Gabriel Marcel's Ethics of Hope: Evil, God and Virtue

Gabriel Marcel’s Ethics of Hope Continuum Studies in Continental Philosophy Continuum Studies in Continental Philosop...

Author: Jill Graper Hernandez

418 downloads 1779 Views 433KB Size Report

This content was uploaded by our users and we assume good faith they have the permission to share this book. If you own the copyright to this book and it is wrongfully on our website, we offer a simple DMCA procedure to remove your content from our site. Start by pressing the button below!
Report copyright / DMCA form

DOWNLOAD PDF

Gabriel Marcel’s Ethics of Hope

Continuum Studies in Continental Philosophy Continuum Studies in Continental Philosophy is a major monograph series from Continuum. The series features first-class scholarly research monographs across the field of Continental philosophy. Each work makes a major contribution to the field of philosophical research. Adorno’s Concept of Life, Alastair Morgan Art and Institution, Rajiv Kaushik Being and Number in Heidegger’s Thought, Michael Roubach Badiou, Marion and St Paul, Adam Miller Deleuze and Guattari, Fadi Abou-Rihan Deleuze and the Genesis of Representation, Joe Hughes Deleuze and the Unconscious, Christian Kerslake Deleuze, Guattari and the Production of the New, edited by Simon O’Sullivan and Stephen Zepke Derrida, Simon Morgan Wortham Derrida and Disinterest, Sean Gaston Derrida: Profanations, Patrick O’Connor Encountering Derrida, edited by Simon Morgan Wortham and Allison Weiner The Domestication of Derrida, Lorenzo Fabbri Foucault’s Heidegger, Timothy Rayner Gadamer and the Question of the Divine, Walter Lammi Heidegger and a Metaphysics of Feeling, Sharin N. Elkholy Heidegger and Aristotle, Michael Bowler Heidegger and Logic, Greg Shirley Heidegger and Philosophical Atheology, Peter S. Dillard Heidegger Beyond Deconstruction, Michael Lewis Heidegger, Politics and Climate Change, Ruth Irwin Heidegger’s Early Philosophy, James Luchte Kant, Deleuze and Architectonics, Edward Willatt Levinas and Camus, Tal Sessler Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology, Kirk M. Besmer The Movement of Nihilism, edited by Laurence Paul Hemming, Kostas Amiridis and Bogdan Costea Nietzsche’s Ethical Theory, Craig Dove Nietzsche, Nihilism and the Philosophy of the Future, edited by Jeffrey Metzger Philosophical Hermeneutics in Relation, Paul Fairfield Place, Commonality and Judgment, Andrew Benjamin Sartre’s Phenomenology, David Reisman Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, edited by James Luchte Time and Becoming in Nietzsche’s Thought, Robin Small The Philosophy of Exaggeration, Alexander Garcia Düttmann Who’s Afraid of Deleuze and Guattari? Gregg Lambert Žižek and Heidegger, Thomas Brockelman

Gabriel Marcel’s Ethics of Hope Evil, God and Virtue

Jill Graper Hernandez

Continuum International Publishing Group The Tower Building 80 Maiden Lane 11 York Road Suite 704 London SE1 7NX New York, NY 10038 © Jill Graper Hernandez, 2011 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. EISBN: 978-1-4411-9860-0 Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data Graper Hernandez, Jill. Gabriel Marcel’s Ethics of Hope: evil, God, and virtue / Jill Graper Hernandez. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4411-9627-9 1. Marcel, Gabriel, 1889-1973. 2. Existential ethics. I. Title. B2430.M254G73 2011 171’.2--dc22 2011008055

Typeset by Newgen Imaging Systems Pvt Ltd, Chennai, India Printed and bound in Great Britain

This book is dedicated to Dr. John J. McDermott, teacher, and as always, this is for my family: Gustavo, Allie, Sofie. May we bring hope to each other during this journey.

Contents

Citing Marcel

viii

Acknowledgments

x

Introduction

1

Chapter 1 Evil and the Problematic Man

4

Chapter 2 The Problem of Evil: the Death of God and an Ethics of Hope

28

Chapter 3 The Ethical Life

58

Chapter 4 Ethics in Personal Crisis

74

Chapter 5 Ethics in Global Crisis

104

Notes

138

Bibliography

146

Index

150

Citing Marcel

There are two main sources of primary texts that I drew upon for this book: new, heretofore unpublished material from the Harry Ransom Center’s Gabriel Marcel Collection, and already published classics in Marcelian scholarship. The materials in the Gabriel Marcel Collection are truly a treasure, but they are currently quite a ménage of signed and unsigned work: handwritten notes by Marcel, handwritten and printed correspondence, newspaper editorials written by Marcel, critical essays of Marcel’s dramatic pieces, synopses of his lectures, some philosophical criticism of Marcel, as well as printed interviews with Marcel. (I found it to be true and disappointing that, except for the “Couers de Bergson” notebook, Marcel’s own diaries and philosophical notes are nearly illegible, and it is certainly true that the older he became, the more difficult his handwriting became. That said, there is a good amount that might become more available, in the Marcelian sense, if someone were to dedicate a long period of time to deciphering his hand.) For citation purposes, I chose to reference the Collection materials starting with the box number, followed by the file folder number, then with a description of the article, along with the author and date (if given). So, the following: Box 6.12. «Existentialisme Chretian: Gabriel Marcel» 1947, Henri de la Marche, La Crain would indicate that «Christian Existentialism : Gabriel Marcel » was a newspaper article in the paper La Crain, written by Henri de la Marche sometime in 1947, and would be found in main box six, folder 12. (Please note that all translations are mine, except when indicated.)

Citing Marcel

ix

As for the main primary sources for Marcel, I employ the following abbreviations throughout the book: BH = Being and Having CF = Creative Fidelity HV = Homo Viator: Introduction to a Metaphysics of Hope Vol. I = The Mystery of Being, volume I: Reflection and Mystery Vol. II = The Mystery of Being, volume II: Faith and Reality PE = Philosophy of Existentialism PI = Presence and Immortality, published with the Metaphysical Journal, 1938–1943 PM = Problematic Man TW = Tragic Wisdom and Beyond

Acknowledgments

This book would not have been possible without the Faculty Research Development Leave afforded to me by the College of Liberal and Fine Arts and the Department of Philosophy and Classics at the University of Texas at San Antonio during Fall 2010. Special thanks to Dean Daniel Gelo and Dr. Michael Almeida for their continued support of my research. Terri Gerondale provided me with her normal stellar administrative help before, during, and after the leave. Additionally, the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin gave me unlimited access to their special holdings and the Gabriel Marcel Collection there. The research librarians at the Hazel H. Ransom Reading Room, as well as Margaret Tufts Tenneys; and the French Collections staff, Elizabeth Garver and Richard Workman, were especially helpful. Dr. John J. McDermott planted the seeds for this book a decade ago, and he has been an avid supporter of the project since I first approached him with a “What do you think?” note in Spring 2009. An early version of Chapter 4 was presented at a colloquium at Texas A&M University in 2009, and I am grateful to have had the opportunity to have ongoing dialogue with faculty there about the themes in this book. Early editorial assistance was provided by Thomas P. Newman. Dr. Kristie Dotson, Dr. Sue Whatley , and Dan Whatley have parlayed with me on topics within this book throughout its development. Erin K. Carter evaluated a more finished proposal of the book, and helped me work through important ideas. Dr. Brendan Sweetman, Professor of Philosophy at Rockhurst College and President of the Gabriel Marcel Society provided extensive and thought-provoking comments during the review period for Continuum. All of these

Acknowledgements

xi

people have also seen me through this process with encouragement and suggestions. Thank you! Finally, Gustavo endured countless repeat viewings of Monsters, Inc. while keeping Allie and Sofie occupied and altogether distracted so that I could finish this project. The three of you are my life!

Introduction

“Gabriel Marcel is the prime example of the human being he is talking about, who is not content to merely ‘live’ but who also wants to ‘exist’, which is to say, to ‘go beyond himself’, to exceed this pure present in which he is never completed, but only engaged.” Box 6.12 «Un Existentialisme Chrétien: Gabriel Marcel» by Roger Cample, Construire, Zurich, le 9 aout, 1947, #36, p. 5. Amid the contemporary landscape of war, economic turmoil, and the increased dependence on technological innovation, the resurgence of philosophical interest in the work of existentialist Gabriel Marcel should come with little surprise. Marcel’s body of work, after all, suggests that a meaningful life can emerge out of a broken, objectified world. The door to new analyses of Marcel’s philosophy has been opened only recently, especially as monographs about Marcel’s metaphysics and epistemology have met with success even in the last 3 years.1 In spite of the growing cache of scholarship on Marcel, however, expansive and important applications of Marcel’s thought have not been made in the area of ethics—even though Marcel argued that his philosophy was fundamentally normative, since it is only through an ethics of hope that evil (which for Marcel is always tied to our despair over the limits of the body) can be overcome.2 This book responds to the need for an existentialist ethics based on Marcel’s philosophy of presence—and even more, it shows that Marcel’s theoretical ethics are relevant to contemporary analytic ethics. In other scholarship3 I argue that Marcel grounds meaningful existence ontologically, so that interpersonal connections with others (especially those who also seek to overcome the despair that comes with being most definitively a body—a body which ultimately will perish) can lead us through existential anguish. This book uses Marcel’s

2


ontology as a framework from which to understand his ethical work. Recent interest in Marcel’s thought has rebounded in no small part due to the practical applications of many of Marcel’s philosophical views. On the basis of those applications, this book argues that Marcel’s existentialism is essentially moral and that today’s reader of Marcel can (and should) resonate with his belief that the existential experience of pain can be transcended through a philosophy of hope in difficult times. This book also uses—for the first time in any published work— research from the Gabriel Marcel Collection held at the University of Texas Harry Ransom Center. (Please see the bibliographic note for how I cite these unpublished resources.) These unique materials inform my book: his political writing, including that for the Moral Rearmament movement, in which he argued that a restoration of human value is the key to solving political crises; his dramatic works, which demonstrate that the basic, deepest needs of humanity are common to all people; and his social commentary, which warned against the inability of technology to replace true relational community. If Marcel’s existentialism is primarily normative, the outlook changes for his philosophy and for the role existentialism can play in the world today, both in relevance and its pragmatic implications. Marcel’s work, then, emerges as a bridge between existential and analytic ethics. Theoretically, whereas analytic ethics struggles to establish the efficacy of moral behavior in the relational tie between subjects,4 the key feature of Marcel’s existentialist ethics is that another person’s perspective functions as the basis of moral decision making. Pragmatically, Marcel’s moral theory makes significant points of contact with current work in global welfarism and a feminist ethics of care. Even the most noted proponents of welfarism—which argues that public action is morally necessary to fight global crises—point out that analytic philosophy struggles to show that individuals are obligated morally to address global needs.5 This book argues that problems which are endemic to the human condition morally constrain all people—a view consistent with Sen’s welfarism, and that resonates with Noddings’ feminist ethics of care, in which ethics is posited as a relationship between the one caring and the one cared

Introduction

3

for, so that social ills are irresolvable unless ethics is grounded in social care.6 If socio-political policies reflect the experience that people are by nature capable of conceiving values on the basis of their dependence on others, and of acting in conformity to those values, the very notion of ‘hope’ (which has been used so powerfully recently in American politics) changes. ‘Hope’ need not be equated with optimism, which may not be pragmatically available, but instead with possibilities for flourishing. ‘Hope’ as a moral predicate pertains to one’s awareness of her possibilities, which are inextricably tied to the connections created and maintained with others.7 An existential ethics, like that offered by Marcel, complements analytic ethics and the practical goals of global welfarism and an ethics of care by providing a moral basis for this hope. Marcel’s philosophy is, at its heart, existentialist since he regards isolated existence to be fundamentally meaningless. Meaning can, however, be created. If relationships grow out of shared experiences between people who are vulnerable with each other, the individuals involved in those relationships can live effective, free, and creative lives. This goal is at its root moral, since it is not an abstract ideal, but a process by which hope can be obtained. A holistic existentialism, then, must explain the sustainability of meaning through devastating pain, suffering, and feelings of abandonment. An ethics of hope can function as an alternative to isolation, dread, and anguish offered by most existentialists, while it creates a space for individuals working toward intersubjective relationships.

Chapter 1

Evil and the Problematic Man

There is a strange inner mutation spreading throughout humanity. People are being shut out of meaningful existence by reducing who they are to what they can do, or the functions they can perform. This metamorphosis begins when a person realizes that she is a contingent being whose existence depends upon factors outside of the self. She thinks of her self only in terms of her own physical existence in the universe and soon she believes that what it means to be is a problem that can solved, just like any other mechanical difficulty. She invariably shuts meaningful experiences out of her life by reducing everything in life down to the fact of problematic existence. This person recognizes that, at root, she is an existing thing, but she feels compelled to somehow prove that her life has significance beyond mere existence. So, she begins to believe that the things she surrounds herself with can make her life more meaningful or valuable. This is the life of Marcel’s “problematic man.” The problematic man lives in a ghostly state of quandary caused by a desire to possess rather than to be. The problematic man believes that material possessions are what give meaning to life and this belief leads those who share it to become adept at self-identifying through either their possessions or professions. The mutation develops from there, when the problematic man believes that life can actually be defined through these avenues, so that a life that is worth living can only be gained through appropriating more material things. This process culminates in the experience an individual has when she can only understand herself as a problem to be answered—when asked who she is, this person can only respond by enumerating all of the possessions she owns or the professions she engages in.


5

Chapter 1 introduces Marcel’s notion of the problematic, explores the problematic man’s commitment to materialism, and suggests that this commitment is the source of moral evil in the world, on Marcel’s view. The belief that material things matter causes people to view others as valuable only for the functions they can perform, and to seek out a life surrounded by things, rather than meaning. We become slaves to objects, and our slavery eats away at our ability to be moral agents. Since we believe that a better world can only be had by obtaining more things, we lose all hope for a better world. This loss of hope decays the human propensity for good actions just as it leads to a devaluation of humanity. And, if our propensity for good actions helps determine whether we can be virtuous, and so whether we can be moral, the hold materialism has on the problematic man has a determinate, negative impact on the moral life.

The Problematic Man Marcel recognizes that the question of the problematic man is really a problem regarding a problem—there are certain conditions under which humans become a problem for themselves. The image Marcel uses is that of a person who looks in the mirror and can no longer recognize the face that looks back, except that the problem of recognition is internal. The problematic man becomes separated from who he most importantly and essentially is. This internal divorce of the self from the self is not just an indication that the person is problematic (a person for whom existence is a problem to be solved), but it is also truly an existential problem (or difficulty). With Marcel’s use of the term “problem” to represent the existential subject, he invokes the Greek πρόβλημα, which connotes something that blocks my way and obstructs forward movement. Problems are placed in front of me so that, if I am going to face the problems in order to solve them, I have to uncover what it would mean to solve them, as well as find out what elements are relevant to solving them. But reducing the significance of human existence in the universe to the realm of the problem is doomed to failure, for Marcel, because meaningful existence is unsolvable.

6


When man begins to become a problem for himself, the problematic man defines the self either by the possessions he has or the profession he engages in. This definition is synthetic, however, because it is an artificial attempt at injecting meaning in life through a venue that is outside of one’s control. This person makes the mistake of believing that life can have existential significance through venues that are not tied to our existence as human beings. By raising objects to the level of what is existentially meaningful, the problematic man can classify, systematize, order and so, he believes—exert control over what constitutes his identity. He does not realize that when he treats his identity as an object, he separates himself from meaningful existence. The problematic man transforms from a human person to a thing that can only experience himself as an object, or a statement, or an answer: “I am X.” Placing what it means to be into an equation of data, input, and output marries the characteristics of the problematical (namely, fear and desire, which Marcel believes are inseparable) to our existential journey to address the significance of existence. The result is functionalized existence—misunderstanding our human existence as one of function. But, “like a lady too large in her corset,” the paramount importance of existence cannot be inserted into some matrix.1 The significance and nuance of existence is truncated by a systematic philosophical point of departure. Reality, instead, is complex. From this standpoint, when our existence as humans is ground down to a formula, solvable by some system, we will ultimately come to despair. Equations are insufficient to speak to the nature of human existence, which itself escapes the grasp of the problematic man (insofar as his grasp is limited to the world of objects and to this alone). Man becomes a question without answer, who continues to seek meaning at the source of the problem. At some point, however, we cannot continue to gain worth and significance from the broken perspective of the problematic. Instead, by defining who we are by what we have or what we do, we experience anxiety, or a sense of loss. We wonder at how we have gotten to this particular place in our lives, or what impact we have on the outside world, or what purpose we serve. Rather than working ourselves out of our quagmire, we become steeped in it. Marcel notes, “It seems to


7

me that anxiety is always an evil, since it is after all closed in upon itself, and at the same time it is in danger, as we have seen, of giving birth to a sort of sadistic delight . . . something like the manifestation of the need of self-punishment” (PM 143). To be anxious is to give in to our self-aggrandizing desire to wallow in a feeling of meaninglessness (especially because Marcel will come to conclude that meaningful existence is fully attainable).2 This is the predicament of the problematic man. Marcel does want to distance himself from those (like Heidegger) who place a primary emphasis on anxiety in a philosophy of existence.3 But, anxiety can play a role existentially for the problematic man. On the one hand, it is a cause of suffering. There is a “stifling impression of sadness produced by this functionalized world” which appears to mock the tolerance that people afford to their problematicity (PM 12). Marcel continues on to describe the situatedness of the problematic man: he experiences a “dull, intolerable unease” rooted in the feeling that this is all “some appalling mistake”; he is a person who finds himself in “an increasingly inhuman social order and an equally inhuman philosophy” but who is also dedicated to “life in a world centered on function” even though such a life is “empty” and “hollow” (PE 11–13). Although anxiety is a source of distress, it also can be revelatory once the problematic man is ready to merge out of the facticity and function that rule him. Anxiety does, for the reflective person, reveal someone’s actual situation. The moment that anxiety is faced, Marcel contends, the first step is taken to overcoming it so that the person can work toward authentic existence—an existence which can have as its purpose the virtue of hope (PM 14). At first blush, Marcel’s picture of the problematic man might be rejected as improperly describing the human condition. Is it the case, after all, that most people are so tied up by materialism that they become defined by it—especially to the degree that they end up forgetting the source of true meaning in the world, and the importance of human relationships? Marcel responds to these critics by arguing that there is probably no more dangerous illusion than that of imagining that some readjustment of social or institutional conditions

8

Gabriel Marcel’s Ethics of Hope could suffice of itself to appease a contemporary sense of disquiet which arises, in fact, from the very depths of man’s being. (MM 37)

The problem-as-obstacle of the problematic man is thoroughgoingly interwoven into the fabric of who we are as people existing in a materialistic world. The problematic man is the picture of the condition of today’s person. Many individuals simply do not have a proper grasp on what it means to be embodied, and so can only relate to themselves as mere objects, or as functions that play a small part in a mechanistic world. These individuals ultimately can neither be satisfied with who they are nor can they experience meaningful relationships with others. These individuals are empty and shrouded by the facticity and resultant boredom of life. Since all they know of the self is its physical existence in the universe, the question of what it means to be in that universe is a mere problem that can be answered by asserting that he exists. The problematic man is the one who invariably shuts meaningful experiences out of his life by reducing everything in his life down to the fact of existence. The plight of the problematic man is the timeless condition of humanity, for Marcel, and problematicity is something that every individual must come to terms with, if they are to develop ontologically and come into meaningful relations with those around them. But it is not true that the reason the problematic man best represents the human condition is that human nature is essentially and universally constituted to face existence as a problem. Instead, the reason the problematic man represents the human condition is because human condition depends upon the manner in which it is understood (MM 98), and the manner in which the human condition is understood in the contemporary world is through its functionality. Marcel elaborates: The human condition is, in fact, that it is not assimilable to some kind of objective and already existing structure which we have merely to uncover and explore . . . . But it is also becoming more obvious that when man seeks to understand his condition by using as his model the products of his own technical skills, he infinitely degrades himself and condemns himself to deny, that is, in the end,


9

to destroy, those deep and basic sentiments which for thousands of years have guided his conduct. Does not the proper function and dignity of philosophy consist in recognizing that this logic of negation and death, far from being obviously true, on the contrary bears witness against itself when confronted by a more enlightened exercise of reason, of a kind that has taken care not to break the ties that attach man’s reason to a wider protective reality, enveloping it on all sides? (MM 98–9) The problematic man has the option of continuing to define himself by the things he has, and often he does. The problematic man treats every encounter, person, or thing he deals with in the world as a fact, because facts can be categorized, systematized, and (ultimately) solved. Humanity-as-fact works to alienate the self, and to rob a person of freedom, because even the individual’s own existence in the world becomes bound up as a matter of facticity, so that all of the elements of individual significance are founded upon, and are dependent upon, the existing physical universe. The existing physical universe signifies the problematic man as an existent thing; in effect, I assert that “I am” because “I am in the physical world.” These seemingly banal statements become perverted into problems themselves, so that “I am” reduces to “I am an object, existing among other objects.” But if the self is understood in terms of objectivity (so, in terms of its value as an object, rather than as a subject), the impending issue of the death of the self also becomes the ultimate problem facing mankind. There is nothing like my own death, after all, to make me think of myself as a thing, since objects break down and disintegrate just as my body does. The anguish experienced as a result of facing one’s death is a vice that can exhaust the hope for future possibilities and thereby can paralyze a person from creatively acting.

Death and Unhope Death, Paul Ricoeur commented to Gabriel Marcel, is a true crisis which completely shatters all faith in existence and all certitude of

10


presence.4 The human condition, upon reaching the crisis of despair over death, often leads an individual to feel as though she is living in captivity. Ricoeur’s statement was a direct response to Marcel’s comment in Tragic Wisdom about the drastic negative existential impact of death on the individual: But in the midst of so many clouds, which somehow accumulate and descend from the unknown future to the depths of the problematic past, an invariable assurance remains—I will die . . . . This kind of possibility can invest my death with an obsessive and petrifying power. In this case there will be nothing left in my life that cannot be dried up by this presence of my death. I may even be stricken with vertigo and yield to the temptation of terminating this wait, this miserable respite whose duration remains unknown. In such a situation I am like someone condemned to death who, from one day to another and from one moment to the next, can see himself taken to the execution chamber. This possibility constitutes for me a metaproblematic of being no more which can degenerate into a systematic despair. (TW 126) The experiences which bring a person to a state of despair cause him to feel overcome with impatience, boredom, and distaste for his present existence. Suffering ultimately leads the individual to feel as though his situation is without exit. Indeed, Marcel defines despair as “the shock felt by the mind when it meets with ‘There is no more’” (BH 102). Upon reaching this point, the despairing individual, walled up within himself, finds that he is unable to establish any kind of relation that will allow him to transcend his pain to reach a sustaining reality. Without the possibility of a healing experience or supporting relationships, the suffering self dissolves into a state of dejection, which is deemed the opposite of hope. The inner desolation experienced by the dejected individual resembles a paralysis of life. She who lives in dejection often feels that her suffering will only be abolished when it is realized in her own death.5 Marcel argues that the dejected person’s wish to die simply corresponds with her present


11

state of living. In the following passage, Marcel elaborates on the evisceration of a hope for the future: Unhope, which is opposed to hope as fear is opposed to desire, is truly a death in life, a death anticipated. No problem is more important or more difficult than that of determining how to overcome it—for it seems to occur outside the zone of possible conflict, and in a zone of bleak desolation. It yawns before us as an abyss at certain moments and we are swallowed up by it as in a morass from which we do not possess the courage even of the most elementary kind to will our escape. (CW 55) Despair—left unhampered—causes an overwhelming detachment of the self from itself to the extent that the individual feels as though she is dead. It can even seem that, since death has such crucial existential significance it can provide a permanent invitation to despair (BH 110). The despair of the problematic man develops upon that first moment of childhood in which a person recognizes that she will die, despite not knowing the time or manner of her death. Marcel even considers the possibility that Spinoza was correct in his affirmation that we perceive and experience ourselves as immortal, even though, on Marcel’s view, our death is something we understand immediately (that is, without the aid of any other thing), and is not something that we infer (TW 127). How difficult it is to imagine our selves not existing, and yet, death is like an invisible vault hanging over us, shaking under the palpitations of our imminent exhaustion, and remaining over us as we advance underneath it—the ordinary, tangled, complex, tragic structure of our lives that is illumined at our death.6 Death is inevitable, irresistible and even unreasonable since dying requires a reason (“Why did she die? Was she sick? Old? Did she have a broken heart? Well, was she murdered?”), but no reason can be given as to why anyone’s death is imminent and necessary (TW 128). To search for significance in the face of death, the problematic man can make a “turn”. Rather than the metaphysical, epistemic, transcendental, Hegelian, pragmatic, or linguistic turns that came

12


before it, the problematic man has to take a relational turn—a turn toward another person and away from the self—if meaning can be found in the face of the self’s ultimate and imminent demise. It is not the case that Marcel wants to separate a person’s existential significance from the external world. On the contrary, for Marcel, the question of “Who am I?” cannot be separated from the ontological problem as a whole. It must be that if we look for significance personally, we also look for meaning ontologically, and the process of looking creates a problem. But a person’s individual significance in the world cannot, however, be quantifiable or solvable like an arithmetic problem. If life’s experiences could be explained like a problem, then the various techniques of science could explain the intricacies of life, since the purpose of science is invariably to solve problems. Being, according to Marcel, is not a problem to be solved. Rather, being is a mystery that certainly can be probed, but never fully answered. The distinction between problem and mystery is a major Marcelian contribution to ontological inquiry, and one that is of particular concern in his work Being and Having. In it,7 he describes a problem as something which can be completely met and solved, and as such is something that we can reduce or minimize. Problems can be defined precisely by applying a particular technique. Additionally, when we seek to answer problems we come across, the solutions we find become common property, or can be rediscovered by any person. A mystery, however, can only be thought of as something in which I find myself caught up, and whose essence is therefore not before me in its entirety. Mystery is “as a sphere where the distinction between what is in me and what is before me loses its meaning and its initial validity.” The sphere of mystery cannot be confused with unknowability, however, since unknowability is a limiting feature of a problem. Conversely, the recognition of mystery is a positive act of the mind which I slowly become aware of through a type of intuition that I possess without immediately knowing that I possess it. Just as the knowledge that I will die begins with a non-inferential knowing, a ‘mystery’ is also recognized immediately. I gain awareness of my intuition when, as in a mirror, the experiences I have illuminate and reflect it. Marcel does not mean to bring a vague literary floweriness to the discourse


13

on mystery; rather, the mystery of our being involves the active situation that we are concerned with—our experiences—and so, is one whose true nature can only be grasped, acknowledged, or recognized from the inside. The most mysterious aspect of our being is our propensity to love, and it is love that can foster hope because love attempts to transcend death. If I love you, I say to you particularly that you for me will never die, that I will not surrender to the betrayal of giving you up to death (HV 147). True friendship resides for Marcel between the bookends of birth and death and bears witness to the everyday mystery of living as though death will not erase from me the significance of your life. This movement toward making permanent your impact on my life is a testimony that your presence to me as one I love can never be diminished. Love is the aspect of Marcel’s thought that speaks most poignantly to those who have suffered through the death of a loved one. He writes that the real meaning of “to say that one loves a being” resides in saying, “Because I love you, because I affirm you as a being, there is something in you which can bridge the abyss that I vaguely call ‘Death’” (CF, 61–2). The intersubjective relationship, then, offers a quality of love to individuals which allows them to continue to be receptive to the experiences of another’s life, even if the other has already died. But the ability to love is only truly possible for someone who has overcome problematicity and the pattern of thinking of the self and others as objects. Most people cannot do this, and in fact, live with the fear of death so much that they use the unknowingness of death as an opportunity to slide into a life that is not truly living. The objectification of the self strips away meaning from our human existence, and so treats the mystery of being as a problem. But the mystery of being is actually meant, for Marcel, to be concrete. It is meant to signify the individual’s relationship with the world and the self through the body.

The Body and the Pull of Materialism The body is the vehicle through which we are able to perceive, and so the body creates the possibility for our experiences. To say that some-

14


thing exists is just to say that it is a thing that is connected to the body, even if indirectly. The existential judgments I make about the external world, outside of my body, will always be colored by the subjective relationship between my body and my self (BH 10). The body, for Marcel, is the bridge between the self and the other—between “egoism and altruism”8—it is the interaction between the pure sensation and the material, motional realm outside the body. To have a body, then, means that any meaningful existence must begin with the fact that I cannot be separated from my body. I am my body. This, for Marcel, is the one unavoidable existential claim. “The only existential indubitable is the self incarnate in a body and thereby manifest to the world.”9 To say that I am “manifest” to the world through my body is to say that my body is the means and medium by which I exist. Only through my body can I surmise the outside world and my relation to it. Further, I cannot come to an understanding of the ontological reality of myself—of who I am—without grasping the existential indubitable.10 The body is me and I am my body. As an existentialist, Marcel believes that our self-identity starts with the body. The existential indubitable allows me for the first time to have an awareness of my body and my tie to it. The existential journey is perilous, however. People can fall prey to treating their own bodies as objects, as machines for pleasure. But the body is more than its functions, and so is more than a merely material thing. Its ability to perceive is the foundation for our experiences, but who we are must be more than that, if the body is to be treated as more significant than just another material thing. An improper perspective of the body leads to an improper view of the self. Individuals who make it a life habit to objectify themselves do so as a result of a deeper underlying problem of not having a proper understanding of their bodies. Marcel’s existential indubitable is clear, but at the same time, it seems counter-intuitive to say either that I do not have my body, or that I have my body only in a qualified sense of the term “have.” On the one hand, I feel united to the body concentrically (or, as that which centers me and to which I always return), but on the other hand, I also imagine that my body is close at hand but also part of a world that is distinct from me and part of the world external to me. But, it cannot be forgotten that a body is also a history, which con-


15

tains the story of one’s body-among-bodies, or (more accurately), it is the outcome, the concrete manifestation of a history. I cannot therefore properly say that I have a body, at least not in the way that I might say, “I have brown eyes”, but the mysterious relation that unites me to my body is at the foundation of all my powers of having (BH 84). But the problematic man sees the body as an object that he has, a machine that allows him to move about (albeit, rather successfully) in the world. He has never realized that he is the body; rather, he always believes that he has the body. The distinction is crucial.11 To say, “I have my body,” implies a certain Cartesian dualism that erupts the unity Marcel thinks the body has with other bodies. Indeed, in order for the body to be a personal body (i.e., a body that a person can, at some moment, gain meaning through), it cannot be said to be something which the ego owns, or has.12 A further explanation of “having” is instructive here, for although Marcel is clear that existential significance (and so—as will be argued in this book—moral significance) cannot be obtained through any objectification of bodies, there are instances in which the body can be objectified. Anatomy and medical science, for example, must treat bodies as objects. But when scientific analyses of the body are used to describe general qualities of humans in an impersonal, universal way, then those analyses are not talking about “body” in the way that Marcel thinks of it. In the scientific sense, there is no “I” relating to the universal human body, and so there is also no self. If I am my body and I want to inquire into being, which is a philosophical mystery rather than a scientific problem, then I must recognize that I do not ‘have’ my body in the scientific, objective way. Philosophically, I can talk about my body as mine only on condition that I do not objectify it as a problem whose function I can separate and whose structure I can fully recognize. S. U. Zuidema summarizes Marcel’s philosophical sense of “having” effectively:13 The real man is the man who has nothing, and who, although he “has” a body, has this only in the sense of “being” this body. Anyone who “has” a body in any other sense is alienated from his own corporeality.

16


I am my body, and so am inextricably intertwined with it. The dependency of the self on the body does cause us to be swallowed up by what we own. The problematic man’s belief that he owns the body comes from the comfort he takes in the possessions he has. But, this belief erroneously causes the self to become incorporated in the thing possessed; not only that, but the problematic man comes to believe that the self is only there if possession is there too (BH 152). But the materialism that causes people to believe that the body is another thing to be owned actually ends up eroding freedom. Marcel writes: for a materialistic conception of the universe is radically incompatible with the idea of a free man: more precisely, that in a society ruled by materialistic principles, freedom is transmuted into its opposite, or becomes merely the most treacherous and deceptive of empty slogans. (MM 20) That a materialistic universe is incompatible with true freedom is not to say that all people who are swayed by materialism lose their freedom. Rather, Marcel argues that a contradiction is implied in the belief that it is possible for people to be free while at the same time they are driven by materialistic motives, since it puts people in a position of having to respond to urges that they cannot control. Even if a person actively pursues aa materialistic perspective, even if such a person wants to be objectified (though Marcel would deny any person could authentically want such a thing), this desire is akin to suicide. The existential death of the person comes when the self is relegated to the status of an object, since such an even renders (simply) no such thing left as the individual. To be a body, then, must be to experience the world through the body, to feel as a body. What is it, though, to feel? Certainly, Marcel would include as feelings all of the emotive aspects of our personality. (We must be careful here not to confuse our feelings with our selves. To be sure, we are our bodies, and our bodies feel, but it does not follow for Marcel that we are our feelings.) Also included in the realm of “feelings” would be sensations of the body. Marcel calls these types of feelings acts of feeling.14 Of course, by describing feelings (sensa-


17

tions, even) as “acts,” Marcel does not want to reduce the act of feeling to instrumental functionality, or as the body merely producing computations from a particular apparatus. In fact, it would be circular to reduce the body to its functions,15 because such a reduction requires that I first suppose that my body is a type of machine whose essence is to mechanistically perform. This supposition would result in the conclusion that when I have a sensation or feeling, I would be compelled to categorize any message (or here, feeling or sensation) from my body as some mechanistic output. (If my body is nothing but a machine, then, whenever I have a sensation, I would be unable to actually say what that sensation is, except that I sense it. The fact that I can give an account of my sensation on the basis of my sensing a thing indicates that my body is more than, even, a very complex machine.) The only recourse for those who think of their bodies at the level of object—for those whose conception of the human body is that of an apparatus or a mechanism for perception—is despair. The direct existential impact of reducing an individual’s value to his or her probable mechanistic output is an implication that there is no such thing as individual dignity.16 If members of humanity can aspire to be more than the reduction of their parts to simple machinery, if humanity can cross the intermediary between simple binary of egoism and altruism, individual selves must then be valued for something besides their ability to produce. Humans are part of the world of objects, though they do not belong entirely to the world of objects, and are far more valuable than it. But if given the opportunity, our natural disposition to possess, and then to overpower, will lead to an imprisonment to the realm of materialism and technicality. “To put it very concretely indeed,” Marcel writes: we have to proclaim that this life of ours, which it has now become technically possible to make into a hideous and grimacing parody of all our dreams, may in reality be only the most insignificant aspect of a grand process unfolding itself far beyond the boundaries of the visible world. (MM 22)

18


Marcel’s critique of the instrumentality, problematicity, and facticity of the body regarded as a machine was made possible, Paul Ricoeur suggested, because the body is the primary focus of existence for Marcel (rather than, say, language).17 Marcel’s critique gives new meaning to the phrase “care and maintenance” (used of machinery) by creating a canvas for the notion of bodies-as-subjects (rather than as objects). The materialistic conception of humanity builds the individual person on the model of a machine—on the model of a mere physical object—and it is through this tendency to treat man as a machine that the scope and purpose of materialism as a practical philosophy can be detected: A materialistic philosophy was able, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, to gain adherents among men of simple and at bottom idealistic temperament who believed that materialism was true, but who very seldom thought of drawing any practical corollaries from it about the treatment of human beings. (MM 95) This “materialistic” attitude toward human beings, this tendency to treat man as a machine, has often been that of individuals and sometimes of whole social classes, who believed that they accepted a spiritual and even a religious conception of the universe, but nevertheless continued to treat whole groups of their fellow beings as mere instruments, whose output was all that mattered. Roger Bollnow explains the difficulty of possession and the body in the problematic man: With reference to my body, I cannot say that I have it—if the word have is understood in the sense of possession—since I am much too closely bound up with it, nor can I say that I am simply identical with it. My relation to it fluctuates. In a condition of physical health, I can deal with my body with a certain matter-of-factness without becoming aware of the problematical character of my relation to it. But in the event of illness or of some other difficulty, such as meeting with an obstacle that must be overcome, it eludes my power of disposition and becomes a hindrance.18


19

Bollnow here essentially argues that I cannot have my body as a possession, because who I am is so closely related to it. But, this leads to confusion. If who I am is closely related to a particular possession, and my relation to that possession changes frequently, then who I am would actually fluctuate frequently. Marcel argues that a fundamental predicament is that I am or possess my body in such a way that, the only way I can identify with myself is to have a definable connection with it (BH 12).

