Gabriel Marcel

French Christian existentialist philosopher (1889–1973); author of Métaphysical Journal (1927), Être et avoir (1935; English: Being and Having 1949), Du refus à l'invocation (1940), Le Mystère de l'être (1951). One of the early-MP's principal thematic sources (alongside max-scheler and Husserl) for the body-as-being thesis. MP's 1936 review of Être et avoir is reprinted as Chapter 8 of *Texts and Dialogues*; MP discusses Marcel's place in 1930s French philosophy in the 1959 Maison Canadienne lecture The Philosophy of Existence (Chapter 14).

Key Points

  • Marcel's Embodiment as central given of metaphysics (Being and Having p. 11–12): "Embodiment, the central given of metaphysics . . . is the given on the basis of which a fact is possible (which is not true of the Cogito)." This is the formula MP cites at the centre of his 1936 review and which underwrites his earliest articulation of body-as-being against Cogito-as-foundation.
  • MP's 1936 review of Être et avoir: extracts and develops Marcel's distinctions of being vs having, mystery vs problem, and the body-as-mine-not-as-object. MP argues that Marcel's first essays (1927 Métaphysical Journal) "spoke in protest" against the spectator-position of classical philosophy; the more recent works (Being and Having) generalize this protest into a new method — phenomenology, in which the distinction between existence and objectivity is not two contents of thought but two regions of being.
  • MP's qualifications of Marcel: (a) Marcel's philosophy "lacks binding force" — it offers no criterion to distinguish authentic intuition from "pseudo-intuition." (b) Without a dialectic (which Marcel does sketch as "hyper-phenomenological method"), the philosophy remains "suggestions" / "propositions" rather than theses. (c) The distinction between problem and mystery is methodologically generative but ontologically loose — Marcel never specifies how the philosopher moves from inadequate to more adequate intuition.
  • Marcel's place in MP's 1959 reconstruction (Maison Canadienne lecture): MP locates Marcel as one of the 1930–39 "philosophers of existence" (alongside Husserl, Jaspers, Heidegger) whose central theme — incarnation — emerged in the 1930s as the alternative to Brunschvicg's neo-Kantian idealism (Sorbonne) and Bergson's marginalized vitalism (Collège de France). MP credits Marcel's mystery vs problem distinction as "a new style of thinking" that prepared the ground for Sartrean existentialism (1944–45).
  • Marcel as anchor of MP's body-as-being thesis 1936: "I and [my body] form a common cause, and in a sense I am my body" — this 1936 formulation, mediated by Marcel, is the earliest printed MP statement of the body-as-not-object thesis that PhP (1945) will systematize and V&I (1968) will radicalize. The 1936 review predates motor-intentionality (1945) by 9 years and the late ontology of chiasm by 24 years.
  • Marcel's later turn to "religious" register: MP's 1959 Maison Canadienne lecture notes that Marcel's "mystery of being" is "strictly speaking religious" in inflection — Sartre's nothingness-mystery would later become "limpid" (less religious) by contrast.

Connections

  • was reviewed by MP in 1936 — Chapter 8 of merleau-ponty-1992-texts-and-dialogues; the 1936 review is the earliest printed attestation of MP's body-as-being thesis
  • is the cardinal anchor for MP's pre-PhP articulation of motor-intentionality / body-as-being
  • contrasts with Sartre's nothingness-as-mystery — MP 1959 Maison Canadienne reads Marcel's religious mystery as more committed than Sartre's limpid mystery, but both remain within a "two-entities-face-to-face" framework MP will later overcome
  • appears alongside max-scheler as 1930s phenomenology-existentialism — the two together are MP's earliest review-format engagements with phenomenology
  • is named alongside Husserl, Jaspers, Heidegger as "philosopher of existence" by MP's 1959 reconstruction

Sources

  • merleau-ponty-1992-texts-and-dialogues — Chapter 8 ("Being and Having," 1936; original "Être et avoir" La Vie intellectuelle 45 [1936]), pp. 125–31. Translation by Michael B. Smith. Chapter 14 ("The Philosophy of Existence," 1959; Maison Canadienne radio lecture), pp. 153–58 — MP's retrospective account of Marcel's place in 1930s French philosophy.
  • Marcel, Being and Having: An Existential Diary (trans. Katherine Farrer, Peter Smith 1976) — MP's primary source.
  • Marcel, Metaphysical Journal (trans. Bernard Wall, Henry Regnery 1950) — MP's secondary source.