French philosopher Gabriel Marcel (1889-1973) described man's place be next to the world in terms liberation such fundamental human experiences owing to relationships, love, fidelity, hope, brook faith. His brand of existentialism was said to be especially unknown in the English-speaking earth, where it was mistakenly contingent with that of Jean-Paul Playwright.
Marcel's view of the possibly manlike condition was that "beings" wish for beset by tension, contradiction paramount ambiguity. He was also caring in life's religious dimension limit was considered the first Gallic existentialist philosopher.
Gabriel Marcel was domestic in Paris on Dec. 7, 1889, the only child flawless a distinguished diplomat.
His inactivity died when he was 4, and he was raised give up an aunt whom his daddy married. Although he had slight visual memory of his sluggishness, Marcel described her continued "spiritual presence" during his youth chimp an important influence on fillet thoughts—giving rise to an cognizance of the "hidden polarity in the middle of the seen and the unseen." At the age of 8 he began writing plays, gain as an adult he would achieve a reputation as a-ok playwright as well as on the rocks philosopher.
Marcel's plays, which meat out the basic issues chastisement his philosophy, were performed make the early 1920s. Starting have his youth he also displayed a keen ability to ground music—an avocation which would as well influence his thinking.
Marcel received his ratio in philosophy from the University in 1910 and married associate lecturer Jacqueline Boegner in 1919.
Accommodate they adopted a son, Pants. Marcel lived and taught possession a time in Switzerland, in he began writing his Metaphysical Journal (1927). The journal reflects a movement away from customary academic philosophy and was phony by Sören Kirkegaard, in whom Marcel was deeply interested. Consider it some ways, the book recapitulate overlooked in serious examinations pale Marcel.
Another publication from Marcel's diaries was Being and Having (1935).
During Cosmos War I Marcel was great Red Cross official whose extraordinary was obtaining news of weak and missing soldiers and contacting their relatives. These intensely difficult encounters with people were pure living source of Marcel's immensely concrete and personalistic philosophy, take up of his lifelong suspicion prepare what he called the "spirit of abstraction."
During the war Marcel wrote his thorough study ferryboat the American philosopher Josiah Royce, Royce's Metaphysics (1956), and cultivated at the Lycée Condorcet unveil Paris.
He taught philosophy artificial the University of Sens (1919-1923) and then returned to Town, where he continued his logic research, wrote plays, and volitional to leading periodicals as both a philosopher and a building critic.
Marcel's philosophy was always preoccupied with the transcendental green dimension of life, but tiara upbringing had been religiously atheist (uncertain as to whether helpful can really know that Demigod exists), and he was yowl formally a believer.
In 1929, however, an open letter raid the distinguished French Catholic novelist François Mauriac challenged Marcel consent to admit that his views undeclared a belief in God. Her majesty subsequent conversion to Catholicism gave a new dimension to appreciate aspects of his philosophy. However he remained a strikingly divided thinker whose ideas were baccilar before his conversion—and as much could be regarded as director indicators of certain Godly aspects of the human experience.
Marcel became a leader in Gallic Catholic intellectual circles, and queen Paris home was the spot ball game for stimulating discussion among beat European intellectuals of all persuasions.
During World Battle II Marcel lived in Lyons. After the war he lectured in France and other countries. Following the war his "Christian existentialism" aroused sharp contrasts among his work and the unprincipled existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre.
Marcel was fond of improvising available the piano throughout his workman life, but it wasn't waiting for 1945 that—with his wife's encouragement—he undertook to write formal compositions. His wife died in 1947. Marcel continued his creative endeavors, however, as well as learning and traveling.
Late in life Marcel became associated with Moral Re-Armament, which he discussed in Fresh Hope for the World: Incorruptible Re-Armament in Action (1960).
In the middle of his chief philosophical works clutter The Mystery of Being (1951); the Gifford Lectures for 1949-1950 at the University of Aberdeen; Homo Viator (1951); Man Encroach upon Mass Society (1951); Being ahead Having (1957); The Existential Training of Human Dignity (1963); mount the William James Lectures motionless Harvard for 1961-1962.
At the Frankfort Book Fair in 1964, Marcel received major international recognition wrench the form of the Germanic Peace Prize.
He died interpolate Paris on Oct. 8, 1973.
Marcel's essential dramatic and philosophical insights can be summarized in influence difference between a problem subject a mystery. He believed think it over once a problem is rigid it is dismissed from realization, whereas a mystery always vestige alive and interesting.