Materialism and Moral Evil I have thus far been able to show the existential difficulty of the problematic man and his struggle with materialism, objectification, and death. But it is a further stretch to claim that the materialism of the problematic man is a moral evil. A critic, in fact, might argue that the problematic man merely suffers an epistemic problem that has metaphysical results. (So, the problematic man has a false belief that existential meaning can be gleaned from materialism, and this false belief leads the problematic man to objectify the self.) The critic misses, however, the moral import of the metaphysical travails of the problematic man. The self is objectified only through a process of a devaluation of the human person. The problematic man is willing to trade existential significance for hopelessness and anguish, which are the ultimate results of being habituated to the hopelessness of his position. The objectivity with which the problematic man relates to himself and others reduces overall human value to their functionality in the world, which then allows the problematic man to operate within his world. People in his life are treated in the same manner as the things he owns. In the same way that lamps, cars, jobs, or books can be possessed, persons are also related to according to the function that they perform for the individual. The consequence is that “men are treated as objects collected together to perform a certain task as a part of a larger and vastly more important machine, while they should be treated as people in a community capable of personal communication.”19 But the treatment of others as objects results in the problematic man not being

20


able to relate to others except in terms of having. He either has things or he has people (his friends, his family, his co-workers). “My relations with what I have are those between a who and a what. One’s being is vulnerable precisely at that point where it is prolonged in its possessions.”20 Herein resides the express moral difficulty with the materialistic trend of treating others as objects. The more a person sees others as objects, and the more that he seeks them out for their functionality, the more deeply imbedded he becomes in believing himself to be a function as well. But the functionality relation between the self and others is ultimately absurd. Marcel notes: Utensils and functions have so dominated the thinking of contemporary society that specialists see themselves not as persons but as functions: as clerks, receptionists, railway men, teacher, but not primarily as human beings. As man becomes his function, his body becomes a tool . . . . Man becomes a product of his efforts to produce. As he reduces himself from what he essentially is to what he does, the deep reaches of human living available to integral individuals recede, and life becomes shallow.21 The quagmire becomes morally denser because the problematic man’s abstraction of people-as-objects creates an uneasiness which leads to the continued devaluation of humanity. Marcel describes this devaluation as “attenuation, a thinning down of being,” which is deemed by Marcel to be a “depreciation in ontological density.”22 This depreciation highlights the inner defect of the individual brought by the mechanical, functional valuing of humanity: In this case the defect is in myself, yet it remains objective in relation to my thought, which discovers it and observes it. But evil which is only stated or observed is no longer evil which is suffered. In reality, I can only grasp it as evil in the measure in which it touches me. (PE 19–20) I, the product of functionality, am morally defective because my misunderstanding of human value is an evil that taints me.


21

Perhaps paradoxically, Marcel sees the devaluation of mankind as a result of a sort of hubris he observed in contemporary society, in which a person draws strength only from the self. The arrogant person disconnects herself from others and thinks she no longer needs them to exist meaningfully. But the value of humanity resides in the authentic, healthy connection of people Arrogance devalues humanity, which fundamentally requires others for meaningful existence, and this depreciation then allows us to recapture the value of humanity. Marcel writes, What has happened almost before our eyes is a gigantesque devaluation in many ways comparable to that which has taken place in so many countries on the monetary plane. This devaluation can be interpreted in various ways, according to whether one emphasizes the fact that certain values are no longer acknowledged at all, or the way in which they are disintegrating; that is to say, that they give rise to anarchic and incoherent interpretations. (PM 36) The devaluation of humanity is not an abstract, theoretical problem but is one that Marcel thinks has real-world impact, with real-world applications. He recounts his exchange (MM 183) with a friend of his, a young priest, who lived in an agrarian area in France that was being wholly given over to industrialism. The priest told Marcel, “Nothing counts any more for the peasants except money and pleasures, they have become mere automata at the service of money and pleasure.” Marcel replied that no one had a right to speak of men as automata when they were undertaking the toilsome and arduous labor of working the land. But Marcel hastened to add, “The fascination exercised by the towns and by office jobs on the peasantry can, alas, perhaps be partly explained by the almost wholly automatized character of such jobs, of such lives” (MM 183). The priest’s worry demonstrates that the manufacturing of disconnectedness among people is a concrete moral dilemma, generated by the devaluation of humanity and perpetuated from the worldview of the problematic man. He suggests that any individual can become lifeless if he becomes fixated on what he possesses, whether the fixation is on the body,

22


material possessions, or the relationships which are associated with those possessions. This obsession can lead to a “locking up, which [further] results in my no longer lending myself. It is because I no longer avail myself that I am no longer available for others.”23 The longer that the unavailable (Marcel calls this “indisponible”) individual is “locked up,” the more he will feel as though he is behind walled-up, immovable gates, paralyzed to act and so, doomed to a meaningless existence. The problem is, of course, that an unavailable person—one who is locked up, and walled up within the self—cannot be in healthy, nonobjectified relationships with other people. Because unavailability creates relationships of function rather than value, Marcel equates indisponibilité with a crippling moral evil. Bollnow explains: It is only when we are available that we are as we should be. By contrast, unavailability is the basic form of all human offense and is thus comparable to sin. Most importantly, this basic form of offense is fundamentally construed not as a kind of action, but rather as a peculiar kind of deficiency, a passive inertness, an emptiness. 24 The indisponible person is egocentric, empty, and offensive to those who can help him through despair. The common experiences of loneliness and disconnectedness cause a person to lose sight of the worth that the self can have, along with that of others. Marcel distinguishes two ways in which a person can become indisponible, and thereby devalue humanity. First, suffering can cause an individual to be indisponible because they become preoccupied with the attraction of materialism (CF 51). When this occurs, the personal preoccupations are too absorbing for her to make any room for others’ experiences in her life. She does not succeed in making other persons’ needs her own. Marcel uses the French word crispation (a word that suggests a hardening—perhaps, the dehydration of a fruit) to describe the preoccupied individual as shriveled and contracted, consequences the person endures when she withdraws into the self.25 The second way that a person might suffer from indisponibilité is through opaqueness. Opaqueness typically comes about when an individual is encumbered so that the events of life get in the way of


23

the self’s presence to itself and to others. To be encumbered by a thing or event is to be more than just occupied by it, but also to be used up by it. The one who suffers feels swallowed whole by her trauma. Her pain blocks her off from others and herself, and even begins to seal the individual off from further experience.26 Marcel uses the following image to describe the encumbered, opaque individual: I find myself in the state of chronic anxiety of the man hanging over the abyss, who possesses nothing but a small sum of money, which he must make last for as long as possible, because when it is gone, he will have nothing. This anxiety is a care which is gnawing and paralyzing, which blocks up every élan, every generous initiative. What we must see, is that anxiety or care can be reabsorbed into a state of interior inertia from which the world is lived as stagnation, as putrescence. The exhausting of the self through opacity has a number of different causes. Marcel notes that fatigue, moral deterioration, and even the habit of concentrating on the self too much can all contribute to an opaque life. Of course, all of these can stem from the duress of enduring under the struggle of life. For an individual to break free from the indisponibilité caused by crispation or opacity, Marcel argues that, “submerging oneself suddenly in the life of another person and being forced to see things through his eyes, is the only way of eliminating the self-obsession from which one has sought to free oneself.” The least formidable response to suffering will be the one that allows the self to move out of self-obsession and into caring for another person. Marcel compares these two modes of detachment as one of the spectator and the other as the saint (BH 20). The detachment of the saint springs from the very core of reality; it completely excludes curiosity about the universe. The detachment of the spectator is just the opposite; it is desertion, not only in thought but in the act. The saint is better able to move from suffering into a positive relation than one who is totally blocked from presence with himself or others.

24


But without a devaluation of existential significance of the self or others, our attention would likely not be drawn to the topic of human value, or more closely to this book, the moral value of those around us. The value of humanity stands for something real and substantial, and in an ideal sense, reflects something perfect about being (MM 128). Philosophy can discuss the value of humanity, then, only as an act of recovery, rather than discovery, especially since philosophy frequently gives value to aspects of existence that are of no true existential import. (A prime Marcelian example of this philosophy’s emphasis on technological advancement, because these philosophical attempts succeed by equivocating the value of individuals with objects. The relationship between philosophy, technology, and existential meaning will be thoroughly discussed in Chapter 4.) Although it is worthwhile to give primacy in politics and the classroom to the topic of human value, it is also worth knowing that this primacy is only possible because the value of humanity has already been altered or lost. Humanity has been devalued through the problematization of humanity, as Marcel’s picture of the problematic man shows. This is a moral problem, though, rather than a purely metaphysical one, if moral questions relate to the value of humanity, or if moral acts relate to the people who perform them. If I am my body, and my body is the bridge between the self and others, then when my body is simply reduced to another material thing, or simply conceived as another machine to be conquered, or simply worshipped as another possession, then the relationship between the body and others is arbitrary. When my body is only an object among objects, the only moral significance of it would be a subjective one: my body is mine. If the only moral significance of the body is subjective, however, moral claims can only merely reflect preferences, and moral judgments would only communicate whether or not my body responds positively to whatever morally relevant aspects of a situation are present to it. Marcel does not meet this dilemma head on, although it is clear from his writings that he rejects moral relativism. The body experiences perceptions subjectively but lives in an objective moral order. A Marcelian response to the worry about an objective ground of morality, however, could be given by pointing out that if moral


25

judgments are just statements of preference, there can be no valid second-personal claims made. I do not have to recognize the validity of the Other, nor to respond if another person makes a claim on me. Imagine, for example, that you and I are in a busy café. You sit down to write an important paper, and the quiet music wafting from the café’s speakers mingles nicely for you with the muted shuffling of the other patrons. But I take the seat next to you and proceed to play my newly-downloaded music quite loudly, and without earbuds. You attempt to get my attention over the music—is it possible for me to listen at a decibel that would not interrupt the work of other people? I respond that it might be possible, but that I don’t want to. Such a response shows that I see you as I do the other objects in the room—as insignificant, and only there for my own purposes. Of course, you are furious with me, and with good moral reason. I do not recognize the validity of your claim, because it is preferable for me not to, but your presence right next to me in the busy café should weigh in on my behavior. In Marcel’s analysis of the human condition in an embodied world, existence in the world with others is fundamental. I exist as a body only insofar as I relate to the external world. As people age, there will be a difference between how people will understand their relation to their bodies and to the external world. Some people will relate badly—problematically. These people will not be able to meaningfully ascertain what should concern them and what should not, and what they should strive for and what they should not. Marcel describes these people as those who have secreted a kind of shell around themselves which—imperceptibly and gradually—hardens and imprisons them. This “sclerosis” makes it difficult for these problematic people to have a proper interest in others, and so make it also difficult for them to understand their own standing in the world (PE 41). Some other people may be able to conquer the objectification of the self, and will properly recognize that the body can serve as a bridge to others. These individuals can, through the experiences of ordinary life, reject the “lower” thinking of the problematic man not by thinking at all—but by carrying what is “higher” (i.e., “better”) with us through action. A moral life, a better life, is attainable for these people by

26


practicing actions that will help defeat the objectification of the self. Marcel writes, “I will call the world a school, formed for the purpose of teaching little hatreds to end.”27 ‘Self-hatred’ does not too strongly describe for Marcel how the problematic man ends up conceiving of the self, since the person who only sees the self as an object devalues the self to such a degree that the self is on par with any other material thing. That hatred seeps into a devaluation of humanity, and this devaluation grounds moral evil.

Conclusion Chapter 1 focuses on the self and moral evil: the problematic man as someone who suffers the objectification of the self by not recognizing the relationship between the self as body and the body in the world. The problematic man’s commitment to materialism skews his perspective on how to treat himself and others. This is not simply a metaphysical problem, but is a metaphysical problem that has moral implications. If the problematic man does not properly view the self and the self’s relation to others, he is doomed to acting in a way that hurts the self and others. Though moral evil stems from the objectification of the self, it is perpetuated through abstraction. Philosophy’s emphasis on a rationalized method of inquiry has aided this objectification, but to its detriment. The object alone is precisely what the existing thing is not. Existence occupies a position in thought entirely different from what is implied in the fact of objectivity. The primacy of materialism separates the self from the self and others, and to an eventual life of objectification. When a person’s functional value is used up, meaning dries up as well. If existential meaning is tied to one’s functionality, the notion that future possibilities awaits is lost. Along with this loss of hope comes the degradation of value we have for humanity. The devaluation of humanity and the abruption of hope threatens the development of morality, since morality functions to bring people closer to community.


27

Marcel does not take abstraction qua abstraction to be the source of moral evil. Rather, the practical problem of abstract rationalism is that it prevents hope, if understood as positive action which creates possibilities, from taking root. Since the problematic man is unable to see himself and others as more than a conglomeration of functions, one of the initial and most crucial moves he must make to break out of problematicity and to participate in healthy relationships with others is for him to emerge out of the anguish that comes from the imminence of his own death. This then allows them to face their own objectification. To move out of the realm of problematicity and suffering caused by moral evil, the individual must shift his thinking from questioning existence as a matter of fact to questioning how he is related to his body. But rationalism, materialism, and—even—my own death does not have to end in the disintegration of hope. They can, on the contrary, be used as a springboard toward hope. Meaningful hope always gives birth to possibilities. Although the birth of possibilities seems counter to death, which extinguishes possibilities, Marcel believes they are inextricably linked. A world where death is missing, writes Marcel, would be a world in which hope only exists in its larval stage (BH 93). But it is not my own death only that is crucial to bringing about moral development. The ultimate death that relates to the success of each individual’s pursuit out of problematicity and into hope is the death of God. The next chapter explores Marcel’s unique view that our theological commitments relate fundamentally and crucially to our conception of ethics, and that the theological commitments stem from our individual responses to the role we share in the death of God. Death is the source of despair and anguish, but hope can emerge from our quandary over the death of God. So if hope is tied to the creation of possibilities, the death of God fundamentally impinges on the development of a moral life.

Chapter 2

The Problem of Evil: The Death of God and an Ethics of Hope

Perhaps surprisingly, for Marcel, the ethical question of how the self relates to the body begins with how the self relates to God. Chapter 2 shows that the quest for morality begins—not with God’s existence— but with the individual’s relationship to the death of God. Marcel contends that many of those who claim that “God is dead” do not understand the context in which Nietzsche made famous the claim. Nietzsche’s existential claim was bold for making the self the agent of God’s death, rather than for announcing the death of God. The only people who can properly gauge the damage caused by the death of God are those who recognize their own complicity in his murder. Three types of people will be differently confronted by the ethical question of the self-as-body when faced with the death of God. The first are those people who, like Sartre, never believed in God. These atheists actually have no claim on the proclamation of the death of God—because they lose nothing with God’s death—and so the only result morally for them when they recognize the limits of the body is Sartrean absolute freedom and, ultimately, meaninglessness. The second group consists of those atheists, theists, and agnostics who either do not understand or do not accept their complicity in the murder of God. Such people are more easily given to materialism and are more susceptible to technology’s ability to objectify people. Last are the atheists and theists who know that God has died at their own hands. These atheists must create meaning out of their grief: they are people who had wished or believed that God was, and then, because of their own volition, God was not. These theists can create meaning only if they recognize the divine blood that is on their hands, and seek

The Death of God and an Ethics of Hope

29

redemption through relationships with others who understand their embodied state, and the limits of the body. A moral life that is directed toward surmounting suffering is possible for all people, regardless of their theological beliefs, but only after they wrestle with evil and their responsibility in choosing it (especially the evil of materialism). Marcel does think that the moral life is risky, because it involves owning up to the fact that we participate in the creation of our own suffering, and also that we already have access to some of the tools that can help assuage the pain that our actions have caused.1

Marcel and the Death of God The existential impact of Nietzsche’s work, on Marcel’s view, is that it sparked off in people the need to reflect upon whether the possibility for God’s existence impinges upon personal existential meaning. Those who do this and are atheists, Marcel contends, can nonetheless never escape an ambiguity in Nietzsche’s philosophy: The deep sense of Nietzsche’s phrase “God is dead” is this: On the one hand, it seems impossible to claim that this assertion is a simple observation, for clearly the phrase implies a passionate will to go beyond what is observable. But on the other hand, it seems difficult to eliminate completely from this assertion the element of observation which it contains insofar as it represents a particular judgment on man’s development. This kind of oscillation, often hardly perceptible, is an essential characteristic of contemporary atheism. (TW 163) This atheist, when suffering from the death of God, actually suffers a disconnection from the self, since the act of pronouncing the death of God also highlights the role the individual plays in God’s death. Marcel believed that Nietzsche’s own thought about the murder of the divine reveals the phenomenological role played by how each individual’s personal story is intertwined with his or her relationship to God. Particularly important is the problem of solitude—how each individual personally experiences the trial of finding themselves alone and separate from God. This struggle establishes the backdrop

30


for each person’s emotional response to the tragedy that is the death of God. Marcel thinks that Nietzsche’s own biography serves as a poignant example of an atheist who breaks away from the belief in God and undergoes the suffering that comes from this break. It is an established fact, Marcel writes, that as a child Nietzsche was a theist for whom God was then alive (PM 31). Later, Nietzsche would come to think that God withdrew from him, and what he took to be as a personal retreat of the divine later became for Nietzsche the universal and definitive ground for atheism. Nietzsche’s atheism does not merely reject the existence of God, however. Grounded in a deep sense of loss, Nietzsche does not just maintain that God does not exist, but rather God no longer exists. God has died. Even more, God has died a painful death at the hands of his murderers—you and I. Just as we have suffered at the retreat of God, we exact suffering on God through the lives we lead. And then, we kill him. Consider both the sense of loss, as well as the moral agency depicted in Nietzsche’s famous passage in The Gay Science 2: Have you ever heard of the madman who on a bright morning lighted a lantern and ran to the marketplace calling out unceasingly: “I seek God! I seek God!” And as there were many people standing about who did not believe in God, he caused a great deal of amusement. Why! Is he lost? Said one. Has he strayed away like a child? Said another. Or does he keep himself hidden? Is he afraid of us? Has he taken a sea-voyage? Has he emigrated?—the people cried out laughingly, all in a hubbub. The insane man jumped into their midst and transfixed them with his glances. “Where is God gone?” he called out, “I mean to tell you! We have killed him,—you and I! We are all his murderers! But how have we done it? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the whole horizon? What did we do when we loosened this earth from its sun? Whither does it now move? Whither do we move? Away from all suns? Do we not dash on unceasingly? Backwards, sideways, forwards, in all directions? Is there still an above and below? Do we not stray, as though infinite nothingness? Does not empty space breathe upon us? Has it not become colder? Does not night come on continually, darker, and darker? Shall we not


31

have to light lanterns in the morning? Do we not hear the noise of the grave-diggers who are burying God? Do we smell the divine putrefication?—for even Gods putrefy! God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him! How shall we console ourselves, the most murderous of all murderers? The holiest and the mightiest that the world has hitherto possessed, has bled to death under our knife—who will wipe the blood from us? With what water could we cleanse ourselves? What lustrums, what sacred games shall we have to devise? Is not the magnitude of this deed too great for us? Shall we not ourselves have to become Gods, merely to seem worthy of it? There never was a greater event,—and on account of it, all who are born after us belong to a higher history than any history hitherto! A few important observations should be made regarding the atheism presented by this passage. In the first place, the death of God is preceded with God’s retreat from our lives, just as Marcel noted occurred at the onset of Nietzsche’s own personal journey to atheism. The madman attempts to find God among the people, in the square, presumably because that is where God should have been. But then we discover that we (ourselves, as people, as believers) are the murderers of God. We are free to perpetrate the murder of the divine, and we exercise our agency to bring it about. But, this murder is a grievous, horrific event. The terms Nietzsche uses to describe the event indicate tragedy, “dark, darker,” “empty,” “putrefication,” “infinite nothingness.” Rather than this homicide being an event to be celebrated, it is one from which we cannot be cleansed, and one that we will have to imagine away in order to continue. And yet, our murder of God is the single most important moment in history. Our own deification is ensured by this death. By killing God, we become greater than God. That God is dead, then, is a moral indictment on divine behavior and for organized theistic religion. God is unworthy of our belief (PM 30). But, Marcel suggests that the Nietzschean pronouncement also condemns those individuals who subscribe to some forms of theistic morality. Many theists, undeniably, are as attracted to materialism and are as susceptible to problematicity as atheists. And these can cause the theist to disregard the “lengthy, vast, and uninterrupted

32


process of crumbling, destruction, ruin and overthrow which is now imminent,” leaving very few people to actually stand up “as the teacher and herald of such a tremendous logic of terror, as the prophet of gloom and eclipse, the like of which has probably never taken place on earth before” (PM 30). The theist, by losing focus on what is meaningful and so, on what activities she ought to be pursuing, participates in the same way in the moral demise of the community as those who are only focused on the self. Materialism is, after all, a leading contributor to atheism and to the development of doubt in the theist. When a person discovers that she can provide for herself, can function without relating to God and others, and even more, when she finds she loses trust in both she can slowly lose her commitment to theism while materialism gains a stronger hold upon her. But the theist also is morally culpable when she acts as though she can access and know God’s full essence. We are not, as Marcel notes, capable of all-encompassing comprehension (TW 180), but many theists act on the presumption that the more they study, pray, meditate, or serve, the closer they can come to know a God who is (by the nature of divinity and a fallen humanity) hidden. The theist, by invoking the knowledge of God, implies that God is an object or can be known objectively. And, this is precisely why atheism can reject God. If God is an object and cannot be found or related to, then God does not exist. Similarly, if God is not an object, God cannot exist (TW 180). By relating to God in objective terms, the theist contributes to the problems facing humanity and also does herself a disservice by undermining the mystery that Marcel thinks underlies the relationship between God and humans. So the theist succumbs to Nietzsche’s condemnation of her when she yields to materialism and the objectification of the divine. But there is a danger associated with a non-reflective theism, as well. Although Marcel’s philosophical work is opposed on the whole to a dialectical rationalism, he does think that proper reflection (discussed more in the following chapters) is crucial for wearing theism well in the world. Atheism often presents theism as a childish mode of thinking. (For example, in his recent introduction to Richard Rorty’s An Ethics for Today, Gianni Vattimo states,3 “While once upon a time humanity might have needed something to worship beyond


33

the visible world—and whether that something is literally God or, later scientific truth makes little difference in Rorty’s mind—now it is the time to grow up.”) The atheist, on the other hand, is free and so is liberated from the belief in God, the atheist is mature, and the atheist can make the most positive impact on the course of human history (TW 176). But the break between theism and atheism should evidence itself not only in reflection, but in a difference in behavior. Marcel attributes Jaspers with first underscoring the behavioral practices endemic to atheism and tied to the death of God: The atheism of Nietzsche is the progressive uneasiness of a search for God which perhaps no longer understands itself. The expression given by Nietzsche to his atheism reveals an unspeakable suffering: the necessity of renouncing God is translated by phrases such as: you will no longer pray, you will no longer rest in an infinite confidence, you forbid yourself to stop before a wisdom, a good, a supreme power and to psalmodize your thoughts . . . Man of refusal, do you want to bear a universal refusal? Who will give you the strength? Does anyone still have the strength? (PM 109) If a belief in God is something possessed by and intertwined with the agent, then a belief that God has died becomes a wrenching personal crisis for those who come to that belief. For the Nietzschean atheist, to say that God is dead is to eviscerate the umbilical tie that once gave life to the agent. It is an acknowledgement that a belief that was once fundamental and core to who I am is impotent to give life, and even more, is toxic to my future possibilities in the world. This evisceration is not to be celebrated. It is an abruption of the self from the self. Famously, Nietzsche laments, “How have we been able to drink the sea? Who gave us the sponge capable of erasing the entire horizon? What have we done by detaching the chain which linked this earth to its sun?”4 Marcel depicts the turn to atheism as an act of violence—a violence on the world of religion, certainly, but also on a nostalgia for childhood which remains deep inside many people, on the ontology built on it. The murder of the divine is not accidental. It is intentional, heinous, and a declaration of war, without which a transvaluation of values is impossible. This is why, for

34


Nietzsche, the move to acknowledge one’s complicity in the death of God is courageous. As Marcel reads Nietzsche, when a person sees that she is the one who has killed God, she transcends nihilism (which is the end result for an atheism that stops at the death of God) and she catapults into the creative impulse of the übermensch (PM 32). The übermensch experiences human value as the will to power, and catapults over the human propensity for faith. This courage to leap is not the courage before witnesses, “but the courage of the solitary, of the eagle which no god watches any longer.”5 A rejection of God is an ownership of an individual truth against other beliefs that are unworthy of my belief, in the face of my desire to share beliefs with those around me. Central to Marcel’s understanding of the death of God is his belief that atheism is divided. The differences are existential. There are atheists who lose something personal by announcing God’s death, and for these people atheism is a type of “defiance, hurled at beliefs regarded as obsolete, as vestiges which could only interest the sociologist” (TW 175). There are other atheists for whom the death of God is an impersonal fact about the world, a mere result in the fact that there is not a God. For Marcel, the two camps actually operate under different phenomenological frameworks. The first sort of atheists experience the death of God as a seismic shift of personal significance, and the move to declaring that there is no God has the devastating result that it actually and essentially alters one’s sense of self as a consequence of the declaration. The second sort of atheists includes those who either never believed that God existed, or who never were personally impacted by the belief in God. The first sort includes those like Nietzsche, for whom the death of God indicates personal efficacy and, then, moral responsibility. The second sort includes those who do not recognize that they play a personal, efficacious role in God’s death, and so they do not actually lose anything or suffer by saying that God is dead. The first sort of atheist sees the death of God as a type of revolt, whereas the second sort of atheist accepts it through complacency, or as an acceptance of the status quo. Atheism that reflects the existential angst of Nietzsche is existentially truer, because it reflects both the personal agency in the death


35

of God as well as the guilt and loss that are felt as a result of that event. The uneasiness experienced by the Nietzschean atheist comes not just from the disconnection one feels when giving up a formerlyheld, personally significant belief. The uneasiness, rather, is a product of the blood that stains the hands of the agent who experiences it. Marcel remembers that, for Nietzsche, it is I who killed God. I murdered God. This signifies that “the Nietzschean affirmation is infinitely more tragic, since it states that we ourselves have killed God, and it is this alone which can account for the sacred dread with which Nietzsche here expresses himself” (PM 31). It is the extreme sense of personal loss that a person experiences at the death of God that separates, on Marcel’s view, Nietzschean atheism from the Sartrean variety. Marcel seems to fault Sartre for never experiencing a sense of loss by invoking the death of God. The origin of Sartrean atheism could be either from an initial disappointment with God (similar to that of Nietzsche), in which case Sartre would will that God could not exist for him out of a deep-seated internal sense of loss; or it could stem from a traditional, scientific mode of thinking in which Sartre applies the scientific method to theism only to discover that God does not exist in any objective way, in which case the death of God is similar propositionally to saying that there are no people on Mars (PE 85). If the first instance is true, and Sartre’s denial of the existence of God springs from a personal, internal and emotional standpoint, Marcel thinks Sartre’s metaphysics is in danger. (Sartre’s existentialism loses out if it is discovered that Sartre’s atheism has as its source a regret that God does not exist.) In the second instance, Sartre’s existential metaphysics would have to be abandoned for an objective rationalism, much like science affords us. And anecdotally, at any rate, Sartre’s treatment of the death of God does not seem to come from a personal sense of loss nor from a scientific objectivism. Marcel was keen to relay the story of a triumphant Sartre being welcomed by journalists at Geneva at the dawn of the liberation. Sartre declared to them straightway, “Gentlemen, God is dead.” How could one fail to see that the existential tone is absolutely different here, precisely because the sacred dread has disappeared, and has

36


been replaced by the satisfaction of a man who claims to establish his doctrine upon the ruins of something in which he never believed? (PM 31–2) If a belief in God is something intrinsic to, and possessed by, the agent, then a belief that God has died becomes personal for those who come to that belief. Marcel argues that the concept of God is tied to the notion of availability. We want to have access to the presence of God, and for those who feel that God has abandoned them, the blow to the self is more visceral. For this person, God is experienced as a “someone who,” rather than as an object, and so the loss experienced is much more personal (BH 91). But, atheists of Sartre’s ilk never had the experience of thinking of God as a “someone who,” or of being trained as children as to the significance of the belief in God, and so their lives were never shaped and defined by that belief. To say that God is dead is equivalent ontologically, for this type of atheist, to saying that I like wearing comfortable shirts, that moderation is valuable, or that the Broncos play tomorrow. Each of these propositions are equivalent, impersonal, empirical (but not emphatically objective) features of the world in which I live. The detachment of the Sartrean atheist represents the distanced, objective manner of the historian. A pronouncement of the death of God from such a position is an attempt at reporting the event, as one would a series of facts which are unattached, and even unhampered, by any personal investment in the results of the inquiry. It is quick, painless, and unsentimental. Perhaps on a more personal level, for Marcel, the Sartrean atheist also approaches the death of God with an air of pretension, since she claims to prove the non-existence of God without the exigency which underlies personal experience. It is not enough for this brand of atheist to claim or establish that God does not exist, but that God cannot exist, and that any assertion of God’s existence contradicts itself (TW 158). Marcel, in a separate publication, bitterly comments on the belief that God’s existence is contradictory, by again reminding his readers of the capricious manner with which Sartre celebrated the death of God in front of a group of Swiss journalists:


37

I should like to linger for a moment over this anecdote. Let us leave aside the question of what ultimate judgment we ought to bring to bear on Nietzsche’s tragic and prophetic affirmation. What is clear is that as soon as Nietzsche’s affirmation “God is dead,” is blared forth to journalists, or is put forward as a possible sensational headline, it becomes degraded, not only in the sense of losing, in this new context, all real meaning, but in the sense of becoming an absurd parody of its original self. There is an existential difference between Nietzsche’s sigh or sob and this sort of publicity handout, obviously intended to make a cheap sensation: “Gentleman, I have a piece of news for you. God has been liquidated. Isn’t that something?” (MM 106–7) Sartre’s brand of atheism, labeled “mental masochism” by Marcel (MM 106), injects the existential subject into the role of God without having to experience the sense of loss that plagues the Nietzschean atheist. The idea of a “God” is extraneous if man himself can play the role. Rather than anthropomorphizing any humanlyinspired notion of the divine, who does not exist, Sartre deifies man by stripping away the power, presence, and existence of a JudeoChristian notion of God and supplanting it with the mind of man (BH 181). Man is a place-holder, then, for a God who does not exist. Humans suffer, on Sartre’s view, because they do not recognize that they reach for a totality, an infinity, which does not exist. The sense of loss that they feel is not an actual loss of God, but is a by-product of seeking what is simply not there. Sartre writes in Being and Nothingness, The being of human reality is suffering because it rises in being as perpetually haunted by a totality which it is without being able to be it, precisely because it could not attain the in-itself without losing itself as for-itself. Human reality therefore is by nature an unhappy consciousness with no possibility of surpassing its unhappy state. (1983, 140) The anguish felt by those who recognize and share in the bitter picture of Sartre’s reality should in part be mitigated against the ideal

38


that we are free. The primary upshot of the death of God is absolute freedom and responsibility for our actions. God cannot determine my actions, the devil cannot make me do it, and so who I become should only be the result of who I choose to be. But this freedom is, according to Marcel, at the same time a condemnation. Sartre contends that we are damned to be free, which liberates man, at least from the values of religious morality. This liberation places humans in the position of attempting to find values that were once present in the religious order. The existence of God—at first a constraint on human action—becomes a different obstacle. Sartrean atheism rejects the concept of a God which is empty and whose concept denotes nothing, and attempts to construct a more authentic divinity out of humanity (TW 165). But in reality, the construction of a new, human divinity that is always in contrast to the theistic perspective functions itself as a constraint, since humanity forms its divinity based on rejected and reconstructed bits of the theist’s God. Since we cannot conceptualize “God” except by a comparison with the God that is rejected, this rejected God is still the standard-bearer for the nature of the divine, even if what is divine is human. Sartre appears to acknowledge this possibility in Being and Nothingness, when he writes: in order to judge the real being we must establish that the real is an abortive effort to attain to the dignity of the self-cause. Everything happens as if the world, man, and man-in-the-world succeeded in realizing only a missing God. (762) Since the presence of God in the experience of mankind “is always indicated and always impossible” the existential feeling surrounding that missing God, according to Sartre, can present itself as chaotic when compared to a world in which the concept of God would never have entered. But, on Marcel’s account, when Sartre denounces the existence of God in favor of the deification of humanity, Marcel thinks the death of God is “experienced as an unbearable constraint by existentialism a la Sartre” (PM 116). Included among the Sartrean atheists would be agnostics for whom the belief in God was never a personal endeavor. Just as atheists like


39

Sartre have no personal claim on the death of God, so too agnostics who lose nothing or do not experience personal tragedy with God’s death are treated similarly by Marcel. A 1952 interview with Marcel obviated his frustration with Sartrean atheists and agnostics who are apathetic to finding meaning from the question of the death of God. The difficulty with philosophers who held such a view was that, according to Marcel, regardless of their intentions, they “discover absurdity everywhere and replace it with nothing.”6 The agnostic is stuck in this active negation, specifically because she does not positively believe the presence of something in the absence of God. The agnostic commits neither to the belief in God nor to the disbelief in God, and for the existential significance of her own death, she is caught between existing meaningfully and not existing at all, which can put the agnostic in an experiential paradox (HV 149). Marcel actually uses Heidegger’s thought as one example of the problems of agnosticism. Although Heidegger’s theistic commitments are not properly atheistic, Marcel argues (PM 111) that his views are hung in suspense on the problem of the existence of God. Heidegger believes in the notion of the sacred, but not necessarily in the idea of God or in a relationship to God. More importantly for Marcel, a person can be Heideggerian and also be an atheist of the Sartrean variety. Heidegger’s philosophy is independent of theism, and certainly independent of a phenomenological moment of anguish over the death of God. (In contrast, it seems clear that Marcel does not believe this of Nietzscheans.) Missing in this assessment of divisions among degrees of belief and non-belief for Marcel is the role that the problem of evil plays in his treatment of the death of God, as well as the impact it has on a potential ethics of presence. The problem of evil is a primary mode of critique for the atheist. It contends that the presence of moral and natural evil in the world is inconsistent with the existence of an allknowing, all-powerful, all-good God. If God had those “omni-qualities” that the theist thinks he does have, God would be able to prevent, or in the very least, limit the amount of overwhelming suffering that results from the presence of evil in the world. Marcel deals specifically and particularly with pernicious evils throughout his work (such as war and poverty generally and the Holocaust and Africa specifi-

40


cally), but apart from this he also engages in discussion of the problem of evil and its impact on the conception of the divine. Marcel actually uses points of contact and difference with Albert Camus as the platform for this discussion, which is interesting if only because he does not categorize Camus in the same way that he does the philosophical atheology of Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Sartre. Camus’s thought, instead, opens the door for Marcel to redeem the notion of God for those who have killed him, and for recognizing the moral impact of such a redemption.

