the concise “On the
Ontological Mystery.”

Marcel's philosophical methodology was unique, although it bears some resemblance to

both existentialism and phenomenology broadly construed. He insisted that philosophy
begin with concrete experience rather than abstractions. To this end he makes constant
use of examples in order to ground the philosophical ideas he is investigating. The
method itself consists in “working…up from life to thought and then down from thought
to life again, so that [one] may try to throw more light upon life” (Marcel 1951a, p. 41).
Thus, this philosophy is a sort of “description bearing upon the structures which
reflection elucidates starting from experience” (Marcel 1962a, p. 180). In addition,
Marcel expressed a refreshing preference for philosophizing in ordinary language. He
maintained that “we should employ current forms of ordinary language which distort our
experiences far less than the elaborate expressions in which philosophical language is
crystallized” (Marcel 1965, p. 158).

2. The Broken World and the Functional Person

In line with his preference for concrete philosophy that speaks in ordinary language,
Marcel begins many of his philosophical essays with an observation about life. One of his
central observations about life and experience, from which he is able to derive many of
the philosophical distinctions that follow, is that we live in a “broken world.” A world in
which “ontological exigence”—if it is acknowledged at all—is silenced by an
unconscious relativism or by a monism that discounts the personal, “ignores the tragic
and denies the transcendent” (Marcel 1995, p. 15). The characterization of the world as
broken does not necessarily imply that there was a time when the world was intact. It
would be more correct to emphasize that the world we live in is essentially broken,
broken in essence, in addition to having been further fractured by events in history. The
observation is intended to point out that we find ourselves hic et nunc in a world that is
broken. This situation is characterized by a refusal (or inability) to reflect, a refusal to
imagine and a denial of the transcendent (Marcel 1951a, pp. 36–37). Although many
things contribute to the “brokenness” of the world, the hallmark of its modern
manifestation is “the misplacement of the idea of function” (Marcel 1995, p. 11).

“I should like to start,” Marcel says, “with a sort of global and intuitive characterization
of the man in whom the sense of the ontological—the sense of being, is lacking, or, to
speak more correctly, the man who has lost awareness of this sense” (Marcel 1995, p. 9).
This person, the one who has lost awareness of the sense of the ontological, the one
whose capacity to wonder has atrophied to the extent of becoming a vestigial trait, is an
example of the influence of the misapplication of the idea of function. Marcel uses the
example of a subway token distributor. This person has a job that is mindless, repetitive,
and monotonous. The same function can be, and often is, completed by automated
machines. All day this person takes bills from commuters and returns a token and some
change, repeating the same process with the same denominations of currency, over and
over. The other people with whom she interacts engage her in only the most superficial
and distant manner. In most cases, they do not speak to her and they do not make eye
contact. In fact, the only distinction the commuters make between such a person and the
automatic, mechanical token dispenser down the hall is to note which “machine” has the
shorter line. The way in which these commuters interact with this subway employee is
clearly superficial and less than desirable. However, Marcel's point is more subtle.

What can the inner reality of such a person be like? What began as tedious work slowly
becomes infuriating in its monotony, but eventually passes into a necessity that is
accepted with indifference, until even the sense of dissatisfaction with the pure
functionalism of the task is lost. The unfortunate truth is that such a person may come to
see herself, at first unconsciously, as merely an amalgamation of the functions she
performs. There is the function of dispensing tokens at work, the function of spouse and
parent at home, the function of voting as a citizen of a given country, etc. Her life
operates on a series of “time-tables” that indicate when certain functions—such as the
yearly maintenance trip to the doctor, or the yearly vacation to rest and recuperate—are
to be exercised. In this person the sense of wonder and the exigence for the transcendent
may slowly begin to wither and die. In the most extreme cases, a person who has come to
identify herself with her functions ceases to even have any intuition that the world is
broken.

A corollary of the functionalism of the modern broken world is its highly technical
nature. Marcel characterizes a world such as ours—in which everything and everyone
becomes viewed in terms of function, and in which all questions are approached with
technique—as one that is dominated by its “technics.” This is evident in the dependence
on technology, the immediate deferral to the technological as the answer to any problem,
and the tendency to think of technical reasoning as the only mode of access to the truth.
However, it is clear that there are some “problems” that cannot be addressed with
technique, and this is disquieting for persons who have come to rely on technics. While
technology undoubtedly has its proper place and use, the deification of technology leads
to despair when we realize the ultimate inefficacy of technics regarding important
existential questions. It is precisely this misapplication of the idea of function and the
dependence on technics that leads to the despair that is so prevalent in the broken world.

3. Ontological Exigence[2]
“What defines man,” claims Marcel, “are his exigencies” (Marcel 1973, p. 34).
Nevertheless, these exigencies can be smothered, perhaps even silenced, by despair. Such
is the case in the example of the “functionalized” person. The broken world can smother
transcendent exigencies, leaving only quotidian, functional needs intact. Ontological
exigence, the need for transcendence, is linked to a certain dissatisfaction—one that is all
the more troubling because one is unable to soothe this dissatisfaction by one's own
powers. However, without a feeling that something is amiss, without the feeling of
dissatisfaction, ontological exigence withers. This is why the functional person, the
person who no longer even notices that the world is broken, is described as having lost
the awareness of the ontological and the need for transcendence. In the face of this
potential despair, Marcel claims that:

Being is—or should be—necessary. It is impossible that everything should be reduced to

a play of successive appearances which are inconsistent with each other… or, in the
words of Shakespeare, to “a tale told by an idiot.” I aspire to participate in this being, in
this reality—and perhaps this aspiration is already a degree of participation, however
rudimentary. (Marcel 1995, p. 15)[3]

Thus, ontological exigence is a need and a demand for some level of coherence in the
cosmos and for some understanding of our place and role within this coherence. It is the
combination of wonder and the attendant desire, not to understand the entire cosmos, but
to understand something of one's own place in it.[4] Note that, for Marcel, ontological
exigence is not merely a “wish” for being or coherence, but is an “interior urge” or
“appeal.” “Otherwise stated, the [ontological] exigence is not reducible to some
psychological state, mood, or attitude a person has; it is rather a movement of the human
spirit that is inseparable from being human” (Keen 1984, p. 105).

4. Transcendence
Marcel is very clear that the term “transcendence” has, in his view, become degraded in
modern philosophy. Transcendence cannot mean merely “going beyond” without any
further specification. It must retain the tension of the traditional distinction between the
immanent and the transcendent, one that emphasizes a vertical rather than a horizontal
going beyond, a transcendence toward a height, a trans-ascendence.[5] Although the
transcendent is juxtaposed with the immanent, Marcel insists that “transcendent” cannot
mean “transcending experience.” “There must exist a possibility of having an experience
of the transcendent as such, and unless that possibility exists the word can have no
meaning” (Marcel 1951a, p. 46). The tendency to discount the idea of experiencing
transcendence is the result of an objective view of experience. However, experience is
not an object and therefore it cannot be viewed objectively. Speaking metaphorically, the
essence of experience is not an “absorbing into oneself,” as in the case of taste, but “a
straining oneself towards something, as when, for instance, during the night we attempt to
get a distinct perception of some far-off noise” (Marcel 1951a, p. 47). Thus, while Marcel
insists on the possibility of experiencing the transcendent, he does not thereby mean that
the transcendent is comprehensible.

There is an order where the subject finds himself in the presence of something entirely
beyond his grasp. I would add that if the word “transcendent” has any meaning it is here
—it designates the absolute, unbridgeable chasm yawning between the subject and being,
insofar as being evades every attempt to pin it down. (Marcel 1973, p. 193)

5. Being and Having

Marcel discusses being in a variety of contexts; however, one of the more illustrative
points of entry into this issue is the distinction between being and having.[6] In some cases
this distinction is one that is obvious and therefore not particularly illuminating. For
example, most people would readily acknowledge a difference between having a house
and being hospitable. However, there are other cases where the distinction between
having something and being something is much more significant. For example, when we
hope, we do not have hope. We are hope. Similarly, we do not have a belief. We are a
belief.

Marcel's hallmark illustration of being and having is one that actually straddles the
distinction between them: “my body.” My body, insofar as it is my body, is both
something that I have and something that I am, and cannot be adequately accounted for
using either of these descriptions alone. I can look at my body in a disassociated manner
and see it instrumentally. However, in doing so, in distancing myself from it in order to
grasp it qua object, qua something I have, it ceases to be “my” body. I can have “a” body,
but not “my” body. As soon as I make the connection that the body in question is my
body, not a body, it can no longer be something that I have pure and simple—this body
also is me, it is what I am. On the other hand, it cannot be said that I simply am my body
either. I can dispose of my body in certain circumstances by treating it instrumentally. A
person who loses a limb in an accident is not less of a person and, therefore, there is a
sense in which our bodies are objects that we have.

The ambiguous role played by my body not only points out the distinction between being
and having, but also shows that we relate to other things and persons differently in these
two modes. Having corresponds to things that are completely external to me. I have
things that I possess, that I can dispose of—and this should make it clear that I cannot
“have,” for example, another person. Having implies this possession because “having
always implies an obscure notion of assimilation” (Marcel 1949, p. 83). While the
encounter with otherness takes place in terms of assimilation when speaking of having,
the encounter with otherness (e.g., other persons) can also take place on the level of
being. In this case Marcel maintains that the encounter is not one that is purely external
and, as such, it is played out in terms of presence and participation rather than
assimilation.

Both being and having are legitimate ways to encounter things in the world; however, the
misapplication of these two modes of comportment can have disastrous consequences.

6. Problem and Mystery

The notion that we live in a broken world is used—along with the person who is
characteristic of the broken world, the functionalized person—to segue into one of
Marcel's central thematic distinctions: the distinction between problem and mystery. He
states that the broken world is one that is “on the one hand, riddled with problems and, on
the other, determined to allow no room for mystery” (Marcel 1995, p. 12). The denial of
the mysterious is symptomatic of the modern broken world and is tied to its technical
character, which only acknowledges that which technique can address: the problematic.
The distinction between problem and mystery is one that hinges, like much of Marcel's
thought, on the notion of participation.

A problem is something which I meet, which I find completely before me, but which I
can therefore lay siege to and reduce. But a mystery is something in which I am myself
involved, and it can therefore only be thought of as a sphere where the distinction
between what is in me and what is before me loses its meaning and initial validity.
(Marcel 1949, p. 117)

A problem is a question in which I am not involved, in which the identity of the person
asking the question is not an issue. In the realm of the problematic, it makes no difference
who is asking the question because all of the relevant information is “before” the
questioner. As such, a problem is something that bars my way, placing an obstacle in
front of me that must be overcome. In turn, the overcoming of a problem inevitably
involves some technique, a technique that could be, and often is, employed by any other
person confronting the same problem. Thus the identity of the questioner can be changed
without altering the problem itself. This is why the modern broken world only sees the
problematic: the ‘problematic’ is that which can be addressed and solved with a
technique, e.g., changing a flat tire on an automobile or downloading security software to
fix a virus on one's computer.