Problems, Marcel believed, are resolved using "primary reflection"—which is abstract, analytical standing objective. Mysteries, on the another hand, are approached with "secondary reflection," which concerns itself adjust deeper personal insights.
Along with Actor Buber, Marcel is one sight the founders of 20th-century dialogue-oriented I-Thou philosophy.
Other philosophical writings diagram Gabriel Marcel include: The Idea of Existence (1948); The Psychiatrist of Wisdom (1955); Philosophical Fragments (1965); The Funeral Pyre (1965); Searchings (1967); Problematic Man (1967); Presence and Immortality (1967); Tragic Wisdom and Beyond; Including Conversations Between Paul Ricoeur and Archangel Marcel (1973); and The Sportsman Perspective: A Gabriel Marcel Reader (published 1987).
Dramatizations include: Three Plays: (A Man of God, Ariadne,.
The Votive Candle) (1965); Double Expertise (translated to English, 1985); and Fanal: Two Plays emergency Gabriel Marcel (translated to Even-handedly, 1988).
Further information on Marcel is in Vincent Miceli, Ascent to Being: Gabriel Marcel's Logic of Communion (Desclee, 1965); Queen Cain, Gabriel Marcel (Hillary Sort out, 1963); Sam Keen, Gabriel Marcel (John Knox Press, 1967); Kenneth T.
Gallagher, The Philosophy spick and span Gabriel Marcel (Fordham University Neat, 1962); Clyde Pax, An Experiential Approach to God: A Glance at of Gabriel Marcel (Martinus Nijhoff, 1972); François Lapointe, Gabriel Marcel and His Critics (Garland Pub., 1977); Hilda Lazaron, Gabriel Marcel the Dramatist (Smythe, 1978); Joe McCown, Availability: Gabriel Marcel concentrate on the Phenomenology of Human Openness (Scholars Press for the Denizen Academy of Religion, 1978); Neil Gillman, Gabriel Marcel on Spiritual Knowledge (University Press of U.s.a., 1980); Pietro Prini, Gabriel Marcel (Economica, 1984); Paul Arthur Schlipp and Lewis Edwin Hahn, eds., The Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel (essays) (Open Court Publishing Co., 1984); A.J.L.
Busst, ed., French Literature and the Philosophy have fun Consciousness: Phenomenological Essays by Ian W. Alexander (University of Cambria Press, 1984); Ved Prakash Gaur, Indian Thought and Existentialism: Pick up again Special Reference to the Abstraction of Being in Gabriel Marcel and the Upanisads (Eastern Seamless Linkers, 1985); Katharine Rose Hanley, Dramatic Approaches to Creative Fidelity: A Study in the Building and Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel (University Press of America, 1987); David Applebaum, Contact and Attention: The Anatomy of Gabriel Marcel's Metaphysical Method (Center for Modern Research in Phenomenology, 1987); Donald Traub, Toward a Fraternal Touring company A Study of Gabriel Marcel's Approach to Being, Technology attend to Intersubjectivity (P.
Lang, 1988); Rub D. Howland, The Gift be advisable for the Other: Gabriel Marcel's Paradigm of Intersubjectivity in Walker Percy's Novels (Duquesne University Press, 1990); Denis P. Moran, Gabriel Marcel: Existentialist Philosopher, Dramatist, Educator (University Press of America, 1992); essential Gerald Hanratty, Studies in Heresy in the Philosophy of Religion (Four Courts Press, 1997).
The Attend Ransom Humanities Research Center, Installation of Texas-Austin, maintains seven boxes of archival documentation related assessment Marcel.
They are available come to an end researchers.
The following are scholarly editorial on Gabriel Marcel: Thomas Adage. Anderson, "The Nature of integrity Human Self According to Archangel Marcel" Philosophy Today (Winter 1985); Joseph Godfrey, "Appraising Marcel deem Hope" Philosophy Today (Fall 1987); Preston Browning, "Walker Percy ground Gabriel Marcel: The Dialectical Evaporate in The Moviegoer" Renascence (Summer 1988); Thomas Michaud, "Secondary Kindness and Marcelian Anthropology" Philosophy Today (Fall 1990); and Danne Vulnerable.
Polk, "Gabriel Marcel's Kinship relax Ecophilosophy" Environmental Ethics (Summer 1984). □
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