The Problem of Evil and Redemption Conspicuously absent from my treatment of Marcel’s taxonomy of atheistic beliefs is the figure of fellow existentialist Albert Camus. Camus never is condemned with the same acidity with which Marcel blasts Sartre, nor is he treated with the same high regard Marcel has for the atheism of Nietzsche. Rather, Marcel seems to have a great deal of respect for Camus’s work without engaging the question of Camus’s atheism. Camus’s writing is especially significant for Marcel because it introduces the problem of evil that Marcel rightly thinks should plague the theist, “despite all the arguments that theologians and philosophers have used, atheism finds its permanent base of supply in the existence of evil and in the sufferings of the innocent” (TW 169). Marcel’s own position, by invoking Camus, is not to provide a theodicy as a defense of theism in light of the problem of evil, but instead to reflect on the existential problem moral evil poses for theists. In addition, his handling of Camus is instructive for establishing a link between the death of God and an existential hope that can bridge the problematic man with the ethical, hopeful life. Marcel refers to an intimate conversation he had with Camus in which Camus revealed that he could not personally accept a belief in God because of the suffering of innocent people in the world, and especially the inordinate suffering of innocent children. Marcel writes of this moment: Any theologian who would have tried to explain to him that this suffering is not willed by God but only permitted, he would answer


41

that he rejected a God of this kind. Thus he took his stand. Could he have agreed that his protest or his revolt itself implied a kind of previous acceptance of a God of justice and mercy? I am sure that he would have seen in that a kind of sleight of hand which his integrity would have rejected. He would have been rejecting the idea that it would be possible to hypostatize the sentiment of indignant compassion he felt for so many innocent victims, and for my part I think that, all things considered, he would have been right. It is precisely characteristic of existential thought, it seems to me, to refuse such pseudo-solutions. (TW 178) The sympathy with which Marcel deals with Camus’s assertion that an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good God would not permit the suffering of innocent children is markedly distinct from his position against the atheism presented in the persons of Nietzsche and Sartre. The problem of evil as given by Camus is an unselfish, subjective expression based on empirical and rational observation. If there is a God, then where is he? If God is all-powerful, where is his exercise of power? If God is just, then where is the demonstration of his justice? Had Camus communicated some personal disappointment with God’s mishandling of Camus’s own biography, we might have very well read an alternate Marcelian assessment of Camus’s atheism. But, Camus’s beliefs are differently rooted than either Nietzsche or Sartre. His belief in the non-existence of God was a reluctant pronouncement based on the suffering of those who cannot stand up for themselves. It is as though Camus looks at the Other, and on the basis of the situatedness of the Other, bemoans the human condition without God. Marcel was, in fact, so moved by the impact that the problem of evil had on Camus personally that he later said, when faced with Camus’s attitude, that the problem of evil could only have meaning for a philosopher if the philosopher was a non-believer, or if the philosopher was a believer who set aside his private religious beliefs (MM 119). There are two real problems that come from the concrete problem of evil, on Marcel’s view. The first is that it leads to a despicable theistic practice of denying the visceral, tangible, concrete, and atrocious experience of moral evil. Marcel suggests that the attitude or manner

42


with which the theist engages in the problem of evil counts more significantly, perhaps, than what the theist actually says about it and thus far, many theists lack respect for the tragic pain that many who reject theism on this ground undergo. The attitude and love that the theist shows, when he explains the problem of evil, ultimately determines the value of his theology, and if the theology “in any way conjures away the tragic, if it substitutes for real suffering and for real evil only a chimera or an effigy that accommodates all the logical manipulations, his theology decisively reinforces atheism” (TW 169). There are contemporary examples that reflect the pernicious difficulty the problem of evil has for theistic views like Marcel’s.Claudia Card, for instance, argues that theistic defenses of God’s power and goodness should be rejected and replaced with a secularized notion of evil that is inextricably tied to the experience of the victim, because traditional theism does not provide a concrete description of the lived experiences of atrocious harms.7 And, although she does not discard the notion and function of “theodicy,” Marilyn McCord Adams8 identifies the potential difficulty that horrendous evils (such as rape) pose to the rationality of one’s belief in, for example, the omnibenevolence of God. Marcel’s second worry over the problem of evil is that it leads people to face the world with a numbness that can take on the likeness of a spiritual death. He calls this a “lived atheism,” a result of philosophical skepticism over the presence of God in the face of the suffering of innocents. It is not the case, of course, that all those who have spiritual numbness or are complacent about God are atheists, but for Marcel, it seems right to say that such a manner of existing and conceiving of life implies atheism as its corollary, even if those who have adopted it and who are moreover numbed by it adhere to a church or to some sect, whatever that may be. (TW 168) More disturbing, even, than the anaesthesia of lived atheism, is that it negates the notion of transcendence outright. Without transcendence, there is no possibility. Without possibility, there is no hope. A criticism might be posed that Marcel’s existentialism overreaches at this point, since it seems to critique and reject Camus on the basis


43

of the latter’s emotional response to moral evil in the world. But, for Marcel, whatever contributes to one aspect of the lived experience of our concrete situation will always be tied to other aspects of our concrete situation. In a similar way, a person’s identity can in one sense be tied to her role in her family and in another sense to her role in her vocation; her identity is inseparable from either. So, too, the concrete aspects of our lives are in one sense distinct, though inseparable. The result is that Marcel’s philosophy can engage in politics and empathy and ethics and theology—all while still ringing true as philosophy. But, Marcel would agree with the critic that a potential problem of his philosophy, if it is interpreted wrongly, is that it could be read as a justification for some Christians to lead lives politically that are distinct from their theology. The contemporary Christian church is often faulted (rightly or otherwise) with either being disconnected from civil rights issues or injustice in the world, or through their hypocrisy in perpetuating the atheist’s contention that adherence to religion does not make one in any way a better or more moral person.9 Marcel thinks hypocrisy that leads to further suffering in the world does pose a problem for religion proper (although not theism). Marcel indeed worries that religious-types of this sort are liable to deform the conscience of these people, to corrupt them or to scandalize them or perhaps even to cut them off from religion. These simple souls seem incapable of making any kind of distinction at all between God and his unworthy representatives. (TW 166) If the religious person identifies herself primarily as a religious person, or a Christian, and then perpetuates actions that violate the flourishing, well-being, and healthy relationships Marcel thinks should characterize those who are in a spiritual community, theism can be negatively impacted in the same way as the problem of evil. And while the impact of Camus’s problem of evil and the problem of hypocrisy resonates with Marcel on a phenomenological level, he still contends that atheism itself plays a role in the suffering of humanity. He argues, for example, that just as Nietzschean atheism preceded

44


and helped make possible the dehumanizing acts of World War II, so too theism could be a viable option after the war only from a notion of God that could rise out of the agony and ashes of humanity. The theoretical Nietzschean framework for such evil is found in Nietzsche’s attempt to lay the foundation for a higher kind of good in his desire to get “beyond good and evil.” Marcel’s assessment of Nietzsche’s move is that, “Nietzsche’s ‘beyond’ becomes a ‘beneath’; his way up is, in practice, a way down: not a transcendence of ordinary moral categories but, to use a word coined by Jean Wahl, a transcendence from them,” and on the basis of this moral inversion, Marcel concludes, “it is quite impossible to acquit Nietzsche of a certain at least indirect responsibility for the horrors of which we have been, and are still, the witnesses” (MM 66). I think that Marcel’s indictment of Nietzsche is his attempt to level the playing field against the atheist over the problem of evil and hypocrisy. Moral evil (including hypocrisy) is a human problem, whose source is human nature, rather than some divine dictate. Atheists suffer the same indignities over problematicity and materialism that theists do, and theists have a noted history of performing morally atrocious acts in the name of God. Neither group is blameless.10 The most pronounced example of shared responsibility for suffering in the world between the atheist and theist is in the theatre of war. Both groups have contributed to, and continue to propagate, human suffering as a result of war throughout the world. A group’s participation in war might seem impervious to its theological commitments, although there have been creative attempts at winning over (at least) the support of certain social groups for acts of war.11 Marcel was never a pacifist12, but still argued that war “with the face it wears today” is a sin, and should be denounced. Because of advances in technology, war has become more and more disconnected from the humanity which it decimates. In fact, The fate of war and that of technical advancement in our time seem to be inextricably linked . . . everything that gives a new impetus to technical research at the same time renders war more radically destructive, and bends it more and more inexorably to what, at the breaking point, would be quite simply the suicide of the human race. (MM 81)


45

Neither the theist nor the atheist can escape the impact of technology on the ability to separate humanity from itself, or from the question of the death of God. Both relate directly to the impetus for war, and both can contribute to the worldview which accepts as a possibility the human creation of human technology that has as its purpose the devastation of the human race.

The Theist Ultimately, Marcel rejects the atheist critique of the problem of evil, largely because he thinks that the success of the atheist’s argument depends upon the atheist having some special ability to judge the veracity of the theist’s noumenal experiences. The debate between the theist and the atheist would be easier if each dealt with facts, or with particular bits of evidence that gave one thinker some epistemic advantage over the other (TW 159), but the decision to believe or not is not made on the order of facts, even if facts contribute to belief. But the atheist seems to think that belief is essentially tied to what facts are discoverable in the world and that the believer is simply deluded as to how to best interpret those facts. Marcel complains that the atheist is a person who says to a believer, I put myself in your place, that is, I am in some degree able to reconstitute what you call your experience. But in addition I have the capacity, which you do not seem to possess, of correctly interpreting whether this is a real, or merely an illusory, experience. (TW 159) But the inability of the atheist to correctly assess the theist’s noumenal experiences of the divine does not allow the theist to escape the impact of the death of God. Instead, the theist might be placed in an even more precarious situation than that of the Nietzschean atheist: she recognizes and grieves her culpability in the death of God, the problem of moral evil in the world, the hypocrisy motivated by her beliefs, and at the same time, she holds true to her belief. If anybody is in need of redemption, it is the theist. On the one hand, her beliefs are not systematically rational, and on the other, they are consistent with reason. The central problem with the debate over God’s

46


existence, Marcel contends, is what is asserted if God’s existence is denied. I am forced to admit that I would undoubtedly not have dared to say that I believed in that God with regard to whom I was trying to maintain that, even if his existence was denied, his reality could not be taken away. (TW 181) If God is a being for whom, when his existence is denied, his reality is taken away, then when the theist believes in God, she believes that God’s reality is affirmed, in spite of the hidden nature of God. God is not an object, so attributing existence to God does not denote the same objective existence as a proposition like, “The coffee is in front of me on the table.” It has already been seen how atheists stumble with the objectification of God. But, theists stumble in the same way (TW 170): theists want to say that God exists as a fact, as a verifiable object of experience. But God exists differently because God is not an object. God is a being who, rather than a thing that, and as is the case with any being, some people will be able to recognize God’s presence, and some will not.

The Death of God and Morality For Marcel, this theological moment—that God is a concrete aspect of subjective experience rather than a concrete object of scientific verifiability—is the place where existential theology can shine. In the first place, if God is subjectively experienced rather than objectively verifiable, existential theology transcends any particular brand of religion. Just as existentialism (or geometry, for that matter) is neither Christian, Muslim, or Hindu, so too the grace which comes from the experience of God independent of objectification is freeing. In an interview, Marcel contends,13 The grace with which this experience is about, is not invented, it does not “result.” What is current is what exists, a tablecloth on which to place things upon. One can discover what exists, one can


47

recognize it, and one can remain far from it. One does not deduce the grace, one recognizes it. Faith is not about believers but about the experience of the believer, and so the concrete experience of theism will look differently depending upon the believer. (Marcel supports the concrete subjectivism of theism, but would reject the relativism that pronounces that whether there is noumenal truth depends upon the believer. There are noumenal experiences, and some are veridical. How those experiences are felt will depend upon the particular believer. But, their fact is independent of particular believers.) In the second place, the subjective experience of God correlatively maps onto the journey that a person can take out of the problematic. Just as the person who journeys through the realm of the problematic depends upon understanding and will to do so, the subjective experience of faith also leans upon these two faculties. Although the atheist demands rational lucidity and objectivity to test claims in favor of the existence of God, the theist affirms her faith through volitional and phenomenological terms, while at the same time challenging the atheist’s commitment to emotionless objectivity. Marcel notes: If the atheistic philosopher does not want to pursue a meaningless dialogue with the believer, he will have to follow him on the existential level and even go beyond this notion of radical lucidity behind which he pretends to barricade himself. More simply, the atheistic philosopher will come to recognize for himself that his denial is grounded, not in a warrant or anything resembling one, but in passion. (TW 162–3) The emotion with which the atheist rejects the notion of God as prime determiner is not distinct from the emotion with which all people, regardless of theological commitment, feel for the imminence of their own death. Humans feel dread in thinking about their own demise, and Marcel thinks it is this feeling that can bridge the gaps between different eschatologies. In his Conversations with Paul Ricoeur, Marcel suggested that his theological existentialism in this regard could be regarded as a philosophy of the threshold, as walking

48


“in rather uncomfortable fashion on a line midway between believers and nonbelievers so that he could somehow stand with believers, with the Christian religion, the Catholic religion, but also speak to nonbelievers” (Conversation 4, 240). Death is imminent, but for Marcel it does not necessarily mark the total annihilation of the self. Rather than being the absurd end of the absurd human adventure, death is a productive means that enables us to strengthen the being that our typical human experiences simply point to, and it is this strengthening of being in the face of death that throws a final light on the monstrous and unthinkable character of the Nietzschean refusal.14 Sartre viewed the death of God as an opportunity both for the deification of man and for man’s freedom. But, Marcel’s position is that for any given individual, regardless of their belief, the death of God presents an unavoidable moral obstacle that must be wrestled with in order for freedom (and then, moral responsibility and virtue) to be able to take hold. The obstacle of the death of God is not something that can be overcome; it is an existential dilemma that can only be struggled over and grappled with until, ultimately, one’s life is defined by it. The Nietzschean dilemma is not an abstract difficulty, but is a concrete historical and sociological fact of our moral evolution, and it has led to both the Sartrean deification of man as well as Marcel’s problematic man (PM 29). The moral obstacle of the problem holds even for those who choose not to recognize that the moral significance of the question of God’s death will ultimately define their moral and existential development. (In these cases, individuals substitute an emotional response to the idea of their own death for the response to the idea of the death of God.) It is precisely this type of atheism that has the most difficult moral project, according to Marcel, because morality would reduce to some solipsistic or egoistic project, rather than to serve as the corporate, communal result of choosing what is right. I think that the atheism that refuses a personal connection between the self and the death of God is what Marcel is referring to when he writes about “lived atheism.” (He includes a number of political and philosophical movements under this heading, including Marxism, various socialist projects, and some versions of Hegelianism.) The lived atheist detaches from atheism as a doctrine. (It is instead, analogous to Sartre’s reviled


49

Geneva episode, a pronouncement.) Marcel comments at length about lived atheism in Tragic Wisdom. In the following paragraphs, I will showcase the main aspects of his capitulation of lived atheism in order to set up his rejection of it on moral grounds. His abbreviated remarks reflect the sense that lived atheism is a self-centered, improperly based theoretical view that has an improper moral response to the death of God: The words “lived atheism” refer . . . to a certain way of living and of feeling (as opposed to thinking) which has no apparent reference to what is more or less clearly meant when atheism is spoken of as a doctrine. One might be tempted to say that this lived atheism is a mode of existence where everything is subordinated to a kind of individual self-interest or the satisfaction of the appetites. In such an interpretation individual self-interest is obviously taken in its narrowest meaning, signifying acquisitiveness, as, for example, a preoccupation with amassing goods for oneself or obtaining honors. Here the heaviest emphasis is on the words “for oneself,” to show that all generosity is lacking, as would not be the case, for example, with the father of a family who works furiously with the intention of leaving his children the fruits of his labor. Admittedly it could be argued that such a man’s children are in a certain sense still himself; but it cannot be denied that a life of labor dedicated to one’s children implies a certain kind of transcendence. Lived atheism seems to imply that the total absence of scruples, a ruthless single-mindedness in the struggle to possess material goods or reputation. Indeed what appears to define lived atheism is this kind of systematic moral occlusion, which may come about from avarice or greed but also perhaps from licentiousness and lust. In every case there seems to be a kind of asphyxiation of the conscience. (TW 173) In addition, the “lived” atheist thinks of the concept of God in objective, propositional terms, indifferent to a personal impact the notion could have: For the Marxist, God appears as just one more hypothesis—one which can be done without, however, and which must in fact be

50


rejected in any sensible view. Surely the lives of men, if taken on their own interpretation or even simply by outward appearance, seem to be irreproachable. But do we have the right to call this kind of existence lived atheism? It seems much rather that we are here in the presence of a professed atheism whose significance or thrust is purely negative since it is the refusal of an alleged hypothesis. Is it possible to live a refusal that bears only on an idea considered fictitious? (TW 174) Philosophically, Marcel suspects that lived atheism maps onto a form of Cartesian skepticism. If so, the theist can benefit by paying attention to the critique of the lived atheist, but in the end, the lived atheist will probably not garner sustained meaning from her view: The idea of a tentative or methodological atheism, which one is inevitably tempted to compare to the methodical doubt of Descartes, will always seem somewhat distressing and even revolting to the naïve faith that is meant to be attacked by such doubt, so that what is still perhaps wrongly called faith would be perfected or dissolved through the encounter with critical reflection. But can such doubting reflection, however philosophically justifiable, be fruitfully grafted onto the life of a soul unencumbered by philosophical sophistication? Nothing could be less certain. I do think, however, that it is extremely important to locate precisely the position of the philosopher with regard to naïve faith, especially the position of the existential philosopher who is, strictly speaking, not a dialectical thinker. (TW 172) Lived atheism could have philosophical justification, but instead reduces to emotional pronouncements. These pronouncements might be taken seriously, if not for the fact that they are used to reject theism that is based on an emotional attachment to God: [This] atheism to me is like a machine at the service of certain passions embodied in ideologies. But on analysis this kind of thinking proves ambiguous. Its philosophical precariousness is evident because, when submitted to reflection, it falls apart. For, on the one


51

hand, it marks the lowest limit toward which a humanity that has become prisoner of its own conquests can tend; and on the other it attests to this spirit of restlessness, this will to go beyond, which in a perspective of faith, hope, and charity, can be the very mark of our election. But even when understood this way, philosophical atheism, far from being complacent and self-enclosing, must appear as a simple moment in a purifying dialectic. Here is a serious trap which Hegelianism has set for Christian consciousness. I mean the idea that religion would find its highest and most authentic expression in the thought of the philosopher. Every true Christian would see a simplification in this, even a serious perversion of the necessary relationship between faith and reflection. Moreover, the history of Hegelianism seems to show that this path, like many others, leads to atheism. (TW 170) Ultimately, lived atheism is not well grounded and should be rejected, not because it does not provide arguments for its atheism, but, because it functions at the level of pronouncements rather than at the level of the concrete, lived experience: Taken together these reflections seem to indicate that the notion of lived atheism is a pseudo-notion. But in a related perspective it would be useful to note that some men and women who regard themselves as Christians because they continue to go to church can in fact be living as atheists in the sense that they go about their lives as if God did not exist. No doubt they would go about their lives as if God did not exist. No doubt they would be astonished, though, if they were accused of being atheists. (TW 175) God is dead, then, and this moment marks a moral point of departure for all of those who engage in it, and who recognize its impact on their lives. Any person who lives as though God continues in death is living some form of atheism, even if such a person would profess belief in God. If the death of God does not spur a difference in one’s behavior, its impact is empty. In a similar way, if the death of God does not spur reflection about one’s own death, it is empty. The existential indubitable—I am a body, and I will die—must be faced

52


with the same clarity and unavoidability as the death of God and then, with a response. The existential indubitable resounds for Marcel uniquely and precisely in the moral relationship between these two concrete aspects of human experience. Nietzsche meant it as a moral denunciation of the divine, and Marcel views the guilt that humans experience at creating the suffering felt by themselves and others as an indication of humanity’s own moral reprobation. We have used our freedom to further separate ourselves from God, and we have used our human power toward immoral purposes. The result is Marcel’s decree that “Man is in his death-throes,” which he sees as the concrete and existential correlative to Nietzsche’s proclamation (MM 14). Marcel does not take his statement to be prophetic, but as a representation of the moral state humanity is in when it can, on an individual level, reduce personal significance to one’s technical function in the world and, on a global level, can eradicate entire human groups with the push of a button (and so without experiencing the anguish involved in the execution of human life). He writes: to say that man is in his death-throes is only to say that man today finds himself facing, not some external event, such as the annihilation of our planet, for instance, which might be the consequence of some catastrophe in the heavens, but rather possibilities of complete self-destruction inherent in himself. These possibilities, always latent, become patent from the moment in which man makes a bad use, or rather an impious use, of the powers that constitute his nature. I am thinking here of the atomic bomb and of techniques of human degradation there exists, quite certainly, a certain bond; it is precisely the duty of reflective thinking to lay bare that secret. (MM 14–15) But moral redemption (at least from the pit of meaninglessness that the problematic man encounters upon recognizing the imminence of his own death) is possible, in spite of the diminished condition of man and the role of God. Even the atheist can achieve redemption, if redemption is the salvaging of a meaningful existence tied to community and evidenced in a life of hope. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given


53

Marcel’s sympathy for Camus’s position, the most redemptive form of atheism on Marcel’s view is that of the rebellious consciousness, because it can serve “as the starting point for a decisive advance” toward alleviating suffering in the world (TW 169). Both the theist and the atheist who recognize the problem that pain and suffering cause to living a full and fulfilled life can be “redeemed” from the death of God and one’s own death. But, both also face an enormous responsibility in turning these dual existential dilemmas into something meaningful, because the success of their ventures depends upon turning away from the isolation of the self and toward those who are in emotional, physical, and (even) spiritual need. If they are able to turn toward the other, and move away from a totally egoist perspective of the world, the question of the death of God becomes a part of the concrete lived experience of hope, of creating possibilities for the self and others. Marcel notes: Also (this is a strange reflection, but a true one) it is perhaps by starting from the statement, “Man is in his death-throes,” that we may be able to question once more the statement, “God is dead,” and to discover that God is living after all. It is, as the reader will soon discover, toward the latter conclusion that the whole of my subsequent argument tends. (MM 14–15) But this move toward redemption, either for the theist or for the atheist, cannot substitute materialism for the search for meaning and possibility. Those who make the turn away from the self have a “duty imposed on us by our honesty as thinking beings” to break away from the idolatry of materialism and to seek community (MM 142). Objects can break, diminish in popularity, and be lost, but the nature of intersubjective relationships (as I will show in the following chapters) is to persist even when material objects cannot. The transcendence of humanity over the material is not theistic, or particularly Christian, but is open to those who respond to it (MM 142). It will be perhaps curious for those who know of Marcel’s personal commitment to Catholicism that, although he did believe that atheism was more prone to epistemic error than theism, he also believed that when any person opened herself to the possibility of grace (which is that gift

54


of community that can help us through the pain of moral evil), grace is then itself translated into freedom—and freedom to hope (MM 190).

The Death of God and Hope The free act is the gift that God gives to creation. It is also the moment which concretely represents the separation of human beings from the creator. Without freedom, people would rely solely on some determinate creator or natural order for an explanation of their actions and, in turn, would escape moral approbation for their actions. For theists, this would bind people inextricably to the will of God, and some theists strongly argue for theistic hard determinism. It is comforting, after all, for a theist to think that all events, all actions are chosen by God before the creation of the world. In such a world, I can never tip the bowl existentially and make a mess of what was intended. I can never be distant from God. There is a feeling of security that comes with this perspective.15 Marcel flatly rejects theistic determinism, and actually for a similar reason that he rejects atheism. Both this version of theism and atheism take on the concept of God as “determining factor”—the creator and executor of the game in which we are pawns. What is denied or rejected by some brands of atheism is an image of God as supreme controller over all, rather than of God himself (TW 177). But we concretely experience the freedom to choose our actions (upon which any ethics at all is premised), and so any interpretation of the divine that Marcel takes seriously must be within the concrete, lived experiences of people (TW 178). The concrete experience of freedom, however, can lead to despair. Just as a toddler learns that she is separate from her mother, and tests the boundaries of that newfound separateness and sometimes ends up terrified as a result, so too at the moment wherein we recognize that we are distinct from God and free to test the boundaries of this distinction, we can experience anguish. That we are distinct from God can mean that we are separate from him—disparate from him, even. In the unbeliever, this can motivate horrific acts, even to such a degree that the unbeliever could


55

conceive of “sin” in a purely secular sense. Sin is, Marcel thinks, a mark of personal monstrosities that especially evidences itself in a regression of public morality (MM 79). Humanity, insofar as it participates in morality, must recognize egregious violations of human dignity. So, these violations should induce in all people moral indignation toward those who witness them. (Marcel writes, “I am thinking particularly of children who died in concentration camps, but also of those who perished in bombing raids. To me, it seems very difficult to find any sort of argument that can even attempt to excuse this general crime against human life” (MM 79).) So, for Marcel, the death of God from any particular theological standpoint is a definitive moment of any existential journey, and it is the basis for a person’s response to moral evil in the world. The unbeliever’s continual progression toward death is marked uniquely by it, whereas the believer actually can see that the death of God is a mere starting point toward further existential meaning. It is this point of departure that connects the death of God to the hope of morality, for Marcel. All people are in the journey toward death, but how an individual relates to her own culpability in the death of God is transformative for how the life she leads will play out. For the theist, and especially for the Christian theist, the response to the death of God must lead to the ethical, the life of hope. Without a purview of the ethical that can be communicated across theological perspectives, the Christian theist would sanction a division between people who live their lives on a mystical basis and those who live their lives by affecting as little harm as possible on others (HV 157). This “fissure” between the Christian theist and the rest of the world risks the “danger of excessively over-simplifying and even of misrepresenting a situation which is infinitely more complex and which it is probably scarcely possible to schematize” (HV 157). Marcel instead thinks that all people face death and the death of God, and so an ethics of hope ought to be able to be expressed in an existentially meaningful way to all people, even if it is not accepted by all people. It is at this point that Marcel’s explication of the death of God seems, to me, to be most susceptible to critique, because it is the moment at which Marcel is doing philosophical theology for an eschatological topic that includes all humans. Marcel appears to

56


recognize a vulnerability when he admits that philosophy can lead a person toward an incarnate God, but is not enough to motivate belief in him. For redemptive belief to occur, a person must “become personally engaged in a witness that was more than philosophical” and must cross the threshold of faith that actually makes the belief one’s own (TW 181). The difficulty, of course, is that only believers cross the threshold of faith, and so at least, on the face of things, only believers could adopt Marcel’s version of the Nietzschean problem. Further, if only believers can adopt Marcel’s version, only believers could have authentic hope. Marcel does not directly tackle this difficulty, although I think that a reading can be given of Marcel that avoids the exclusivity problem and is also consistent with Marcel’s philosophical theology. Philosophy is a tool that can bring a person to belief, but cannot by itself induce a person to believe. Similarly, philosophy can lead a person to understand her own culpability for the death of God without also bringing that person to a belief in the redemptive process of reclaiming belief in God. Marcel’s recapitulation of Nietzsche is meant, after all, to be consistent with Nietzsche. A person can be a Nietzschean atheist and experience the loss Marcel thinks is so fundamentally, existentially, and ethically important and yet not come to believe that God exists—or that God exists in any significant phenomenological way. One relevant caveat should be made, here, as to the role philosophy plays in contributing to a belief in God for Marcel. Marcel disagrees with Ferdinand Ebner, who wrote, “The philosopher thinks in the third person, but God must be found in the second person.” For Marcel, philosophy can be a means that brings God closer to the individual. He notes, “the passage from the third to the second person, to the extent that it must be grounded or justified philosophically, is still situated in the religious” (TW 186). Any ineffectiveness of philosophy to bring individuals into belief in God comes from a presupposition some theistic arguments make that our experiences are already concretely grounded in God (BH 98). Recall that for Marcel, the result of the human condition is that evil is inescapable and unavoidable. Hope is not some Marcelian kryptonite that can erase anguish or the consequences of evil. Hope is not


57

the assurance that life will be rosy. Far from it. In fact, those who have Marcelian hope realize that hope is a type of constraint on what can be realized. Hope provides a prospect for recognizing one’s own condition in relationship to those around her, and it gives expectation for future prospects, without being reduced to mere wishful thinking. But hope doesn’t give someone a leg up on happiness, and the prospects for happiness for the hopeful can be just as daunting as for the problematic man. But true hope does give someone a leg up on being moral, and in so doing, provides a way of seeing new possibilities for oneself, which can be freeing and, indeed, those possibilities and freedom can lead a person out of despair.

Chapter 3

The Ethical Life

Whereas Chapter 2 functions as a bridge in the book between the Marcel’s views of evil and good, Chapter 3 marks a turn in the book, away from establishing that Marcel’s existentialism should be read as fundamentally moral work, and toward developing his positive normative theory that can have practical applications. This chapter articulates what the ethical life looks like for Marcel. The virtuous, good life for Marcel is free and exigent, whose fruits are the fostering of hope in others through a creative impulse. The ethical life must be free, since it is only through breaking out of the objectification of the self and the gaze of others that we are able to take responsibility for our choices and growth. The ethical life must be exigent, or committed to reflection and being ontologically present to others, if it will successfully create relationships and meaning in spite of moral evil. Finally, the ethical life must foster hope through a creative impulse because virtues are those traits through which we are able to see beyond ourselves and our own limits. Marcel noted that the truly alive person can convince others to have a taste for living and to express themselves creatively as a result. If it is true that we are active agents grounded in receptivity, then growth can only come when agents are divorced from their inherent tendency toward egocentrism. Struggling away from the grip of narcissism should not be confused with losing one’s identity, since the exigent life locates its identity in the self-with-others. The meaninglessness that is inevitable for the problematic man can be sublimated through grasping what possibilities are ahead for the person, and this comes through hope. The emergence of the subject’s mindset out of facticity and problematicity into a greater degree

The Ethical Life

59

of being comes by being in a community which fosters the creation of hope. But, the creation of hope is not truly possible without giving up the materialist point of departure of the problematic man. If the root of evil is materialism that really is a perverted form of desire, then, if a person attempts to create hope without breaking out of materialism, the best that she can attain is passivity. The passive person might believe that she is waiting, or being patient for what is to come. Patience on Marcel’s view is not passive, however, and so is a virtue of those people who hope—not by simply wanting something to happen—but for those who choose to engage with others to make things happen. Passivity, conversely, is a vice evidenced by those who are mired in materialism. The patient person waits for the opportunities she creates to pan out, and the passive person waits for things to come to her without also working toward those things.1 A critic might argue that if Marcel is right about the relationship of hope to the creation of possibilities, then experience (rather than patience) should be the source of hope, and experiences are always individual. But if an individual’s experiences stand in for meaningful relationships, or are used as an instrument to gain other possessions, experiences themselves lose their ability to be meaningful. This loss of meaning can also silence hope. The capacity to hope diminishes in proportion as the soul becomes increasingly chained to its experience and to the categories which arise from it, and as it is given over more completely and more desperately to the world of the problematical. (PE 42) Hope begins, then, when people cease to seek it through the objects they value, and is efficacious, on the basis of what can be created rather than on what objects are desired. The subject must have an awareness of her body as her self if she is to move out of problematicity, to experience herself as a subject rather than as an object and thereby to move into a community of subjects. This might at first glance seem odd. But Marcel argues that the more aware that I am, as a body, intertwined with others in the world, the weaker the hold functionality has on me. It is as though I look in the

60


mirror and, after years and years finally see who I am. Ostermann suggests2 that through this particular view of the body, Marcel is trying to replace man at the center of metaphysics, to get him back inside reality instead of facing it like a stranger. I cannot talk about being from the outside: it is something I cannot be outside of without absurdity; the investigation can only be prosecuted within reality. For those who worry about the metaphysical significance of hope as it relates to bodies, Marcel would respond that the universe and our experience of it already admits of hope, and it is up to those who want to break out of problematicity to see the moral significance of hope (BH 73).

Definition of ‘‘Hope’’ In a 1949 newspaper article highlighting the work of Gabriel Marcel, Roger Bodart suggested that Marcel’s true philosophical triumph is the esteem Marcel has for the human person, whose best moment is the moment in which she hopes. “The sense of the sacred, basic respect toward life facing death, and the poetry before creation,” underscores the high value of the virtue that springs from hopeful action.3 As keen as Bodart’s words are at picking out the beauty and substance of Marcel’s existential philosophy, it still misses the key, pragmatic nature of hope: hope is not wishing, but is about what is and what can be. Hope must have reality as its object, since the goal of hope is the creation of possibilities for the person. But, the relationship of hope with what is real can be difficult, especially when we confuse what we hope for with what we want. If hope is, in part, trust in a person’s real options and if there are simply no perceptible, pragmatic options available for her, the person can become fearful. Marcel thinks, however, that hope will include some means of triumphing over fear, rather than succumbing to it (BH 75). The opposite of hope is not despair or fear, since those intense feelings can be overcome, but is instead when someone makes the

The Ethical Life

61

worst out of a particular situation. The hopeful person attempts to create new possibilities for herself and others, even though the options she has to choose from might not be what she would have liked them to be. The college student who has to work full time while attending a second-choice school, the husband who discovers that his wife is not really an angel, the child who has to take care of aging or ill parents—all are examples of those for whom the notion of hope must be inextricable from real possibilities. These people hope in a way that is substantively different from those who merely wish their lives were something other than they are. Mere wishing always has as its object an outcome that is independent of the agent’s ability, and is often confused with hope. (“I hope I win the lottery,”; “I hope the Cubs break the curse,”; “I hope I-10 isn’t backed up with traffic.”) Hope is distinct from mere wishing because the hoped-for situation is one that can be influenced by the individual’s action. In cases of mere wishing, the chances of the hoped-for situation coming to fruition are neither increased nor decreased by the wishful person’s actions, but in true hope, the agent has a role in the outcome of the situation. But hope does its best work when the agent knows what her role is in bringing about the best set of circumstances available to her.4 One way of differentiating between wishing and hoping is to distinguish between ordinary (or, superficial) hope and a hope that is fuller. Although this distinction is not obvious in Marcel, some scholars have found it useful when expositing hope for Marcel. Joseph Godfrey, for example, argues that ordinary hopes express desire for a future event to come about and that the future event is one in which the agent really has very little at stake.5 Ordinary hope, on this view, “is insistent on imagined outcomes” (235), and is inflexible since if its goal is not realized, the agent will not be happy. Ordinary hopes are those which express a desire that a future event will occur because the consequences of the event are beneficial. These hopes are directed toward matters in which a person has little at stake. Full hopes are patient—they diligently wait to obtain their goals because the circumstances are essential to the meaning in their life. This is why the morally efficacious notion of hope is, for Marcel, always

62


focused on genuine transformation, in which the agent’s future prospects hang in the balance. Full hopes, however, are the ones that can bring an individual out of the depths of dejection, and they are the ones that Marcel focuses on. To gain a proper grasp of what Marcel means by a “full” hope, it is helpful to first identify what full hope is not. First, Marcel stresses the point that full hope is not a religious diction, but is something that is attainable through individual action. He notes:6 the religion which you set in opposition to me is nothing but an ethics; and this my whole being disavows. The only religion that can count for me is that which opens to us another world where the miserable barriers that separate beings of flesh vanish in love. Genuine hope, then, is not rooted in an eschatology that does away with the pain and despair that one might feel. Instead, the type of hope that reduces the experience of pain that we feel to some unknown providential wisdom is linked by Marcel “to a certain candor, a certain virginity untouched by experience. It belongs to those who have not been hardened by life.”7 Quite the contrary, Marcel argues that full hope is one that incorporates, rather than eliminates, despair. Hope is the active supersession of the despair that we experience by isolation and suffering. So the antithesis to hope is dejection rather than despair. The truth, Marcel continues, is “that there can strictly speaking be no hope except when the temptation to despair exists. Hope is the act by which this temptation is actively or victoriously overcome” (HV 36). In his later writings, Marcel asserts that an ingenious hope can dwell within people without despair weighing on them, but when people reflect on true hope, the threat of despair often appears. In other words, from the moment I attempt to reflect on hope in its specificity, I realize that hope is not hope unless it is surrounded by a sort of halo or fringe of possible despair.8 Without making a judgment on whether this distinction is warranted or helpful, it is clear from Marcel’s work that he thinks hope

The Ethical Life

63

in its best sense can produce acts which allow a person to overcome the despair of a hopeless situation. Even more, the acts evidenced by hope can breathe new life into a person’s otherwise fearful outlook. Hope allows the agent to will an action based on what she knows can come to be, and so hope is, at its best moment, regenerative (HV 10). If hope is regenerative, then the question of whether hope can be action-guiding (and so, whether hope functions morally) becomes important. Hope is intrinsically interwoven into the fabric of human dignity and community. Hope is at root pragmatic because it breeds new possibilities for oneself and others. Hope is at the same time about what is empirical and mysterious (and so, relates to our human perceptual and phenomenological nature). Finally, hope comes alive when we see its possibilities emerge even in the face of struggle.

