[size=33]Gabriel (-Honoré) Marcel[/size]
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.
[size=30]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, Simone de Beauvoir, Nicolas Berdyaev and Jean-Paul Sartre were among the many noted philosophers who attended these gatherings at one time or another. These informal meetings 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 and monographs. 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).
Marcel was consistently critical of Cartesianism, especially the epistemological problems with which Cartesianism is mainly concerned (such as the problem of skepticism). Like many of the existentialists, his critique was motivated by a rejection of that account of the nature of the self which was assumed in Descartes’ overall approach to the question of knowledge, and how the mind comes to know reality. The Cartesian picture of the self assumes that the self is a discrete entity with a neatly defined “inside” and “outside,” so that our ideas, which are “inside,” can be fully understood without reference to the world, which is “outside.” “Cartesianism implies a severance . . . between intellect and life; its result is a depreciation of the one, and an exaltation of the other, both arbitrary” (Marcel, 1949, p. 170). Marcel agreed with other thinkers in the existentialist tradition, such as Heidegger, that the Cartesian view of the self is not
ontologically basic for the human subject because it is not a presentation of how the self actually is. Part of Marcel’s task is to try to reveal phenomenologically the true nature of the subject, which will have implications for many philosophical issues, including those relating to the nature of knowledge. However, on the issue of the true nature of the subject, Marcel differs from both Heidegger and Sartre; indeed, his views are closer to those of Jewish philosopher, Martin Buber, than they are to many of the existentialists.
[size=30]2. The Broken World and the Functional Person[/size]
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. Obviously, we cannot turn back the clock with regard to technological progress, and Marcel acknowledges that technology is not necessarily detrimental to the life of the spirit; nevertheless, it often is, because: “does not the invasion of our life by techniques today tend to substitute satisfaction at a material level for spiritual joy, dissatisfaction at a material level for spiritual disquiet?” (Marcel 1985, p. 57).[/size]
Gabriel (-Honoré) Marcel
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