When I am dealing with a problem, I am trying to discover a solution that can become
common property, that consequently can, at least in theory, be rediscovered by anybody
at all. But…this idea of a validity for “anybody at all” or of a thinking in general has less
and less application the more deeply one penetrates into the inner courts of philosophy…
(Marcel 1951a, p. 213)

Marcel often describes a mystery as a “problem that encroaches on its own data” (Marcel
1995, p. 19). Such a “problem” is, in fact, meta-problematic; it is a question in which the
identity of the questioner is an issue. On the level of the mysterious, the identity of the
questioner is tied to the question and, therefore, the questioner is not interchangeable. To
change the questioner would be to alter the question. It makes every difference who is
asking the question when confronting a mystery. Here, on the level of the mysterious, the
distinctions “in-me” and “before-me” break down. Marcel insists that mysteries can be
found in the question of Being (e.g., my ontological exigence), the union of the body and
soul, the “problem” of evil and—perhaps the archetypal examples of mystery—freedom
and love. For example, I cannot question Being as if my being is not at issue in the
questioning. The question of being and the question of who I am (my being) cannot be
addressed separately. These two questions are somehow incoherent if approached as
problems; however, taken together, their mysterious character is revealed and they cancel
themselves out qua problems.

Unlike problems, mysteries are not solved with techniques and therefore cannot be
answered the same way by different persons—one technique, one solution, will not apply
in the different cases presented by different persons. Indeed, it is questionable if
mysteries are open to “solutions” at all. Nevertheless, it would be incorrect to call the
mysterious a gap in our knowledge in the same way that a problem is. “The mysterious is
not the unknowable, the unknowable is only the limiting case of the problematic” (Marcel
1949, p. 118).

Although a mystery may be insoluble, it is not senseless; and while its inexpressibility
makes it inaccessible to communicable knowledge, it can still be spoken of in a
suggestive way (Marcel 1964, xxv). Marcel notes in a journal entry dated December 18th,
1932 that:

The metaproblematic is a participation on which my reality as a subject is built… and

reflection will show that such a participation, if it is genuine, cannot be a solution. If it
were it would cease to be a participation in a transcendent reality, and would become,
instead, an interpolation into transcendent reality, and would be degraded in the
process… (Marcel 1949, p. 114)

Referring back to the idea of a broken world, the technical and the problematic are
questions that are addressed with only “part” of a person. The full person is not engaged
in the technical because a person's self, her identity, is not at issue. “At the root of having
[and problems, and technics] there lies a certain specialization of specification of the self,
and this is connected with [a] partial alienation of the self…” (Marcel 1949, p. 172).
Problems are addressed impersonally, in a detached manner, while mysteries demand
participation, involvement. Although some problems can be reflected on in such a way
that they become mysterious, all mysteries can be reflected on in such a way that the
mystery is degraded and becomes merely problematic.

7. Primary and Secondary Reflection

The distinction between two kinds of questions—problem and mystery—brings to light
two different kinds of thinking or reflection. The problematic is addressed with thinking
that is detached and technical, while the mysterious is encountered in reflection that is
involved, participatory and decidedly non-technical. Marcel calls these two kinds of
thinking “primary” and “secondary” reflection. Primary reflection examines its object by
abstraction, by analytically breaking it down into its constituent parts. It is concerned
with definitions, essences and technical solutions to problems. In contrast, secondary
reflection is synthetic; it unifies rather than divides. “Roughly, we can say that where
primary reflection tends to dissolve the unity of experience which is first put before it, the
function of secondary reflection is essentially recuperative; it reconquers that unity”
(Marcel 1951a, p. 83).

In the most general sense, reflection is nothing other than attention brought to bear on
something. However, different objects require different kinds of reflection. In keeping
with their respective application to problem and mystery, primary reflection is directed at
that which is outside of me or “before me,” while secondary reflection is directed at that
which is not merely before me—that is, either that which is in me, which I am, or those
areas where the distinctions “in me” and “before me” tend to break down. The parallels
between having and being, problem and mystery, and primary and secondary reflection
are clear, each pair helping to illuminate the others.

Thus, secondary reflection is one important aspect of our access to the self. It is the
properly philosophical mode of reflection because, in Marcel's view, philosophy must
return to concrete situations if it is to merit the name “philosophy.” These difficult
reflections are “properly philosophical” insofar as they lead to a more truthful, more
intimate communication with both myself and with any other person whom these
reflections include (Marcel 1951a, pp. 79–80). Secondary reflection, which recoups the
unity of experience, points the way toward a fuller understanding of the participation
alluded to in examples of the mysterious.

8. The Spirit of Abstraction

Although secondary reflection is able to recoup the unity of experience that primary
reflection dissects, it is possible that secondary reflection is frustrated. One example of
the frustration of secondary reflection and the mysterious is the functional person;
however, this is really just one example of a more general phenomenon: the person who
has given in to the “spirit of abstraction.” When we engage in primary reflection without
proceeding to the synthesizing, recollecting act of secondary reflection, we fall victim to
what Marcel calls the spirit of abstraction. “As soon as we accord to any category,
isolated from all other categories, an arbitrary primacy, we are victims of the spirit of
abstraction” (Marcel 1962b, pp. 155–156).[7]

Abstraction, which is in essence the kind of thinking that characterizes primary reflection,
is not always bad per se. However, neither is it, always an “essentially intellectual”
operation (Marcel 1962b, p. 156). That is, contrary to what the successes of science and
technology might tell us, we may succumb to the spirit of abstraction out of passional
reasons rather than intellectual expediency. Abstraction—which is always abstraction
from an embodied, concrete existence—can overcome our concrete existence and we
may come to view abstracted elements of existence as if they were independent. As
Marcel describes it: “it can happen that the mind, yielding to a sort of fascination, ceases
to be aware of these prior conditions that justify abstraction and deceives itself about the
nature of what is, in itself, nothing more than a method” (Marcel 1962b, p. 156). The
significance of this phenomenon for Marcel would be difficult to overstate—indeed, in
Man Against Mass Society, Marcel argues that the spirit of abstraction is inherently
disingenuous and violent, and a significant factor in the making of war—and there is a
sense in which his whole philosophical project is an “obstinate and untiring battle against
the spirit of abstraction” (Marcel 1962b, p. 1).[8]

9. Disponibilité and Indisponibilité

Marcel emphasizes two general ways of comporting ourselves towards others that can be
used as barometers for intersubjective relationships: disponibilité and indisponibilité.
These words—generally translated as either “availability” and “unavailability” or, less
frequently, as “disposability” and “non-disposability”—bear meanings for Marcel that do
not fully come across in English. Therefore, in addition to the sense of availability and
unavailability, Marcel suggests the addition of the concepts of “handiness” and
“unhandiness” to his English readers in an attempt to clarify his meaning. Handiness and
unhandiness refer to the availability of one's “resources”—material, emotional,
intellectual and spiritual. Thus, the term disponibilité refers to the measure in which I am
available to someone, the state of having my resources at hand to offer; and this
availability or unavailability of resources is a general state or disposition. While it may
appear that there is the possibility of a selfish allocation of one's resources, the truth is
that when resources are not available, their inaccessibility affects both the other and the
self. Marcel comments frequently on the interconnected nature of the treatment of others
and the state of the self.

Indisponibilité can manifest itself in any number of ways; however, “unavailability is

invariably rooted in some measure of alienation” (Marcel 1995, p. 40). Pride is an
instructive example of indisponibilité, although the same state of non-disposability would
also exist in a person who has come to view herself in functional terms, or one who is
blinded by a purely technical world-view. Pride is not an exaggerated opinion of oneself
arising from self-love, which Marcel insists is really only vanity; rather, pride consists in
believing that one is self-sufficient (Marcel 1995, p. 32). It consists in drawing one's
strength solely from oneself. “The proud man is cut off from a certain kind of
communion with his fellow men, which pride, acting as a principle of destruction tends to
break down. Indeed, this destructiveness can be equally well directed against the self;
pride is in no way incompatible with self-hate…” (Marcel 1995, p. 32).

For the person who is indisponible, other people are reduced to “examples” or “cases” of
genus “other person” rather than being encountered qua other as unique individuals.
Instead of encountering the other person as a ‘Thou’, the other is encountered as a ‘He’ or
‘She’, or even as an ‘It’.

If I treat a ‘Thou’as a ‘He’, I reduce the other to being only nature; an animated object
which works in some ways and not in others. If, on the contrary, I treat the other as
‘Thou’, I treat him and apprehend him qua freedom. I apprehend him qua freedom
because he is also freedom and not only nature. (Marcel 1949, pp. 106–107)

When I treat the other person as a He or She, it is because he or she is kept at arms length
but within my grasp, outside of the circle that I form with myself in my cogito but inside
the circle of “my world.”

The other, in so far as he is other, only exists for me in so far as I am open to him, in so
far as he is a Thou. But I am only open to him in so far as I cease to form a circle with
myself, inside which I somehow place the other, or rather his idea; for inside this circle,
the other becomes the idea of the other, and the idea of the other is no longer the other
qua other, but the other qua related to me… (Marcel 1949, p. 107)
When I treat the other person as a ‘Her’, I treat her, not as a presence, but as absent.
However, when I treat the other as a ‘He’ or ‘She’ rather than a ‘Thou’, I become
incapable of seeing myself as a ‘Thou’. In deprecating the other I deprecate myself.

If I treat the other person as purely external to me, as a ‘Her’, a generic Ms. X, I
encounter her “in fragments” as it were. I encounter various aspects of the other person,
elements that might be used to fill out a questionnaire or form (name, occupation, age,
etc.). I am not present to the other person and I am closed off and indifferent to the
presence she offers me. However, in encountering the other person in this manner—not
as another person but as a case or example of certain functions, roles or characteristics—I
myself cease to be a person, but take on the role, speaking metaphorically, of the pen that
would record these disparate elements onto the form. Any other person could encounter
the other in this impersonal manner. If this is the case, I myself have become
interchangeable, replaceable. I have ceased to encounter her in the absolutely unique
communion of our two persons. This functional view of the other and, consequently, of
the self, is a direct result of the “spirit of abstraction.” When the other is encountered as a
generic case, I who encounter am myself a generic case in the encounter. But the
situation can be otherwise.