Ethics, Hope, Community There is a non-theological sense of the transcendent character of morality that human virtue is meant to aspire to (HV 8). If morality is based on human dignity, then morality is not rule-based, but is eschatological—that is to say, hope is rooted in what lies beyond the present and the problematical. Rather than conforming to moral laws, morality that is based on possibilities for a better future is guided by the rehabilitation of the problematic man and grounded in the subjective (rather than functional, objective) relationship of one person to another. The person who shuts herself off from others is tragic because she limits herself to mendacity (erroneously telling herself that she doesn’t need others), meaningless repetition, and a life without genuine hope. Marcel should not be thought of as being overly dramatic here. Hope is not solely tied to the individual’s possibilities—it is not potent at the level of the self without the aid of others. By itself, the “solitary ego, self-hypnotized and concentrating exclusively on individual aims” seeks ambition, which is innocuous, but hope subsists on a different plane (HV 10). For Marcel, hope creates possibilities only if there is someone for me to share those possibilities. The most significant source of meaning for a suffering individual, then, is a genuine

64


hope that does not undermine the experience of pain that one feels. We can inject some type of meaning into painful experiences through healthy relations with others. Marcel goes so far as to say that it is necessary that the suffering individual “through suffering itself” should open itself up more to others, instead of being closed in on itself.9 Just as community is crucial to Marcel’s version of the ontological development in man, community is also the medium through which a person struggling with the problematic can create meaning. Marcel ventures as far as to say that there “can be no hope which does not constitute itself through a we and for a we.”10 Hope, then, is “choral,” because it brings the totality of a being’s experiences together with a community’s total receptivity for one another. If a community of beings is responsive to my needs, and I am reciprocally responsive, I come even closer to suppressing despair’s desire to be self-enclosed. Marcel elaborates:11 If I am in the grip of evil, that is, if I am tempted to despair . . . it is not by turning in on myself that I will manage to overcome this temptation. My only recourse is to open myself to a wider communion. For in becoming our evil it ceases to be a blow struck at a selfcentered love. Since there is no possibility for genuine, transformative hope in the isolated, hermetic individual, hope is only possible on Marcel’s view when the individual becomes aware of who she is in relation to others. The choral nature of hope is deeply pragmatic, since I create more possibilities for myself when I turn to help others, and turn to others for help. Marcel thinks of this turning toward as an opportunity for the self to break free from the desires of the problematic man and toward the possibilities of the ethical, hopeful life (HV 10). If I seek the fulfillment of hope only in myself, then I refuse to see that morality depends upon the plurality of others and their connection to each other. Just as evil relates to the question of the self and God, for Marcel, evil is grounded in the relationship of the self to others. Cutting oneself off from others can result in “spiritual fatigue” and “paralysis in the presence of death” (TW 143). In a community, conversely, other people can bring about the reconciliation between the inevita-

The Ethical Life

65

bility of my own death and hopeful existence. It is incongruous that hope can be self-centered or covetous since it must depend on the best sense of ourselves, and this best sense is one that is corporate and communal.12 Paul Ricoeur described Marcel’s concept of hope as that which makes the passage to true being possible, since hope is always “coming back, beneath our experience and not above it.”13 Hope is being available to others and patient with the results that emerge from our creative impulses. The communal aspect of hope, then, cannot be divorced from pragmatism within a community. Just as existence without life is not concretely possible, hope without real possibilities is empty (MM 63). Even if the only possibility that is created through the community is the possibility for relationships that can help someone through a difficult situation, the community can be a visceral source of meaning even in the face of suffering.

The Pragmatic Aspect of Hope Hope, independent of future possibilities, reduces to mere wishing. Whereas wishing is severed from the concrete, hope is a concrete illustration of what an agent can bring about when they can no longer wish for something better. In a letter to his Canadian correspondent, Darwin Yarish, Marcel noted that the entire project of the homo viator is to demonstrate that hope allows a person to bring what he says about himself— all that he wants for himself and for those around him—into reality.14 Hope, when coupled with the agent’s will and knowledge, can bring the hoped-for end as a possibility for one’s lived experience rather than a merely desired object. The fluidity between desire and hope means that hope will always be in danger of being degraded into something that allows for fear, despair, and longing for what could never happen. The phrase “living in the past” is reminiscent of this tenuous thread hope depends upon. When someone lives in the past, he is not open to the possibilities that confront him. Instead, his current situation is read in the context of his past options. He is stuck, paralyzed by the choices he did not make, or the circumstances that could have been, but never materialized. Marcel thinks such a person puts things at their worst,

66


and his acts are “strikingly illustrated by what is known as defeatism” (PE 27). This defeatism comes when the agent feels powerless to determine his life, and feels as though what happens in his life has nothing to do with the choices that he makes. A teenage student reminded me of Marcel’s sense of defeatism recently. She rejected Descartes’ view that the senses could not help a person tell dreams from reality because she claimed that in her dreams she always chose the outcome but in her life she never felt as though she was never free to effect her own life. If ever given the choice, she claimed, she would never have chosen the set of circumstances she was in. Such despair, even more striking at such a young age, reflects the despair that Marcel believes the problematic man feels. My young student already felt hopeless in her situation because she felt that whatever options she had in life, they were not her own. She felt unfree and without hope for different, exigent possibilities. And to a large degree, Marcel would argue that her feelings are based on a confusion of desire and hope. Regardless of the circumstances that brought her to this point, my student, by choosing not to own what possibilities currently face her, chooses to view her current experiences as something to be suffered. (Taking things at their worst begins by not owning one’s one concrete situation.) Someone might argue that Marcel’s view favors the privileged, since those who have more are often allowed more possibilities than those who are poor. But this criticism misses two important points in Marcel’s theory of an ethics of hope. In the first place, the possibilities that Marcel is thinking of in his very pragmatic sense of hope are not possibilities to own more or better things. The desire to own is antithetical to the free, moral life because this desire leads the person to the life of the problematic. Instead, the person who breaks out of the problematic and seeks real possibilities without concern for amassing more objects is the person for whom hope is effective. Marcel writes, Hope is proper to the unarmed; it is the weapon of the unarmed or (more exactly) it is the very opposite of a weapon and in that, mysteriously enough, its power lies. Present-day skepticism about hope is due to the essential inability to conceive that anything can be

The Ethical Life

67

efficacious when it is no sort of a power in the ordinary sense of the word.15 In the second place, the life of hope, the moral life, is going to be one that seeks to freely exercise control over what she can control and to recognize that there are parts of life that are beyond her control. The opportunities Marcel thinks of are the chances for a free, intersubjective life where the exercise of hope makes the agent the source of movement and (in its best sense) the source of progress in her own life. 16 Hope is not the advantage of the privileged, then, but of the free. But if that is true, it means that hope must be a product of the will (since only those who can choose their own ends can effectively experience hope). It is the will of a free person that also helps to underscore the difference between genuine hope and mere wishing; just as it indicates the active nature of hope. On the active, pragmatic nature of hope, Marcel’s own comments are quite telling: The idea of inert hope seems to me a contradiction in terms. Hope is not a kind of listless waiting; it underpins action or it runs before it, but it becomes degraded and lost once the action is spent. Hope seems to me, as it were, the prolongation into the unknown of an activity which is central—that is to say, rooted in being. Hence it has affinities, not with desire, but with the will. The will implies the same refusal to calculate possibilities or at any rate it suspends this calculation. Could not hope therefore be defined as the will when it is made to bear on what does not depend on itself? (PE 33) The calculative aspect Marcel mentions above is the wish-fulfillment inversion of hope. Hope is not the calculation of possibilities, remember, but the creation of them. Calculation is passive; creation is active. The free will acts on the principle of hope that wills only that whatever I will should be willed, if what I will actually deserves to be willed (PE 28). The deserving nature of the principle of hope of the will can be thought of as the seat of moral approbation for Marcel. Many desires are capricious and come independent of our volition, and so are unfree, but hope is a movement forward that is wholly mine.

68


The pragmatic nature of hope does not preclude a person from hoping for an outcome that is not a viable possibility for him, especially when the person hopes for something that is indirectly tied to the will. Consider a person whose loved one is ill.17 He might want, desire, and even hope that the loved one will recover from the disease by ensuring that the person gets all of the care that could be given to him. In the case of terminal illness, the hopeful individual cannot act alone in his willing. He does everything he can to bring about a cure, just as he connects to as many people as possible to produce the best situation. This hope is not discouraged by anecdotal evidence which suggests his hope might not be properly grounded because he believes that the actions he is taking can in reality result in a different outcome for his loved one. Marcel argues that it is in the essence of hope to exclude the consideration of cases (i.e., to not give up when told, “in the immense majority of cases this is an illusion”); moreover, it can be shown that there exists an ascending dialectic of hope, whereby hope rises to a plane which transcends the level of all possible empirical disproof. (PE 28) The hope-against-hope in these cases is a legitimate use of the will. Marcel not only thinks that hope is only possible if struggle also is (BH 91), but since hope is not a failsafe against struggle, it also allows us to be able to see what the possibilities are in the dark recesses of crisis. Hope can instruct us to right the wrongs that threaten the status quo, or to fix past wrongs. As long as hope is not related to materialism, it can give the person who has it a type of power that she might otherwise not know that she has. To hope against hope is to be realistic about the possibilities that face her but also to be active to create options outside of that. These options are viewed by Marcel as a type of grace, even, that gives the agent the ability to wait for the best while reaching out toward others who can help her through despair that might come. Hope is not a guarantee that life will be better. Life is full of difficulty, pain, and grief. Hope does not protect us from living through these encounters, but aids the hopeful in living

The Ethical Life

69

through them. The way out for a person can be to create possibility and meaning in these events through hope. Marcel argues that the people who are able to make the best use of hope are those who are the most active in creating different possibilities for the community in which they are involved (PE 33). But this does not mean that hope is easy to come by or to create. Since hope is a trait that can speak meaning into the totality of the lived experience, the possibilities that emerge from it come through struggle and growth. Certainly, the idea of hope in Marcel’s works is closely intertwined with struggle. He notes:18 When people reflect on true hope, the threat of despair often appears. In other words, from the moment I attempt to reflect on hope in its specificity, I realize that hope is not hope unless it is surrounded by a sort of halo or fringe of possible despair. The wounded and fighting existential self is one who experiences a hope that is not separate from despair. His hope, however, enables him to continue on struggling through the despair that he might feel. In this sense, Marcelian hope refuses to compute all of the possibilities against oneself, and instead, chooses to move forward in spite of the despair one might feel. There is despair, but there is always a movement toward something more. If anything, an action by the self to impute some meaning into her pain is the only way that she can transcend the prison of herself. Sometimes, she is brought into the realm of hope simply by the act of willing meaning to her life, since hope is that “which cannot but will that which I will, if what I will deserves to be willed and is, in fact, willed by the whole of my being.”19 Indeed, Marcel proffers his doctrine of hope as the antithesis to dejection, since it is an intentional act, and as the source of meaning that can bring individuals back into relations with others. So, while it is impossible under Marcel’s view to either attribute meaning or meaninglessness to suffering, the individual can emerge out of despair through genuine hope. Full hope does have much at stake; it seeks to bring a person back into community with others— not in spite of despair—but on account of the individual’s suffering.

70


Genuine hope, then, overcomes egocentrism and allows the individual to come to terms with his or her pain. Sam Keen20 encapsulates the whole of Marcel’s view of suffering and genuine hope as such: Thus experience as a whole provides material to develop not only the question of being but also the answer. Taken alone, the experience of disease, discontent, and despair would lead to the affirmation that there is not being. However, we are vouchsafed experiences of fullness, of hope, of love and of joy. The elaboration of an ontology depends on choosing the correct aspect of experience as the key analogy by which we understand the significance of experience as a whole. Since Marcel does address the problem of pain for an individual, as well as a means of providing hope to emerge from experiences of suffering, it must be the case that he makes room somewhere for a hopeful being to experience the pain of suffering—possibly even despair—without losing freedom and the possibilities for freedom’s expression. The pragmatic nature of hope is fascinating when juxtaposed against what an agent feels when in a crisis situation. Hope in situations without felt hope are those in which, phenomenologically, an agent can feel powerless but is also open to acting against that feeling. In Marcel’s words, the “real efficacy of hope is the counterpoint to a complete inefficacy on the phenomenal level” (BH 76). The ability to create possibilities when a person feels unable to see her way out of a situation can derail her feeling of inadequacy. Marcel uses nonviolent resistance as an example of pragmatic, effective hope. Imagine that I oppose violence and most forms of violent combat, but that I live in a community in which rampant and heinous civil rights abuses are occurring. It could be that the tension over those injustices builds until the only means through which resolution seems possible is through violence. The crisis might come to the point at which it becomes impossible to treat the possibility of violence as outside of me. Marcel suggests that if I allow the will to exact revenge to take hold, an identical and opposite will can also grow in those who are oppressing civil rights (BH 77). But the will to overcome what is unjust through nonviolent resistance “com-

The Ethical Life

71

pletely disarms” the enemy, and in so doing it makes the violence of the oppressor empty. By meeting violence with resistance that is of a different type, any justification for the violence is silenced. In meeting evil with a positive, hopeful response, those who are oppressed feel a sense of solidarity, and their actions pave new paths of possibility for themselves, even amid their suffering. But what can hope do in the face of the ultimate existential crisis— the face of one’s own death? Since hope is only possible if despair is also possible, the anguish that emerges in light of my own death can strangle the ability to act. Any paralysis of action will silence the movement forward that hope makes. But if the prospect of my own death is encountered without fear (that can come when desires and wishes might not be fulfilled), that encounter can propel me toward hope. In fact, Marcel argues that a world without the possibility of death is a world where hope only exists in the larval stage (BH 93). Hope can be a springboard that helps one through struggle and, ultimately, through the experience of one’s own death. The springboard sense of hope which allows us to struggle through difficult times should not be equivocated with a magical wand that takes struggle and death away. Remembering that the conditions for the possibility of hope coincide rigorously with those for despair,21 Marcel writes that, “hope is nothing like a short cut for pedestrians, taken when the road is blocked and joining the road again on the other side of the obstacle” (BH 78), but instead, hope acts as a leap, a jump, a dash that can help the person see through anguish. This hope refuses to calculate what could go wrong as a quantity against what one’s real options are. Hope reaches out as a type of “frantic appeal to others, to allies” so that what it knows about its possibilities can (humbly) outstrip the negative outcomes of what is unknown (HV 10). The pragmatic sense of Marcelian hope is, in one sense concrete, since its efficacy is rooted in the creation of possibilities and the person who has genuine hope is able to use it to wade through struggle. But there is, a different sense in which Marcel’s notion of hope is mysterious, since fulfilling the hoped-for end depends not only on the individual’s action, but also on the other people in the community. The risk a person takes for hope is that what she hopes for might not come to fruition, because she has to trust that other

72


people will also take action. The communal call reflects the mystery of being Marcel believes is crucial to the triumph over the problematic.

Hope and Mystery Marcel compares hope at one point to prayer, not for its dependence on a higher being, but on the unsystematic, nondialectical, intersubjective nature of both. For prayer to work, there must be faith, in the very least, that the prayer is other-directed. (Even if a non-believer prays, her prayer is a call out to somebody other than herself.) Hope is also other-directed, and depends for its fulfillment on others in a community (BH 74). It is mysterious, then, in the same way that prayer is, since it requires an Other in order to be effective. Also mysterious to the nature of hope is that hope must contemplate being able to transcend what other people call sureties of reality. When someone says, “There is no hope,” the hopeful must be able to recognize actions that could maneuver room for hope. Hope transcends these negative sureties, but it also transcends our natural inclination toward desire and fear (MM 92) by recognizing that even our own individual achievements are insufficient to overcome facticity and isolation. We need a community for true hope, and for forward movement. And, notwithstanding Marcel’s view that any person, regardless of theological convictions, can have hope, there is an eschatological feature to the community Marcel wants for fostering hope. This feature is unverifiable (and so, mysterious), but it aims toward salvation. (Just like hope, salvation is only possible where real harms are also possible.) Salvation for the theist, of course, has its source in God. For Marcel’s brand of theism, the idea of the mystical body of Christ permits at least a glimpsing of what salvation can be.22 Although they would have a different representation of this mystery, the agnostic or atheist can find the source for the type of hope that ends in salvation is the experience of love. Love, after all, gives hope more than any other experience. Marcel notes: Hope in this sense is not only a protestation inspired by love, but a sort of call, too, a desperate ally who is Himself also Love. The supernatural element which is the foundation of Hope is as clear here as its transcendent nature, for nature, unilluminated by hope,

The Ethical Life

73

can only appear to us the scene of a sort of immense and inexorable book-keeping. (BH 79) Unbelievers can experience hope, even if Marcel thinks they will not have the phenomenological experience of salvation, that ultimate culmination of hope. Love is hopeful, and so produces some approximation of the salvation Marcel thinks is waiting for the community of believers whose hope is grounded in the divine.

Conclusion In a journal entry, Marcel writes about his own experience of hope, which felt to him like a special experience of grace: This morning’s happiness is miraculous. For the first time I have clearly experienced grace. A terrible thing to say, but so it is . . . . And yet, I feel a kind of need to write. Feel I am stammering childishly . . . this is indeed a birth. Everything is different. Now, too, I can see my way through my improvisations. A new metaphor, the inverse of the other—a world which was there, entirely present, and at last I can touch it. (BH 15) Marcel’s positive normative theory has its origins in the question of the death of God, and has its best expression in hope. Hope is a question for ethics because it guides which actions agents should attend to, because it is tied to the community of others who also obligate the agent, and because it develops virtues through the inevitable struggles and despair that come in life. Other, more systematic philosophical standpoints cannot be effective without a certain moral formalism which can be ineffective at addressing hope, ambitions, commitments, and vulnerabilities that are in their nature human experiences (HV 10). The next step is to articulate how Marcel’s ethics of hope applies to real-world global moral problems, and so to demonstrate its pragmatic relevance. Since hope is interwoven with the development of new possibilities and also about a community of beings, Marcel’s view should be able to be directed toward practical circumstances in the world with the goal of easing suffering and fostering effective communities.

Chapter 4

Ethics in Personal Crisis

Marcel states that in all suffering, an individual is at risk for becoming self-centered and eventually succumbing to despair. Chapter 4 shows that ineffectual attachments to technology, possessions, and to people thwart the ethical life, and that personal crises can be existentially viable by making adjustments to those attachments. Marcel already has established that attachments to the wrong thing can lead to suffering, but when those attachments disrupt hope, they can also abort the person’s moral ends. Instead of being attached to a healthy source, the individual substitutes technology, possessions, or bad relationships for those that can actually give hope. These attachments squelch existentially ethical hope by compelling individuals to wallow in the depth of their suffering, and as a result bind the person toward emptiness and despair. Bad attachments lead to “unhope,” the abruption of belief in any effective future possibilities. Unhope feels like a death sentence during life, since a person not only knows that she will die, but she anticipates her death. For Marcel, no problem is more important or more difficult than that of determining how to overcome unhope in personal crisis. If there is a way to overcome the vice of unhope in personal suffering, it must be through individual action either to understand or to create meaningfulness within that crisis. Suffering can never be good in itself—it is actually bad in principle—but a free act that seeks to create meaning independent of the pain experienced in crisis can lead a person out of unhope and despair. Even the simple act of willing to think through a crisis can serve as the impetus for virtue, since it gives the agent a glimpse of what is beyond the crisis. The will is the seat of hope—the momentum of possibilities and meaning—and so is the antithesis to dejection and despair. Hope in


75

personal suffering is not eschatological, because the purpose of hope is not to eradicate painful experiences, but to aid in the journey. Hope incorporates despair into reaching out toward others to experience possibilities even amid the despair. Full hope does have much at stake morally. It drives a person into community with others—not in spite of despair, but on account of the individual’s suffering. Hope in the ethical life, then, serves as a foundation for relationships that better the self, others, and (ultimately) true community. When someone can adjust the attachments she has toward those that foster creativity and possibility, she opens the door for the development of virtues that can sustain her through times of struggle. Fidelity, especially, is a virtue that both comes from hopeful existence and, reciprocally, supports the pursuit of possibilities for the self and others.

Technology Marcel’s existentialism was noted during the apex of its popularity for its skepticism about advances in technology, but it is that same caution toward which Marcel approaches technology that serves as a bridge between early twentieth century and twenty-first century applied ethical issues. We should take pause, if only to consider how virtue and the moral life fit with the frenetic pace at which current technology is developing, even technologies whose purpose is social networking and connecting people. Marcel should not be read as a critique of all technological advances, especially those whose purpose is to right wrongs and to alleviate suffering. The nature of technology is morally and existentially benign. Like any other object or relationship, technology can be misused and valued incorrectly, but it also can be an impetus for good. Technology, as Marcel understands it, is a methodically elaborated procedure which can be taught and reproduced, whose goal is some concrete purpose (MM 83). The creative impulse is the source of significant technological advances, after all, and so technology can be a positive determinant of our experiences and can result in beneficial ends. Any progress is progress, and can be celebrated as such. There are

76


even moments in Marcel’s writing where he seems to advocate technological progress, as long as progress is the goal for technological development. For example, in an early segment in Man against Mass Society, Marcel writes: We ought to insist, however, that there would be no point in regarding either technical progress in general, or the progress of some particular technique, as having of its very nature a necessarily negative value for the spirit. It would be more precise to say that technical progress in the strict sense is a good thing, both good in itself, and good because it is the incarnation of a genuine power that lies in human reason: good even because it introduces into the apparent disorder of the outer world a principle of ineligibility. (MM 56) So, if progress is the endpoint of technological innovation, and if we can focus on celebrating progress as an important element of the hopeful, ethical life, it will not be difficult to see how technology fits for Marcel. Even more, if we have the ability to create more possibilities for humanity through technology and we do not do so, then, Marcel argues, that we’ve done something wrong. We cannot say that the realm of the technical is evil in itself or that progress at the technical level ought, as such, to be condemned . . . . There is every reason to suppose, on the contrary, that such a step would be the starting point of an almost unimaginable regression for the human race. (MM 82) Since hope is the characteristic virtue of meaningful existence and the moral life, and hope can be fostered through technological development, it is permissible and, indeed, obligatory to pursue human progress through technology. The caution over technology must instead come from “the concrete relationship that tends to grow up between technical processes on the one hand and human beings on the other” (MM 83). Since humans are by nature creative, they will always be attracted to technological


77

developments. But this attraction can lead to materialism, and a disconnection of the self from the self and others.

Technology and Materialism Chapter 1 already established the difficulty materialism can pose for existential significance and moral growth. But the interest in technology, when the pursuit of its advance is motivated by materialism, can lead to the same problems that any other desires for possessing can. The user of technology quickly becomes a consumer of technology, and from a consumer’s position, technological progress encourages envy because the desire for technology and gadgets does not actually lead to personal fulfillment, but only a false sense of personal superiority for adding to one’s collection of things (MM 58). Marcel actually calls the pull of materialism from technological sources “idolatry.” In an undated newspaper interview, Marcel notes: The progress of technology encourages idolatry. The man who does not believe does not have anything to exist. The man without relations cannot exist. What must remain is to know what becomes of the relations without belief, especially without the belief in Life.1 The idolatry of technology mostly comes as a result, on Marcel’s view, of the effortlessness with which people are able to use technologies that they had no part in developing. The developer of the technique is less susceptible to corruption by the technology than those who did not participate in the creation of it.2 The creator often better understands the technology as a by-product of a human, creative undertaking. Those who benefit from the technology but do not participate in creating it tend to “undertake to exceed their condition” by placing a primacy on the technological advance, rather than on discerning the proper role the technical object should play in life. The altar of technology can “result in a depreciation for the one who does not have to take part in having the effort of the conquest (of creation),” given the dual facets of over-emphasizing the role of technology and allowing technology to greatly impact effective relationships (Seltifer).

78


The materialistic pull of technology resembles that of the attraction to coveting other material goods. The temptation comes from imagining that owning or using the latest technological gadget actually has intrinsic value. And, Marcel thinks that most people get caught up in the latest and greatest without recognizing that their own thinking can deceive them by placing too great of value on the technological good. Most people do not recognize that technological materialism is a pitfall. Like my 9-year-old daughter, who does not see any potential danger in spending endless hours playing video games, many people believe they are impervious to a negative impact of technology in their lives. If men are generally unaware of this danger, it is because they are deceived by their own childish notion of idolatry. Idolatry is something savages do! How could the emancipated man, who prides himself in believing nothing, be an idolater? Their delusion consists precisely in failing to recognize that superstition can work itself into the very substance of the mind. (MM 62–3) The materialism that comes with an ascension of primacy of technology has an important residual effect: it leads people to devalue their relationships with other non-human entities, like the environment, which can have further detrimental effects. Since technology allows us to better engage with, travel across, and then take ownership of the earth, Marcel notes that “an infinite number of applications” have been developed so that “places, sites are no longer respected.”3 It is at our own peril that we ignore the environmental impact of some technological advances, especially when the successful development of the advance depends upon natural resources. An environmental paradox of sorts emerges with our continued engagement with it: the world becomes more alive to us, almost as a being itself, because of our enhanced tools that help us gain knowledge and dominance of it. But the enhanced tools are impossible to produce without the world also acting as a natural source for the production of continued technological possibilities (Marcel article, Box 6.11). Anthropocentric practices supplant the idea of human stewardship and care of the earth with the will of business. But, business


79

on Marcel’s view tends to operate as a “will of exploitation” that operates on “the principle of indefinite upheaval,” and so a purely costbenefit financial assessment should primarily be to blame for unsustainable technological practices. The effects of the inappropriate attachment to technology are not just felt on the environmental level. Technological advances over the last century have led the human race to a place in history where they have never yet been: the place wherein technology endows people with the power of putting an end to their own earthly existence (MM 76). If the time in which we live can be called an “eschatological age,” it is not for the message of hope or for some religious sense of living in an apocalyptic moment. Rather, our use of technology can undermine our very earthly existence—and not just meaningful, existential existence, but as beings at all. The attraction to technology for each person who feels its pull places within him the potential for the destruction of himself, others, and the environment which provides for technological opportunities. Imagine the responsibility that comes with this internal switch! Prior to the rapid growth, for example, in military technology that gave birth to nuclear and chemical warfare, nations would have to labor to produce weapons that could protect and conquer each other, but which could not threaten all existence. In this era, there is no need for a person to actually create new ways of destruction—he can use a computer and a printer to plan a course of action, perfected by others, to threaten lives, communities, and the environs in which they thrive. The technological age has put the entire human race, then, at a point that intersects (and so, can connect or disconnect) science and ethics. The ideal connection between the two would be a galvanization or envelopment of science and ethics so that technological successes would come only as a result of the active involvement of ethical discourse (Marcel article, Box 6.11). And, surely, we can point to moments in the last century where the galvanization has actually occurred in spite of the danger that could have resulted if ethics were missing from the equation. But Marcel warns that, “it is an illusion to believe that it is possible to precisely build a stable order from paroxysms and the conscience that they can give birth to” (Box 6.11). Securing the moral cart—especially when the human impulse creates

80


technologies that can lead to systemic unrest and (even) destruction— will always entail sacrifices from those who choose virtue. Those who do not see the relationship between ethics and technology will always argue that moralists protest disproportionately and unjustifiably against technological improvements, and even more, will argue that including moral deliberation in technological discussions will create social harm. For the argument that the ethical has nothing to do with the technological to work successfully, the social masses must become hoodwinked. Society has to buy into the idea that scientific advances require the non-voluntary participation of entire societies. Communities are obligated to pursue development at all costs (whether existential, moral, or economic). And, it is important to note that the wool-pulling has been effective. “In the name of science” has become a mantra with more social efficacy than “in the name of God,” even though in the most extreme cases (say, those of warfare, poverty, global terror), humanity itself has been placed as collateral against technological achievement. The existential result, according to Marcel, is a “state of suspense” wherein we (as a human group) wait to see if the marker will be called in. “There is nothing more dubious and, I will add, of more worrying, than the moral or spiritual status of these (sacrificial) multitudes” (Box 6.11).

Technology and Disconnection The “insuperable hiatus” between technology and morality, it must be emphasized, is intrinsic neither to technology nor morality. It is only built by the same hands that effect technical and moral change in the world. If the distance between science and ethics is not intrinsic, then it must be the case that the ascension of significance for technology in daily life is actually not itself an existential or moral problem. Rather, the problem is that the attraction to technology can displace the proper existential and ethical significance that people ought to have in life. The idolatry of technology becomes “autolatry,” or a worship of oneself (MM 84). The ascension of technology in the place of human relations leads to the same deification of the self that worried Marcel about Sartrean atheism. The autolatry of humans


81

through technology comes primarily through the advances that led people to believe that their existence can be projected as a presence in all places at all times. The opportunity to be everywhere at all times puts the person in danger of believing herself to be omnipresent, and so a sort of divine, or in the least, royalty (Seltifer). The omnipresence afforded by technology appears to come to us at no cost, but for Marcel, it is the absence of an apparent cost that is part of the problem. All progress should be balanced by a kind of inner conquest, but the person who is at all times for all people without proper reflection or true presence (as I will argue later in this chapter), is lost to herself. Dependence on gadgets “whose smooth functioning assures a tolerable life at the material level” only leads to an “estrangement from an awareness of inner reality” (MM 55). The person who immerses who she is in what she has—even if they are technologies aimed at helping her connect to others—places her center of significance outside of herself: more and more into objects, into the various pieces of apparatus on which (s)he depends for existence. It would be no exaggeration to say that the more progress “humanity” as an abstraction makes towards the mastery of nature, the more actual individual men tend to become slaves of the conquest. (MM 56) Her technological fingerprint can be seen by all at the same moment at which she is available to no one. Technology—like any other material item that we use to build the image that we project to other people—allows us to hide from and to escape honest, intersubjective relationships. Healthy connections (i.e., the stuff of meaningful existential experiences) are replaced in the autolatrous system with man himself. Man becomes the center—the source—of meaning without the connections to other people that Marcel believes is fundamental to transcending the realm of the problematic. The difficulty is, on his view, at the level of the meta-biological, because a constitutive component to our humanity is the belief that man is center of all things, and (more honestly, actually) that I am the center of all things. But, it also

82


could be the case that I am not, and that humanity is not, the center of all things, just as it could finally be the case that neither I nor humanity is at the center. Rather than reflecting these possibilities, technology affirms man’s place, and my place, for any existential significance (Marcel article, Box 6.11). That place is a place of omnipresence. Even setting aside the basic business tools that have become requirements of our workplace functionality, like email and texting, we can advertise ourselves through 140-character segments of our inner lives on networks that have grown to actually be called social network sites. Twitter, Facebook, Linked-In, Academia.edu, and Skype—all are pitched as free opportunities to “connect,” “create networks,” “establish profiles,” and, even “make friends”—and, a person can do all of these simultaneously if she has, you guessed it, the right technological equipment. Existentially, it is not clear that the omnipresence offered by the onslaught of social media is the most worrisome. Instead, it can be argued that what the social network model has done is to offer a person a taste of omnipresence. Of course, Gabriel Marcel himself died prior to, even, the commercial success of Macintosh’s first personal computer. But, his guest editorial smacks of prescience in its description of the desire for humanity to glorify itself through technology. In his words: All in all it is a question of ensuring, by providing man the necessary cosmic equipment, the triumph of a humanity glorified. But it is necessary to say more precisely than “it is as well,” since humanity is represented as glorified if it has this equipment. Still let us say that it is from itself that humanity’s glory is drawn. If that is the case, we thus help to establish a “theosis,” but what kind of deification is this? It is about a control as complete as possible bearing on a determined (given) sector of the world. But what is it to be he who exerts or he who intends to exert this control, and can he still be a master of himself? We instead ask, from such a point of view, if these words “self control” can keep their direction. The master of oneself always was dependent on mastering the vital feeling of mastering the measurement of oneself—but, a disproportion of this opposition to one’s spirit is hubris. But the concept of hubris was not itself


83

dependent on that of a cosmos, or else man would know how to maintain his position (without it). Box 6.11, Marcel “L’Homme et Les Techniques”, «L’aventure technocratique>> From Marcel’s technologically-archane pad and paper, or his assistant’s manual typewriter, he argued that the biggest attraction technology affords us is the feeling of control over our lives, and the biggest downside is that it provides us with opportunities to have a more facile availability with more people. Apart from how remarkable it really is that Marcel could write these words without having experienced the profile-building of social media sites and other technologies, the tenor of Marcel’s distress resonates exactly because human nature, in spite of technological advances, has not changed. The ability to process-feed snippets of our thoughts and thumbnails of our best selves is actually not new, even though the scope of those who can access it is wider, and the vehicles through which we do so are more expansive. Instead, what accompanies conscious human innovation is an implied judgment that the creating person is at the center of nature and is in control. “The question that must be asked here or understood not at all . . . is (under which) concrete terms creative action can fit” (Marcel article, Box 6.11). If the human élan vital leads people to believe themselves to be the center of all things, then technological creation, regardless of its intent, will also have the propensity to cause disconnection. On one hand, this disconnection is caused by humans failing to understand what is and should be in the scope of human control. Marcel consistently maintained that humans are always at the mercy of technology, because people lose control through their dependence on technology (PE 31). Perhaps class cannot be taught if the powerpoint slides are left behind in the office, or the market items cannot be purchased when the credit card machine is down, or even perhaps the kids cannot properly enjoy life unless the television is on and playing at full volume—if the success of the plane of our activity depends solely on technology, and if our existential significance depends also on that success, we no longer have control. On another hand, the anthropocentrism Marcel sees as integral to technological advances radically excludes the transcendence of the

