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Note
This page was added December 2004, to indicate my future
plans for the Existential Primer. Please know that this page may be delayed
while I address the primary pages of the primer. I consider
it important to complete pages on Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Sartre, and Camus
before expanding further.
Introduction
Most noted within existentialism for his disputes
with Jean-Paul Sartre, Gabriel
Marcel was a gifted essayist and playwright, specializing in matters
of faith and morality. Marcel is generally considered a “Christian
existentialist” due to his Catholicism and the influence of Soren
Kierkegaard on his philosophy.
Biography
Gabriel Marcel was born 7 December 1889 in Paris to
Henri and Laure (Meyer) Marcel.
His father was a civil servant. Due to the nature of European politics
of the time, it is important to note Marcel’s mother was Jewish. This
link to the Jewish faith and traditions would influence Marcel’s understanding
of human cruelty.
In approximately 1894, Marcel’s mother died. Marcel
was four years old. Marcel’s father was generally secular, probably agnostic.
Henri never discussed Laure’s death with their son. In fact, Henri did
not permit discussions of religion in the household. Marcel later suggested
that the lack of religion in his father’s house is why it became a personal
fascination for Marcel.
The French government dispatched Marcel’s father to Sweden in 1898.
Marcel spent only a few years in Sweden, deciding to pursue his education in France.
Marcel reccived his doctorate in philosophy from the Sorbonne in 1910.
His studies were influenced by Bergson and F. H. Bradley. (I admit to
being unfamiliar with both.)
Some form of health problem led Marcel to relocate to
Switzerland in 1912. It seems to have been common to seek care and rest
at various spas and health clinics at that time. While resting physically,
Marcel began writing Journal Métaphysique, which was
later published in 1927.
World War I
During World War I, Marcel served with the Red Cross. WWI is sometimes
described as worse than World War II. New technologies and horrific weapons
left battlefields barren of all life. These images influenced Marcel,
and most other European writers.
Marcel became obsessed with issues of death and immortality.
He wondered what happened to the essense of men killed in battle. As a
liaison officer for the Red Cross, Marcel was called upon to comfort
the relatives of missing, captured, or killed soldiers. Notifying families
that their loved ones had been killed in action deeply affected Marcel.
While with the Red Cross, Marcel began his first play, Le Soleil
invisible (“The invisible sun”). Marcel would write more than
20 plays during his life.
Between the Wars
Some biographers suggest that Marcel
introduced the works of Kierkegaard to France
in a 1925 in an essay published by Revue de Metaphysique. For Marcel,
Kierkegaard seemed to be writing about the anxieties experienced by all individuals.
Searching for meaning, and thinking about Kierkegaard, Marcel attended Protestant
services.
Christian Existentialist
Marcel joined the ranks of “Christian existentialists”
while working as the drama critic for L’Europe nouvelle.
Following a favorable review of a work by François Mauriac, Marcel received
a note from the author. “Why are you not one of us?” Mauriac asked.
Marcel joined the Catholic Church in 1929, at the age
of 39, and would remain a defender of faith until his death. His deeply
held religious beliefs would later conflict with trends among the French
Left.
While the French Left was embracing atheism and Marxist
ideals, Marcel was developing a different view of freedom. For Marcel,
freedom was demonstrated by a respect for and love of other individuals.
The truly free would undertand the rights of all men had to be defended
to deserve personal freedom.
World War II
Gabriel Marcel interviewed many French victims of Nazi
Concentration Camps following World War II and wrote several works based
on these interviews.
Post-War
Marcel died of a heart attack in 1973.
Chronology
| 1889 December 7 |
Born in Paris, France |
| 1894 |
Mother dies |
| 1898 |
Father made ambassador or “French representative” to Sweden |
| 1910 |
Doctorate from the Sorbonne |
| 1912 |
Moves to Switzerland, begins writing Journal Métaphysique |
| 1923 – 1941 |
Works as a “reader” (editorial post) at Grasset and Plon Publishers. |
| 1929 |
Conversion to Catholicism. |
| 1945 – 1973 |
Drama and music critic for Nouvelles Litteraires. |
| 1973 October 8 |
Dies of a heart attack in Paris. |
Works
- Journal métaphysique, 1927
- Rome n’est plus dans Rome, Play: 1951
- Être et avoir, 1935 (Being and Having,
1949)
- Présence et immortalité, 1959
- Le Mystère de l’être, 1950 (The Mystery
of Being, 1951)
- Homo Viator, 1945 (English, 1951)
- Les Hommes contre l’humain, 1951 (Man Against
[Mass] Society, 1952)
- Le Déclin de la sagesse, 1954 (The Decline
of Wisdom, 1954)
Commentaries
Gabriel Marcel offers a bridge between the atheistic existentialism
of Jean-Paul Sartre and the theism of Søren
Kierkegaard. As a proponent of existentialism and phenomenology,
Marcel argued for a rejection of philosophical systems that claimed abstract
truths were of primary importance. In Marcel’s view, philosophy needed
to emphasize lived experience: a phenomenological approach. Marcel considered
his approach a “concrete” philosophy.