In contrast, “the characteristic of the soul which is present and at the disposal of others is
that it cannot think in terms of cases; in its eyes there are no cases at all” (Marcel 1995,
p. 41). The person who is disponible, who is available or disposable to others, has an
entirely different experience of her place in the world: she acknowledges her
interdependence with other people. Relationships of disponibilité are characterized by
presence and communication between persons qua other, qua freedom—a
communication and communion between persons who transcend their separation without
merging into a unity, that is, while remaining separate to some degree. “It should be
obvious at once that a being of this sort is not an autonomous whole, is not in [the]
expressive English phrase, self-contained; on the contrary such a being is open and
exposed, as unlike as can be to a compact impenetrable mass” (Marcel 1951a, p. 145). To
be disponible to the other is to be present to and for her, to put one's resources at her
disposal, and to be open and permeable to her.

It will perhaps be made clearer if I say the person who is at my disposal is the one who is
capable of being with me with the whole of himself when I am in need; while the one
who is not at my disposal seems merely to offer me a temporary loan raised on his
resources. For the one I am a presence; for the other I am an object. (Marcel 1995, p. 40).
[9]

10. “With” (avec)

Thus, while I encounter objects in a manner that is technical and objectifying, the
encounter with the other person offers another, unique possibility: I can have a
relationship “with” another person.
When I put the table beside the chair I do not make any difference to the table or the
chair, and I can take one or the other away without making any difference; but my
relationship with you makes a difference to both of us, and so does any interruption of the
relationship make a difference. (Marcel 1951a, p. 181)

The word “with,” taken with its full metaphysical implication, corresponds neither to a
relationship of separation and exteriority, nor to a relationship of unity and inherence.
Rather, “with” expresses the essence of genuine coesse, i.e. of pluralism, of separation
with communion (Marcel 1995, p. 39). As indisponibilité is illustrated with the example
of pride, disponibilité is best illustrated in the relations of love, hope and fidelity.

Marcel—contra Kant—does not shy away from declaring that the participation in a
relationship “with” someone has a significant affective element. It is not knowledge of
the other that initially binds us to another person—though we may indeed grow to know
something of the other—but “fraternity,” the sense that the other is beset by joys and
sorrows common to the human family.[10] It is that which allows us, upon seeing the
misfortune of another, to say, “There, but for the grace of God, go I.” To go to someone's
side or to assist another out of a sense of “duty” is precisely not to be present to her. [11]
The person who is disponible does not demure from saying that she truly does desire the
best for the other person and that she truly desires to share something of herself with the
other (Marcel 1964, 154). In fact, because disponibilité is only a philosophical way of
describing what we mean by love and trust, disponibilité is inconceivable without this
affective element.

11. Reciprocity
As implied in the emphasis on “with” and shown in the description of indisponibilité, it is
not enough for one person to be disponible in order for the full communion of
disponibilité to occur. It is entirely possible for one person to come to an encounter in a
completely open and available manner, only to be rebuffed by the total unavailability of
the other person. Ideally, a relationship of availability must include an element of
reciprocity. However, the fact that reciprocity is necessary in an intersubjective
relationship does not mean that reciprocity may be demanded of such a relationship.
Disponibilité does not insist on its rights or make any claim on the other whatsoever. It is
analogous to the situation of “a being awaiting a gift or favor from another being but only
on the grounds of his liberality, and that he is the first to protest that the favor he is asking
is a grace [que cette grâce demandée est une grâce], that is to say the exact opposite of an
obligation” (Marcel 1962a, p. 55). Nevertheless, the fact that disponibilité does not
demand reciprocity and the fact that some kind of relationship is indeed possible without
such reciprocity do not alter that fact that such reciprocity must be present if the
relationship is to fully flower. “One might therefore say that there is a hierarchy of
choices, or rather invocations, ranging from the call upon another which is like ringing a
bell for a servant to quite the other sort of call which is really like a kind of prayer”
(Marcel 1951a, p. 179).
Marcel characterizes disponibilité as charity bound up with presence, as the gift of
oneself. And therefore, at the extreme limit, disponibilité would consist in a total spiritual
availability that would be pure charity, unconditional love and disposability. However, a
problem arises here insofar as Marcel has insisted on an affective element in
disponibilité. How is such a gift of self possible for temporal beings, persons for whom
the vicissitudes of time may alter feelings or opinion of the other?

12. Opinion, Conviction, Belief

Marcel draws a sharp distinction between opinion and belief. Opinion always concerns
that which we do not know, that with which we are not familiar. It exists in a position
between impression and affirmation. It is often the case that opinions have a “false” basis,
which is most clear in case of stereotypes and prejudices (“everybody knows that…”).
Furthermore, opinions are invariably “external” to the things to which they refer. I have
an opinion about something only when I disengage myself from it and hold it at “arm's
length.” Nevertheless, we hold or maintain these opinions in front of others, and given
the elusive foundations on which these opinions are based, it is easy to see how an
opinion slides slowly from an impression we have to a claim that we make. This
transition invariably takes place as part of an absence of reflection on the given subject
and the entrenchment of the opinion due to repetition. Our opinions are often
“unshakable” precisely because of the lack of reflection associated with them.

While opinions are unreflective and external, convictions—which are more akin to belief
than opinion—are the result of extensive reflection and invariably concern things to
which one feels closely tied. Like opinions that have entrenched themselves to the point
of becoming actual claims, convictions are felt to be definitive, beyond modification.
However, when I claim that nothing can change my conviction, I must either affirm that I
have already anticipated all possible future scenarios and no possible event can change
my conviction, or affirm that whatever events do occur—anticipated or unanticipated—
they will not shake my conviction. The first possibility is impossible. The second
possibility is based on a decision, a decision to remain constant whatever may come.
However, upon reflection such a decision seems as over-confidant as the claim to have
anticipated the future. By what right can I affirm that my inner conviction will not change
in any circumstance? To do so is to imply that, in the future, I will cease to reflect on my
conviction. It seems that all I am able to say is that my conviction is such that, at the
present moment, I cannot imagine an alteration in it.

Belief is akin to conviction; it is, however, distinguished by its object. Marcel insists in
many places that proper use of the term “belief” applies not to things “that” we believe,
but to things “in which” we believe. Belief is not “belief that…” but is “belief in…”
Belief that might be better characterized as a conviction rather than a belief; however, to
believe in something is to extend credit to it, to place something at the disposal of that in
which we believe. The notion of credit placed at the disposal of the other is another way
of speaking about disponibilité. “I am in no way separable from that which I place at the
disposal of this X… Actually, the credit I extend is, in a way, myself. I lend myself to X.
We should note at once that this is an essentially mysterious act” (Marcel 1951a, p. 134).
This is what distinguishes conviction from belief. Conviction refers to the X, takes a
position with regard to X, but does not bind itself to X. While I have an opinion, I am a
belief—for belief changes the way I am in the world, changes my being. We can now see
how belief refers to the other, and how it is connected to disponibilité: belief always
applies to “personal or supra-personal reality” (Marcel 1951a, p. 135). It always involves
a thou to whom I extend credit—a credit that puts myself at the disposal of the thou—and
thus arises the problem of fidelity.[12]

13. Creative Fidelity

The discussion of “creative fidelity” is an excellent place to find a unification, or at least
a conjunction, of the various themes and ideas in Marcel's non-systematic thought.
Ontological exigence, being, mystery, second reflection, and disponibilité all inform the
discussion of creative fidelity, which in turn attempts to illustrate how we can experience
these mysterious realities in more or less concrete terms.

The “problem” posed by fidelity is that of constancy. However, fidelity—a belief in

someone—requires presence in addition to constancy over time, and presence implies an
affective element. Mere constancy over time is not enough because “a fulfillment of on
obligation contre-coeur is devoid of love and cannot be identified with fidelity” (Marcel
1964, xxii). Thus, the question is posed as follows. How are we able to remain disponible
over time? How can we provide a guarantee of our “belief in” someone? Perhaps the best
way to address this complex idea is to address its constituent parts: the problem posed by
fidelity and the answer given by creativity.

The extension of credit to another is a commitment, an act whereby I commit myself and
place myself at the disposal of the other. In extending credit to the other I am also placing
my trust in her, implicitly hoping that she proves worthy of the credit I extend to her.
However, we sometimes misjudge others in thinking too highly of them and at other
times misjudge by underestimation. Recalling that there is an affective element of
spontaneity involved in disponibilité, how can I assure that I will remain faithful to my
present belief in the other? Like the question of conviction over time, my present fidelity
to another can be questioned in terms of its durability. Though I presently feel inclined to
credit the other, to put myself at her disposal, how can I assure that this feeling will not
change tomorrow, next month, or next year? Furthermore, because I have given myself to
this other person, placed myself at her disposal, when she falls short of my hopes for her
—hopes implicit in my extension of credit to her—I am wounded.

However, the “failure” of the other to conform to my hopes is not necessarily the fault of
the other. My disappointment or injury is frequently the result of my having assigned
some definite, determinate quality to the other person or defined her in terms of
characteristics that, it turns out, she does not possess. However, by what right do I assign
this characteristic to her, and by what right do I judge her to be wanting? Such a
judgment drastically oversteps—or perhaps falls short of—the bounds of disponibilité. In
doing so, it demonstrates clearly that I, from the outset, was engaged in a relationship to
my idea of the other—which has proved to be wrong—rather than with the other herself.
That is to say that this encounter was not with the other, but with myself. If I am injured
by the failure of the other to conform to an idea that I had of her, this is not indicative of a
defect in the other; it is the result of my inappropriate attempt to determine her by
insisting that she conform to my idea. When I begin to doubt my commitment to another
person, the vulnerability of my “belief in X” to these doubts is directly proportional to the
residue of opinion still in it (Marcel 1964, p. 136).

Nevertheless, practically speaking, there are innumerable times when my hopes for the
other are not in fact met, when my extension of credit to the other—which is nothing less
then the disposability of myself—results only in a demand for “more” by the other. Such
situations invariably tempt me to reevaluate the credit I have put at the disposal of the
other and to reassert the question of durability concerning the affective element of my
availability to the other. Thus, again, the mystery of fidelity is also the question of
commitment, of commitment over time

“How can I test the initial assurance that is somehow the ground of my fidelity? …this
appears to lead to a vicious circle. In principle, to commit myself I must know myself,
but the fact is I really only know myself when I have committed myself” (Marcel 1964, p.
163). However, what appears to be a vicious circle from an external point of view is
experienced from within, by the person who is disponible, as a growth and an ascending.
Reflection qua primary reflection attempts to make the experience of commitment
understandable in general terms that would be applicable to anyone, but this can only
subvert and destroy the reality of commitment, which is essentially personal and
therefore, accessible only to secondary reflection.

Returning to the question of durability over time, Marcel insists that, if there is a possible
“assurance” of fidelity, it is because “disposability and creativity are related ideas”
(Marcel 1964, p. 53). To be disposable is to believe in the other, to place myself at her
disposal and to maintain the openness of disponibilité. “Creative fidelity” consists in
actively maintaining ourselves in a state of openness and permeability, in willing
ourselves to remain open to the other and open to the influx of the presence of the other.

