Gabriel Marcel
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Gabriel Honoré Marcel (December 7, 1889 Paris – October 8, 1973 Paris) was a French philosopher, a leading Christian existentialist, and the author of about 30 plays.
Marcel obtained the agregation in philosophy in 1910, at the unusually early 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. Gentle, flexible, and good natured, Marcel was opposed to anti-Semitism and supported reaching out to nonCatholics.
Marcel is believed to have coined the word existentialism[citation needed] some time after the First World War, while he was still an atheist. He is often classified as one of the earliest existentialists, although he dreaded being put in the same category as the atheistic Jean-Paul Sartre; Marcel came to prefer the label "neo-Socratic". Sartre emphasized people's ability to create themselves with freedom and autonomy, which Marcel viewed as mistaken. He instead taught that the goal of life is true communion with God, which meant opposing both modern materialism and a technologically driven society. Marcel argued that scientific thought had squeezed the life out of human experience, by replacing the "mystery" of being with a false scenario of human life composed of "problems" and "solutions."
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. Camus and Sartre were far more successful in translating their philosophical concerns into appealing literature.
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, 1961-62, published as The Existential Background of Human Dignity.
[edit] Books by Marcel in English translation
*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. Edna Craufurd, trans. Harper & Row.
- 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.
- 1995. The Philosophy of Existentialism. Manya Harari, trans. New York: Carol Publishing Group.
[edit] External links
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Gabriel (-Honoré) Marcel -- by Brian Treanor.
- The Gabriel Marcel Society