84


problematic because it leads so often to an objectification of the self and others. The ironic result, as Marcel conceives it, is that by becoming gods, humans lose the ability to speak meaningfully about their own lives, and about the ethical significance of being human. He writes: On the contrary, man does not hold any longer an account of himself, and in that sense, he has moved much more radically, more cynically, to the center of the world than he did during the preceding time that he declared bygone.4 The attempt to make himself more than he is, through technology, reduces what he can be. So, for Marcel, the disconnection and ultimate reduction of the self’s significance results when technological progress replaces the centrality of human interaction to meaningful existence. But this assessment of technology and the ethical life would miss something important if it did not also underscore that, for Marcel, equally destructive is the disconnection from others that results from overvaluing the existential importance of technology. Since technology is simply a tool, it is functional only at the hands of the people who develop and use it. And, like any other tool available to us, it can be used to cause suffering—especially when people who have the technology use it to target other groups of people. Technological progress, Marcel noted, is at its nature indifferent to moral values but also the material expression of any given intellectual conquest (MM 56). Devaluing people whom we hate, distrust, or simply cannot tolerate has been an intellectual endeavor since the beginning of recorded human history, just as using technology to do so has been. (It must be noted, here, that the devaluation Marcel means is in its most secular, common, sense. There is no evidence that Marcel thinks that the theist is at an advantage in properly valuing objects and subjects, just as a believers are no more apt at properly valuing people that they do not particularly like. But, methodologically, his existentialism seems to promote the value of humanity in a way that others do not. Marcel himself thought Sartre’s philosophy, as an example, could be called “a technique of depreciation,” since to


85

overcome the Look, a person must turn inward and create meaning.5 Rather, regardless of one’s theological commitments, Marcel believed that the existential significance of humanity was universal, and that all people ought to restore the values that place meaning at the level of intersubjective relationships). We know that Marcel had in mind advances in weaponry and medicine that were used toward heinous ends in World War II. But in the twenty-first century, there have been egregious examples of individual abuses of technology to target and degrade specific individuals or small groups. Craigslist is used to traffic children for sex (and to lure potential murder victims), and MySpace is used to cyber-bully to such a degree that the target kills herself. Chemical warfare happens locally, with anthrax scares and biological terrorism in subway portals. But far less dramatic degradation occurs just in virtue of access to technological advances. Those who can afford technology and who live in urban areas which can facilitate its use already are in a seat of power in terms of education, information, and economic development. These, too, are tools and are not intrinsically valuable, but the disparity between those who have and those who do not itself suggests the danger of this being a method of degradation. There are even famous instances in which China, North Korea, Iran, and most recently, Egypt have suspended their citizens’ access to social media sites in order to filter what ordinary citizens can communicate about the policies and practices of their respective governments. Whereas totalitarian-like regimes restrict access to technology to punish and control, in many first-world countries, the gap between those who have and those who do not have reflects an economic disparity. Couple the large-scale opportunities for degradation with smaller violations of human dignity and trust, and it cannot be ignored that technological development will culminate in the invention of more and more formidable instruments of destruction whose imminent use would only foolishly be denied (see, e.g., MM 56). The devaluation is the same, since the motivation for all of it is to squelch human flourishing of a particular type. Whether the propaganda of the totalitarian regime, or the deprecating technique of a business competitor, the endeavor is to use technology to destroy any efficacious individual reaction to the political party, business group, or state.6

86


The end result is the obliteration of being directed toward what is true and significant, and so an obliteration of hope. The abruption caused to personal relationships through the pull of materialism (idolatry, actually, if Marcel is to be believed) along with the inequality that persists in the use and application of technology generates despair, and this despair can impede the path to the moral life. Just as nature in itself does not have a positive or negative value, so too Marcel is careful to say that technological progress itself does not lead to materialism, disconnection, or despair. Instead, it is the technical process which can bring about these results, especially as they feed either the desire to possess or fear that one cannot possess the objects (MM 89). If the pursuit for technological gain—rather than a pursuit for the betterment of the world—occurs, the only result Marcel foresees is a world of despair. Marcel called the twentieth century of technological innovation “the very era of despair” (PE 30) because the people who were so caught up in what technology can do often applied this same model to reality, even though technology as a whole can only help us solve particular—not universal—problems. Even the person who says that humans can achieve only as much as technology can achieve “must admit that these technics are unable to save man himself, and even that they are apt to conclude the most sinister alliance with the enemy he bears within him” (PE 31). That enemy—the internal fight over problematizing the significance of existence—cannot be won through technology, but must be dealt with through intersubjective relationships. The ultimate external enemy is, of course, death. Since technology, regardless of how advanced it gets, cannot help us escape death it is, at best, of neutral existential value. A technological world only ends in despair because it promises advancement but cannot provide escape. For by the very nature of such a world, it can offer us no possibility of help where techniques are useless—as primarily, and above all, they are useless in the presence of death. Here, from the point of view of such a world, could death appear as anything else than the flinging on the scrap heap of a being that has ceased to be of service—and that no longer is anything, the moment it is no longer of any use? (MM 95)


87

The fragility of the intellectual pursuit of technological advance can clash against the very real danger of despair when we realize that technology, for all of its benefits, is simply another tool. It can be used, it can be misused, it can be valued correctly, it can be valued incorrectly and, in the final analysis, it can be used to repair a broken world or it can further separate us from existential and ethical growth. But what is the proper role of technology in an ethical life? Technology—or, at the very least, a narrative about technology—that can help us navigate the correlation between the increasing complexity of the world in which we live and the existential import of technology would be a good place to start. Although Marcel rejects the notion that there is a “nature” or “essence” to technology, we (as creators, producers, consumers, and users of technology) can dictate its ethical and existential value. Apart from a certain aesthetic value that can be felt when engaging with a well-formed technological tool, we ought to demand of technology that it provide for the overall betterment as a society (not materially, here, but spiritually/interpersonally), and that it allows us to create new avenues for confirming and reinforcing the presence we ought to have with others.7 The attachments that lead to the possibility of an ethical life are those that breed the practice of virtues, and for Marcel, fidelity is the key virtue that accompanies, and undergirds hope. Any subjective or objective relation to the self that can foster the growth of fidelity (and so, can foster hope) is virtuous. Just as technology can be a good thing on the individual level if the person has a proper attachment to it, and if technology functions to help the person sustain effective relationships, so too on a broader scale, technology that was used to unify humanity and to work for the good of human community—so, technology whose end was a moral one—would transform its negative value into a necessary, positive end (MM 61).

Fidelity Marcelian fidelity is the common, secular commitment to being actively involved in the growth of people who sustain your own growth, and its benefit, according to Marcel, is that it perpetuates the creation of new possibilities (PE 36). Commitment, then, is the foundation for

88


faithfulness, and the commitment to others is a kind of commitment to the self. (It does not seem to follow, however, that one has to be aware that she has a commitment that undergirds her fidelity. She could say, “I will be for you and for me,” which is the best expression of fidelity, without also cognizing that commitment is required for her promise to be fulfilled.) Even still, fidelity is a vow. Nietzsche famously remarked that man is the only being who makes promises, and for Marcel, the only way to triumph over the passage of time that invariably leads to our own death is to make the vow of fidelity, and to choose to enter freely into relationships that can foster a moral life that can escape despair. The vow of fidelity is meant to be a concrete demonstration that reflects a person’s proper attachment to another.8 The vow of fidelity can create, heal, and sustain broken human connections, and so it is fundamentally an ethical virtue. The exercise of fidelity is dominated by the idea of choice and is always directed toward an outward purpose. Jacques Delesalle argued that Marcel’s fidelity allowed the human viewpoint to walk between idealism and the poetry of heroism which the imagination tends to seek, but also that the vow of the faithful is fundamentally concrete.9 Fidelity seeks to freely build attachments in the hope that doing so will make my expressions of freedom efficacious for significance, meaning, and virtue. The virtue of fidelity is grounded on the idea that I cannot be free within myself until I submerge myself in the needs of others. Gallagher explains: 10 Freedom is a belonging; therefore the disponibilité which makes belonging possible is a constituent of metaphysical knowledge and not only a moral virtue. Freedom is not a matter of clenching my fists against intrusion from the outside. It is a realization, a letting-go, a letting-be of being. The assimilation of ethics into the commitment-relationship can sometimes express itself in astonishing terms: “it is because freedom is creative that it infinitely transcends the limits of prescription”; “the homo viator reflects a persuasive virtue of fidelity”;


89

“the world of metaphysics can best be seen through the window of faithful reflection”; “loyalty is above obedience in the virtues if it helps us overcome the abyss of existential anguish”.11 The critic might suggest that Marcel is either attempting to provide a formula to extricate someone from existential angst, or that the extrication is too simple. Neither criticism hits the mark. The problem with problematicity and the despair that comes with it is that the problematic man habituates himself to disavowal—a commitment not to vow, or a commitment not to commit. This is, of course, a commitment. But the seriousness of the disavowal practiced by the problematic man is that “it walls the person into the loneliness of a proud and solitary consciousness and slices it from all contact with a life of action and grace.”12 We know from Chapter 1 that the problematic man is reduced to the mechanical and experiences meaning only through being used as any other tool would be. But the disavowal of the problematic man is particularly troublesome for a moral life, because it disconnects the individual with meaningful reality, it disconnects the individual from the historical situation that helps him adhere to others in similar situations, and it disconnects the individual from a healthy relationship with his own body (Marinoir). The attempt to not vow, then, is a type of abstraction because it idealizes what humans should be independent of their situation, and instead provides a value for them that depends solely on their use in society. The ethical problem with the disavowal of the problematic man is that it inverts the virtues that can help people break out of their isolation. Think of the young man who has bought into the reduction of love to sexuality, and thinks of the body only at the level of function. He is astonishingly incapable of seeing that the body as a “through-which” he can effectively connect to someone he cares for, and this impotence leads to his alienation—even if he is totally unaware that the alienation has occurred. Such a man trades in freedom of the body for a desiccated, choked, obsessive idea. The most potent point of suffering that Marcel mentions is that of loneliness that comes from disavowal. Man’s loneliness is actually paradoxical, for although the uniqueness and individuality of man’s

90


personality predispose him to being existentially insular and independent, being alone is something that an individual simply cannot bear.13 A solitary individual certainly may be able to function (though on many occasions he may not), but deep in his functionality he feels even more alone. At least in his early play Le Coeur de Autres, Marcel comments that, “There is only one grief, to be alone.”14 For those who feel alone, loneliness becomes a condemnation to suffer, and to suffer as an isolated being. The only presence that a truly lonely person feels is her own, largely because she believes that her experiences as an individual are incommunicable. If she cannot communicate who she is or the things she struggles with to others, then she certainly cannot feel the presence of others in her life. The cold truth of the matter may be that disavowing is easier than vowing. To commit to oneself through disavowal risks far less than being faithful to those we are committed to. When a person acts faithfully, she always opens herself up to the possibility that her faithfulness will not be reciprocated. Her fidelity is always collateral placed against an unknown quantity. It could turn out that the person to whom she commits betrays her in the end, and because she took a chance on meaningful existence through the relationship of the one who betrays her, the pain can totally eviscerate her. When the vow is fulfilled, though, and the commitment is returned, the concrete growth that is mutually experienced is paid back beyond what was risked. So, although it is true that fidelity attaches itself in such a way that it can, at every moment, confirm or obliterate one’s significance (Delesalle), it is also true that the presence that is afforded when a person lives the virtue of fidelity can produce a well of hope that can sustain those who are committed to helping each other through the enormity of life’s difficulty.

Presence “Presence” is a crucial concept to Marcel’s philosophy (metaphysically and epistemically even, but definitely, normatively as well). Presence is the inward realization, through love, that I am related, and bound, to another person (PE 15). The term has nothing to do with


91

being physically nearby. You can sit in excruciating proximity to another person on an airplane, and yet not have presence with that person. You can have a conversation about important philosophical concepts with another person, and yet not have presence with her. You can even engage with your partner in the most intimate physical expression of presence possible—the sexual experience—and yet not have presence with that person. Conversely, you can have presence with a person who is miles away from you, or with whom you have never shared a word, or, through the written page, with someone you have not even met. Presence is revelatory, rather than demonstrative, which means that a person cannot empirically prove whether she shares presence with another person, but the presence of the person shows itself. The relationship of one person to another fundamentally requires what Marcel calls “availability” (disponibilité). I am available to another person when I make room for the other in myself. Marcel uses the example of the conscientious, but unavailable listener (PE 40). We all have been in conversations with such a kind of person—someone, whether because of training or habit are very good listeners, but who do not offer themselves (either through advice, encouragement, disagreement) at all in the conversation. An upper administrator at a school that I used to teach for became notorious for his attentive, unavailable comportment with faculty. He would listen very well, and you would initially feel drawn in when he was obviously listening to you. But, quickly it became clear that your words really were ineffectual, because though he was listening, he was actually closed to whatever proposal you were putting forth. The attempt to interact with someone like this is frustrating, not only for the feeling that there is no reciprocal engagement, but because you have no hope that whatever it is that you would like that person to attend to will be attended to. Presence can be used interchangeably (in many cases) with intersubjectivity. Marcel actually talks about the close similarity between the general use of intersubjectivity and presence in Presence and Immortality:15 Actually it is necessary to speak of intersubjectivity here. The meaning of this term, however, is always in danger of being misunderstood

92


because of the world of ordinary activity is that of objects, and therefore one is apt to interpret intersubjectivity as a transmission bearing on a content that is objective and independent of those who transmit it. But that would only be a distorting interpretation of something which in no way allows itself to be expressed in such a language. Intersubjectivity is essentially an openness. Marcel’s description of intersubjectivity, then, calls for both an openness and a receptivity toward others. Rightly so, for intersubjectivity is an openness to others. Presence and intersubjectivity differ, however, on their focus. Presence is concerned largely with recognizing myself as a being-among-beings, and acknowledging the relevance of others’ experiences to my own, as a being. Intersubjectivity, conversely, goes beyond an opposition of “I and him,” in which I see myself as one being, and then I see another being as simply another being. Intersubjectivity is concerned with the depth of the self without the matter of distinguishing between the self and others, because the end of intersubjectivity is community. Anderson remarks16 that my intersubjectivity with others has “an underlying unity which ties me to other beings and as an underlying reality, a community deeply rooted in ontology,” which then enables us, as members of such a community, to delve “deeply into our experience of being [so to] catch glimpses of being as plentitude.” There are, however, degrees of intersubjectivity and we must delineate more specifically what Marcel means by intersubjectivity so that we are able to see the development of this community, as well as how intersubjectivity works as an aspect of the existential self. To be intersubjective, one must first be open to the togetherness or withness that Marcel desires for his participative community. Whereas presence is characterized as being “in” or “within” the experiences of another person, intersubjectivity carries the individual further in his relationships and can be identified as a state of being with, or together with, another being. Stallknecht notes that this state of being is so integral to Marcel, that any explication of the existential self would be remiss without it. He writes:17 For Marcel, the meaning of human, the very quality of man, lies in a capacity for fellowship and reciprocity. The reality of the


93

individual appears in the freedom and good faith of his commitment, without which there is no human togetherness, no intersubjectivity, and these are the very atmosphere whereby personality or subjectivity exists. Upon realizing his need for others, and upon being open to them, the individual’s commitment to others leads him into relationships whereby he can experience that togetherness—the withness—of others. Intersubjectivity can only take place among individuals who are committed to being with one another, and it is only through intersubjectivity that a community of presenced beings can flourish.18 Marcel reiterates the relationship between the togetherness of intersubjectivity and the development of his community: I have laid such stress upon intersubjectivity precisely because I wish to emphasize the presence of an underlying reality that is felt, of a community which is deeply rooted in ontology; without this, human relations, in any real sense, would be unintelligible.19 In other words, the mutual intersubjectivity of beings is recognizable on account of the presence of some other quality; for Marcel, the mark of intersubjectivity is love: To be with is an exalted dimension of being, inextricably bound up with the dynamic drive for transcendence. In the case of man, to be with involves the human person in a self-commitment to a dialogue with the animate and inanimate universe in a search for truth, and to a mutual self-donation with his fellow men for the attainment of the dialectic of love in a community of love.20 Love, the spouse of intersubjectivity, is important to Marcel’s community on several counts. At its very root, it is an outward sign of fulfilled being. (Indeed, Keen21 remarks that love is the developed form of intersubjectivity, and that it is only through love that intersubjectivity can justify the assertion that there is being.) Secondly, through the “donation” of their selves to each other through love, individuals continue to remain in a state of receptivity toward each other. Instead

94


of just the act of receptivity (i.e., responding to a need), intersubjective beings allow love to make them constantly aware of needs that other individuals have. Further, love allows beings who have intersubjectivity with one another to be present with the other, even though they are physically apart. Marcel elaborates: Our own inclinations impel us to treat existence as the fact that a thing is there and yet could after all be elsewhere; or could even be nowhere at all . . . . But if I concentrate my attention on this simple fact: I exist; or again: “such and such a being whom I love exists,” the perspective changes; to exist no longer means “to be there or to be elsewhere”; in other words it means that essentially we transcend the opposition between here and elsewhere.22 Love, as part of the mystery of being, confounds those who believe that relations should also be bound by spatial categories. Lastly, love gives what is called an “exigence for perenniality,” or an apprehension that the other individual is a being whose presence to me can never be diminished. This aspect of Marcel’s thought speaks most poignantly to those who have suffered through the death of a loved one. He writes that the real meaning of “to say that one loves a being” is in saying, “Because I love you, because I affirm you as a being, there is something in you which can bridge the abyss that I vaguely call ‘Death’.”23 The intersubjective relationship, then, allows individuals, through love, to continue to be receptive to the experiences of another’s life, even if the other is someone who has already died. The significance of intersubjective presence for the moral life was so crucial for Marcel that he even set about to structure his dramatic plays to underscore the physical presence and emotional availability of the characters. His purpose was to reflect the end-point of morality: a communal intersubjectivity that sustains, and gives people hope, through a grievous life journey. In a 1939 interview with Robert Kemp, Jacques Lemarchand, and Jean-Jacques Gautier on the topic of Marcel’s theatre, Marcel commented that the construction of his work was meant to ensure that, by curtain’s close, the play would function as an existing thing which defined the presence of the heroes within it. In life, if a person attempted to discover meaning for


95

her entire existence through one moment’s experience, she would come away aghast and filled with anguish; so too in drama, the organization of Marcel’s plays are always united to particular scenes. This represents life—an open, unsolvable problem, whose outcome sometimes cannot be measured until the drama is over.24 The desire, of course, is to know the significance during the event. “To be known as one truly is” is the lament of the priest in one of Marcel’s most popular plays, A Man of God. The existential dilemma is that full knowledge is impossible, even though we stake our claim to meaning based on what we believe has meaning. As the reviewer of the play observed, this is the design of the play and perhaps the design of life—the pattern that leaves all of us prone to struggle, whether the teacher, the mother, the celibate, the philosopher, or the dramatist. All face the problem of the moral collapse whose source is the doubt we have about the reasons for, and significance of, living. Some attempt to escape, some attempt to build meaning, some forget that they are more than their role in the play. The theatre—a vehicle for exploring abstract concepts and themes—was designed by Marcel to speak into the concrete, lived experience of those engaged in the play.25 If intersubjectivity provides meaning, and then hope for an individual, it must also be the hallmark of an ethical life, since we must be connected to others in order to develop the virtues. (Marcel’s moral theory reflects a bit of Aristotle at this point; Marcel would agree that an immoral life tends toward the hermetic, insular existence. If someone is too occupied with the self, whether with one’s health, finances—or even one’s own moral life—she is too occupied in such a way as to exclude the possibility for growth with and through someone else (EP 42)). The moral life, if it can help navigate through the difficulties that come in any particular life, must incorporate the “thee” as well as the “me.” Consciousness is not isolated, and it is by all reports what connects all of me to the other. And yet, each person is distinct . . . . The singular and the universal walk hand in hand, thanks to God’s gift of presence, which enriches and at the same time even carves out the personal terms: I and Thou.26

96


Along with the vow of fidelity, the presence generated by Marcel’s interpersonal philosophy can lead to a strengthening of the self because of the strengthening of the relationship between the self and the other to whom she is tied. The moral life is always about the relationship between the self and the other—which is not to say that the moral life is always about the other. The moral life is a personal one, but for Marcel, the personal incorporates the plural. Feelings, when they are divorced from the realm of objects, make the subject more aware not only that he is a being, but that he is one of many beings. He is able to recognize that he exists within a human situation that is not one of pure function. His body, in this new connected situation, is at once the foundation of every act of feeling and the object of perception. The body manifests his identity but also allows him to identify and communicate with others. Marcel compares this type of participation to participating in a ceremony. An individual may very well be one of a number of people present at a ceremony, but he can still mingle and have his own “ideal character” among them. Just as the person at the ceremony is aware of the happenings at the gathering, and his place in it, the available subject responds to his feelings and allows others to stand in relation to, and so to participate in, those feelings. Indeed, “the term ‘responsiveness’ is probably our least inadequate way of designating [participation through sensation]; we think of responsiveness as contrasting with that inner inertia which is insensibility or apathy.”27 Until now, I have not engaged in an important theme in Marcel’s existentialism, but it bears mention here, at the intersection of the body and lived experience. Marcel distinguished between two types of reflection, primary and secondary. First, primary reflection is directly related to scientific or objective problems. The goal of primary reflection is, then, to break down issues into their verifiable aspects, and to objectify as many characteristics of a problem as possible.28 If it is true, as Marcel notes, that “a problem is something which I meet, which I find complete before me, but which I can therefore lay siege to and reduce,”29 then, it seems that primary reflection is closely tied to the notion of having. If I can possess or have a particular thing, because I see it as conquerable and solvable, then I use primary reflection to attempt to meet my goals of conquering and solving. Marcel


97

dismisses any type of reflection that is rooted in the scientific method as useful for ontological growth because of his emphasis on the subjectivity, rather than the objectivity, of the human person. Gerber explains further: For Marcel’s purpose in the discussion of the personal body, the method and results of primary or scientific reflection are not only undesirable but also inapplicable. In a scientific analysis body and soul become abstract things, logical terms which are imagined as a strictly defined and linked to each other by some determinate relation. This abstractive approach entirely misses the issue at hand, the incommunicable experience of the body as mine . . . . It is incommunicable in the sense that it cannot be exhausted in the logical categories of primary reflection.30 Primary reflection fails to explain the relationship between my self as a being among beings largely because it cannot give an account of the human person as a being, apart from his mechanistic function as an existent in the universe. Existentially effective reflection needs to give an account for being in the experiences of daily life, and from a moral standpoint, reflection should allow the subject to see how those experiences impinge on the development of future possibilities. As Keen suggests,31 “In turning aside from a rationalistic, intellectualistic approach to being, Marcel elaborates a new type of reflection—secondary reflection—which searches for being in the concrete realities of experience.” One might be quick to confuse Marcel’s secondary reflection, which looks for the significance of being in the reality of experience, with contemplation, another Marcelian notion. The two are similar, since contemplation is as important to the subject as secondary reflection, and both involve intentional introspection. During secondary reflection, the subject turns from the focus of primary reflection, that of problems, and onto the search for being. This search is anchored in the concrete realities of experience, thereby bringing the subject into close, non-objective contact with those around him. But Marcel explains contemplation through the physical experience of looking.32 Throughout the day, we look without any specific

98


purpose, but we also look for things in a way that serves some practical activity. When I walk across across a patch of ground covered in boulders, puddles, or muddy patches, I keep my eyes open, and I watch my step. My attention is continuously directed toward a wholly definable activity—that of picking my way from one given point to another. The knowledge that I seek by looking in this intentional way is specific, and focused on a particular end (that of finding my way across the obstacles before me.) In looking, I look out, away, and without, in order to find out what I need to know. In contemplation, I seek inside. Insofar as the word “contemplation” indicates the act by which the self concentrates its attention on its own self or being, we can properly say that contemplation is a turning inward of our awareness of the outer world.33 This turning inward allows the participating subject to begin to see herself as a being who is able to participate with the needs of others and thereby open up to new relations available to him. Even the interior life of reflection (which is arguably the most private, nonresponsive, and potentially closed-off aspect of the individual self), is significant for the way it promotes or restricts the individual’s availability to other people and possibilities. During moments of personal crisis, a subject can make the mistake of cutting herself off from others and from preventing them to share in her grief. Although it seems paradoxical to think that during crisis, when we think of a person having “less of herself to give,” that the subject can benefit from giving of herself. But, to Marcel, the gift of the self implies no impoverishment to the giver, since the loss of one’s self only makes sense if the giver presupposes that what she gives when she gives herself has a thingly character of an object (BH 69). But the gift of vulnerability pays back more, especially in times of stress and unknowing, than if the subject closes herself off. By closing herself off, she denies any other person the opportunity to provide a new perspective, or a shared emotion. Shutting down, then, entails cutting off hope at the time when hope is most needed. The moral life instead seems attainable on Marcel’s account only if the subject can make accessible the experiences of the interior life. If the life of the mind is part of lived experience, then the life of the mind must also be accessible to those with whom we attempt to have


99

community.34 Marcel’s ideas of the human person and of such a community are based on the existential, ethical self: a being who exists at more than the merely physical level, but who seeks participation and presence with others, and who endures the traumas life offers because of the hope that is offered through their commitment to each other. Marcel hints at this version of the moral subject throughout his work; indeed, it seems that the existential self envisioned by Marcel is a version of the moral being who fosters hope in the self and in others. If hope is possible, so is virtue. But the revelatory quality of Marcelian presence, which is a foundation for the hope of the moral subject, has also been criticized for its abstract, mysterious quality. Sartre, for example, was deeply skeptical of a spiritual bond among people. Marcel’s commentary on Sartre’s concern is excellent: For Sartre “communion” has no meaning at any possible level, not to speak of its religious or mystical sense. This is because in his universe, participation itself is impossible: this, philosophically, is the essential point. There is room only for appropriation, and this in a domain where appropriation is impracticable or where, if it is achieved, it fails of its object. Take, for instance, the case of a man who succeeds in enslaving his wife. She becomes his instrument, his thing: he can do with her what he wills. But the probable result is that this successful appropriation will destroy his love for her. She will lose all interest for him and the climax of success will prove to be the climax of failure. This truth has been seen long before Sartre; its inexorable logic cannot be escaped except by recognizing that the aim of love is quite different from appropriation, that it is a communion the nature of which must be understood before the cause of the failure can be grasped. (PE 76) Appropriation and the problematic, the ethical and existential hurdles to meaningful existence for Marcel, are the brute facts of existence for Sartrean existentialism. Marcel suggests that (if he does not, in fact, blame) Sartre fails personally—as a man—for embracing isolation over community. A genuine community built out of trust, friendship or even love, when juxtaposed against Sartre’s bleak appro-

100


priation model, is impossible. Love, on Sartre’s view, has as its aim to turn the Look into a gaze of absolute value, so that love is never about the other, but is always about the self. Any conception of community would be reduced to a network of others in which the self is the center, and the only significant player. Marcel even relays the exchange between Sartre and Friar Troisfontaines, in which Sartre spoke of his own life: I am accused of spending my life in cafes; it is true that I cannot work anywhere else. A café has the immense advantage of indifference: I and the other people who come to it are independent of one another. Just imagine, if I had a home, I could never work in it; there would be a wife, children; they would be a burden to me, and all the heavier the more they were obviously anxious not to be a burden, not to worry me. This is putting things at their best, and there are far more sinister possibilities. (PE 59) Marcel can respond to the philosophical problem suggested by Sartre’s concrete indifference in two ways: first, he can better describe mystery and; second, he can link the best possibilities for action with that mystery. Toward the first, Marcel has a significant amount to say. (I would invite interested readers to read, especially, The Mystery of Being, volumes I and II, which are, simply, a beautiful expression of Marcelian mystery.) Most relevant to the Sartrean criticism, however, is that “mystery” should not be understood as “without the possibility of being known.” Although it is not possible to thoroughly know a mystery, it is possible to engage with it. Marcel thinks that mysteries are a type of problem (and so, we attempt to solve them). Rather than solving the mystery, however, the mystery related to community transcends itself as a simple problem by invading and encroaching upon its own data, and by recognizing itself for what it is: a mystery (PE 19). Relationships are mysterious, then, because they are held together with bonds that are undemonstrable, unprovable, and at times, undefinable. But, at life’s end, those bonds provide the inexplicable meaning of an exigent moral life. And, during life, it is those same mysterious bonds that make morality and the actions we pursue tied to others. It is actually through the


101

mystery of community that Marcel’s ethical theory can make important points of contact with analytic ethics. Stephen Darwall, for example, is the leading proponent of an ethics of welfare that is based on “second-personal” reasons. Moral obligations, according to Darwall, are second-personal, so that one’s actions make claims on others’ conduct and will. Many morally wrong acts skew the shared moral accountability balance, so the agent does not properly recognize her moral relationship to the other. Darwall argues that moral authority is given to an agent from a moral patient only if the agent addresses the patient second-personally. The agent addresses the patient second-personally, when the reason that an agent acts is motivated by the people effected by the agent’s action. Darwall calls this motivation the “essential reference”, or the crucial moral link between the agent and the other. On Darwall’s view, this “essential reference” reduces in its most simple form to respect, since the reasons that connect agents to moral obligation and the equal dignity of persons encapsulate the commitment we have to one other when we relate to each other second-personally.35 Moral action, then, requires a reciprocal accountability relation between the moral agent and the moral patient. The agent recognizes the moral other as a “you”— as a constraint on her action—and the patient acknowledges the agent also as a subject that constrains her response. If the reciprocity condition of moral action is met because the agent acts from secondpersonal, agent-relative reasons, the agent has the moral authority to demand compliance. Conversely, unless an agent’s reason for acting is second-personal, and if there is not compliance from the moral patient, the agent has no reason to object simply because she contravenes it.36 The existential bonds that tie the subject to others, whose result is hope and virtue, indeed ground second-personal reasons. For Marcel, the moral being is committed to another on account of their mutual needs. For Darwall, moral action is predicated on the assumption that another person’s presence provides a reason to respond to her. Marcel provides an example of second-personal, existential ethics when he relates the experience of visiting a friend who is terminallyill. Marcel had visited the friend in hospice, and was extremely uncomfortable seeing his friend dying and in pain. But, his friend

102


asked him to return. In response, Marcel promised his dying friend that he would come back for a visit, even though Marcel knew it would be an equally uncomfortable experience. He noted: All that I can do is to observe that C—is unhappy and alone and that I cannot let him down; also, I have promised to come back; my signature is at the foot of the bond and the bond is in his possession. (BH 47–8) Moral obligations are focused on, and centered in, the communal bonds that are present to those who are faithful to each other, and the Marcelian bonds reflect the reciprocity thesis that Darwall sees as a basis for the efficacy of second-personal reasons. Actions, on Marcel’s view, can function independent of my feeling about performing them—and, even more, my feelings can change if my actions change about them. (This is what can happen when, in the strongest fit of anger, you act contrary to your feeling, and respond with a compliment or a patient word. Your feeling can actually change because you acted in spite of how you felt.) If the ground of my action can be the presence of another person, rather than the presence of an emotion, my actions can effectuate hope even for those who—like Marcel’s dying friend—are without hope. Hope can emerge between subjects if the self can bind itself—so can exercise control over what he can and escape attempting to control what he cannot—and can train his attention on those with whom he can share a sustaining presence (BH 49). The commitment required for an existential ground to secondpersonal reasons is in sharp contrast with those philosophers who argue that autonomy depends upon the strength of solitary decisions made by individuals who have committed themselves fully to independence from others. Commitment for Marcel, however, “is primarily the response to an appeal directed to us as individuals.”37 Necessarily, then, Marcel’s commitment rests on the act of feeling’s receptivity toward others, which must be rooted in denying that meaningful existence can be had without the presence of others.


103

Conclusion It is apt, at the conclusion of a chapter about Marcel’s notion of the ethical life in personal crisis, to invoke the difficulty Sartre’s philosophy poses for Marcel’s moral subject. Sartre’s philosophy rests upon the devaluation of the self-among-others, whereas Marcel’s takes as its point of departure the broken self who needs to experience the presence of others. Sartre’s hell—the concrete experience of other people—provides a space where the light of God can be seen. Marcel inverts Sartre’s hell, so that relationships with other people can actually promote shared experiences, shared virtues, and the shared goal of alleviating personal and (even) global pain. The moral life, then, is the journey toward healing. As a journey, suffering (both personal and interpersonal) will always be a component of life. Since the moral life avoids making the pain experienced by the subject as another problem to be solved, the moral being is not content to find solutions, but rather to sustain meaningful existence in spite of the problems within it. Those who seek to develop the virtues know that “the successes of the journey are never guaranteed, and they can always badly turn.”38 Whoever takes up the prospect of the journey toward can succumb to the vices of exhaustion, the degradation of a perversion of carnal desires, environmental distresses, and even hostility from those around them. But, taken along with the prospect of journeying through pain and toward a vibrant, creative, meaningful life surrounded by those who are also attempting to do the same thing, but “the one possibility which remains . . . is that we are in the presence of a spiritual fact of nature, a command, an injunction” to journey together and to give hope to the world (Box 6.11, Marcel article).