The fact is that when I commit myself, I grant in principle that the commitment will not
again be put into question. And it is clear that this active volition not to question
something again, intervenes as an essential element in the determination of what in fact
will be the case…it bids me to invent a certain modus vivendi…it is a rudimentary form
of creative fidelity. (Marcel 1964, p. 162)

The truest fidelity is creative, that is, a fidelity that creates the self in order to meet the
demands of fidelity. Such fidelity interprets the vicissitudes of “belief in…” as a
temptation to infidelity and sees them in terms of a test of the self rather than in terms of
a betrayal by the other—if fidelity fails, it is my failure rather than the failure of the
other.

However, this merely puts off the question of durability over time. Where does one find
the strength to continue to create oneself and meet the demands of fidelity? The fact is
that, on the hither side of the ontological affirmation—and the attendant appeal of Hope
—fidelity is always open to doubt. I can always call into question the reality of the bond
that links me to another person, always begin to doubt the presence of the person to
whom I am faithful, substituting for her presence an idea of my own making. On the
other hand, the more disposed I am toward the ontological affirmation, to the affirmation
of Being, the more I am inclined to see the failure of fidelity as my failure, resulting from
my insufficiency rather than that of the other.

Hence the ground of fidelity that necessarily seems precarious to us as soon as we

commit ourselves to another who is unknown, seems on the other hand unshakable when
it is based not, to be sure, on a distinct apprehension of God as someone other, but on a
certain appeal delivered for the depths of my own insufficiency ad summam
altitudinem… This appeal presupposes a radical humility in the subject. (Marcel 1964, p.
167)

Thus, creative fidelity invariably touches upon hope. The only way in which an
unbounded commitment on the part of the subject is conceivable is if it draws strength
from something more than itself, from an appeal to something greater, something
transcendent—and this appeal is hope. Can hope provide us with a foundation that allows
humans—who are radically contingent, frequently fickle, and generally weak—to make a
commitment that is unconditional? Marcel acknowledges, “Perhaps it should further be
said that in fact fidelity can never be unconditional, except where it is Faith, but we must
add, however, that it aspires to unconditionality” (Marcel 1962a, p. 133).

14. Hope
Hope is the final guarantor of fidelity; it is that which allows me not to despair, that
which gives me the strength to continue to create myself in availability to the other. But
this might appear to be nothing more than optimism—frequently misplaced, as events too
often reveal—that things will turn out for the best. Marcel insists that this is not the case.
Following now familiar distinctions, he makes a differentiation between the realm of fear
and desire on one hand and the realm of despair and hope on the other.

Fear and desire are anticipatory and focused respectively on the object of fear or desire.
To desire is “to desire that X” and to fear is “to fear that X.” Optimism exists in the
domain of fear and desire because it imagines and anticipates a favorable outcome.
However, the essence of hope is not “to hope that X”, but merely “to hope…” The person
who hopes does not accept the current situation as final; however, neither does she
imagine or anticipate the circumstance that would deliver her from her plight, rather she
merely hopes for deliverance. The more hope transcends any anticipation of the form that
deliverance would take, the less it is open to the objection that, in many cases, the hoped-
for deliverance does not take place. If I desire that my disease be cured by a given
surgical procedure, it is very possible that my desire might be thwarted. However, if I
simply maintain myself in hope, no specific event (or absence of event) need shake me
from this hope.
This does not mean, however, that hope is inert or passive. Hope is not stoicism. Stoicism
is merely the resignation of a solitary consciousness. Hope is neither resigned, nor
solitary. “Hope consists in asserting that there is at the heart of being, beyond all data,
beyond all inventories and all calculations, a mysterious principle which is in connivance
with me” (Marcel 1995, p. 28). While hope is patient and expectant, it remains active;
and as such it might be characterized as an “active patience.” The assertion contained in
hope reveals a kinship with willing rather than desiring. “Inert hope” would be an
oxymoron.

No doubt the solitary consciousness can achieve resignation [Stoicism], but it may well
be here that this word actually means nothing but spiritual fatigue. For hope, which is just
the opposite of resignation, something more is required. There can be no hope that does
not constitute itself through a we and for a we. I would be tempted to say that all hope is
at the bottom choral. (Marcel 1973, p. 143)

Finally, it should be no surprise that “speaking metaphysically, the only genuine hope is
hope in what does not depend on ourselves, hope springing from humility and not from
pride” (Marcel 1995, p. 32). And here is found yet another aspect of the withering that
takes place as a result of indisponibilité in general and pride in particular. The same
arrogance that keeps the proud person from communion with her fellows keeps her from
hope.

This example points to the dialectical engagement of despair and hope—where there is
hope there is always the possibility of despair, and only where there is the possibility of
despair can we respond with hope. Despair, says Marcel, is equivalent to saying that there
is nothing in the whole of reality to which I can extend credit, nothing worthwhile.
“Despair is possible in any form, at any moment and to any degree, and this betrayal may
seem to be counseled, if not forced upon us, by the very structure of the world we live in”
(Marcel 1995, p. 26). Hope is the affirmation that is the response to this denial. Where
despair denies that anything in reality is worthy of credit, hope affirms that reality will
ultimately prove worthy of an infinite credit, the complete engagement and disposal of
myself.

15. Marcel in Dialogue

Three decades after his death, Marcel's philosophy continues to generate a steady stream
of creative scholarship that, if modest in volume, nevertheless attests to his continued
relevance for the contemporary philosophical landscape. Marcel's influence on
contemporary philosophy is apparent, for example, in the work of Paul Ricoeur, his most
famous student. Through Ricoeur, Marcel has influenced contemporary philosophy in
and around the hermeneutic tradition. The pattern of “detour and return” that
characterizes Ricoeur and some of his students closely resembles Marcel's dialectic of
primary and secondary reflection.[13] Likewise, Marcel's understanding of otherness—
illustrated by his image of “constellations,” conglomerations of meaningfully connected
but non-totalizable beings—is an explicit challenge to philosophers of absolute otherness
including Emmanuel Levinas, Jacques Derrida, and John D. Caputo, and a valuable
resource for philosophers with a chiastic understanding of otherness, including Ricoeur
and Richard Kearney. In addition, Marcel's philosophy offers rich possibilities for
dialogue with contemporary ontologies struggling to address the problem of “being”
without succumbing to ethical “violence” or “ontotheological” conceptions of God. As
such, his philosophy should be of interest to scholars interested in the work of Martin
Heidegger, Jean-Luc Marion, Merold Westphal and others philosophizing at the
intersection of philosophy and theology. Finally, his insistence that philosophy should
illuminate our lived experience and his insistence on concrete examples have much in
common with thinkers who view philosophy as a “way of life,” including Pierre Hadot
and Michel Foucault. The resources of Marcel's philosophy have only begun to be
tapped, and one may hope that the recent republication of what are arguably Marcel's two
most important works, The Mystery of Being (by St. Augustine's Press) and Creative
Fidelity (by Fordham University Press), will help to fuel a renaissance in scholarship
concerning this remarkable thinker.

Bibliography
Marcel was a very prolific writer, given that his work includes philosophy, drama,
criticism, and musical compositions. The following bibliography merely scratches the
surface of his extensive oeuvre. More complete bibliographies, which were consulted in
collecting this selected bibliography, can be found in: (1) Lapointe, Francois H. and
Claire, eds. Gabriel Marcel and His Critics: An International Bibliography (1928–1976).
New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1977; (2) Schilpp, Paul Arthur and Lewis
Edwin Hahn, eds. The Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel. The Library of Living
Philosophers, vol. 17. La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1984; and (3) a fine bibliographic
resource can be found at the website of the Gabriel Marcel Society (hyperlink below).

Primary Literature: Works by Marcel

 1949, Being and Having. Translated by Katharine Farrer. Westminster, UK:

Dacre Press.
 1951a, The Mystery of Being, vol.1, Reflection and Mystery. Translated by G. S.
Fraser. London: The Harvill Press.
 1951b, The Mystery of Being, vol.2, Faith and Reality. Translated by René Hague.
London: The Harvill Press.
 1952, Metaphysical Journal. Translated by Bernard Wall. London: Rockliff.
 1962a, Homo Viator: Introduction to a Metaphysic of Hope. Translated by Emma
Crawford. New York: Harper Torchbooks.
 1962b, Man Against Mass Society. Translated by G. S. Fraser. Chicago: Henry
Regnery Company.
 1963, The Existential Background of Human Dignity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
 1964, Creative Fidelity. Translated, with an introduction, by Robert Rosthal. New
York: Farrar, Strauss and Company.
  1965, Philosophical Fragments 1909–1914 and the Philosopher and Peace. With
an introduction by Lionel A. Blain. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame
Press.
 1967, Presence and Immortality. Translated by Michael A. Machado. Pittsburgh:
Duquesne University Press.
 1967, Problematic Man. New York: Herder and Herder.
 1967, Searchings. New York: Paulist Newman Press.
 1973, Tragic Wisdom and Beyond. Translated by Stephen Jolin and Peter
McCormick. Publication of the Northwestern University Studies in
Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, ed. John Wild. Evanston, IL:
Northwestern University Press.
 1984, “An Autobiographical Essay.” In The Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel.
Translated by Forrest Williams. The Library of Living Philosophers, vol. 17. La
Salle, IL: Open Court.
 1995, The Philosophy of Existentialism. Translated by Manya Harari. New York:
Carol Publishing Group.
 2009, Thou Shall Not Die. Translated by Katherine Rose Hanley. South Bend, IN:
Saint Agustine's Press.

