Un volume, 493 p.
Parution: 1997.
ISBN:2-95121139-0-6.
23 euros
Lire quelques pages
(fichier pdf 1489 Ko )
If it is important
today to go back to Gabriel Marcel's thought, it is no less important
to grasp it at its highest level of philosophical demand. But
many events have taken place in the world of ideas since the day
The Mystery of Being was first published. We must not forget
the development of human sciences, then, in the Sixties, the vogue
of Structuralism. Passing fads were pushing Gabriel Marcel's existential
style into a seemingly gone past.
Moreover, French philosophers have gotten better acquainted with
Heidegger's thought, and this thought has taken so much space
in the philosophical area that anyone who talks today about being
seems to move in the Heideggerian orbit. That, of course, isn't true of Marcel, whose ontological approaches are very different
from Heidegger's. Marcel's reflection can be situated within the
French intellectual tradition, together with Maurice Blondel and
Lucien Laberthonnière. The latter wrote about a metaphysics
of charity to which Marcel is very close when he identifies,
in the Journal métaphysique (Metaphysical Diary), the problem
of being and the problem of salvation.
The relevance of Marcel today is particularly evident when he
considers connections between ontology and ethics. When he blames
Heidegger for not acknowledging intersubjectivity, Marcel
in fact underlines the great weakness of that philosophy: its
lack of ethics.
In his constant and polemic dialogue with Heidegger, Emmanuel
Levinas doesn't think we can assert ethics's preeminence without
a radical contestation of ontology. Marcel's originality, on the
other side, is to maintain a substantial bond between ontology
and ethics. Let us come back to the seminal text : Position
et approches concrètes du mystère ontologique, that was first
published along with a play, Le Monde cassé. What Marcel
calls a broken world is a world where our demand of being
is so frustrated taht we're not even conscious of this demand
anymore. Through dissociation of the individuality, reduced to
functions — vital, social, psychological —, Marcel shows the triumph of the instrumental reason. But his description of a world given
up to technocracy also aims to put into light the stifling of
what he calls exigence ontologique (ontological demand). What
will become of man, bereaved of this demand of being, which ought
to be the life and soul of his relation with the world, with other
human beings, with God ?
In his own way, Marcel also defies contemporary nihilism. To say
: Nothing is, is to say : Nothing has any value.
Ontological demand is the process through which we bring to trial
everything that claims to give meaning to human life. Is there,
in our experience, something able to withstand critical dissociation, is there a ground upon which we can build our hope ?
For Marcel, love is the most concrete approach of ontological
mystery. The wonder of love reveals human beings to themselves.
And this encounter, which is grace itself, turns the demand of
being into a call : I call forth, but I am also given this call,
and I must respond to it.
In their fragility and distress, other people call to me — in
order to be. But I am also giving the same call. As the philosopher
of the we, Marcel thinks that the demand of reciprocity is essential
: être, c'est être avec (being is being with). And if Marcel gives to God the name of Toi absolu, it is to make us understand
that we can trust Him without the fear of being betrayed.
Pierre Colin
Présence de Gabriel Marcel