Chapter 5

Ethics in Global Crisis

The ethical life is not lived in a vacuum of personal relationships that play out among possessions and individual concerns. Instead, it is located both individually and globally. Global evils like war, poverty, and political injustice can impact the existential quest to create meaning ethically. Chapter 5 is most prominently an applied ethics chapter that evaluates how a Marcelian ethical agent should navigate these issues. Most significantly, the ethical life is one that is engaged in politics, and actively pursues to right global wrongs through promoting hope. Since evil resides in the isolated life, the ethical person must be dogmatic in her pursuit to positively affect, and be positively affected by, others. But, doing so requires an outlook that is otherdirected. Those familiar with Marcel’s own life know that, especially in the last 15 years of his life, he became active in a political movement whose goal was to further individual and corporate moral growth. The Moral Re-Armament movement was truly international, and was met with concrete astonishing support from some of the world’s top leaders during the 1960s and early 1970s. Although Marcel never embraced the full ideology of the Moral Re-Armament movement (because he felt that the ideals put forth by the movement were too universal and abstract), Marcel was committed to the political and social change he believed could be brought about by focusing on moral growth which fosters hope. Paul Ricoeur noted that the connection between justice and morality was the basis of Marcel’s philosophy, especially as Marcel set out to denounce “every form of inhumanity,” to which Marcel replied that,


105

It has seemed more and more clear to me that the problem of justice is the supreme problem, as Plato saw in his own way, and that a state that does not maintain justice in the supreme position it deserves will be a degraded state.1 It might seem incongruent that an existential thinker could argue that war, poverty, and political injustice can be tackled by a person engaging with others. But, global evils impact all who are vulnerable to them, and so can only be fought by those who will focus on them. This provides a moral mandate to the existentially exigent: our own actions must be constrained by the needs of others, both near and distant. The justification for our response to the global terrors of war, poverty, and rights violations must be tied to those needs, and to those of others. The beauty of such justification is that it allows others to ground ethical behavior—and analytic ethics has struggled to show how it is that others could be the seat of moral permissibility for actions. Marcel’s ethics thus serves to bridge the gap not only between the theoretical and the practical, but also between existential ethics— which predominately is focused on the individual agent—and contemporary analytic ethics of welfarism (which focuses on global need as well as second-personal reasons) and an ethics of care (which argues that moral permissibility is demonstrated through caring). Rather than delineating a series of moral principles, or establishing a doctrine of morality, Marcel uses experiences as the concrete ground for what an ethical life should look like. The moral conduit to change is fostering hope in the world. Marcel’s agent is ethical only if she responds to the needs of others, and so only if she responds to the second-personal authority of another’s claim on her. And social care is the vehicle through which this ethical life is lived, since a life that is not engaged with others is one that is improperly and ineffectively rooted. An ethical life gives hope—not by political grandstanding or by wishing—but by using one’s talents, experiences, relationships and—yes—even pain to create possibilities for oneself and for others. It is as Henri Goutheir noted, “Nothing ever happens greater than a change in the history of hope.”2

106


Philosophy and Morality Philosophy at times becomes stagnant for its inability to speak to the practical.3 We are living in a world in which the humanities in general are eviscerated at the university level, and some philosophy departments specifically have been stripped of funding at state and federal levels. 4 Stephen Hawking has even announced, in a move that replicates Sartre nearly 70 years earlier, that “philosophy is dead.”5 But if philosophy has become unmoored from its ability to be relevant to those outside of the relative few who are professional philosophers (and it is not at all clear that it has), Marcel would point out that philosophy is indispensable as a means to raise methodological, technical, and moral questions. Without philosophy, science and technological innovation can threaten the existential and ethical import of people. The greatest evil of our time, Marcel wrote, is that advances in ‘all techniques’ have encouraged people to refuse to reflect, which has thrown many minds into a state of terrible confusion (MM 132). The philosopher is in a unique position to question the point of departure in which humans are reduced to their mere functionality among a world of functioning natural objects. In trumpeting the critical spirit necessary to battle the evil of materialism, the philosopher has to be cautious to not also become a caricature. Marcel himself sought to be a thinker who was also relevant politically and socially. Deeply critical of the Holocaust, Marcel won a German Peace Prize in 1964, and so Marcel knew the balance that must be shown by the philosopher to be a voice for social and political change without abandoning the rigor required by philosophy. Perhaps this balance is what Marcel had in mind when he argued that proper philosophy should be active, but that active philosophy takes a native courage to survive under slander and fanaticizing (MM 130). If the philosopher is armed with the courage and readiness to act, it is difficult to think that Marcel would have anything but disdain for contemporary critics of philosophy, especially given both the impact technology has had in our world and the amount of global political and social unrest in it. Technology has yet to solve basic human problems, but because it turns basic humanity into a problem yet to be solved, the philosopher is obligated to act to salvage human dignity—


107

even if she does so through technology. The role of the philosopher is to take a stand on concrete moral and political issues that reflect her theoretical commitments. For those who argue that philosophy is too abstract and disconnected from the realm of concrete suffering in the world, the philosopher will respond that fundamental principles intervene directly with action.6 The revocation of human rights typically results from ignorant prejudice, the principles of the philosopher must motivate her to intervene, since the philosopher’s primary duty is to attack ignorance (MM 111–12). In this passage, Marcel provides a concrete example from postWorld War II of what he means by the philosopher’s moral obligation to prevent abuses caused by ignorance: I personally hold that the philosopher, as such, was bound to protest against the way in which the purge was carried out in France after the war, by men who, often unjustly, claimed to incarnate the Resistance, this at a moment when, the war being at an end, the word ‘Resistance’ was losing all real meaning. That it was permissible to set up irregular courts, to allow victims the right to judge their persecutors just because of the spirit of vindictiveness that inspired them—all this is the philosopher was in duty bound to deny, as forcibly as possible. Here again the principle at stake was glaringly obvious . . . . For, in fact—and I assert this without a shadow of hesitation—the first duty of the philosopher of our world today is to fight against fanaticism under whatever guise it may appear. (MM 111–12) Marcel even goes so far as to offer a sort of attitudinal primer for philosophers who want to break out of the theoretical, and to voice their political concerns and act on them. Philosophers, he writes (MM 113), should act with calm and constancy in the world, living in daily life the opposition to unreasonableness and greediness. Philosophers should actively sympathize with any action whatsoever (regardless of political or religious affiliation) that is done out of a reasonable and generous spirit. Encouraging a spirit of fearlessness is not tantamount, however, to simply accepting any view whatsoever politically. Shortly after this passage (MM 116), Marcel warns that no

108


philosopher can accept a world which encourages war, disorder and crime, and also devalues the mind and spirit. To be a philosopher, one must take an active stand against injustice in the world. But the temptation for the philosopher will be to stay in the world of the theoretical, largely because our training as philosophers develops in us a healthy epistemic humility that can prevent us from speaking out against issues outside the scope of our areas of specialty. On the one hand, we pause to speak out and act accordingly because we see ourselves as unqualified and the enormity of the happenings in the world to be a bit unintelligible. As an example, Marcel invokes Albert Camus, who was so overwhelmed by the gratuitous suffering of innocent people that he rejected both the existence of God and the ordered intelligence of the world. As a philosopher, Marcel understands the humility of such a stance, “it is honest and honorable, the stand of a man who does not want to let himself be imposed on, and who refuses from the very depths of his being to confuse what he desires with what actually exists” (MM 117). But, he also criticizes Camus’ view, and the stasis it can foster, at the same time this attitude of Camus is also extremely simpleminded. It is that of a man who has never reached the stage of what I have often called secondary reflection. There is a fundamental question which Camus never seems to have put to himself: by what right am I qualified to pass this sort of verdict on the world? (MM 118). On the other hand, philosophers might not want to be politically or socially active because we do not want to act unreflectively, only to then have our actions be questioned later. There is negative precedent for academic philosophers, who take certain unpopular political stances, and then pay a political, professional, or personal price. We see in our students and our society the propensity to make quick judgments of approval or disapproval on social and political movements— massive, historical happenings, even, and our training and the speed in which all of it is happening can make us hesitate. We do not want to be put in the position, especially during our tenure or promotion reviews, to have to explain what looks to be hasty affirmations about what is happening politically and what could happen in the future,


109

and even more—what morally ought to be the case in these arenas (MM 128–9). The philosopher hesitates because of the potential repercussions on her reputation. Although the philosopher views her reticence as a type of vocational conservatism, it can be narrowed down (as Marcel claims, MM 60) “to the notion of conserving the individual’s own skin.” The result of this personal conservatism essentially reduces to subversion, and results in political and social regress, instead of progress. By foregoing the social, this philosopher forgets the inextricable link of the social to the personal. But Marcel would argue against the insulated philosopher, and would contend that she has either rejected or forgotten the role philosophy can play in developing hope, and thereby, fostering social and political change in the world. (Then-presidential candidate Barack Obama was not wrong, of course, that hope can bring about change. He was simply working with a notion of hope that was removed from political possibility, and so became diluted into wishing.) Hope can bring about change in the world, and can actually help alleviate suffering . . . and the philosopher can be the impetus for such change if she recognizes that her professional worries are too individualized. A too-solipsistic focus, even for a philosopher, can prevent her from remembering that hope, for Marcel, is always about the self in relation to me. Hope is not individual, it is social. Joseph Godfrey aptly pointed out the distinction between merely hoping (hoping for myself), the social result of an insular hope, and how Marcel envisioned the social goal for hope, as explained by Godfrey: If social hope is directed toward what is desired primarily for me, and where the frame of reference is that of individuals in competition with each other to the detriment of the formation of ‘we’, then this hope is no different from that attending the building of a pyramid: only material results are desired, and, for such, hoping is at most a useful stimulus. But if the society conceived is more than an essentially material result, then full hoping itself makes a key difference to its possibility. For Marcel, the kind of society hoped for and the hoping itself are intimately linked. Degraded hoping contributes to social decline—some social visions are really counterfeit utopias and require only covetous ‘hoping’ as stimulus. But other

110


social visions (‘for us’) contribute to the possibility of overcoming the temptation to despair; furthermore, fully to hope (with, as target, Marcel’s form of social living) is actually to contribute to social amelioration, especially insofar as hope is active. While Marcel’s social thought is not a full social philosophy, he does have a basis for such, stressing the difference between essentially material results and those that engender true human community. (Godfrey, 236) When people individually face hopelessness because their basic needs are not being met, and when people globally accept the constant possibility of war and terror, it becomes obvious that without possibilities, there will be no hope. The philosopher can help provide a way by underscoring the corporate—the “we”—for which hope and morality functions. The philosopher does this by refocusing the political and social debate back to values. (By ‘value’, Marcel does not mean the American conservative/liberal debate over what constitutes, say, ‘family values’. Nor does he mean particular values specific to a particular political party, group, or nationality. All too often, governments wield the term ‘value’ as a matter of nationalistic virtue, so citizens feel powerless to object to it. In this political sense, the term ‘values’ is a mask worn by those hiding behind self-interest.7 Marcel instead means the value of the human group, and individual human value in relationship to that group.) A restoration of human value can provide a point of departure that can motivate change and initiate moral growth. As Helen Herdinge, the translator for Fresh Hope for the World, observed: It is only by restoring human value that one can hope to solve political problems. This complete change of outlook and renewal of hope breaks through men’s individual lives into the sphere of politics and affects the destinies of nations.8 Once moral growth occurs at the level of the individual, Marcel argues that hope can affect change in war, global atrocities, poverty, and civil injustice.


111

Human Value Human value is renewable at the point, unsurprisingly by now, whereby it can be reasserted without relying upon human technical function. Since the reduction of the value of human life to its technological, scientific, biological (or political, or social, for that matter) function leads to a degradation of life, it is no wonder that “all the other degradations quite naturally follow” (MM 60). If human value is lost, either because it is destroyed through overtly evil cruelty or quietly eradicated through a commitment to a mechanistic view of human significance, the floodgates of human rights violations will be opened. It is the dichotomy offered up by Governor Munshi of India, companion to Mahatma Gandhi, in Fresh Hope for the World, “Are we going to accept the supremacy of the moral order, or the superiority of materialism? This is the conflict which underlies everything else.”9 There is nothing human in materialism, but there is something human in morality. If the value of humanity is tied to morality, then the starting point for an investigation into a recasting of human value is to look at the role of the human in the moral. Since the earliest of recorded philosophy, people have wondered about the value of humans: Did it come from the gods or God? Did it come from the natural order? Was it socially constructed? Does it depend upon what characteristics people have? Does it depend upon people being able to fulfill their function? Marcel recognizes that the term ‘human’ is ambiguous, and also that the moment philosophical discussion depends upon ‘humanity’ that the tenor of discussion is refocused.10 The ambiguity of the term is not a result of a plurality of perspectives on it, rather than a reflection of what measurement thinkers will use to indicate what it means to be a person. But value is not something, on Marcel’s view, that is chosen or that is located outside of the human group. It would be speculation on either side to argue whether Marcel’s conception of human value is motivated by his religious perspective. There is some evidence to suggest it is, there is some evidence to suggest that it isn’t, but regardless, what is clear is that a religious foundation is not the sole ground for human value on Marcel’s view. (Some

112


have gone as far as speculating that the because Marcel grew up in a family who was respectful of Catholicism, had long-standing Jewish roots, and was oriented toward liberal Protestantism, Marcel was able to develop a theory of human value that rejects fanaticism and is grounded on a mostly-secular moral and intellectual austerity.11) The value of humanity is, instead, rooted in the concrete and— consistent with the normative theory of Marcel that has already been demonstrated— it resides in the intersubjective relation between the subject and the other. This value is easier to demonstrate when the relation is effective and meaningful, but Marcel thinks human value is also reflected in a relation that is broken, or results in an immoral act. Dignity, in the end, is the aspect of human value that immoral actions trample upon. Even in abusive or oppressive relationships, human value is what is at stake. Marcel writes: The persecutor sets out to destroy in an another human being that being’s awareness, whether illusory or not, of having a value . . .. Because this is the sole means of having this other human being wholly at one’s mercy; a being who retains even the smallest awareness of his own value remains capable of reacting against using a way which, if not dangerous, is at least vexing. On the other hand, in degrading his victim in this way, the persecutor strengthens in himself the sense of rightful superiority; he postulates that, from the beginning, his victim was already virtually the piece of waste product he has now for all practical purposes become, and it was therefore just to treat him with the utmost severity. (MM 46) In part, Marcel’s view of humanity seems to place the responsibility for recognizing that special value on imperfect, and at times, evil people. But, at least on the face of it, this disproportionately favors those whose value is never threatened by oppressive and abusive acts. ‘Degradation’ in the Marcelian sense means a methodology of reducing the human person’s self-respect in order for them to give up any understanding of themselves as being worthy of respect, intellectually, spiritually, volitionally, or relationally. Further, Marcel’s move to tie human value to human relationships can lead—and, historically, has led—to oppressive power relations in which the person who is


113

subject to abuse is treated as having less value than the person in power. Marcel recognizes the possibility for disenfranchisement in his own work. In an intersubjective relationship, for example, the transfer of human value assumes that both subjects think of the other as equal. To say to another person: “you are my equal” is really to place oneself outside the actual conditions which make concrete apprehension possible for such beings as ourselves. Unless, of course, one merely means to say, “You have the same rights as myself,” which is a merely juridical and pragmatic formula, whose metaphysical content is impossible to elucidate. (MM 208) Since many relationships are defined by the problematic, there is not an equal or shared value. Marcel even invokes Nietzsche’s contrast between the morality of slaves and masters, but quickly argues against it. If it is possible to suggest that a certain class of human beings can have no share in human value, the immediate result is that values are illusory or imaginary. It is consistent for the person who thinks there is no human value to treat particular human groups as though they have no value. Any autocracy which insidiously makes a person disappear under a label or a number—and even those which do this and still ask the person for assistance in doing so—is a world in which the human being is reduced so terribly that the eradication of the human is the logical next step.12 As an example of such thinking, Marcel uses Sartre’s conception of the man who thinks of himself as a waste product of an inconceivable universe, who then exalts and abases himself and other as a result (MM 67–8). But therein resides the difference in Marcel’s conception of how human value motivates action: Marcel recognizes the propensity for people to debase and demean others, but rejects it as immoral. Any person caught in the problematic will always have reason to treat others badly, especially if they do not serve a useful function for his own benefit. Although the possibility for the degradation of human value is possible, the very reason that it is possible is because of the relationship between morality and human value. There will be people who take advantage of it, and when they do, they commit immoral or evil

114


actions. But the self-dependence of Sartre’s and Nietzsche’s subject comes from the deification of a self, but a self whose value can then only be conceived of and recognized by the self. On Marcel’s conception of human value, the moral act is one in which human value is recognized by the self and others. The moral act, with a proper perspective of human value, seeks the hopeful end for the benefit of the human group. Putting into proper perspective human value does entail the growth out of the realm of the problematic. But this growth is beneficial in numerous ways, especially since it indicates that a person has taken control over how she responds to her materialistic desires and the pull of the problematic. It is this continual transformation of the human person who exceeds her own sense of being the master at every moment which thus melts the irreplaceable character that Marcel entitles ‘the itinerant’… who lives a life of journey as the homo viator.13 The benefit of the life of the traveler, as has been shown, is that it gives the person who works her way out problematicity the unique perspective of turning toward others for significance and help. Being available existentially and growing morally is bound up in recognizing the claim of others on the self. Just as it is not enough for the subject to be open to others (since they must also be willing to respond to them), it is also not enough for a subject to be claimed by others. The privilege of being in community with other beings necessitates the responsibility to truly hear and embrace their needs. This is the activity of the moral life. But Marcel also thinks that embracing the needs of others can lead to a further existential crisis, since no two people, their situations or desires, are ever fully commensurable with each other (MM 35). Morality has as its starting point, then, the dual facets of competing individual desires/needs and the demand or claim of the other on the self. The seemingly competing claims can be navigated if the subjects focus on their commitment to generating hope. It cannot be done by any technique, but rather by a conscientious choice of the will to be united in battling abuse, neglect, and need. “Perhaps it is necessary to try in small


115

communities ‘reforming fabric’, or opening the communities up (to new possibilities). All members must always propose to take part in the covenant of the community.”14 Couched within the historical and ideological debate of the value of humanity, I want to say of humanity something that I believe Marcel would very much agree with: the collective human group is the only group for whom morality functions.14 Humans are the only group who can be praised or blamed morally, and they are the only group to whom moral predicates apply. The value of humanity, then, is tied in a concrete way to being able to seek out the good and the right. Our value is not in some ideal, but in the experiences that we have as humans. Human value is not some abstract definition, but is inseparable from our lived experience in the human body (HV 143). So, if human value is tied to the human experience of making, setting, and achieving moral ends, and moral ends are those that reflect human value, has Marcel run into some moral circle? Not quite. Moral ends reflect human value, because they originate there, but moral ends do not finish with human value. Rather, moral ends finish with hope, and the possibilities generated for people from hopeful action. Value is the starting point, then, of morality. But, how does value motivate the development of moral ends? How does value get people to pursue a moral life? In the first instance, human value can be a motive to push people out of fear, and in the second instance, human value can motivate people to act creatively. Without fear, people can stand up to falsehood and degradation and will feel free to live purposeful lives in the community. Fueled by the creative impulse, people can build new avenues for breaking out of oppression and into healthy political and social environments. Fear (and accompanying uneasiness) is the first hurdle, and the most difficult because we are fearful to affect change because we know that in doing so, we might draw negative attention to ourselves, which might result in personal suffering—the very thing that we are attempting to overcome through our actions. But it is important to recognize that fear is not to be overcome; rather, it is something to battle. Value cannot become a reality in life unless it is realized

116


through a perpetual struggle against fear and paralysis (HV 141). Since fear can lead to passivity and inaction, we must learn to deal with it as a feeling, rather than making fear the focus of our reflection. Marcel thinks, instead, that the philosopher can help people view sacrifice as birthing pains for something different—something altered. Marcel relates the motivational quality of value to managing fear through sacrifice, “Value is probably always related to a sacrifice which is at least possible; value is, however, only authentic when something incommensurable is not only granted but established” (HV 143). Marcel is not being consequentialist, here. He is not arguing that a small amount of sacrifice will pay off huge dividends. During a conference on “The Man of Tomorrow,” Marcel answered questions to some who believed that his view on value, especially in light of the Holocaust, was too dependent on consequentialist reasoning. Marcel clarified the falseness of the reasoning of those which support that the horrors of the moment are justified by the fact that they would be necessary to the birth of a new spiritual horizon . . . . That this prospect is erroneous should be evidenced to any. Dictatorial regimes essentially negate human value based on some ‘standardized’ version of identification (of personhood).16 Remember that for Marcel, the future may be as bleak as our present experiences are, but any future with possibilities (and so, a hopeful future) is better than one without those possibilities. Our sacrifice and pain is not outweighed by those possibilities, but is the ‘forwhich’: the motivational cause of the sacrifice. If fear can be managed so that the person can act sacrificially, human value can then begin to motivate effective human change. “Value is the very substance of exaltation, or more exactly is the reality that we have to evoke when we try to understand how exaltation can change into creative force” (HV 142). The change brought about by human value is more than merely theoretical and ideological for Marcel. He saw glimpses of what could happen if people shared his view. “Thousands of people have shed their petty con-


117

cerns, and are able to think for the world and today as they concentrate their efforts wherever the need is greatest.”17 The glimpse led him to conclude that a change in values and personal moral growth could bring about a new political order, in which citizens were committed to a normal life which included thinking, living, and daring for everyone (213). Marcel was not alone in believing that human value could motivate moral action, and that human value must be more than a theoretical ideal used to champion political causes. In Fresh Hope for the World, Dowuona-Hammond, during the time when he was a member of the Ghana Parliament concurred with Marcel’s assessment: The demand of our times is for an ideology fundamental enough to deal with the problems raised by the human passions of hate, fear and greed, an ideology of freedom, that man’s relations with man shall not be governed by how much we can get from one another, but how much we can selflessly give. That is the only guarantee that man’s inhumanity to man shall end. Men shall cease to fear each other because their motives will have changed.18 Hope, grounded in human value, can serve as a concrete experience which changes the abuses to human dignity that occur in the world—in families, in communities, and in political systems. For Marcel, morality hinges on the value of the human group, and if relentlessly pursued, can actually, concretely speak to huge global problems rather than serve as a passive ideology that functions only for philosophers. It is, as Marcel once noted to loud applause, “What is not done for love and by love is done against love. There is a path that leads out of Sartrean death, out of concentration camps, out of torture, and out of abuse of a defenseless people.”19 The path out is the path of hope. To demonstrate that this hope is not merely a dated remnant of obscure existentialism, nor an ideology divorced from the problems faced by real people in the real world, it will be imperative to assess Marcel’s view in light of particular cases. In the remaining part of the chapter, then, I will apply Marcelian hope as a moral theory to the following contemporary global moral issues: war, poverty, and civil rights violations.

118


War To evaluate Marcelian ethics in contemporary settings, perhaps the best place to start is with the moral issue that impacted both Marcel’s modern world and our contemporary one, and that ushered in an era for which Marcel expressed some measure of terror: the mechanized era in which humans can use technology to engineer their own eradication. Add to these techniques the suspicion Marcel has for the motivation of any war (he believed that any people who would either wage war, or suffer through war, had to have been lied to by their leaders about what to expect from the war), and a good starting point emerges for discussing the moral permissibility of war.20 Wars pose a unique paradox for Marcel, because their goal is the annihilation of a particular human enemy, but they are initiated with the possibility for reconciliation or dénouement, and they retain a human character which often includes codes of conduct for war that is centered upon human respect (MM 87). The impetus of war disrupts the human tendency toward and need for autonomy, and those in war succeed at squelching autonomy primarily through humiliation of the other. This was true in Marcel’s time (and he refers us to the atrocities in concentration camps as a paradigmatic example), but it is also true of contemporary times (as anyone familiar with the American atrocities at Abu Ghraib or Guantanimo Bay will know). But war presents a more thoroughgoing humiliation of humanity than evidenced by the most heinous of evils during war. Rather, it is the quiet sublimation of human dignity through attempts of the enemy at degrading an entire people that are most effective at changing the human value factor. If I can debase my enemy at the most basic moral level—at the value of his humanity— I will go far in changing my thinking as to whether he has moral value at all. Perhaps even more insidiously, this degradation can occur without an explicit awareness by my enemy that he is being debased. (Historically, the Polish in Warsaw come to mind as a vibrant example of people who went along with their aggressor’s demands, not recognizing that the Nazis did not value them as people and so had a much more nefarious end in mind for them.) Quickly, however, the degraded comes to terms with the fact that he is being degraded.


119

Marcel writes, “It is hardly possible that even the most radically degraded being should not sometimes be pierced by flashes of awareness and know the depth to which he has fallen” (MM 45). Just as debasement can occur without the debased knowing it has occurred, it can also occur without the oppressor having an initial recognition that the people group he has targeted has dignity. Herein resides the (poor) justification given by those who practice genocide: it is only genocide if the individuals targeted are ‘persons’, and if those in power can describe the oppressed as something other than ‘persons’, then the oppressed no longer count morally and those in power can do with them what they deem best. The initial dignity is denied of most groups who are the object of torture, terror, and genocide by those who engage in such practices: “How does a Streicher or a Himmler fundamentally estimate the Jew whom he is persecuting? Apparently he looks on this Jew as the rubbish, the waste, the leavings of the human race”.21 So, whether the political or pragmatic justification of war is territorial, economic, environmental, or the specific degradation of the enemy, Marcel thinks that war starts with the value of humanity. There might be cases in which war is justified—especially in a fight over totalitarian regimes (as will be discussed in the next section)—but the fundamental ideological motivation involves human value. The concrete upshot to this motivation is that war must always also involve deception. Marcel argues that there is “an indissoluble connection between lying and war” in which “the actual world we are living in it is impossible not to recognize that making war is linked to lying, and to lying in a double form: lying to others and lying to oneself” (MM 153). The Bush 41 and Bush 43 wars (i.e., the Gulf and Iraq wars) are excellent examples of Marcel’s suggestion that deception is required for the success of an aggressor in war, but even in cases in which a country’s entrance into a war is morally justified (take America’s entry into World War II, for instance), Marcel thinks that deception has to occur. America, after all, was not guiltless in that war, and hate crimes were committed on American soil in part because Americans bought in to the deception that Japanese people ought to be feared. Whether the members of the deceived group are willing participants in the deception is beside the point, since they might even believe

120


that they must look away in order to advance the interests of the state. An assessment of the impact of morality on war, then, must at least start with the value of humanity and with a recognition that deception is the primary vehicle used by those in power to cajole, force, or persuade their people and warriors to back their war effort. But, those who seek the moral life, even in times in which war might be justified, need to recognize the impact of history, memory, and feeling on perspectives of war and how a country engages in war. Marcel references Peguy’s Clio on the relationship between history and memory: History consists essentially of passing along the line of an event, of reviewing an event. Memory consists essentially of being within the event, of above all not emerging from the event; in remaining there and going over it again from within . . . . History is the elderly general, plastered with medals, brisk and impotent, who reviews the long lines of troops, laden with their heavy field-kit, on the barracksquare of some garrison town.22 Philosophers have to be ready to remind people of the experiences that are left behind in memories. History is able to scour the injustice war causes when memory fails to recall what it felt like to be treated unjustly. History loses “that real contact with the event for the lack of which historical narrative so often reduces itself to a simple abstract naming of events” (MM 37). History names events in order to create phenomenological distance between the event and those who recall it. (‘The war in Afghanistan’ feels differently than ‘the ten-year war that the US has been fighting in the Middle-East’. The former is succinct, mechanical and, indeed, tactical. The latter is a truer description of the gravity of the war. History will call it The War in Afghanistan. Memory recalls it as an interminable, unwinnable guerrilla war which sacrificed thousands of lives for the vaguely-defined purpose of regulating the Taliban.) If history’s practice is to mute the viscera of past events, it has (Marcel thinks, MM 38) “a great share of responsibility for this sad state of affairs.” The role of the philosopher is to obviate the “prose fiction” of history and to point out to the world


121

when history becomes “an obscure, fantastic, and deceptive relation with the world of real activity” (MM 38). The most demonstrative cases to show the difficulty of history and the progress of morality in war are those of the Holocaust and other totalitarian or authoritarian regimes.

War and Authoritarian Regimes Hopelessness occurs in war when the general situation surrounding the war causes the spirit of the people to fold up on itself, which makes the community hesitant to resist the pressure of the authoritarian power.23 The community feels choked, powerless, exploited, and polluted, but not from the government, or from the war. Instead, these feelings spring from the situation, or the concrete events and experiences which preclude hope and stamp out the future possibility that things can be different. The differences between types of oppression partly constitute the situation. Marcel notes, for example, at least two senses of the term ‘iron curtain’. There are citizens who are behind the iron curtain of an obedient communism, which develops through some collaboration between the civic organization or government and the people. (Marcel cites the Catholic church as such an order. He argues that this authority is without a doubt less evil, because the citizens do not have to sacrifice their fundamental freedoms in exchange for the permission to celebrate the worship.)24 There are citizens who suffer from an iron curtain of oppression that develops without any community support, and even in spite of criticism from its citizens. Examples of communist regimes are not the only ones that come to mind. Marcel cites those humans who have been reduced to a condition of slavery, all of whom suffer because their status as human beings is almost refused recognition (MM 96) and who, in these contemporary times at least, are sold into wretched lives of sexual indenture or as involuntary laborers. Hopelessness ensues when the oppressed see no effort given to make a change by those who could make a difference. But, authoritarian regimes recognize the contagious effect of hope, just as the political anarchies watch for it. Hope takes root and catches on by renewing thinking (by subverting the attraction to materialism,

122


for example) and by working to replace fearful passivity with active creation. (This is not to say that during hope, a community will not feel fear, but they bind together to work through it.) Lottie van Beuningan relays her story of confronting ‘mortal fear’ during World War II:25 The Allied forces entered Holland and liberation was near. The prisoners (of a nearby concentration camp, whom she worked to free) were terrified. One day I got a little note scribbled in pencil by one of them saying, ‘We are living in mortal fear because we have heard that 500 of us will be shot dead on the spot, and all the hostages, including the women and children, are to be taken to Germany. And you know what that means. You are the only one who can save us.’ This was a difficult moment. I realized the danger, but my husband and I had guidance together and once again I was completely convinced that I had nothing to fear. It was my life or the prisoners . . . . I talked straight to (the Commandant) and told him that I had heard the rumor that he was going to shoot 500 of the prisoners, and that this was an inhuman act and that I was there to beg for their lives . . . . He said, ‘Well, what do you want me to do?’ ‘Let them go free. I will come and fetch them and see that they go home safely.’ After some thought he said, ‘All right, you may come tomorrow and take them away.’ So we got all the hostages out. Another extraordinary event took place after the war. I got a letter from this commandant, who was himself now in a French prison. He wanted to know what had become of us; he knew our home had been under fire. Were we all alive? He finished his letter saying ‘I would like to know, because I remember with great respect all that you did.’ The final phrase of the letter was, ‘Yours gratefully’. The courage and hope that can take root among the sufferers of an authoritarian regime can provide a different model to the cruelty of the dominant power, and can even effectuate change. In 1951 during a visit to Columbia (where he was very well-received by his largelyCatholic audience), Marcel was asked what his most accomplished work was. Marcel replied that he believed it to be the critical discussion


123

and controversial essays which focused on the besiegement of the citizen, the terror of Communism, and the American emancipation.26 For all of his metaphysical, epistemic, theological, theatrical, and musical success, Marcel believed that the work which sparked change in communities, policies, and government were the most significant. There is one more interview, a sampling of which will be informative to see Marcel’s view of the relationship of hope to authoritarian and totalitarian powers.27 Marcel was asked whether there was a military solution to German-like military operations. He replied: I hold such a formula to be extremely doubtful. Europe does not exist morally. It is feared that the European army is only a label, holding a folding screen. But to choose to be engaged with the question is to necessarily choose to be voluntarily plugged into one of the facets of the problem. But to the political position of neutrality, Marcel scoffed, “An insanity! Neutralism is an attitude more dishonest than any person can currently have. Those who preach neutralism travail with the moral dismantling of France. It is, in fact, defeatist.” And, finally, to the suggestion that Marcel leave philosophy for policy, Marcel noted: I defend myself to be a “Christian existentialist.” The word is rotted. If you have to hold a label to me, I am known as a neo-Socratic. I believe that is necessary to the initial question. Thus the word: democracy. What does that want to say today? My political position is completely undogmatic, although there exists in my direction, some intangible absolute values: peace, for example. A certain degree of social iniquity also cannot be tolerated . . . . But, I do not preach. I do not show, either. I subject a case to the public and discuss it . . . . It is the problem of the free man; will he remain a free man even in his chains which threaten his freedom?” Marcel’s view of his own work is that it is most relevant and effective when it is turned outward. The philosopher should motivate action, and that action should induce changes that bring peace.

124


The Holocaust, Torture, and Human Value Inducing hope and creating possibilities seem to be at odds, however, when applied to victims of the most heinous atrocities. Since those who suffer through the worst instances of human brutality are typically in hopeless situations, recognizing that hope is not equated with good feeling or with optimism does not seem to help. We consider people who find hope in these situations to be extremely virtuous— their courage, tenacity, and sympathy are traits that we might want to emulate if we ever found ourselves in a similar situation, but no one would blame us if we could not. The grief and hopelessness evident in these horrific experiences are contagious. When a person is stripped of the possibility of having a future, it infects their entire outlook. The anguish spreads so that the prisoner or victim becomes a type of slave: stripped of emotional or physical freedom, serving as the object of the oppressor’s dark purposes, and (perhaps most tragically), paralyzed to think practically and creatively (MM 33–4). A French newspaper commented on Marcel’s response to totalitarian regimes: We remember that Marcel has long held a position that tortures which seek to transcend the expectation of imminent death can only succeed if they suffocate freedom and love. The horror of the system of degradation of the human being which functions in concentration camps exceeds any explanation. There is a refined art of debasement and a humiliation of others (which are all a part of an enjoyment and a sentimental sacrilege among persecutors) which pits prisoners against each other, based on a demonic subtlety to cultivate among the prisoners an attachment to the lowest and most criminal instincts. Whether Nazi or Bolshevik, it is important to these contemporary torturers to observe that whatever is worth nothing is debased in their eyes: by degrading their victims, they possess the power to extend mercy. (Is there not, even among the lowest beings, flashes of consciousness that enable them to measure their future downfall?) Marcel sees the close relationship between methodologies of propaganda, like those used by totalitarian regimes to use techniques of debasement and dishonor.


125

Propaganda seeks to seduce the enemy (and oh, corruption! Is there a role in which money does not play?), and to destroy any individual reaction so that a propaganda state can be established, and the single party scourged.28 The marketing campaigns of the totalitarian regime are indicative of the root problem shared by all global threats to the hopeful life: they are fueled by lies. The Nazi party is an apt target of this observation, but as the article above suggests, Marcel does not indict Nazism only for the physical atrocities it perpetuated in Europe. Rather, those atrocities were only possible because the Nazi party fueled a fanaticism, the success of which provided the condition for the possibility of military success. The deceit that allowed for the Nazi regime to take hold poses the same risk for every one of us. Any principle that is genuine can become fanaticized, popularized, and militarized, in the same way that cancer attached to an originally healthy organic tissue can overwhelm and destroy it (MM 133). Truth can be perverted and the perversion of that truth can be used as a basis to suppress individuality and freedom. Yet those world citizens who do not suffer at the hands of a totalitarian regime can appreciate the progression to paralysis that Marcel suggests happens at the level of deceit and propaganda. Political powers always know that they have the ability to revoke basic human rights and alter the periphery of who can be counted as morally considerable. They also know that if their citizens overcome their fear and instead become mobile, active participants against injustice, their powers will be (in the very least) limited. The goal of the authoritarian regime is to convince the populace that it is in their best interest not to complain; the purview of the populace must then be to combat what is unjust. There are countless examples of the latter happening in response to the evils of genocide and hate in Nazi-controlled Europe. The question remains, then, for Marcel: how can hope be advertised as a promotion of possibilities for those for whom ‘creative possibility’ is obliterated? Marcel responds to this worry in a passage from Man against Mass Society, in which he discusses how the concrete implementation of peace could be possible in post-war France, among

126


leaders who have Nazi-sympathies and a citizenship totally broken by war: There can be no question here of putting forward any simple and easy remedies for evils which are so deeply rooted in our whole national life. All we can assert, on the one hand, and without hesitation, is that our present political system in France can merely with increasing rapidity aggravate these evils; and on the other hand, that it would be both silly and criminal to place any hopes in a neoFascism, of which, after our experiences during the war years, the mere thought ought to fill us with horror. But in fact, failing some quite general conflagration which would change the face of things altogether, France seems to have no practical choice today except between a Communist system, which would in fact be probably merely an aggravated Fascism and would believe it was solving problems merely by eliminating the given factors in national life and tradition from which these problems spring, and a monarchical system, in accordance with the oldest traditions of our country, but of which the very idea, it must be admitted, is inconceivable to most Frenchmen today: to be a living, practical, working system, moreover, a French monarchy would have to adapt itself to economic and even psychological conditions which have no relation to all to the conditions of monarchical France in the past. (MM 34–5) There is no magic existential or ethical formula—in the same way, there is no systematic, complex answer to the problem. There are instances in life in which hope just means being able to see what options are possible, and then making choices in the attempt to create other options. At no point does Marcel celebrate the options available here, or claim that they leave us open for capricious optimism. Marcel does not think, in the above case, that either option facing France is a good one. But the job of the philosopher is to discover them and to think through which options provide the most efficacious means to justice and future options as any other. She might not be able to do anything else. There are cases in which rebellion is futile, retreat is impractical, and the only possible action is submission.


127

At the risk of discontenting and even of shocking those who still tend to think of solutions for political problems in terms of positive problems in terms of positive action, I shall say that in that region all the ways of escape seem to me to be barred (MM 21). During the bleakest, most extreme examples of cruel, barbaric treatment of other humans, hope can come down to saying, “Hold my hand as we go through this.” For those who suffer the isolation imposed upon them by their captors, they can invoke the presence of distant loved ones (in the existential, Marcelian sense), and their free choice of the mind can represent the revolt of the hopeful. A totalitarian government can take every single thing away from a person— they can induce the imminent death that faces us all—but in the last analysis, it cannot do what it so desperately wants, which is to make the people they have enslaved truly unfree.