Secondary Literature

 Applebaum, David, 1986. Contact and Alienation, The Anatomy of Gabriel

Marcel's Metaphysical Method (Current Continental Research 214), Washington,
D.C.: Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology & University Press of
America.
 Anderson, Thomas C., 2006. A Commentary on Gabriel Marcel's The Mystery of
Being, (Marquette Series in Philosophy, Number 46), 2 volumes, Wisconsin,
Marquette University Press.
 –––, 2006. “Gabriel Marcel on Personal Immortality,” in American Catholic
Philosophical Quarterly, 80(3): 393–406.
 Bourgeois, Patrick L., 2006. “Marcel and Ricoeur: Mystery and Hope at the
Boundary of Reason in the Postmodern Situation,” American Catholic
Philosophical Quarterly, 80(3): 421–433.
 Bourgeois, Patrick and Hanley, Katharine Rose, 1997. “Gabriel Marcel,” in
Routledge Encyclopedia of Postmodernism, General Editors: Charles E. Winquist
and Victor E. Taylor, London, New York: Routledge Press.
 Busch, Thomas, 1987. The Participant Perspective: A Gabriel Marcel Reader,
Lanham, MD: University Press of America.
 Cain, Seymour, 1979. Gabriel Marcel. New York: Hillary House, London: Bouer
and Bouer, 1963; South Bend, IN: Regnery/Gateway Inc.
 –––, 1995. Gabriel Marcel's Theory of Religious Experience, New York: Peter
Lang Inc.
 Cipriani, Gérald, 2004. “The Art of Renewal and Consideration: Marcelian
Reflections,” Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia, 60(1): 167–175.
 Engelland, Chad, 2004. “Marcel and Heidegger on the Proper Matter and Manner
of Thinking,” Philosophy Today, 48(1): 94–109.
 Flynn, Thomas R, 2006. “Toward the Concrete: Marcel As Existentialist,”
American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, 80(3): 355–367.
 Franke, William, 2009. “Existentialism: An Athistic or a Christian Philosophy?”
in Analecta Husserliana: The Yearbook of Phenomenological Research Volume
CIII: Phenomenology and Existentialism Book One: New Waves of Philosophical
Inspirations, Dordrecht: Springer Science + Business Media.
 Gallagher, Kenneth T., 1963. The Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel, New York:
Fordham University Press, 1975.
 Hanley, Katherine Rose, 2006. “A Journey to Consciousness: Gabriel Marcel's
Relevance for the Twenty-First-Century Classroom,” American Catholic
Philosophical Quarterly, 80(3): 457–474.
 –––, 1987. Dramatic Approaches to Creative Fidelity: A Study in the Theatre and
Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel (1889–1973), Lanham, MD: University Press of
America.
 –––, 2009. Thou Shall Not Die, South Bend: St Augustine's Press.
 –––, 1986. Two One Act Plays: Dot the I and The Double Expertise, Lanham,
MD: University Press of America.
 –––, 1988. Two Plays by Gabriel Marcel: The Lantern and The Torch of Peace
plus “From Comic Theater to Musical Creation” a previously unpublished essay
by Gabriel Marcel, Lanham, MD: University Press of America.
 –––, 1995. “Gabriel Marcel,” in The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy,
General Editor: Robert Audi. Cambridge, New York, Melbourne: Cambridge
University Press.
 Keen, Sam, 1967. Gabriel Marcel, Richmond, VA: John Knox Press.
 –––, 1984. “The Development of the Idea of Being,” in Schilpp and Hahn (eds.)
1984.
 Miceli, Vincent P., 1965. Ascent to Being: Gabriel Marcel's Philosophy of
Communion, Foreword by Gabriel Marcel, Paris: Desclée de Brouwer.
 Michaud, Thomas (ed.), 1995. “Gabriel Marcel and the Postmodern World,”
Bulletin de la Société Américaine de Philosophie de Langue Française, VII(1–2),
Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, Northern Illinois University,
De Kalb, IL 60115-2854
 –––, 2006. “Gabriel Marcel's Politics: Theory and Practice,” American Catholic
Philosophical Quarterly, 80(3): 435–455.
 Novak, Michael, 2006. “Marcel at Harvard,” American Catholic Philosophical
Quarterly, 80(3): 337–341.
 Ojara, Pius and Patrick Madigan, 2004. Marcel, Girad, Bakhtin: The Return of
Conversion, New York: Peter Lang.
 Pax, Clyde, 1972. An Existentialist Approach to God: A Study of Gabriel Marcel,
The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.
 –––, 1975. “Marcel's Way of Creative Fidelity,” Philosophy Today, 19 (Spring):
12–25.
 Peccorini, Francisco L., 1987. Selfhood as Thinking Thought in the Work of
Gabriel Marcel: A New Interpretation (Problems in Contemporary Philosophy,
Volume 3), Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press.
  Plourde, Simone, 2005. “Gabriel Marcel and the Mystery of Suffering,” Anuario
Filosofico, 38(2): 575–596.
 Popper, Hans,. 2004 “Gabriel Marcel's ‘Essai de philosophie concrète’ in Its
Historical Context,” A Journal of Constructive and Post-Critical Philosophy and
Interdisciplinary Studies, 5(1): 9–24.
 Randall, Albert B., 1992. The Mystery of Hope in the Philosophy of Gabriel
Marcel (1889–1973), Hope and Homo Viator (Problems in Contemporary
Philosophy, Volume 33), Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press.
 Redpath, Peter A., 2006. “Gabriel Marcel and the Recovery of Philosophy in Our
Time,” in American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, 80(3): 343–353.
 Schilpp, Paul A. and Hahn, Lewis E., 1984. The Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel
(Library of Living Philosophers, Volume 17), La Salle, IL: Open Court.
 Smith, John E., 1984. “The Individual, the Collective and the Community,” in
Schilpp and Hahn (eds.) 1984.
 Sweetman, Brendan, 2002. “Gabriel Marcel: Ethics within a Christian
Existentialism,” in Phenomenological Approaches to Moral Philosophy, John
Drummond and Lester Embree (eds.), Dodrecht: Kluwer, pp. 269–288.
 –––, 2006. “Marcel on God and Religious Experience, and the Critique of Alston
and Hick,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, 80(3): 407–420.
 –––, 2008. The Vision of Gabriel Marcel: Epistemology, Human Person, the
Transcendent, New York: Rodopi NY.
 Traub, Donald F., 1988. Toward a Fraternal Society: A Study of Gabriel Marcel's
Approach to Being Technology and Intersubjectivity, New York, NY: Peter Lang.
 Treanor, Brian, 2006. “Constellations: Gabriel Marcel's Philosophy of Relative
Otherness,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, 80(3): 369–392.
 –––, 2006. Aspects of Alterity: Levinas, Marcel, and the Contemporary Debate,
New York: Fordham University Press.
 Tunstall, Dwayne A., 2009. “Struggling against the Specter of Dehumanization,”
Philosophy Today, 53(2): 147–160.

Other Internet Resources

 Gabriel Marcel Society, managed by K.R. Hanley (Le Moyne College).
 The Gifford Lectures Authors Page, maintained by The Gifford Lectures,
University of Glasgow.
 Gabriel Marcel Collection, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the
University of Texas.

Related Entries
Bergson, Henri | Buber, Martin | Christian theology, philosophy and | existentialism |
Ricoeur, Paul | Sartre, Jean-Paul

Copyright © 2010 by
Brian Treanor <btreanor@lmu.edu>
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marcel/
26 January 2011

Gabriel Marcel (1889-1973)

The philosophical approach known as existentialism is commonly recognized for its view
that life’s experiences and interactions are meaningless.  Many existentialist thinkers are
led to conclude that life is only something to be tolerated, and that close or intimate
relationships with others should be avoided. Heard distinctly among this despair and
dread was the original philosophical voice of Gabriel Marcel.  Marcel, a World War I
non-combatant veteran, pursued the life of an intellectual, and enjoyed success as a
playwright, literary critic, and concert pianist.  He was trained in philosophy by Henri
Bergson, among others.  A prolific life-long writer, his early works reflected his interest
in idealism.  As Marcel developed philosophically, however, his work was marked by an
emphasis on the concrete, on lived experience.  After converting to Catholicism in 1929,
he became a noted opponent of atheistic existentialism, and primarily that of Jean-Paul
Sartre.  Sartre’s characterizations of the isolated self, the death of God, and lived
experience as having “no exit” especially disgusted Marcel.  Regardless of his point of
departure, Marcel throughout his life balked at the designation of his philosophy as,
“Theistic existentialism.”  He argued that, though theism was consistent with his
existentialism, it was not an essential characteristic of it.

Marcel’s conception of freedom is the most philosophically enduring of all of his themes,
although the last decade has seen a resurgence of attention paid to Marcel’s metaphysics
and epistemology.  A decidedly unsystematic thinker, it is difficult to categorize Marcel’s
work, in large part because the main Marcelian themes are so interconnected.  A close
read, however, shows that in addition to that of freedom, Marcel’s important
philosophical contributions were on the themes of participation, creative fidelity,
exigence, and presence.

Table of Contents

1. Life
2. Freedom
3. Participation
4. Creative Fidelity
5. Exigence
6. Presence
7. Hope and the Existential Self
8. References and Further Reading

1. Life
Gabriel Marcel was born in Paris in 1889, the city where he also died in 1973.  Marcel
was the only child of Henri and Laure Marcel.  His father was a French diplomat to
Sweden and was committed to educating his son through frequent travel across Europe. 
The death of his mother, in 1893 when Gabriel was not quite four years old left an
indelible impression on him.  He was raised primarily by his mother’s sister, whom his
father married two years after Laure’s passing, and though “Auntie” loved her nephew
and gave him the best formal education, Gabriel loathed the structure of the classroom,
and became excited about the intellectual life only after entering Sorbonne, from which
he graduated in 1910.

Marcel was not a “dogmatic pacifist,” but experiences in World War I as a non-
combatant solidified to Marcel the, “Desolate aspect that it [war] became an object of
indignation, a horror without equal,” (AE 20) and contributed to a life-long fascination
with death.  It was during the war that many of the important philosophical themes in
Marcel’s later work would take root, and indeed, during the war, Marcel began writing in
a journal that served as a framework for his first book, Metaphysical Journal (1927).

After the war, Marcel married Jaqueline Boegner, and he taught at a secondary school in
Paris.  It was in these early wedded years that Marcel became engaged as a playwright,
philosopher, and literary critic.  The couple continued to travel, they adopted a son, Jean
Marie, and Marcel developed friendships with important thinkers of the day.  Marcel
gave talks throughout Europe as a result of these contacts, and was regarded as a keen
mind and a type of renaissance figure, excelling in music, drama, philosophy, theology,
and politics.  As for his literary works, Marcel in total published more than 30 plays, a
number of which have been translated in English and produced in the United States. 
Marcel was acutely aware, however, that his dramatic work did not enjoy the popularity
of his philosophical work, but he believed nonetheless that both were, “Capable of
moving and often of absorbing readers very different from one another, living in the most
diverse countries—beings whom it is not a question of counting precisely because they
are human beings and belong as such to an order where number loses all meaning,” (AE,
27).

Although Marcel did not pursue anything more permanent than intermittent teaching
posts at secondary schools, he did hold prestigious lectureships, giving the Gifford
Lectures at Aberdeen in 1949-50 and the William James Lectures at Harvard in 1961. 
His most significant philosophical works include Being and Having (1949), The Mystery
of Being, Volume I and II (1950-51), Man against Mass Society (1962) and Creative
Fidelity (1964). During his latter years, he emerged as a vocal political thinker, and
played a crucial role in organizing and advocating the international Moral Re-Armament
movement of the 1960s.  (Marcel was pleased to be awarded the Peace Prize of the
Börsenverein des Buchhandels in 1964.)