Marcel’s texts and plays are not rigidly organized
philosophical works. Instead of presenting a systematic philosophy, most
of the texts are journals and transcripts of talks. As a playwright,
Marcel’s works were often too meandering. His desire to create philosophical
plays meant his works did not appeal to a wide audience. The topic of
social alienation was not one on which post-war Europeans wished to dwell.
Alienation for Marcel was not a given state of existence.
The characters in his plays might fear being alone, or find themselves
experiencing anxiety brought on by social changes, but there is the hope
of connecting with other individuals. Love and friendship become part
of authentic existence, not acts of bad faith or old-fashioned notions
no longer valid in post-war Europe. For Marcel, the state of the world
during his life was all the more reason to seek connections.
Faith and Existentialism
Like Rollo May, another Christian existentialist,
Marcel was concerned with the “dehumanization” of individuals in twentieth-century
society. Marcel wanted his philosophical and literary works to stand
as studies of this alienation. For Marcel, philosophy and religion were
both concerned with the means by which individuals could overcome alienation
and the
absurdity of life in order to live an authentic, meaningful existence.
Because existentialism was popularized by the charismatic Sartre,
many associate the term with atheism and Marxism. However, Marcel was
not an atheist, nor was his philosophy as dark as most associated with
existentialism. Marcel considerd himself a “Socratic Christian” in the
tradition of St. Augustine and other Christian philosophers. There is an
optimism with Marcel’s works, focused not on the dread and anxiety of
Kierkegaard, but rather on the hope offered
by Jesus Christ. (As an agnostic individual, I believe once can be optimistic
with a faith in mankind — though such a faith is always being tried by
the state of our world.) As a passionate convert to Catholicism, Marcel
sought to connect his philosophical beliefs to his faith.
Like Kierkegaard, Marcel
was not concerned with proving the existence or nature of God. For Marcel,
faith was a lived experience that defied explanation. Instead of aiming
to win converts to Christianity, Marcel sought to explore the relationships
between people, as well as between the individual and modernity. Through
relationships a person might come to understand God and existence, Marcel
suggested.
Marcel was conerned that modern life, and a near-religious
embrace of technology, was leading to the denial of God’s existence.
Without a belief in God there is no hope — life is meaningless, according
to Marcel and other theists. Like others concerned with the influence
of technology, Marcel feared that technology and science were defining
life in terms of human function: workers are simply the operators of
technology, devoid of any other value. In modern nations, workers were
becoming objects, without dignity. This is the existence of the factory
worker, for example, regardless of political system. The value of the
person is not how he or she relates to others and God, but how well machinery
is operated.
In Marcel’s model, the human-God relationship leads
to better human-human relationships. This put Marcel at odds with Sartre and
other leading French leftists. The Soviet Union demanded atheism; the
state was supreme — not the individual and certainly not God.
Bibliography
Cain, Seymour; Gabriel Marcel (Regnery, 1979)
Cain, Seymour; Gabriel Marcel's Theory of Religious Experience (P.
Lang, 1995)
Gallagher, Kenneth T.; The Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel (Fordham University
Press, 1975)
Grene, Marjorie; Introduction to Existentialism (University
of Chicago Press, 1959)
Konickal, Joseph; Being and My Being: Gabriel Marcel's Metaphysics
of Incarnation (P. Lang, 1992)
Lapointe, Francois and Lapointe, Claire; Gabriel Marcel
and His Critics: An International Bibliography (Garland, 1977)
Lazaron, Hilda; Gabriel Marcel the Dramatist (Humanities,
1978)
Lescoe, Francis J.; Existentialism with or without God (Alba
House, 1973)
McCowan, Joe; Availability: Gabriel Marcel and the Phenomenology
of Human Openness (Scholars Press, 1978)
Moran, Denis P.; Gabriel Marcel: Existentialist Philosopher,
Dramatist, Educator (University Press of America, 1992)
Randall, Albert B.; The Mystery of Hope in the Philosophy of
Gabriel Marcel (Mellen Press, 1992)
Traub, Donald F.; Toward a Fraternal Society: A Study of Gabriel
Marcel's Approach to Being, Technology, and Intersubjectivity (P.
Lang, 1988)
Wall, Barbara; Love and Death in the Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel (University
Press of America, 1977)
Philosophy
Mailing List I established a loosely moderated mailing list
in 1996. The community is very active and its members tend to
know much more than I do. Collectively we are a better resource
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