Political Unrest and Civil Injustice Much of the world, even at the time of the Moral Re-Armament movement, was no longer facing (and no longer faces) the imminent threat of a totalitarian or authoritarian regime. But, there are different political issues which threaten human flourishing to the same degree as oppressive governments. We live in a world in which there is a general, global state of political unrest, in which large portions of the world clamor to receive basic services or escape ruthless guerilla groups, or have to fight to attain basic civil liberties. If Marcel’s ethics of hope is relevant to today’s global situation, it must be able to be applied in concrete ways to these issues. A major consideration in global unrest—in Marcel’s time and in ours—is that of Big Business, or as Marcel calls it “the organization”. All countries have competing interests, if they want a strong economy and the civil rights of their citizens to be protected. But greed is often a contributing factor to injustice, regardless of whatever political system a country has. In the international arena, a country has a thoroughgoing interest in keeping its interests intact. Just as the foreign debt crisis in 2010 and 2011 has shown, when the credit ratings of countries fall through the floor, they are often at the mercy of other

128


countries to get them out of economic trouble. And it is not simply the affluent countries that must worry. During the 2005 World Bank debt relief, aimed at helping the poorest of countries, a stipulation was made for the participation of some countries that the debt relief would be contingent on the country that accepts relief signing exclusive business and construction contracts with corporations native to the country that provides relief. For wealthy and poor alike, the driving consideration in each of these cases is to what extent their current economic crises could impinge on their political and economic futures. There are, after all, “peaceful and warlike means of subjugation, for that matter, the distinction in the extreme cases on either side is rapidly vanishing away”(MM 28). Marcel does note (in the same passage) what most people in the contemporary world equate “equality” in terms of a nation’s economic strength, but that this kind of equality can only be done by “disguising from those who apparently benefit from it the system of oppressive administrative rule to which they are being condemned.” The corporations that take advantage of those who are powerless and those who govern in such a way as to keep the powerless without rights both attempt to substitute obedience for liberty. Civil rights that cannot be expressed fully, or are presented as a privilege of the wealthy or meritorious, or which in the end have to be reduced and suppressed in order for the economy to thrive is not the hallmark of a true liberty. And, in a world in which people are increasingly called upon to suspend their civil rights in view of the need for security and safety, we have to consider the nature of equality in a world of global unrest. Prior to our post-9/11 world in which rights are in question, Marcel noted, In countries where there is still a recognition of what we can call in a very general fashion the rights of the human person, a certain number of guarantees of freedom survive: but we ought immediately to add that such guarantees are becoming less and less numerous and that, failing a very improbable reversal of the present general tendency of things, there will be a continuing demand for their further reduction. It would be contrary to the facts of the case to assert that men, in what we broadly call “the free countries,”


129

enjoy absolute independence. That does not matter so much, for, except to a pedantic type of anarchist, such absolute independence is inconceivable. But it would also be contrary to the facts to assert that men in free countries today generally possess the power to square their conduct with their consciences. (MM 16–17) There is a very real sense in which the abstract conception of ‘equality’ needs to be separate from what can be concretely ‘equal’. Rights and duties can be equal, even if applied to people who are in disparate (unequal) economic and social circumstance. What counts is the action of equality: the social recognition of the dignity that we extend to all people (MM 161). By helping focus the global conversation on concrete equal recognition of rights—which transcends culture, economy, and religion—the philosopher can play a role in avoiding the perpetuation of inequalities that exist when political powers use the abstract to disenfranchise. But, even when security is a factor, global and political unrest have at their center . . . always . . . money, and the pursuit of money is fueled by corporations and the wealthy people who fund governments. Marcel writes that the lowest common denominator of wellbeing is wealth, and that the successful are marked by the amount of covetousness and envy they evoke in others (MM 87). Everybody wants money, but what they really want is a lifestyle that will cause other people to lust after them. Marcel’s ethics—rooted in the will and understanding—must acknowledge the source of the unrest which so often suffocates hope. But, the collaborative political drive for economic sustenance (if not superiority) reflects only the first half of the participants in global unrest. The other is the individual, who always has the intrinsic materialist impulse to battle. The individual who finds herself a participant in the unrest facing the world is in her “death-throes,” in that she finds herself facing the possibilities for global destruction as well as self-destruction (MM 14). These possibilities are always latent, according to Marcel, and they become active when she “makes a bad use, or rather an impious use, of the powers that constitute [her] nature.” These individual struggles are, as has been shown, endemic to the human condition and, so, not newly observed in the contemporary

130


world. But it is new that we have the technology available to access (and help alleviate) the distant suffering of others. And, at the point of hope, Marcel sounds very much like some of the analytic ethical theorists who came after him. The work of Amartya Sen, for example, equates obligation to the promulgation of global welfare, especially that which pertains to well-being and freedom.28 We have an obligation to ensure that the most people possible have access to the best exercise of their freedoms, and the sublimation of their freedoms and well-being have a negative impact on global welfare. Marcel would agree (in spite of Sen’s consequentialism) that our obligations are to alleviate suffering and to promote the general welfare of world citizens, whenever and wherever we can. Marcel would incorporate hope-speak, here. The creation of hope fosters free action and the development of new avenues of thinking, producing, and relating to others. We need to use whatever tools we have to accomplish the preservation and growth of hope in the world. By using hope as a focal point for political change in the world, Marcel argues that we have the ability to claim a triumph over the political powers which oppress by overcoming their intention toward destruction. Moreover, “(hope’s) efficacy seems all the surer when the weakness accompanying it is more real and less of a sham, in other words, when it is less liable to be considered as a hypocritical disguise of cowardice” (BH 77). But what is the most efficacious way to use hope to concretely battle civil injustice? Marcel favors, when possible, the use of non-violent resistance. Any battle—even one that incorporates the use of non-violent measures—implies that at least two parties have the will to battle; the significance for those who use non-violence is that they are not attempting to will the destruction of their enemy, but of the oppression and abuses that their enemy practices. “The efficacy of hope, in some cases, lies in its disarming value” (BH 77), which can produce startling results when contrasted by the violent reactions of the oppressor. (The Tiananmen Square protests in 1989 stand as a visceral example of a Marcelian sense of active hope against tyrannical and homicidal oppressive powers, and the change that can come from it.) Non-violence, of course, does not mean non-activity. The non-violent exercise must be one that rebuts the fearful paralysis of


131

the person who is totally without hope. Recovery from the catastrophe of lost liberty can only assert itself by regulating the self during the day-to-day struggle against fear (MM 31) while not giving up the vigilance of exposing rights violations. (Marcel suggests, for example, that France might not have capitulated to Nazi invasion—and, even more, to a Fascist ideology—had not “the attention of the man in the street been almost exclusively concentrated on the problem of earning his daily bread and on the exhausting difficulties which he had to confront in order to remain alive” (MM 32). Trading in basic civil liberties to the state for a feeling of security is akin, Marcel thinks, to making a dash toward servitude. We forget what we put as collateral in our haste to believe the state can make us safe.) Contemporary examples abound in which the philosopher can remind those outside of academia about the consequences that can come when liberty is put as the ballast of security. The philosopher can be the voice of hope first, by actually articulating a challenge to them (by naming them as unjust) and then, by offering potential alternatives that can provide for the continued political recognition of liberties that are socially found to be universal.

Poverty and Unemployment The final application of Marcel’s normative ethics of hope is to poverty. Certainly, poverty is related to the global unrest and tyranny of authoritarian regimes, but Marcel goes to lengths to treat poverty and unemployment as moral issues that on their own can be impediments to hope. Even nearing a century after Marcel became a prodigious writer in philosophy, his work resonates with the sufferings experienced by communities in this global economic climate. To properly relate his views with the concrete events of today, it is first important to remember that Marcel will not argue that there is a solution to the economic crisis—there might be a way through the suffering, but not a way to solve the problem, because the problem relates directly to humanity’s materialistic tendencies. We cannot expect, then, for Marcel to give us a materialistic response to an economic problem, although Marcel will engage with the phenomenological experience of being poor.

132


Marcel has support for his view that materialistic problems cannot be overcome purely with economic means. In his commentary in Fresh Hope for the World, Munshi writes:30 In our era, when notions of East and West have become largely outdated, our generation has tried to resolve this conflict through nationalism, different forms of democracy, socialism and other means. But it has scarcely helped us to advance towards a solution. The modern world is obsessed by the idea of a material standard of living: it has accepted the notion that if we change the economic conditions, this will automatically change men. In fact, higher standards of living have brought neither peace nor happiness. The time has come when we must learn to put first the absolute moral laws of moral re-armament. Whereas Marcel would ultimately reject that the principles of the Moral Re-Armament were ‘absolute’, Munshi’s comments overall support Marcel’s application of an ethics of hope. Progress politically and economically cannot be had (morally, at least) if what is supplanted in the pursuit of economic stability is the existential meaning of the human person. Technology, then, must also have its proper place in economic development, since it can also work against individual and collective growth. Technological progress is a priceless gift only if it is exercised on behalf of a unified mankind working together for the collective human good (MM 61), but typically, technology is not used in this way. So, to make a concrete, meaningful difference in the concrete economic issues of the day, the philosopher has to see financial and technological growth as a means to the end of an existentially prosperous humanity. If she has those two aspects in proper perspective, the philosopher can then engage in several specific activities to help foster hope in a broken, poverty-stricken world. The first step the philosopher can make is to promote activity in the community in which she lives. (One can imagine the contemporary philosopher—like that of Marcel’s time—engaging with students, fostering dialogue, participating in non-governmental secular and religious groups.) The U.S. Health Department has effectively


133

marketed what the role of the philosopher should be in troubled times: “to raise awareness.” Marcel writes that a philosopher “if he shows himself worthy of his vocation today” is to directly attack those who seek to cause a paralysis of action in contemporary society, and to spark active, reflective creativity and vision for the future (MM 39). One of the best uses of the philosopher’s voice is to expose injustices for the worker. Although Marcel was an outspoken opponent of communism, he agreed with socialism’s analysis of the worker as an exploited cog in the machinery of greed. Humans are not machines—it is not even enough to say that humans are more than machines. It is a category mistake to describe humanity in terms of its functionality or use-value in a corporate ‘machine’. The philosopher has the skills necessary (and with time, it is hoped, the access as well) to obviate the dehumanizing nature of an economic model that thinks of mankind on the model of a machine. Marcel blasts this model: If man is thought of on the model of a machine, it is quite according to the rules and it conforms to the principles of a healthy economy that when his output falls below the cost of his maintenance and when he is ‘not worth repairing’ (that is, not worth sending to hospital) because the cost of patching him up would be too much of a burden in proportion to any result to be expected from it, it is quite logical that he should be sent to the scrap heap like a wornout car, thus allowing any still useful parts of him to be salvaged (as, if I am not mistaken, the Third Reich in wartime salvaged the fatty elements of corpses). (MM 182) The advice to the philosopher is to then reject an emotional response to the exploitation of the worker, but to project the fact of its dehumanizing, demoralizing elements and then to help others build a different system. Building a different system is the hard part, however, not because it requires a new model of thinking about the economy, but because it requires an alternate conception of the moral significance of humanity. Humans will always have to wage war against their feelings of envy; but technology gives rise to more ways of comparing what one has

134


with another. If humans buy into the corporate model of human significance-as-a-cog-in-a-machine, the conception of a good life could change. Rather than viewing the good life in terms of meaning and significance—and, in the end—peace, the good life can be replaced with financial markers. Marcel thinks of the French parishioner who replaces the idea he has of life’s significance as where he journeyed with the idea that life’s significance resides in having a pension that can sustain him through retirement. “Living is in danger of becoming a mere marking time while one is waiting—something petty and cautious, a diminished life” (MM 186). A prominent example of this difficulty comes through Marcel’s assessment of unemployment. (In this age of high unemployment in our privileged countries, we can forget that there are countries where a majority of adults are unemployed. Marcel certainly lived in a period after the war that rivaled the worst contemporary unemployment rates.) As with poverty, global unrest, and totalitarian regimes, the role of the philosopher in approaching the concrete suffering that comes with unemployment is to assuage the tendency to objectify the person who is suffering. The unemployed appears to himself to be unattached and even cast away by what is real, as it were on some desert shore; it seems to him that life has no more use for him. He tries to invent interests for himself; to form habits, but he does not manage to dupe himself with them. (HV 145) The person who is unemployed faces despair at feeling unworthy, at not being able to provide for the family; fear at not knowing when the troubles will end, or what will happen if sickness visits during unemployment; and isolation, because when someone identifies who he or she is with their job and loses it, they can lose the bonds that formerly united them with friends and colleagues (HV 146). In this same passage, Marcel contends that unemployment is synonymous with the existential feeling of despair, because both are “the breaking of an engagement, the desertion of a conscience which has no further part in reality.” Those who can no longer have work to sustain themselves and others are divorced from themselves, and this divorce


135

can break a person’s entire conception of their significance in the world. The unemployed person is actually the most paradigmatic, prominent example of the person without hope, and the philosopher’s role is to motivate hope in spite of the despair and brokenness that is experienced. For those with whom the philosopher is personally engaged, the philosopher can be available for her loved one. Without offering platitudes, the philosopher can establish for the other that the significance felt is simply that of intersubjectivity, and not of function. Meaning is not had, just as people are not possessed— rather meaning subsists in the relationship between the two. For those with whom the philosopher is not personally engaged, the philosopher should work as an advocate and an intermediary. (This is true for any of the suffering, of course, not just for the unemployed. The philosopher can stand in for the person who cannot do so on her own.) Marcel views the philosopher’s élan vital as something that can provide a sustaining impetus for those who have none of their own. This is the collective ethical sense of hope. The philosopher can animate and inspire by being active in obviating opportunities for growth, and by encouraging people away from choices that debilitate. This animating spirit incorporates the grace Marcel thinks is necessary for hope, but also the presence that exists in an intersubjective relationship, the power of animating is the power of using to the full, or, to go more deeply, of lending ourselves, that is to say of allowing ourselves to be used to the full, of offering ourselves in some way to those kairoi, or life-giving opportunities which the being, who is really available (disponible), discovers all around him like so many switches controlling the inexhaustible current flowing through our universe. (HV 146) Absent the presence of the active other, the disenfranchised, hopeless, poor, and unemployed will lose the ability to be open to healthy, meaningful existence. Such a person will lose the perspective on what provides significance existentially, and will give up hope on her future.

136


Conclusion The potential criticism for Marcel’s ethics of hope when applied to global crisis is similar to that in Chapter 4, that it is too abstract to really make a difference. Marcel, a philosopher of the concrete, would argue either that his view was misunderstood or (in the worst possible case, in my mind) that it was misrepresented. He believes that a philosophy of hope is one that motivates change, and that, independent of the possibility for change, there cannot be hope. Even in cases in which a single person has lost all hope, Marcel’s moral theory stipulates that hope cannot exist in a vacuum. Hope is communal, and must be fostered in those who are without it. Marcel could not conceive of the genuine hope of single person, or a hope that did not positively impact the lives of the community. Hope in isolation is simply wishing, and although there is nothing wrong with wishing, without possibilities it remains empty. And empty hopes are impossible. There is a quote attributed to Thomas Edison which goes, “Opportunity disguises itself as hard work, which is why most people miss it.” Perhaps this is the second, most difficult aspect of Marcelian hope: it is volitional. Hope is an aspect of creation, and it demands that the person who acts on it be open to trying something new. That is hard to accept. Our everyday equivocation of hope with desire precludes hard work, and it definitely precludes my needing to think about those outside of myself to fulfill it. Therein lies the aspirational, and some might say ideological aspect of hope. Hope is an intersubjective movement toward, and if it is this, it can require actions that are not always the most desirable or popular. But, perhaps this is the salvation of Marcel’s theory as a moral theory after all. Many reject moral theories for being too rigorous or for requiring actions that are not always in the individual’s best interest. Marcel’s ethics of hope can be rejected on these grounds, too, but I would caution that those who would do so miss the beauty of the view. Hope can be rigorous if it requires work, but the possibilities that emerge from it mean breaking away from what previously was meaningless. Hope can require actions that are not always in the individual’s best interest—not often, of course—but, when it does so it


137

does so to foster community, which provides a fail-safe against isolation and narcissism. Hope is the beginning of the fulfillment of what Marcel thinks humans were built for: a community wherein we meet each others’ needs, stamp out evil and injustice in the world, and provide support for each other as we journey toward our imminent death. To close the book on hope, I call once more upon Marcel, who was himself rounding out a volume on hope:31 For too long we have pinned our hopes on empty dreams: the man of genius, the international organization, the plan conceived by some brilliant mind, an economic or political system. Each time we have believed that the object of our hope would solve our problems for us. Time has passed, and our illusions have been swept away, leaving us cynical and bitter. But a new world is possible…. There is no movement to join, but each of us can allow a movement to stir in us that breaks the bonds that bind us to materialism and make life stagnant. Change in men opens the door to a fresh hope.

Notes

Introduction 1

2

3

4

5

6

7

Brendan Sweetman’s The Vision of Gabriel Marcel (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2008) and Brian Treanor’s Aspects of Alterity: Levinas, Marcel and the Contemporary Debate (New York: Fordham, 2006) have had the greatest impact. Marcel’s own Awakenings (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette, 2002), Creative Fidelity (New York: Fordham, 2002), The Mystery of Being, Volumes I and II (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 2001), and Thou Shalt Not Die (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 2009) have recently been placed back in print. Gabriel Marcel, Tragic Wisdom and Beyond, trs. Stephen Jolin and Peter McCormick (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1980), 143. It should be noted that one recent (unpublished) doctoral dissertation broached the need for more work on Marcelian ethics: Charles C. McCarthey, “Gabriel Marcel’s Reflections on Ethics and Human Flourishing,” Catholic University of America, 2006, UMI 3198787. “The Existential Ground of Community.,” In Coffee and Philosophy, M. Austin, F. Alhoff (eds) (Blackwell, 2011); The Existential Self in Gabriel Marcel: A Critical Analysis of Autonomy through Heteronomy, College Station, TX: Texas A&M University 2001, OCLC: 49620065. Most importantly, that of Stephen Darwall The Second-Person Standpoint. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006) and Amartya Sen, Development and Freedom (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1999) and Rationality and Freedom (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002). Amartya Sen and Jean Drèze The Amartya Sen and Jean Drèze Omnibus (with Jean Drèze). (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), vi. See, for example, Noddings, “An Ethic of Caring.” In Conduct and Character, Mark Timmons (ed.). (Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth, 2006) and Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education. The Regents of the University of California, 1984. Marcel, Fresh Hope for the World (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1960).

Chapter 1 1

2

Box 6.10, newspaper article, Samedi Fou, “Existentialiste Chrétien, Gabriel Marcel,” January 20, 1952. Marcel contrasts this negative anxiety with uneasiness, which is the only venue for the individual to recognize, perhaps for the first time, her own smallness.

Notes

3 4 5 6 7

8

9

10

11

12 13

14 15 16

17 18

19

20

21

22

23

24 25 26 27

139

“Positive uneasiness, that which presents a value in itself, is the disposition which allows us to detach ourselves from the vise in which daily life squeezes us, with its hundreds of cares which end up masking the true realities.” Once free from the cramp of anxiety, the individual is able to force herself to question who she is. See PM 142. Conversation 4, TW, 241. Paul Ricoeur, “Conversation 3,” TW 236. See, for example, Marcel, Creative Fidelity, 142–3. Box 6.11 «Le Signe de la Croix de Gabriel Marcel», par Pierre Boutang. Gabriel Marcel, Being and Having. Translated by K. Farrer (New York: Harper & Row), 1965): 100. Marcel mentions the body as a “crossing” between the two in Box 2.1 “Couers de Bergson.” Marcel, Vol. I, 88ff. Marcel relies here on the Latin prefix ex (exist), meaning out, outward, out from as that with the greatest importance. See also Vol. I, 112ff. Gerber, Rudolph.”Marcel’s Phenomenology of the Human Body,” International Philosophical Quarterly vol .4 (1964), 445. This comparison of the senses of “having” closely parallels the distinctions Marcel makes in Creative Wisdom between the types of “belonging to.” Gerber, “Phenomenology,” 450. Zuidema, “Gabriel Marcel: A Critique,” Philosophy Today vol.4, no. 4 (Winter 1960): 285. Marcel, Vol. I, xi. Marcel, Vol. I, 108ff. Box 6.12, Marcel, “Le Monde ne peut etre aujourd’hui supportable que si on a l’esprit fixe cette esperance.” See also MM 177. Conversation 1, Tragic Wisdom and Beyond, 222. Otto Friedrich Bollnow, “Marcel’s Concept of Availability” In P.A. Schlipp and L. E. Hahn (eds), The Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel: The Library of Living Philosophers, vol. 17 (LaSalle, IL: Open Court, 1984): 186. Italics mine. Martha E. Williams, “Gabriel Marcel’s Notion of Personal Communication,” The Modern Schoolman, vol. 35 (Nov. 1957–May 1958): 107. James Collins, “Marcel’s Philosophy of Participation,” in The Existentialists: A Critical Study. (Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 1952): 156. Rudolf Gerber, “Marcel’s Phenomenology of the Human Body,” International Philosophical Quarterly, v. IV, 1964, 458. Robert Ostermann, “Gabriel Marcel: The Discovery of Being,” Modern Schoolman, vol. 31 (Nov. 1953–May 1954): 102. Marcel, Presence and Immortality. Translated by M. Machado (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1967), 145–6. See also McCown, Joe., Availability: Gabriel Marcel and the Phenomenology of Human Openness (Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1978), 13. Bollnow, “Availability,” 182. McCown, Availability, 12. McCown, Availability, 12. Box 2.2, undated, unsigned, in English, “Principles of Value.”

140

Notes

Chapter 2 1

2

3

4

5 6

7 8

9

10

11

12

Marcel does think that the Christian is uniquely obligated to take the risk of the moral life. This life—optional for those who do not believe—is required of those who have faith. He writes (PM 107), “Whence something like a breach which seems indeed to open in the middle of what one could call the field of human experience. Everything takes place in reality as on an earth shaken by a seismic shock. Since the coming of Christ we live in a split world.” This is Marcel’s translation of Nietzsche. A popular English edition is Nietzsche, The Gay Science. Translated by Walter Kaufmann. (New York: Random House, 1974), 181. Richard Rorty, An Ethics for Today: Finding Common Ground between Philosophy and Religion. Introduction by Gianni Vattimo (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), ix–x. Friedrich Nietzsche, “Die fruliche Wissenshaft,” 125, from Nietzsche Werke, vol. 5, part 2, eds Giorgio Colli and Mazzimo Montinari (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1973) 159. PM 109. BOX 6.10—From a newspaper, dated January 20, 1952, without author, “Existentialiste Chrétien, GABRIEL MARCEL.” The Atrocity Paradigm, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press), 2000. James Spiegel, in his book Hypocrisy (New York: Baker, 1999) argued that hypocrisy was a top reason atheists reject the conception of the existence of God, second only to . . . the problem of evil. The atheist can argue, here, that neither is blameless, but at least one can be explained. Atheistic morality is not dependent upon a notion of an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving God. If the theist is right, the atheist can contend, then where is the tangible, visceral, physical and moral difference in the world that the existence of God should exact? Alas, Marcel does not engage in theodicy, but presumably would fall back on some time-honored compatibilist responses, since in the very least, Marcel would argue that God would not limit human free will in order to prevent suffering in the world. One contemporary, fascinating example is that of La Santa Muerte, the skeletal “saint” of narco-traffickers in Mexico. La Santa Muerte invokes the image of La Virgen de Guadelupe, except her face is an empty skull and her robes are graveclothes. She is worshipped to gain blessing for her followers in their war efforts against the Mexican federales and the United States’ attempts to rein in drug smuggling through Mexican/US border cities. A straight-forward, non-academic history of La Santa Muerte was recently published in National Geographic print edition, “Troubled Spirits”, Alma Guillermoprieto, 5 May 2010. He suggested, for example, that he could never support the “univocal disarmament” of democratic countries, because it would encourage authoritarian regimes to engage in war (BH 77).

Notes 13

14

15

141

Box 6.11, undated newspaper article, «Gabriel Marcel: Ou la marche vers la Lumière», par Maurice Sacre. Box 6.11, undated newspaper article, «Gabriel Marcel: Ou la marche vers la Lumière», par Maurice Sacre. Interestingly, I think this need for security mirrors that need of people who advocate for some encroachment of civil liberties in exchange for promises of national security. I discuss this further in Chapter 5.

Chapter 3 1 2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11 12

13 14 15 16

BH 94 is instructive here. Hope is to desire as patience is to passivity. Robert Ostermann, “Gabriel Marcel: The Discovery of Being,” Modern Schoolman, vol. 31 (Nov. 1953–May 1954): 103. Box 6.12 «La Vie, 19 Juin 1949, «Le Grand Prix de Littérature de Académie Française», by Roger Bodart» This does assume that the person who has hope (rather than someone who merely wishes) is open to the possibilities confronting her. For Marcel, the level of responsiveness to possibilities is proportionately related to how effective hope is in bringing about the best end. Godfrey, Joseph J., “Appraising Marcel on Hope,” Philosophy Today, 31 no.3 (1987, Fall): 234–5. Marcel, Presence and Immortality 229. See Parain-Vial, “Notes on the Ontology of Gabriel Marcel,” Philosophy Today 4, no. 4 (Winter 1960): 276. Marcel, Homo Viator: Introduction to a Metaphysics of Hope. Translated by Emma Craufurd (Chicago: Harper & Row, 1965), 51. Marcel, “Reply to Otto Friedrich Bollnow,” in Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel: The Library of Living Philosophers, vol. 17, edited by Paul Arthur Schlipp and Lewis Edwin Hahn (LaSalle, IL: Open Court, 1984), 201. Marcel, The Existential Background of Human Dignity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963), 107. Marcel, Tragic Wisdom and Beyond. Translated by S. Jolin and P. McCormick (Evanston, IL: Northwest University Press, 1973), 143. Marcel, Tragic Wisdom and Beyond, 144-15. Godfrey “Appraising Marcel on Hope,” Philosophy Today, vol. 31, no. 3, (Fall 1987), 235, and Marcel, Philosophy of Existentialism, 32. Conversations 6, TW 255–6. Box 5.8, Paris, le 8 Juillet 1969. BH 76. If this sounds like a twentieth-century existentialist version of Stoicism, it should. Marcel noted throughout his career the Stoic influence on his work. The key difference in Marcel’s sense of hope is that he thinks hope results in “relaxation and creation” rather than a “stiffening of the soul” that can occur, according to the Stoic, by inactivity (PE 33). Hope is active, tied to what the agent can create.

142 17 18 19

20

21

22

Notes

An excellent treatment of this example can be found in PE 28. Marcel, “Bollnow,” 201. John B. O’Malley, “Marcel’s Notion of Person” In P. A. Schlipp and L. E. Hahn (eds), The Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel: The Library of Living Philosophers, vol. 17 (LaSalle, IL: Open Court, 1984): 288. Keen, “The Development of the Idea of Being in Marcel’s Thought,” In The Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel: The Library of Living Philosophers, vol. 17. Edited by Paul Arthur Schlipp and Lewis Edwin Hahn. LaSalle, IL: Open Court, 1984, 108. Box 6.11 «Un Existentialisme Chrétien: Gabriel Marcel» by Roger Cample, Construire, Zurich, le 9 Aout, 1947, #36, p. 5. Marcel, “Desire and Hope,” in Readings in Existential Phenomenology, ed. Nathaniel Lawrence and Daniel O’Connor (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1967), 285.

Chapter 4 1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

Box 6.11 «Gabriel Marcel croit a l’avilissement du monde moderne par la technique» by Seltifer. This is certainly not to say that the technological developer is unsusceptible. In fact, Marcel cautions those who spend their life focused on technological development: “And we can at once see that if a man can become the slave of his habits, it is equally probable that he can become the prisoner of his techniques. But we have to go deeper. The truth is that a technique, for the man whose task it is to invent it, does not present itself simply as a means; for a time at least, it becomes an end in itself, since it has to be discovered, to be brought into being; and it is easy to understand how a mind absorbed in this task of discovery can be drawn away from any thought of the real purpose to which, in principle, this technique ought to be subordinate” (Man against Mass Society 83). Box 6.11. An undated newspaper article, written by guest author Gabriel Marcel, «L’Homme Et Les Techniques, «L’aventure technocratique». Box 6.11. An undated newspaper article, written by guest author Gabriel Marcel, L’Homme Et Les Techniques, «L’aventure technocratique». Box 6.12 (undated) «La Bourse Egyptieene» Marcel denonce ‘Les Hommes Contre l’humain’» par Georges Cattaui. Box 6.12 (undated) «La Bourse Egyptieene» Marcel denonce ‘Les Hommes Contre l’humain’» par Georges Cattaui. Box 6.11. An undated newspaper article, written by guest author Gabriel Marcel, «L’Homme Et Les Techniques, «L’aventure technocratique». What constitutes a “proper attachment” is, to be sure, a necessary and compelling question. In this chapter, I will discuss the virtues that can lead to proper attachment, but will leave others who have written before me on the ontological status of fidelity to better inform those who want to think more about it. See, especially, Treanor (2006).

Notes 9

10

11 12

13

14

15 16

17

18

19 20

21

22 23 24

25

26

27 28

29

30

31

143

Box 6.11, “‘Un Philosophe’, au Temps Present” trouvera de plus nombreux lecteurs si vous criez son nom,” by Jacques Delesalle, January 14, 1938. Gallagher, Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel 92. The Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel. New York: Fordham University Press, 1962. Box 6.11 (undated) «Gabriel Marcel, Temoin du spirituel» Oliver Perceval. Box 6.10 GAZETTE DE LIEGE», LE Mardi 29 Novembre 1949, «Gabriel Marcel», by Brian Marinoir. Williams, “Gabriel Marcel’s Notion of Personal Communication,” The Modern Schoolman, vol. 35 (Nov. 1957–May 1958): 108. In Etienne Gilson, ed., Le Coeur des autres in Existentialisme chrétien: Gabriel Marcel (Paris: Plon, 1947). See also Bollnow, “Availability,” 191. Marcel, Presence and Immortality, 238–9. Anderson, “Notions,” 37 and 44. “Notions of Being,” Philosophy Today vol.19, no. 1, Spring 1975. Newton P. Stallknecht, “Gabriel Marcel and the Human Situation,” Review of Metaphysics, vol. 7 (1953–1954): 662. Strauss and Machado, “Marcel’s Notion of Incarnate Being,” In The Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel: The Library of Living Philosophers, vol. 17. Edited by Paul Arthur Schlipp and Lewis Edwin Hahn. LaSalle, IL: Open Court, 1984, 139. Marcel, Mystery of Being, Vol. II, 17. Vincent P. Miceli, “Marcel; The Ascent to Being,” Thought, vol. 38 (Fall 1963): 406. Keen, “Being,” “The Development of the Idea of Being in Marcel’s Thought,” In The Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel: The Library of Living Philosophers, vol. 17. Edited by Paul Arthur Schlipp and Lewis Edwin Hahn (LaSalle, IL: Open Court, 1984), 108. Marcel, Vol. II, 61–2. Marcel, Vol. II, 61–2. Box 6.12. Une Piece Dont on Parle, «Un Homme de Dieu» 1949, signed only by «un spectator». Box 6.12, «Le Metier De Critique» (an interview w/ Robert Kemp, Jean-Jaques Gautier et Jacques Lemarchand, 25 June 1939. This interview is fascinating, as well, for its mention of Sartre. Marcel contends that Sartre’s existentialism—including his plays—fails to provide concrete meaning. The closest to success, on Marcel’s view, is Dirty Hands. Box 6.12, Existentialisme Chrétien: Gabriel Marcel» 1947, Henri de la Marche, La Crain. Marcel, Mystery of Being, Vol. I, 119. Thomas A. Michaud, “Secondary Reflection and Marcelian Anthropology,” Philosophy Today, vol. 34 (Fall 1990): 223. Marcel, Being and Having. Translated by. K. Farrer (New York: Harper and Row, 1965), 117. Gerber, “Marcel’s Phenomenology of the Human Body,” International Philosophical Quarterly vol.4 (1964), 453. Sam Keen, “The Development of the Idea of Being in Marcel’s Thought.” In P. A. Schlipp and L. E. Hahn (eds), Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel: The Library of Living Philosophers, vol. 17 (LaSalle, IL: Open Court, 1984): 103.

144 32 33 34

35 36 37 38

Notes

Marcel, Vol. I, 125. Marcel, Vol. I, 126. Pax, “Philosophical Reflection: Gabriel Marcel,” New Scholasticism vol. 38, no. 2 (April 1964), 171. Darwall, The Second Person Standpoint (Cambridge: Harvard, 2006), 11. Darwall (Harvard 2006), 90. Darwall, 179. Box 6.11. An undated newspaper article, written by guest author Gabriel Marcel, « L’Homme Et Les Techniques, «L’aventure technocratique»

Chapter 5 1 2 3

4

5 6

7 8 9 10 11

12

13

14

15

“Conversations 5,” TW, 246. Fresh Hope for the World (London: Longmans, Green & Co, 1960), 1. There is, on the other hand, a view in philosophy that true philosophy is only about the theoretical, and that reaching across to popular media, public policy, or even to members who ordinarily are not touched by philosophy (like children, or those in prison) amounts to a disemboweling of philosophical truth. See, for example, Nevada’s 2011 efforts to gut the University of Nevada-Reno’s entire philosophy department, as well as all of the junior philosophy faculty at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas The Grand Design, New York: Bantam Books, 2010, introduction. Man against Mass Society, 110–15 develops an elegant view from Marcel that the philosopher is meant to be engaged in the world to prevent suffering. The duties explicated by Marcel for the philosopher are not vocational, but they are moral. I do not think we can read Marcel as saying, “Well, the philosopher’s job is to speak to ignorance,” in the same way that the HVAC worker has to clean the chimney. The philosopher has special insight into the assumptions certain methodologies make, and the impact it has. Vocationally, the philosopher can write obscure papers; morally, the philosopher can act to stamp out prejudices caused by ignorance. Marcel, “From Personal to the Worldwide,” Fresh Hope for the World, 77. Helen Hardinge, translator’s note, Fresh Hope for the World. As quoted by Marcel, Fresh Hope for the World, Part III, 212. Marcel, Introduction, Fresh Hope for the World. «The Times Literary Supplement, 21 Feb 48, “The Work of Gabriel Marcel» In English, page 110, no author listed. See, for example, Box 6.11, unsigned, undated «Le crise des valeurs dans le monde d’aujourd’hui». Box 6.11. La cle des livres. «Un Existentialisme Chrétien: Gabriel Marcel» by Roger Cample, Construire, Zurich, le 9 aout, 1947, #36, p. 5. Box 6.11. undated, unsigned newspaper review of a conference paper by Marcel, «Le crise des valeurs dans le monde d’aujourd’hui». This phrasing is mine, but I think that Marcel would adopt it as his own. The strong advantage this conception of human value has over others is that it does not pick out some perfectionistic or idealized quality of humans, and then

Notes

16

17 18 19

20

21

22 23

24

25 26

27

28

29

30

30

145

discern from there who fits within the particular group. The human group is the only group that can make use of morality, and moral terms. That doesn’t mean that every individual human can make sense of morality, or can be morally praised or blamed. (This view does not move to particular individuals.) And, it avoids the scope problem for moral considerability, since it does not say that a particular individual is part of the group because morality functions for them. Now consider this Marcelian passage from Fresh Hope for the World: “If I think of a man as a machine or as a system of mechanisms, I am certainly made to recognize the extreme complexity of his ‘motor-processes.’ Only, it must be carefully noted that the moment we do this we are ceasing to think of him as a man. I cannot think of him in this way without forgetting the essential point, that as a human being he is capable of conceiving—I do not say creating— values and ends, and of acting in conformity with or in opposition to them . . . . The moment you say this, however, you cease to think of a man as a machine.” Box 6.11, undated, unsigned newspaper report of philosophical conference, «Le crise des valeurs dans le monde d’aujourd’hui» Fresh Hope for the World, 213. Dowuona-Hammond, Fresh Hope for the World, 211. Box 6.11, undated newspaper article, «GM croit a l’avilissement du monde moderne par la technique» by Seltifer. Throughout this subsection, I will frequently be referencing Man against Mass Society, since in it Marcel directly discusses war as a threat to the existential and moral growth of humanity. MM 154. Marcel continues on to say that such a feeling is actually akin to envy. “Is not ambivalence of feeling here more or less the rule?” MM 46. MM 37. Marcel referenced the Vietnam War as an example of this hopelessness. Box 5.8—letters to Yarish, 5 October 1971 and 16 November 1971. Box 6.12, undated newspaper editorial by Gabriel Marcel «sans l’intervention decisive de Rome… L’eglise dans les pays de l’est était exposee a perdre son ame» “Decisive Encounters,” Fresh Hope for the World, 52–3. Box 6.11, During the Visit to Bogota (1951), pp. 579–84. “Gabriel Marcel, musician and thinker” by Roberto Uribe Pinto (in Spanish). Box 6.12, undated: Visite A Gabriel Marcel, «Le Philosophe est engage qu’il le veuille ou non» by Jean-Pierre Moulin. Though this interview is undated, the substance appears to refer to events surrounding World War II. Box 6.12 «La Bourse Egyptieene» Marcel denonce ‘Les Hommes Contre l’humain’ par Georges Cattaui. Amartya Sen, “Reason, Freedom, and Well-Being.” Utilitas 91, Commodities and Capabilities; and also ‘Well-being, Agency and Freedom: The Dewey Lectures 1984’, Journal of Philosophy 82 (1985). My brief comment here is in no way meant to encapsulate Sen’s view, but instead is meant to provide a bridge from Marcel’s work to contemporary analytic normative theory. Governor Munshi (India), companion to Mahatma Gandhi, in Fresh Hope for the World, 212. Fresh Hope for the World, 215.