Throughout his life, Marcel sought out, and was sought out by, various influential
thinkers, including Paul Ricoeur, Jacques Maritain, Charles Du Bos, Gustave Thibon, and
Emmanuel Levinas.  In spite of the many whom he positively influenced, Marcel became
known for his very public disagreements with Jean-Paul Sartre.  In fact, the acrimony
between the two became such that the two would attend performances of the other’s
plays, only to storm out midway.  Perhaps the most fundamental ideological
disagreement between the two was over the notion of autonomy.  For Marcel, autonomy
is a discovery of the self as a being receptive to others, rather than as a power to be
exerted.  Marcel’s autonomy is rooted in a commitment to participation with others (see 3
below), and is unique in that the participative subject is committed by being encountered,
or approached by, another individual’s need.  Sartre’s notion of commitment is based on
the strength of the solitary decisions made by individuals who have committed
themselves fully to personal independence.  Yet, Marcel took commitment to be
primarily the response to the appeal directed to the self as an individual (A 179) so that
the self is free to respond to another on account of their mutual needs.  The feud between
the two, though heated, had the effect of casting a shadow over Marcel’s work as
“mysticism” rather than philosophy, a stigma that Marcel would work for the rest of his
life to dispute.

2. Freedom
A strange inner mutation is spreading throughout humanity, according to Marcel.  As odd
as it first seems, this mutation is evoked by the awareness that members of humanity are
contingent on conditions which make up the framework for their very existence.  Man
recognizes that at root, he is an existing thing, but he somehow feels compelled to prove
his life is more significant than that.  He begins to believe that the things he surrounds
himself with can make his life more meaningful or valuable.  This belief, says Marcel,
has thrown man into a ghostly state of quandary caused by a desire to possess rather than
to be.  All people become a master of defining their individual selves by either their
possessions or by their professions.  Meaning is forced into life through these venues. 
Even more, individuals begin to believe that their lives have worth because they are tied
to these things, these objects.  This devolution creates a situation in which individuals
experience the self only as a statement, as an object, “I am x.”

The objectification of the self through one’s possessions robs one of her freedom, and
separates her from the experiences of her own participation in being.  The idolatrous
world of perverted possession must be abandoned if the true reality of humanity is to be
reached (SZ 285).  Perhaps most known for his views on freedom, Marcel gave to
existentialism a view of freedom that marries the absolute indeterminacy of traditional
existentialism with Marcel’s view that transcendence out of facticity can only come by
depending upon others with the same goals.  The result is a type of freedom-by-degrees
in which all people are free, since to be free is to be self-governing, but not all people
experience freedom that can lead them out of objectification.  The experience of freedom
cannot be achieved unless the subject extricates herself from the grip of egocentrism,
since freedom is not simply doing what desire dictates.  The person who sees herself as
autonomous within herself  has a freedom based on ill-fated egocentrism.  She errs in
believing freedom to be rooted on independence.

Freedom is defined by Marcel in both a negative and positive sense.  Negatively, freedom
is, “The absence of whatever resembles an alienation from oneself,” and positively as
when, “The motives of my action are within the limits of what I can legitimately consider
as the structural traits of my self,” (TF, 232).  Freedom, then, is always about the
possibilities of the self, understood within the confines of relationships with others.  As
an existentialist, Marcel’s freedom is tied to the raw experiences of the body.  However,
the phenomenology of Marcelian freedom  is characterized by his insistence that freedom
is something to be experienced, and the self is fully free when it is submerged in the
possibilities of the self and the needs of others.  Although all humans have basic,
autonomous freedom (Marcel thought of this as “capricious” freedom), in virtue of their
embodiment and consciousness; only those persons who seek to experience being by
freely engaging with other free beings can break out of the facticity of the body and into
the fulfillment of being.  The free act is significant because it contributes to defining the
self, “By freedom I am given back to myself,” (VII vii).

At first glance, Marcelian freedom is paradoxical:  the more one enters into a self-
centered project, the less legitimate it is to say that the act is free, whereas the more the
self is engaged with other free individuals, the more the self is free.  However, the
phenomenological experience of freedom is less paradoxical when it is seen through the
lens of the engagement of freedom.  Ontologically, we rarely have experiences of the
singular self; instead, our experiences are bound to those with whom we interact. 
Freedom based on the very participation that the free act seeks to affirm is the ground of
the true experience of freedom towards which Marcel gravitates.

3. Participation
Marcel was an early proponent of what would become a major Sartrean existential tenet: 
I am my body.  For Marcel, the body does not have instrumental value, nor is it simply a
part or extension of the self.  Instead, the self cannot be eradicated from the body.  It is
impossible for the self to conceive of the body in any way at all except for as a distinct
entity identified with the self (CF 23).  Existence is prior, and existence is prior to any
abstracting that we do on the basis of our perception.  Existence is indubitable, and
existence is in opposition to the abstraction of objectivity (TW 225).  That we are body,
of course, naturally lends us to think of the body in terms of object.  But individuals who
resort to seeing the self and the world in terms of functionality are ontologically deficient
because not only can they not properly respond to the needs of others, but they have
become isolated and independent from others.  It is our active freedom that prevents us
from the snare of objectifying the self, and which brings us into relationships with others.

When we are able to act freely, we can move away from the isolated perspective of the
problematic man (“I am body only,”) to that of the participative subject (“I am a being
among beings”) who is capable of interaction with others in the world.  Marcelian
participation is possible through a special type of reflection in which the subject views
herself as a being among beings, rather than as an object.  This reflection is secondary
reflection, and is distinguished from both primary reflection and mere contemplation. 
Primary reflection explains the relationship of an individual to the world based on her
existence as an object in the world, whereas secondary reflection takes as its point of
departure the being of the individual among others.  The goal of primary reflection, then,
is to problematize the self and its relation to the world, and so it seeks to reduce and
conquer particular things.  Marcel rejects primary reflection as applicable to ontological
matters because he believes it cannot understand the main metaphysical issue involved in
existence:  the incommunicable experience of the body as mine.  Neither does mere
contemplation suffice to explain this phenomenon.  Contemplation is existentially
significant, because it indicates the act by which the self concentrates its attention on its
self, but such an act without secondary reflection would result in the same egocentrism
that Marcel attempts to avoid through his work.

Secondary reflection has as its goal the explication of existence, which cannot be
separated from the individual, who is in turn situated among others.  For Marcel, an
understanding of one’s being is only possible through secondary reflection, since it is a
reflection whereby the self asks itself how and from what starting point the self is able to
proceed (E 14).  The existential impetus of secondary reflection cannot be
overemphasized for Marcel:  Participation which involves the presence of the self to the
world is only possible if the temptation to assume the self is wholly distinct from the
world is overcome (CF 22).  The existential upshot is that secondary reflection allows the
individual to seek out others, and it dissolves the dualism of primary reflection by
realizing the lived body’s relation to the ego.

Reflexive reflection is the reflection of the exigent self (see 5 below).  It occurs when the
subject is in communion with others, and is free and also dependent upon others (as
discussed in 2).  Reflexive reflection is an inward looking that allows the self to be
receptive to the call of others.  Yet, Marcel does not call on the participative subject to be
reflective for receptivity’s sake.  Rather, the self cannot fully understand the existential
position without orientating itself to something other than the self.

4. Creative Fidelity
For Marcel, to exist only as body is to exist problematically.  To exist existentially is to
exist as a thinking, emotive, being, dependent upon the human creative impulse.  He
believed that, “As soon as there is creation, we are in the realm of being,” and also that,
“There is no sense using the word ‘being’ except where creation is in view,” (PGM xiii). 
The person who is given in a situation to creative development experiences life
qualitatively at a higher mode of being than those for whom experiences are another facet
of their functionality.  Marcel argues that, “A really alive person is not merely someone
who has a taste for life, but somebody who spreads that taste, showering it, as it were,
around him; and a person who is really alive in this way has, quite apart from any
tangible achievements of his, something essentially creative about him,” (VI, 139).  This
is not to say, of course, that the creative impulse is measurable by what we produce. 
Whereas works of art most explicitly express creative energy, inasmuch as we give
ourselves to each other, acts of love, admiration, and friendship also describe the creative
act.  In fact, participation with others is initiated through acts of feeling which not only
allow the subject to experience the body as his own, but which enable him to respond to
others as embodied, sensing, creative, participative beings as well.  To feel is a mode of
participation, a creative act which draws the subject closer to an experience of the self as
a being-among-beings, although higher degrees of participation are achieved by one
whose acts demonstrate a commitment to that experience.  So, to create is to reject the
reduction of the self to the level of abstraction—of object, “The denial of the more than
human by the less than human,” (CF 10).

If the creative élan is a move away from the objectification of humanity, it must be
essentially tied relationally to others.  Creative fidelity, then, entails a commitment to acts
which draw the subject closer to others, and this must be balanced with a proper respect
for the self.  Self-love, self-satisfaction, complacency, or even self-anger are attitudes
which can paralyze one’s existential progress and mitigate against the creative impulse. 
To be tenacious in the pursuit– the fidelity aspect– is the most crucial part of the creative
impulse, since creation is a natural outflow of being embodied.  One can create, and
create destructively.  To move towards a greater sense of being, one must have creative
fidelity.  Fidelity exists only when it triumphs over the gap in presence from one being to
another—when it helps others relate, and so defies absences in presence (CF 152).

It is not enough to be constant, since constancy is tenacity towards a specific goal, which
requires neither presence nor an openness to change.  Rather, creative fidelity implies that
there is presence, if it is true that faithfulness requires being available (in the Marcelian
sense, see 5) to another even when it is difficult.  (Interestingly, Marcel’s notion of
fidelity means more than someone’s merely not being unfaithful.  A spouse, for example,
might not physically cheat on her husband, but on Marcel’s view, if she remains
unavailable to her partner, she can only be called “constant”.  She cannot be called
“faithful”.)  Additionally, fidelity requires that a subject be open to changing her mind,
actions, and beliefs if those things do not contribute to a better grasp of what it means to
be.  Since fidelity is a predicate that is best ascribed by others to us, it follows that
receptivity to the views of others’ is a natural component of fidelity.

But what is it that Marcel thinks we ought to be faithful towards? It isn’t simply to pursue
the impetus of the exigent life, although that is involved.  More concretely, creative
fidelity is a fidelity towards being free, and that freedom involves making decisions about
what is important, rather than living in a state of stasis.  Marcel railed against indecision
with respect to what is essential, even though such indecision, “Seems to be the mark and
privilege of the illumined mind,” (CF 190) because truly free people are not entrapped by
their beliefs, but are liberated by living out their consequences (see 2).

5. Exigence
Dominating Marcel’s philosophical development was the intersection of his interest in
the individuality of beings and his interest in the relations which bind beings together. 
An acceptable ontology must account for the totality of the lived experience, and so must
have as a point of departure the fact that humans are fundamentally embodied.  From
there, ontology must explain how an individual fits among other individuals, and so must
account for what it means to experience and have relations in the world.  Ontological
exigence is the Marcelian actualization of transcendence, which is manifested as a thirst
for the fullness of being and a demand to transcend the world of abstract objectivity. 
This desire to be fulfilled within the body, however, is not a desire for perfection (which
cannot be achieved) but is instead, “The contradiction of the functionalized world and of
the overpowering monotony of a society in which it becomes increasingly difficult to
differentiate between members of society,” (V. II, 42).  The typical person (that is, the
“Problematic man”) has become an object to him or herself through sheer busyness of
life, through a lack of meaningful relationships with others, and through the intrusion of
technological advancement.  The exigent person can transcend her problematicity—
indeed, she, “Gradually develops individuality” (CF 149), and she does this by being
aware of the self as a body in relation with, and in participation with, others in the world. 
(The cognitive subject cannot seek the fulfilled state of the exigent self in a meaningful
way, and the experiencing subject cannot see beyond herself as an object.  It is the
participative subject, who is governed by the uniquely Marcelian doctrines of reflection,
communion, receptivity, and availability, which can move from self-as-body to self-as-
being among beings.)

The reflective focus of the exigent self occurs most effectively when the subject is
involved in a community of people who are mutually receptive and accepting of others’
experiences and needs.  Just as secondary reflection must be active in order to participate
with others, the exigent self’s reflexive reflection is rooted in an active, more developed
sense of availability to others (see  3).  This availability is not passive; rather, the exigent
self actively seeks out relationships with others, just as she is actively engaged in the
concern for others.  Whereas a subject’s passivity can result in fear, hesitancy, and
powerlessness, the action of the exigent self can allow her to positively change a situation
for another person.  The force of the exigent life comes through the experience of being
that is only found in sharing with others in being.  The most significant end achievable
for an individual is to be immersed in the beings of others, for only with others does the
self experience wholeness of being.  (This isn’t to say, of course, that the self will
experience wholeness just in virtue of her being available to others.  Availability is a risk
one takes, since it is only through availability that the potential for fullness emerges as
possible.)

In opposition to exigence is the life of the problematic man.  There is a polarity between
what is given in the technological world (a world in which things are objectified
according to their function—biological, political, economic, social) and the fullness of
being, which resists abstract determinations.  Marcel argued that, “Nothing is more awful
than this reduction of man, of a human being by such distinctions,” (TW 225-6).  The
exigent life is repelled by this reduction, and serves as a protest against it.  Exigence
provides a recourse to a type of experience which bears within itself the warrant of its
own value.  It is the substitution of one mode of experience for another; one that strives
towards an increasingly pure mode of existence (VI ix).

6. Presence
The term “presence” is used in various ways in the English language, although each
connote a “here-ness” that indicates whether or not a subject was “here”.  One of the
differences in how we use the term is in the strength of a thing’s “here-ness”.  Two
people sitting in close physical proximity on an airplane might not be present to each
other, although people miles away speaking on a phone might have a stronger awareness
of being together.  There is mystery in presence, according to Marcel, because presence
can transcend the objective physical fact of being-with each other.   Presence is
concerned with recognizing the self as a being-among-beings, and acknowledging the
relevance of others’ experiences to the self, as a being.

The notion of presence for Marcel is comprised of two other parallel notions, communion
and availability.  Together, communion and availability enable an individual to come into
a complete participation with another being.  Although “presence” is found throughout
Marcel’s work, he admits that it is impossible to give a rigorous definition of it.  Rather
than working out a lexical definition of the term, we ought to evoke its meaning through
our shared experiences.  Marcel demonstrates this by noting how easy it is to find
ourselves with others who are not significantly present at all, and at other times we are
present to those who are not physically with us at all.  The mark of presence is the mutual
tie to the other.  For Marcel, it means that the self is “given” to the other, and that
givenness is responsively received or reciprocated.  (The reciprocity of presence is a
necessary condition for it.)  Presence is shared, then, in virtue of our openness to each
other.

This openness is not linguistically based, since it is beyond the physical relation and
communication among individuals.  Non-linguistic presence is possible for Marcel
because of an aspect of presence Marcel calls “communion”.  Communion with other
participative beings is renewing to the self as a result of the other giving to me out of who
he is, rather than merely by what he says.  Marcel almost certainly borrows from Martin
Buber’s I-Thou in his view of communion, in that Buber’s ontological communion is the
free expression of those who are able to give and receive freely to each other so that an
encounter with the other is possible, and for Marcel this communion is expressed as a
free reception of the other to oneself (IB 136).  Communion-as-encounter, according to
Marcel (GR 273), is encapsulated by the French en, whereas in English, within best
represents the envelopment of one’s being that occurs in communion.  A shared
experience allows for a more full understanding of one’s own being.  If the self is in
communion with another, and is present to the other, the self is more present towards the
self.  Communion with others can give new meaning to experiences that otherwise would
have been closed to the self.

For interactions in which there is communication without communion, Marcel believes

that the self becomes an object to the one with whom the communication is occurring. 
And, where there is objectification, there cannot be participation, and without the
availability of participation, there cannot be presence.  A key aspect of communion, then,
is the way it limits the objectification of beings.  Marcel argues that one cannot have
presence with—that is, one cannot welcome or gather to the self—whatever is purely and
simply an object.  For objects, the self can take it or leave it, but presence can only be
invoked or evoked (VI 208).  Presence that results from communion produces a bond
between those who are in participation with another, who are receptive to another, and
who are committed to sharing in each others’ experiences.
Communion is necessary for presence, but is entwined with Marcel’s notion of
availability, disponibilité.  If it is true that participative beings can have communion with
each other, and so encounter one another, then there must be another component to
presence that enables a once-objectified person to respond to the encounter of
communion.  The ability to yield to that which is encountered, and so to pledge oneself to
another, is the component of presence that Marcel calls availability (HV 23).  Availability
can be understood as being at hand, or handiness, so that a person is ready to respond to
another when called upon.  The available subject seeks out other available subjects as
individuals whose experiences can compliment and more fully speak to her.  Of course,
for another’s experiences to speak to the subject, she must be open to the influence and
needs of the other.  But this openness cannot result in the objectification of the subject by
the other.  To be available is not to be possessed as an object.  Rather, to be available
means that that the best use the subject can make of her freedom is to place it in the
other’s hands, as a free response to who the other is.  The subject is not an object to be
disposed of, then, but a fellow subject in need of the influence of the experiences of the
other.

The positive result of living an available life is that it makes the subject more fully aware
of herself than she would be if she did not have the relationship.  No longer does the
subject have to struggle with her facticity, but she can find contentment through the
mutual presence—from the communion and availability she has with a community of
beings, all of whom are committed to the same end.  Just as the joints of the skeleton are
conjoined and adapted to bones, Marcel contends that the individual life finds its
justification and its meaning by being inwardly conjoined, adapted, and oriented towards
something other than itself (V I, 201-2).

There are, certainly, detriments to the life of presence that Marcel explicates.  He penned
as many words on unavailability, indisponibilité as he did availability, and with good
reason:  obstacles frequently occur when individuals attempt to coalesce their experiences
to emerge as stronger, more cohesive beings.  Almost all occurrences of unavailability
result form an individual seeking fulfillment through the objectification of the self.  To be
unavailable is to be preoccupied with the self as an object, to be self-centered in such a
way as to exclude the possibility of engaging with others as subjects (BH 74, 78).  The
unavailable person is characterized by an absorption with her self, whether with her own
successes and accomplishments or her own problems.  She can feel temporary
satisfaction by wallowing in herself, but she only experiences herself as object, and so
cannot be whole.  Whatever brief satisfaction the unavailable individual has, it is short-
lived because she becomes encumbered—for Marcel, “used up”—by all of the things by
which she attempts to define herself:  job, family, poor health, indebtedness, etc.  Marcel
compares the encumbered, unavailable life, to a hand-written draft of a manuscript.  Just
as the clutter of editing marks on a draft disables the author from figuring out what is
important to the central ideas, the encumbered self no longer has access to her own point
of view.  The result is frustration, apathy, or distrust in oneself or others.  The weight of
encumbrance renders the self incapable of presence, and so the self becomes opaque. 
The opaque person ceased to let his presence pass into the world, and so has blocked the
experiences of others to help inform and shape his own.
7. Hope and the Existential Self
The existential life that Marcel paints as possible for humanity is largely one of hope—
but not one of optimism.   Being in the world as body allows one to seek out new
opportunities for the self, and so Marcelian hope is deeply pragmatic in that it refuses to
compute all of the possibilities against oneself.  But the picture is not rosy.  Hope for
Marcel is not faith that things will go well, because most often, things do not go well. 
The depravity of the problematic man threatens to suffocate.  Yet, even if there is despair
in our situation, there is always movement towards something more.  This movement
towards is the philosophical project for Gabriel Marcel.  If there is always movement, and
always more to reach for, the existential self is never complete (and indeed, this is why
Marcel refused to categorize his existential project as a “system” or “dialectic”).  The
mystery of being for the existential self is unsolvable, because it is not a problem to be
solved.

The notion of “hope” for Marcel relies upon a significant Marcelian distinction between
problem and mystery.  For the problematic man (see section 2) each aspect of life is
reduced to the level of a problem, so that the self and all of its relationships, goals, and
desires are treated as obstacles to be conquered.  Life is, for the problematic man, a series
of opportunities to possess, and the body is alienated from the problematic man’s own
corporeality.  Not only is such a person separated from his own being as a result, he is
distanced from the true mystery of being.  If I am my body, and I want to inquire into
being, I must grasp that being is a philosophical mystery to be engaged with rather than a
problem to be solved.  The existential self, upon recognizing that the self is not
something that is possessed, can then shift his thought from questioning the significance
of his own existence as a matter of fact, to questioning how he is related to his body.  The
vital cannot be separated from the spiritual, since the spiritual is conditioned on the body,
which can then provide for opportunities and so, for hope.

The mystery of being, then, is a tale to be told, analyzed, probed, and worked toward.  To
be sure, even as experiences change, society evolves, and relations emerge, the individual
who seeks meaning through an investigation of their being will never be fully satisfied. 
If Marcel’s ontology is viable, and the self can question who it is that asks Who am I?,
then the self will find the answer to be constantly in flux.