Bibliography Adams, Marilyn McCord. Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God. Ithaca: Cornell, 1999. Adams, Marilyn McCord. Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000. Anderson, Thomas C. “Notions of Being,” Philosophy Today 19, no. 1, Spring 1975. Bollnow, Otto Friedrich. “Marcel’s Concept of Availability. In P. A. Schlipp and L. E. Hahn (eds), The Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel: The Library of Living Philosophers, vol. 17 (LaSalle, IL: Open Court, 1984). Box 2.1. Marcel’s notebook, “Couers de Bergson.” Box 2.2. undated, unsigned, in English, “Principles of Value.” Box 5.8. Letters to Yarish, Paris, le 8 Juillet 1969. Box 5.8. letters to Yarish, 5 October 1971 and 16 November 1971. Box 6.10. newspaper article, Samedi Fou, “Existentialiste Chrétien, Gabriel Marcel,” January 20, 1952. Box 6.10. «GAZETTE DE LIEGE», LE Mardi 29 Novembre 1949, «Gabriel Marcel», by Brian Marinoir. Box 6.10. From a newspaper, dated January 20, 1952, without author, “Existentialiste Chrétien, GABRIEL MARCEL.” Box 6.11. «Le Signe de la Croix de Gabriel Marcel», par Pierre Boutang. Box 6.11. «Un Existentialisme Chrétien: Gabriel Marcel» by Roger Cample, Construire, Zurich, le 9 aout, 1947, #36, p. 5. Box 6.11. “‘Un Philosophe’, au Temps Present” trouvera de plus nombreux lecteurs si vous criez son nom,” by Jacques Delesalle, January 14, 1938. Box 6.11. An undated newspaper article, written by guest author Gabriel Marcel, «L’Homme Et Les Techniques, «L’aventure technocratique». Box 6.11. (undated), «Gabriel Marcel, «Temoin du spirituel» Oliver Perceval. Box 6.11. During the Visit to Bogota (1951), pp. 579–84. “Gabriel Marcel, musician and thinker” by Roberto Uribe Pinto (in Spanish). Box 6.11. (undated newspaper article), «Gabriel Marcel: Ou la marche vers la Lumière», par Maurice Sacre. Box 6.11. «Gabriel Marcel croit a l’avilissement du monde moderne par la technique» by Seltifer. Box 6.11. undated, unsigned newspaper review of a conference paper by Marcel, «Le crise des valeurs dans le monde d’aujourd’hui». Box 6.12. «La Vie, 19 Juin 1949, «Le Grand Prix de Littérature de L’ Académie Française », by Roger Bodart». Box 6.12. (undated) «La Bourse Egyptieene» Marcel denonce ‘Les hommes contre l’humain’ par Georges Cattaui. Box 6.12. guest author Gabriel Marcel, “Le monde ne peut etre aujourd’hui supportable que si on a l’esprit fixe cette esperance.” Box 6.12. undated newspaper editorial by Gabriel Marcel «sans l’intervention decisive de Rome… L’eglise dans les pays de l’est était exposee a perdre son ame».

Bibliography

147

Box 6.12. «Existentialisme Chrétien: Gabriel Marcel» 1947, Henri de la Marche, La Crain. Box 6.12. undated: Visite A Gabriel Marcel, «Le Philosophe est engage qu’il le veuille ou non» by Jean-Pierre Moulin. Box 6.12. «Le Metier De Critique » (an interview w/ Marcel et Robert Kemp, JeanJaques Gautier et Jacques Lemarchand), June 25, 1939. Box 6.12. Une Piece Dont on Parle, «Un Homme de Dieu» 1949, signed only by «un spectator». Box 6.12. «The Times Literary Supplement, 21 Feb 48, «The Work of Gabriel Marcel» In English, p. 110, no author listed. Card, Claudia. The Atrocity Paradigm. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Collins, James. “Marcel’s Philosophy of Participation.” In The Existentialists: A Critical Study. Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 1952. Conversation 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, in Tragic Wisdom and Beyond. Translated by Stephen Jolin and Peter McCormick. Evanston, IL: Northwest University Press, 1973. Darwall, Stephen. The Second-Person Standpoint (Cambridge: Harvard University Press 2006). Gallagher, Kenneth. The Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel (New York: Fordham Univerity Press, 1962). Gerber, Rudolf. “Marcel’s Phenomenology of the Human Body.” International Philosophical Quarterly vol. 4 (1964). Gilson, Etienne (ed.). Le Coeur des autres in Existentialisme chrétien: Gabriel Marcel. Paris: Plon, 1947. Godfrey, Joseph J. “Appraising Marcel on Hope.” Philosophy Today, vol. 31, no. 3 (Fall, 1987). Hawking, Stephen. The Grand Design, New York: Bantam Books, 2010. Hernandez, Jill. “The Existential Ground of Community.” In Coffee: Philosophy for Everyone. Edited by F. Allhoff, S. Parker, and M. Austin. Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011. Keen, Sam. “The Development of the Idea of Being in Marcel’s Thought.” In The Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel: The Library of Living Philosophers, vol. 17. Edited by Paul Arthur Schlipp and Lewis Edwin Hahn. LaSalle, IL: Open Court, 1984. Marcel, Gabriel. Being and Having. Translated by K. Farrer. New York: Harper & Row, 1965. ----. Creative Fidelity. Translated by R. Rosthal. New York: Fordham University Press, 2002. ----. Creative Fidelity. Translated by R. Rosthal. New York: Crossroad Pub, 1982. ----. Creative Fidelity. Translated by R. Rosthal. New York: Noonday Press, 1964. ----. “Desire and Hope.” In Readings in Existential Phenomenology. Edited by. Nathaniel Lawrence and Daniel O’Connor. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1967. ----. Du refus a l’invocation. Paris: Gallimard, 1940. ----. The Existential Background of Human Dignity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963. ----. (ed.) Fresh Hope for the World, London: Longmans, Green & Co, 1960. ----. Homo Viator: Introduction to a Metaphysics of Hope. Translated by Emma Craufurd. Chicago: Harper & Row, 1965.

148

Bibliography

----. The Mystery of Being, volume I: Reflection and Mystery. Translated by G. S. Fraser. Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1950. —. The Mystery of Being, volume I: Reflection and Mystery. Translated by G. S. Fraser. South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 2001. ----. The Mystery of Being, volume II: Faith and Reality. Translated by G. S. Fraser. Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1950. ----. The Mystery of Being, volume II: Faith and Reality. Translated by René Hague South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 2001. ----. Philosophy of Existentialism. Translated by Manya Harari. London: Harvill Press, 1948. ----. Presence and Immortality, published with the Metaphysical Journal, 1938–1943. Translated by M. Machado. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1967. ----. Problematic Man. Translated by B. Thompson. New York: Herder and Herder, 1967. ----. “Reply to Otto Friedrich Bollnow.” In Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel: The Library of Living Philosophers, vol. 17. Edited by Paul Arthur Schlipp and Lewis Edwin Hahn. LaSalle, IL: Open Court, 1984. ----. “Reply to Gene Reeves.” In The Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel: The Library of Living Philosophers, vol. 17. Edited by Paul Arthur Schlipp and Lewis Edwin Hahn. LaSalle, IL: Open Court, 1984. ----. Thou Shalt Not Die. Anne Marcel (Compiler), Katharine Rose Hanley (Translator). South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 2009. ----. Tragic Wisdom and Beyond. Translated by Stephen Jolin and Peter McCormick. Evanston, IL: Northwest University Press, 1973, 1980. ----. “Truth and Freedom.” Philosophy Today 9 (1965). McCown, Joe. Availability: Gabriel Marcel and the Phenomenology of Human Openness. Missoula, Montana: Scholars Press, 1978. Michaud, Thomas A. “Secondary Reflection and Marcelian Anthropology.” Philosophy Today, vol. 34 (Fall 1990). Miceli, Vincent P. “Marcel: The Ascent to Being.” Thought, vol. 38 (Fall 1963). National Geographic print edition, “Troubled Spirits.” Alma Guillermoprieto, 5 May 2010. Nietzsche, Friedrich. “Die fruliche Wissenshaft,” 125, from Nietzsche Werke, vol. 5, part 2, edited by Giorgio Colli and Mazzimo Montinari. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1973. ----. The Gay Science. Translated by Walter Kaufmann. New York: Random House, 1974. Noddings, Nel. Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education. Berkeley and Los Angeles: The Regents of the University of California, 1984. ----. “An Ethic of Caring.” In Conduct and Character, Mark Timmons (ed.), Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth, 2006. O’Malley, John B. “Marcel’s Notion of Person.” In P. A. Schlipp and L. E. Hahn, eds, The Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel: The Library of Living Philosophers, vol. 17. LaSalle, IL: Open Court, 1984. Ostermann, Robert. “Gabriel Marcel: The Discovery of Being.” Modern Schoolman, vol. 31 (Nov. 1953–May 1954).

Bibliography

149

Parain-Vial, Jeanne. “Notes on the Ontology of Gabriel Marcel.” Philosophy Today, vol. 4, no. 4 (Winter 1960). Pax, C.V. “Philosophical Reflection: Gabriel Marcel.” New Scholasticism vol. 38, no. 2 (April 1964). Rorty, Richard. An Ethics for Today: Finding Common Ground between Philosophy and Religion. Introduction by Gianni Vattimo. New York: Columbia University Press, 2011. Sartre, Jean-Paul. Being and Nothingness. Translated by Hazel Barnes. New York: Washington Square Press, 1983. Sen, Amartya. Development and Freedom. New York: Alfred Knopf, 1999. ----. Rationality and Freedom. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002. ----. “Reason, Freedom, and Well-Being.” Utilitas 91: Commodities and Capabilities. ----. “Well-being, Agency and Freedom: The Dewey Lectures 1984”, Journal of Philosophy 82 (1985). ---- and Jean Drèze. The Amartya Sen and Jean Drèze Omnibus. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Spiegel, James. Hypocrisy. New York: Baker, 1999. Stallknecht, Newton P. “Gabriel Marcel and the Human Situation.” Review of Metaphysics, vol. 7 (1953–1954). Strauss, Erwin W. and Machado, Michael. “Marcel’s Notion of Incarnate Being.” In The Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel: The Library of Living Philosophers, vol. 17. Edited by Paul Arthur Schlipp and Lewis Edwin Hahn. LaSalle, IL: Open Court, 1984. Sweetman, Brendan. The Vision of Gabriel Marcel. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2008. Treanor, Brian. Aspects of Alterity: Levinas, Marcel and the Contemporary Debate. New York: Fordham, 2006. Williams, Martha E. “Gabriel Marcel’s Notion of Personal Communication.” The Modern Schoolman, vol. 35 (Nov. 1957–May 1958): 107. Zuidema, S.U. “Gabriel Marcel: A Critique.” Philosophy Today, vol. 4, no. 4 (Winter 1960).

Index

abstraction 20, 26, 81, 89 act 12, 22–3, 29, 62, 71, 94, 98, 106–8, 115–16, 144n. 5 of feeling 16, 96, 102 free 54, 74 immoral 112 moral 114 of recovery 24 of violence 33 of willing 68–9, 74 action 2, 22, 25, 26, 38, 61, 67, 69, 71, 74, 79, 89, 100–2, 107, 113, 123, 127 creative 83 of equality 129 free 130 hopeful 60–3, 115 moral 101, 117 see also paralysis Adams, Marilyn McCord 42 agnosticism 39, 72 alienation 9, 15, 89 altruism 14, 17 see also egoism analytic ethics 1–3, 101, 105 anguish 1, 3, 9, 19, 26, 27, 37, 39, 52, 54, 56, 71, 89, 95, 124 anthropocentrism 78, 83 anxiety 6–7, 23, 139n. 2 Aristotle 95 atheism 29, 30, 32–4, 40, 42, 43, 49–51, 54 and Camus 40, 41, 53 lived 42, 48–51 Nietzschean 30–1, 33–5, 40, 41, 43 Sartrean 35, 37–8, 41, 48, 80 attachment 50, 74–5, 79, 87, 88, 124, 142n. 8

authoritarian regimes 121–5, 127, 131, 140n. 12 autolatry 80–1 autonomy 102, 118 availability 36, 83, 91, 94, 98 see also disponibilité behavior 2, 25, 31, 33, 51, 105 being 4, 8, 10, 12, 13, 15, 19, 20, 23, 37, 46, 48, 58, 62, 64–5, 67, 69–71, 78–9, 86, 88, 90, 92–4, 98, 99, 108, 112, 119, 124, 135, 142n. 2 among-beings 92, 97 moral 100–1, 103 see also self belief 2, 4, 5, 15–16, 19, 29–31, 33–42, 45, 48, 51, 56, 74, 77, 81 Bergson, Henri 139n. 8 Bodart, Roger 60, 141n. 3 body 1, 9, 13, 20, 21, 24–7, 28, 51, 59, 89, 96–7, 115, 139n. 8 of Christ 72 limits of 1, 29 and materialism 9–19 Bollnow, Otto Freidrich 22 Bollnow, Roger 18 Cample, Roger 1 Camus, Albert 40–1, 42, 43, 53, 108 see also problem of evil Card, Claudia 42 caring 2, 23, 105 social care 3, 105 category mistake 133 Catholicism 48, 53, 112, 121–2 change 102, 105, 109, 110, 115–17, 121, 122, 123, 126, 130, 132, 137 moral 80

Index political and social 102, 106, 109, 130, 136 Christ 37, 140n. 1 Christianity 37, 43, 46, 48, 51, 53, 55, 123, 140n. 1 civil rights 43, 70, 117, 127–8 collective 115, 132, 135 commitment 5, 26, 32, 47, 53, 87–90, 93, 99, 101, 102, 111, 114 communication 19, 24, 55, 85, 90, 93, 94, 96 communion 48, 64–5, 71, 99, 101, 136 Communism 121, 123, 133 community 2, 19, 26, 32, 43, 52–4, 59–60, 63–5, 68–75, 87, 92–3, 99–101, 110, 114–15, 121–2, 132, 136, 137 concrete 13, 41–3, 46–8, 51–3, 54, 65, 71, 88, 95, 97, 103, 107, 112, 117, 121, 129, 132, 134, 136, 143 consciousness 37, 51, 53, 89, 95, 124 consequentialism 116, 130 contemplation 72, 97–8 corporate 48, 64, 104, 110, 134 creation 45, 54, 60, 67, 77, 83, 122, 136, 141n. 16 of hope 58–9, 130 of meaning 3, 28, 58, 64, 68, 74, 85, 95, 104 of possibility 13, 26–7, 59–60, 63–4, 67–8, 70–1, 87, 105, 124 of suffering 29 creative impulse 34, 44, 58, 65, 75, 115–16 creativity 3, 9, 58, 68, 75–7, 83, 87, 88, 103, 115, 124, 133 crispation 22, 23 Darwall, Stephen 101–2, 130n. 4 death 9, 16, 19, 27, 39, 47, 48, 51–3, 55, 60, 64, 71, 86, 88, 94, 117, 124, 127, 129, 137 spiritual 42 and unhope 9–13, 71, 74 death of God, 27, 28–57, 73 degradation 26, 52, 85, 103, 111–13, 115, 118–19, 124

151

deification of humanity 31, 37, 38, 48, 80, 82–4, 114 Delesalle, Jacques 88, 90 dependency 1, 3, 9, 15, 72, 81, 83 Descartes 15, 50, 66 desire 4, 6–7, 11, 16, 34, 44, 59, 61, 64–7, 71–2, 77, 82, 86, 95, 103, 108, 109, 114, 136, 141 despair 1, 6, 10–11, 17, 22, 27, 54, 57, 60, 62, 64–6, 68–71, 73, 74–5, 86–89, 110, 134–5 detachment 11, 23, 33, 36, 48, 139n. 2 determinism 54 devaluation 5, 19, 20–6, 78, 84, 85, 103, 108 development 8, 11, 26–7, 29, 48, 64, 73, 75, 92, 93, 97, 115, 130, 132 technological 75–87, 142n. 2 disconnection 20–2, 29, 35, 43, 44, 77, 89, 107 and technology 80–7 disenfranchisement 113, 129, 135 disponibilité 88, 91 see also availability doubt 32, 50, 95 drama 2, 94–5 dualism 15 Ebner, Ferdinand 56 ego 15, 63 egoism 14, 17, 22 see also altruism élan vital 23, 83, 135 embodiment 8, 25, 29 empiricism 36, 41, 63, 68 emptiness 7, 8, 22, 51, 65, 74, 136, 137 encounter 9, 50, 71 equality 101, 113, 128–9 eschatology 47, 55, 62, 63, 72, 75, 79 essence 12, 17, 68, 87 divine 32 ethical life 58–73, 74–6, 84, 87, 95, 103, 104–5 see also moral life ethics of care 3, 23, 105 see also caring

152 ethics of hope 1, 3, 55, 66, 73, 127, 131, 132, 136 evil 1, 7, 20, 29, 39, 40, 44, 56, 58, 59, 64, 70, 76, 104, 106, 111, 112, 114, 118, 121, 125, 126, 137 global 104–5 moral 5, 19, 22, 26–7, 40–3, 44–5, 54–5, 58 natural 39 and the problematic 4–27, 106 see also problem of evil exigence 36, 58, 66, 94, 100, 105 existence 4–5, 6, 8–10, 17, 25, 26, 50, 79, 81, 86, 94, 98 authentic 7 functionalized 6, 22, 27 isolated 3, 53, 62, 64, 72, 89, 90, 95, 99–100, 104, 127, 134, 137 meaningful 1, 4, 6–7, 13–14, 21, 52, 64–5, 75–6, 79, 84, 90, 99, 102–3, 135 philosophy of 7, 24 see also God, existence of existential ethics 2, 101, 105 existential indubitable 14, 51–2 existentialism 1–3, 35, 38, 42, 46–7, 58, 75, 84, 96, 99, 117, 143n. 25 experience 2–4, 6, 9, 10–13, 16, 22, 24, 25, 29, 34–8, 41, 45, 46, 48, 52, 54, 56, 59–60, 62–5, 67, 69– 73, 74–6, 90, 92, 95, 97, 103, 105, 117, 120–1, 124, 131, 135, 140n. 1 interior 23, 81, 98 lived 42–3, 51, 53–4, 65, 69, 95–6, 98–9, 115 meaningful 4, 8, 59, 81, 89 noumenal 45–7 shared 3, 44, 90, 92–4, 98, 101, 103, 113, 131 facticity 7–9, 17, 58, 72 facts 9, 36, 45, 99 faith 9, 34, 47, 50–1, 56, 72, 89, 93, 140n. 1 faithfulness 88, 90, 102 fear 6, 11, 13, 60, 62, 65, 71–2, 86, 115–17, 122, 125, 131, 134

Index feeling 3, 7, 16–17, 38, 47, 49, 60, 66, 70, 82, 83, 91, 96, 102, 116, 120, 121, 124, 131, 133–4, 145n. 20 see also act, of feeling fidelity 75, 87–90 freedom 9, 16, 37–8, 48, 52, 54, 57, 70, 88–90, 93, 117, 121, 123–5, 127–8, 130, 140n. 10 Sartrean 28, 37–8 function 4–9, 14, 15, 17, 20, 22, 26, 52, 89–90, 96–7, 111, 135 functionality 6–8, 16, 19–20, 26, 59, 63, 82, 90, 106, 133 see also instrumentality future 9, 10, 26, 33, 57, 61, 63, 65, 74, 97, 108–9, 116, 121, 124, 126, 128, 133, 135 Gallagher, Kenneth 88 gift 53–4, 95, 98, 132 God 28, 64, 72, 80, 95, 103, 111, 140n. 10 existence of 28–57, 108, 140n. 9, 140n. 10 see also death of God Godfrey, Joseph 61, 109 grace 46–7, 53–4, 68, 73, 89, 135 ground 1, 3, 30, 47, 49, 56, 58, 63, 68, 73, 88, 102, 117 of evil 26, 64 of morality 24, 101–2, 105, 111–12 Hammond, Dowuona 117 having 15–16, 19, 96, 112, 124, 139n. 11 Hegelianism 11, 48, 51 Heidegger 7, 39, 40 history 14–15, 31, 33, 44, 51, 79, 84, 105, 120–1 Holocaust 39, 106, 116, 121, 124 homo viator 65, 88, 114 hopeful action 60, 115 hopeful life 40, 57, 60, 64, 68, 70, 72–6, 125, 127 human condition 2, 7–10, 25, 41, 56, 129 see also value, human

Index humanity 2, 4, 5, 8, 17, 18, 20, 24, 32, 38, 43–5, 51, 53, 55, 76, 80–2, 85, 87, 106, 111, 118, 132–3, 145n. 19 dignity of 55, 63, 85, 101, 106, 112, 117, 118–19, 129 as fact 9, 106 see also devaluation hypocrisy 43–5, 140n. 9 idealism 88 identity 6, 14, 43, 58, 96 ideology 104, 117, 131 idolatry 53, 77, 78, 80, 86 imagination 7, 31, 61, 78, 88, 97 incommunicability 90, 97 indisponibilité 22–3 see also unavailability inequality 86, 129 injustice 43, 70, 104–5, 108, 110, 120, 125, 127–31, 137 see also justice instrumentality 16–18, 59, 85, 99 see also functionality intellect 84, 87, 97, 112 intention 33, 49, 69, 97, 130 intersubjectivity 3, 13, 53, 67, 72, 81, 85–6, 91–4, 112–13, 135–6 introspection 97 see also reflection Jaspers, Karl 33 justice 41, 104–5, 126 Keen, Sam 70, 93, 97 knowledge 12, 65, 78, 98, 107 of God 32 impossibility of full 95 limits of 107 metaphysical 88 la Santa Muerte 140n. 11 looking 12, 97–8 love 13, 42, 62, 64, 70, 72–3, 89, 90, 93–4, 99–100, 117, 124 mankind 9, 20, 38, 132–3 Marinoir, Brian 89

153

Marxism 48–9 materialism 5, 7, 13–27, 28–9, 31–2, 44, 53, 59, 68, 77–8, 86, 106, 111, 122–3, 137 meaning 3, 4–7, 11–13, 15, 18–19, 24, 26, 28–9, 37, 39, 50, 53, 55, 58–9, 61, 63–5, 68–9, 74, 81, 85, 88–9, 94–5, 99, 100, 104, 107, 132, 134–5, 143n. 25 see also creation, of meaning and existence, meaningful meaninglessness 3, 22, 47, 63, 136 memory 120 metaphysics 1, 11, 19, 24, 26, 35, 60, 88–90, 113, 123 methodology 50, 84, 106, 112, 124, 144n. 5 mind 10, 12, 37, 78, 98–9, 108, 127, 142n. 2 moral agency 5, 30, 101 moral life 5, 25, 27, 29, 67, 75–6, 86, 88–9, 94–6, 98, 100, 103, 114–15, 120, 140n. 1 Moral Re-Armament 2, 104, 127, 132 morality 24, 26, 28, 31, 38, 48, 55, 63–4, 80, 100, 104–5, 106, 110– 17, 120, 122, 140n. 10, 144n. 14 Muir, Edmund Munshi, Governor 111, 132, 145n. 29 mutation 1 mystery 12–13, 15, 32, 71, 94, 100, 101 and hope 71–3 nature 3, 6, 8, 12, 32, 37, 44, 52, 53, 73, 76, 81, 83–4, 86, 99, 103, 129, 133 of equality 128, 133 of God 38, 46 of hope 60, 63–4, 67, 70, 72 of technology 75–6, 87, 133 Nazism 118, 124–6, 131 need 2, 7, 20, 22, 29, 32, 45, 53, 64, 72, 88, 93–4, 98, 101, 105, 110, 114, 118, 128, 136–7 Nietzsche, Friedrich 28–37, 39–41, 43–5, 48, 52, 56, 88, 113, 114, 140n. 2

154 non-violence 70, 129–31 nothingness 15, 30, 31, 38–9, 78 noumenal 45, 47 see also experience object 9, 18, 25, 26, 75, 77, 119, 124 body-as 6, 9, 15–17, 24, 59, 96, 98–9 God-as 32, 36, 46 of hope 60–1, 65, 137 objectification 1, 13–16, 19, 22, 25–7, 28, 32, 46, 58, 84, 96, 134 objective 8–9, 15, 19, 20, 24, 26, 32, 35–6, 46–7, 49, 63, 87, 92, 96–7 obligation 101–2, 107, 130 omnipresence 81–2 ontology 2, 14, 20, 33, 36, 58, 64, 77, 92, 93, 97, 142n. 8 opacity 23 openness 53, 62–4, 70, 90, 92–3, 98, 114, 126, 135, 137, 140n. 1, 141n. 3 Ostermann, Robert 60 Other, the 13–14, 24, 41, 53, 72, 73, 91, 94–6, 100–1, 112–14, 118, 135 output 6, 17–18, 133 paradox 20, 89–90, 98, 118 environmental 78 experiential 39 paralysis 9–10, 22–3, 64–5, 71, 116, 124–5, 130, 133 participation 26, 29, 32, 55, 77, 92, 96, 98–9, 119, 125 group 44, 80, 128–9 perception 17, 24, 96 phenomenology 29, 34, 39, 43, 47, 56, 63, 70, 73, 120, 131 philosophy 1–3, 7, 9, 18, 24, 26, 29, 39, 43, 47–8, 56, 60, 84, 90, 96, 103, 104, 111, 131, 136, 144n. 3 and morality 106–11 and policy 123 Plato 105 politics 2–3, 24, 43, 48, 85–6, 104–11, 115, 117, 119, 121, 123, 125–32, 137 potentiality 79, 98

Index poverty 39, 80, 104–5, 110, 117, 131–5 pragmatism 2, 60, 113, 119 and hope 3, 11, 60, 63–7, 70–1, 73 prayer 32–3, 72 presence 1, 9–10, 13, 22–5, 36–9, 50, 81, 87, 90–103, 127, 135 of death 10, 64, 86 divine 36, 38, 42, 46 see also omnipresence problem 4–27, 29, 48, 74, 80–1, 89, 95–6, 100, 103, 105–6, 123, 126, 131 problem of evil 28–57, 140n. 9 see also Camus and evil problematic man 4–27, 40, 47–8, 52, 57, 58–9, 63–7, 71, 81, 83–4, 89, 99, 113–14 problematicity 7–8, 13, 17, 26–7, 31, 44, 58–60, 89, 114 production/productivity 17, 20, 48, 75–9, 87 promises 86, 88, 102, 141n. 15 propensity 5, 13, 34, 83, 108, 113 rationalism 26–7, 32, 35 reality 6, 9–10, 14, 17, 20, 23, 37–8, 46, 60, 65–8, 72, 81, 86, 89, 92–3, 97, 115–16, 134, 140n. 1 reason 9, 46–7, 76 moral 25, 100–2, 113 reciprocity 64, 75, 90–3, 101–2 redemption 28–9, 40–5, 52–3 see also salvation reflection 32–3, 50–1, 58, 81, 89, 96–9, 111, 116 primary 96–7 secondary 96, 97–8, 108 relativism 24, 47 religion 18, 31, 33, 38, 41, 43, 46, 48, 51, 56, 62, 79, 99, 107, 111, 129, 132 Ricoeur, Paul 9–10, 18, 47–8, 65, 104 Rorty, Richard 32–3 salvation 72–3, 86 see also redemption

Index

155

Sartre, Jean-Paul 28, 35–41, 48–9, 80, 84, 99–103, 106, 113–14, 117, 143n. 25 science 12, 15, 33, 35, 46, 79–80, 96–7, 106, 111 self 4–16, 19–20, 22–7, 28–9, 32–4, 36–8, 48–9, 51–3, 58, 59, 63–4, 69, 74–7, 80, 84, 87–8, 92–103, 109, 114, 129, 131 see also being self-hatred 25 Seltifer 77, 81 Sen, Amaryta 130 sensation 14, 17, 96 situatedness 7, 41, 56 situation 7, 10, 12, 24, 43, 45, 55, 60–2, 65–6, 68, 70, 89, 96, 121, 127 skepticism 42, 50, 66, 75, 99 social media 82–3, 85 social networking 75, 82 socialism 48, 132–3 society 16, 20, 80, 87, 89, 108–9, 133 Socrates 123 solipsism 48, 109 soul 50, 59, 97, 141n. 16 immortality of 11 Spiegel, James 140n. 9 Spinoza 11 spirit 51, 76, 82–3, 106–8, 121, 135 spirituality 18, 42–3, 53, 64, 80, 87, 99, 103, 112, 116 Stoicism 141n. 16 subject 5, 9, 37, 59, 96, 112, 114 moral 96–103 subjectivism 47 subjectivity 93, 97 substance 60, 78, 116, 145n. 26 suffering 3, 7, 10, 22–3, 27, 29–30, 33, 37, 39–44, 52–3, 62–5, 69–73, 74–5, 84, 89, 103, 107–9, 115, 130–5, 140n. 10, 144n. 5 suicide 16, 44

theodicy 40, 42, 140n. 10 theology 27, 29, 42–4, 46–7, 55–6, 72, 85, 123 thinking 13, 25, 27, 32, 35, 47, 49–50, 53, 57, 78, 113, 117, 121–2, 130, 133 totalitarian regimes 85, 119, 121, 123–7, 134 transcendence 42, 44, 49, 53, 83–4, 93 transcendent 63, 72 Treanor, Brian 142n. 8 truth 33–4, 47, 62, 90, 93, 99, 125, 142n. 2 turn toward 11, 53

technology 2, 24, 44–5, 74–88, 106–7, 118, 130–2 theism 30–3, 35, 39–47, 50, 53–5, 72, 84, 140n. 10

Wahl, Jean 44 war 1, 33, 39, 44–5, 104–5, 107–8, 110, 117, 118–31, 134, 140n. 11, 140n. 12, 145n. 19

übermensch 34 unavailability 21–2, 91 see also indisponibilité uneasiness 20, 33, 35, 115, 138–9n. 2 unemployment 131–5 unhope 9–13, 74 unknowability 10, 12–3, 67, 71, 90, 98 unity 15, 92 universal 15, 30, 33, 85–6, 95, 104, 131 value 3, 17, 33–4, 38, 59, 60, 75, 84–7, 89, 100, 110, 117, 123, 130, 133, 139n. 2, 145n. 15 human 2, 9, 19–26, 34, 76–8, 110, 111–17, 118–20, 124–7, 144n. 14 see also human condition van Beuningan, Lottie 122 Vietnam War 145n. 22 violence 33, 70, 130 see also non-violence virtue 7, 48, 58–60, 63, 73, 74–6, 80, 87–90, 95, 99, 101, 103, 110, 142n. 8 Vittimo, Gianni 32 vocation 43, 109, 133, 144n. 5 volition 28, 47, 67, 112, 136

156 welfare 101, 130 welfarism 2–3, 105 will 11, 29, 35, 47, 51, 62–3, 65, 67–70, 74, 78–9, 101, 113–14, 129, 130 of God 54 to power 34 willing 68–9, 74, 114 wisdom 33, 62

Index wish fulfillment 67 wishing 60–1, 65, 67, 105, 109, 136 World War, Second 44, 85, 107, 119, 122, 145n. 26 Yarish, Darwin 65 Zuidema, S. U. 15

Gabriel Marcel's Ethics of Hope: Evil, God and Virtue

Virtue Ethics

Kant's Ethics of Virtue

Perfecting Virtue: New Essays on Kantian Ethics and Virtue Ethics

Virtue Ethics and Professional Roles

Virtue Ethics and Professional Roles

God and Inscrutable Evil

God, Freedom, and Evil

Rethinking Virtue Ethics

God, Evil, and Design

On Virtue Ethics

Virtue Ethics, Old And New

The Virtue of Aristotle's Ethics

Rethinking Virtue Ethics (Library of Ethics and Applied Philosophy)

Working Virtue: Virtue Ethics and Contemporary Moral Problems

God, the Best, and Evil

God, the Best, and Evil

Evil and a Good God

Virtue Ethics: A Pluralistic View

Virtue And Ethics in the Twelfth Century

Evil and the God of Love

Intellectual Virtue: Perspectives from Ethics and Epistemology

Virtue Ethics: A Pluralistic View

Intellectual Virtue: Perspectives from Ethics and Epistemology

Intellectual Virtue: Perspectives from Ethics and Epistemology

Gabriel

Virtue Ethics and Sociology: Issues of Modernity and Religion

Gabriel

Gabriel

Gabriel

Gabriel

Gabriel Marcel's Ethics of Hope: Evil, God and Virtue

Virtue Ethics

Kant's Ethics of Virtue

Perfecting Virtue: New Essays on Kantian Ethics and Virtue Ethics

Virtue Ethics and Professional Roles

Virtue Ethics and Professional Roles

God and Inscrutable Evil

God, Freedom, and Evil

Rethinking Virtue Ethics

God, Evil, and Design

On Virtue Ethics

Virtue Ethics, Old And New

The Virtue of Aristotle's Ethics

Rethinking Virtue Ethics (Library of Ethics and Applied Philosophy)

Working Virtue: Virtue Ethics and Contemporary Moral Problems

God, the Best, and Evil

God, the Best, and Evil

Evil and a Good God

Virtue Ethics: A Pluralistic View

Virtue And Ethics in the Twelfth Century

Evil and the God of Love

Intellectual Virtue: Perspectives from Ethics and Epistemology

Virtue Ethics: A Pluralistic View

Intellectual Virtue: Perspectives from Ethics and Epistemology

Intellectual Virtue: Perspectives from Ethics and Epistemology

Gabriel

Virtue Ethics and Sociology: Issues of Modernity and Religion

Gabriel

Gabriel

Gabriel

Gabriel

Recommend Documents