8. References and Further Reading

 Bollnow, Otto Friedrich. “Marcel’s Concept of Availability,” In The Philosophy
of Gabriel Marcel:  The Library of Living Philosophers, 17.  Edited by Paul
Arthur Schlipp and Lewis Edwin Hahn.  LaSalle, IL:  Open Court, 1984. 
Abbreviated A.
 Gallagher, Kenneth T. The Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel. NY: Fordham
University Press, 1962.  Abbreviated PGM.
  Marcel, Gabriel. “Autobiographical Essay,” In The Philosophy of Gabriel
Marcel: The Library of Living Philosophers, 17.  Edited by Paul Arthur Schlipp
and Lewis Edwin Hahn.  LaSalle, IL:  Open Court, 1984.  Abbreviated AE.
 Marcel, Gabriel. Being and Having.  New York:  Harper & Row,
1965. Abbreviated BH.
 Marcel, Gabriel. Creative Fidelity. NY:  Noonday Press, 1970.  Abbreviated CF.
 Marcel, Gabriel. “Existence,”  New Scholasticism 38, no. 2 (April 1964). 
Abbreviated E.
 Marcel, Gabriel.  omo Viator: Introduction to a Metaphysic of Hope, tr. Emma
Craufurd (Chicago:  Harper & Row), 1965.  Abbreviated HV.
 Marcel, Gabriel. The Mystery of Being, Volume I and II.  Chicago: Charles
Regnery Co, 1951. Abbreviated V. I and V.II.
 Marcel, Gabriel. “Reply to Gene Reeves,” In The Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel: 
The Library of  Living Philosophers, 17.  Edited by Paul Arthur Schlipp and
Lewis Edwin Hahn.  LaSalle, IL:  Open Court, 1984.  Abbreviated GR.
 Marcel, Gabriel. Tragic Wisdom and Beyond.  Evanston, IL:  Northwestern
University Press, 1973.  Abbreviated TW.
 Marcel, Gabriel. “Truth and Freedom,” Philosophy Today 9 (1965).  Abbreviated
TF.
 Strauss, E.W. and M. Machado, “Marcel’s Notion of Incarnate Being,” In
The  Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel:  The Library of Living Philosophers, 17. 
Edited by Paul Arthur Schlipp and Lewis Edwin Hahn.  LaSalle, IL:  Open Court,
1984.  Abbreviated IB.
 Zuidema, S.U. “Gabriel Marcel: A Critique,” Philosophy Today 4, no. 4
(Winter 1960).  Abbreviated SZ.

Author Information:

Jill Graper Hernandez

Email: jill.hernandez@utsa.edu
University of Texas at San Antonio

Last updated: December 8, 2009 | Originally published: December 7, 2009

Categories: Continental Philosophy, Philosophers, Philosophy of Religion

http://www.iep.utm.edu/marcel/
26 January 2011

Gabriel Marcel’s The Mystery of Being

Gabriel marcel's The Mystery of Being is based on the Gifford Lectures which he
delievered at the University of Aberdeen in 1949 and 1950. The first series of lectures is
entitled "Reflection and Mystery," and the second series of lectures is entitled "Faith and
Reality.".
"Volume I: Reflection and Mystery" is divided into ten chapters, which are entitled: 1)
“Introduction,” 2) “A Broken World,” 3) “The Need for Transcendence,” 4) “Truth as a
Value: The Intelligible Background,” 5) “Primary and Secondary Reflection: The
Existential Fulcrum,” 6) “Feeling as a Mode of Participation,” 7) “Being in a Situation,”
8) “‘My Life,’” 9) “Togetherness: Identity and Depth,” and 10) “Presence as a Mystery.”

"Volume II: Faith and Reality" is divided into ten chapters, which are entitled: 1) “The
Question of Being,” 2) “Existence and Being,” 3) “Ontological Exigence,” 4) “The
Legitimacy of Ontology,” 5) “Opinion and Faith,” 6) “Prayer and Humility,” 7)
“Freedom and Grace,” 8) “Testimony,” 9) “Death and Hope,” and 10) “Conclusion.”

Each series of lectures is outlined in the table of contents at the beginning of each
volume. The text consists of explanations of the statements which are made in the table of
contents. Marcel does not attempt to construct a complete philosophical system or to
formulate a comprehensive set of arguments in order to describe the mystery of being.
Instead, he conducts a wide-ranging inquiry into the mystery of being, and he examines
all of the results of that inquiry.

According to Marcel, we live in a 'broken world.' The modern world is often in conflict
with itself, and thus we have a need to transcend its disunity The need for, or exigency of,
transcendence is the source of our attempts to understand the nature of our own existence.
Transcendence implies going beyond the limits of ordinary experience.

Marcel explains that to transcend is not merely to go beyond the spatiotemporal limits of
ordinary experience. Transcendance is also a kind of vertical ascent over the limits of
ordinary experience. Transcendence (i.e. rising above ordinary limits) is opposed to
immanence (i.e. remaining within ordinary limits).

Marcel also explains that the exigency of transcendence is intrinsic to human experience.
Transcendence does not imply a state of being beyond all experience. To the contrary, the
transcendent is capable of being experienced. If the transcendent were beyond all
experience, then it could be thought or felt.

According to Marcel, truth is only a single aspect of reality, and is not the whole of
reality. Truth may emerge from reality, but reality is more than truth. The fulfillment of
truth, or the totality of all truths, may produce an inclusive reality. The universe may
realize itself in the fulfillment of truth. However, the universe may also include things
which are lacking in truth. Truth is both immanent and transcendent.

Marcel argues that truth is a value or ideal which we may strive for. Feelings may be
different from logical propositions in that feelings may be neither true nor false.
Judgments of value may be either true or false, but we may not be able to describe a
sensation or feeling as either true or false.1

Marcel also argues that philosophic thought is reflective in that it may not onle be
concerned with the nature of human existence but may also be concerned with evaluating
its own mode of being concerned with the nature of human existence. Reflection may be
a process of recalling or reexamining our past experiences in order to understand them.
Reflection may transform experiences into concepts.

According to Marcel, primary reflection tends to break down the unity of experience, but
secondary reflection tends to restore the unity of our experience. Primary reflection is an
analytic process, but secondary reflection is a synthetic process. Primary and secondary
reflection are on opposite sides of an existential fulcrum, in the center of which is the
question: "Who or what am I?" Primary reflection may discover that "I am not who I am
thought to be," but secondary reflection may discover that "I am not merely the negation
of who I am thought to be." Further reflection on the question of "Who am I?" may
enable each of us to recognize the importance of personal feelings and emotions in
defining who we are as human beings. We may discover that who we are cannot be
separated from what we feel.

Marcel argues that feeling is not merely a passive function which is made possible by
sensory capability. Feeling is also a mode of active participation in the world. Active
participation may be either objective or non-objective. Non-objective participation may
include subjective participation. However, non-objective participation may also include
intersubjective participation. Intersubjectivity (or shared subjectivity) may bring unity to
our being in the world.

Marcel emphasizes that feeling is not passive, and that feeling is participation. However,
participation is more than feeling. Participation is active engagement in the world.

According to Marcel, each person may have both an objective identity in the outer world
and a subjective identity in the inner world of his or her own thoughts or feelings. A
person's subjective identity may be a felt quality of identity which may change in
accordance with changes in that person's feelings. A felt quality (or a quality of feeling)
may be unanalyzable, because the quality of a person's feelings may be inseparable from
the things which that person feels. A felt quality may be a unity of feeling which cannot
be dissolved by primary reflection.

Marcel describes contemplation as a mode of active perception which transcends the

difference between subjectivity and objectivity. Contemplation is a mode of observation
which transcends the difference between the inner world and the outer world.
Contemplation is also a mode of participation in the being of whatever is contemplated.
Contemplation is an inward regrouping or ‘ingathering’ of mental resources. To
contemplate is to gather one’s mental resources in the presence of whatever is being
contemplated.

Marcel explains that the exact relation between existence and being may be indefinable.
Existence and being may be inseparable insofar as anything which is perceived as being
may also be perceived as existing. 2 Being is always ‘being in a situation,’ and thus is
always changing. Our own mode of Being is 'being in the world.'
Marcel also explains that we may not be able to provide an objective answer to the
question: “What is Being?," because we may not be able to objectively consider our own
experience of being. Being may transcend any of our attempts to define it objectively.
Thus, ‘intersubjectivity’ becomes an important starting point for any mode of ontological
inquiry.

According to Marcel, we are part of, and thus cannot be objective about, our own
existence. Existence transcends objective enquiry, and is thus a mystery. Scientific
questions may be objectively answerable, and may be considered as problems for which
there may be solutions. However, philosophic questions may not be objectively
answerable, and may involve mysteries which are part of our own existence. Science may
be concerned with problems which we can stand apart from and be objective about, but
philosophy may be concerned with mysteries which we cannot stand apart from or be
objective about.3

Marcel argues that the mysterious is not the same as the unknowable, and that the
unknowable is only the limiting case of the problematic.4 A mystery is not an 'object' of
perception, but is a 'presence' which is capable of being recognized.

Marcel also argues that mystery may reveal to us a depth of being which leads to eternity.
Eternity is a mystery, and every mystery flows into eternity.5

Marcel distinguishes between faith and opinion by explaining that faith is a belief in
something, while opinion is a belief which makes a claim about something. To have faith
is not to believe that, but is to believe in.6 Faith may be a belief in a transcendent reality
whose existence is a mystery. If we believe in something, then we place our faith in it,
and thus we may be changed by faith, and faith may change our sense of our own being.

Marcel explains that faith is associated with humility and prayer. Humility is a mode of
being in which an individual acknowledges his or her own imperfections. Humility is also
an affirmation of the sacred.7 Prayer is a form of spiritual communication with God.
Authentic prayer is not a self-centered request for attention but is a way of uniting
ourselves with God.

According to marcel, freedom is the ability to act significantly. Free acts are significant
because they help to make us who we are as human beings. Freedom is not merely the
ability to make arbitrary choices, because we are not free if everything which we can
choose to do is insignificant. Freedom is the ability to make significant choices, and is
given to us by God.

Marcel's The Mystery of Being is really less concerned with being than with mystery.
Marcel explains that mysteries must be explored if we are to understand our own
existence, and he argues that mysteries are capable of being recognized and investigated.
His lectures in The Mystery of Being have existential themes, but make a persuasive
argument for religious faith.
 FOOTNOTES
1
Gabriel Marcel, The Mystery of Being, Volume I: Reflection and Mystery (London: The
Harvill Press, 1950), p. 60.
2
Volume II: Faith and Reality (London: The Harvill Press, 1951), p. 30.
3
Alasdair MacIntyre, "Existentialism," in A Critical History of Western Philosophy,
edited by D.J. O'Connor (New York: The Free Press, 1964), p. 522.
4
Marcel, Volume I, p. 212.
5
Ibid., pp. 218-9.
6
Volume II, p. vi.
7
Ibid., p. 86.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

MacIntyre, "Existentialism," in A Critical History of Western Philosophy. Edited by D.J.

O'Connor. New York: The Free Press, 1964.

Marcel, Gabriel. The Mystery of Being. Volume I: Reflection and Mystery. London: The
Harvill Press, 1950.

Marcel, Gabriel. The Mystery of Being. Volume II: Faith and Reality. London: The
Harvill Press, 1951.

Copyright© 2001 Alex Scott

http://www.angelfire.com/md2/timewarp/marcel.html
26 January 2011