Thanks for this.

Marcel holds that it is our fundamental situation in the world which defines our "ideas". Any analysis or description must involve a reference to a human body and it's place in existence. Descartes describes a "spectator view" of the self. According to Marcel, Descartes also mistakenly made conceptual knowledge the paradigm of knowledge. — anonymous66

Cartesianism reduces to abstractions, which can be captured by Cartesian geometry. Those abstractions are not what really exists.

This realm is best described as being mysterious from a philosophical point of view because it cannot be presented in ordinary conceptual knowledge. It must be experienced to be fully known. — anonymous66

Right - really important point. Contrast with the echoes of Locke's 'representative realism' which have created such a sense of 'otherness' - everything known 'in the third person', whereas this kind of understanding is 'participatory'.

Marcel sometimes referred to the modern world as a "broken world" because we are losing the ability of availability, and transcendence. — anonymous66

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The page on his Gifford Lectures is here.

Chapter 1: The Nature of Philosophy
[(From the translator): Marcel explains in these selections that he has no philosophical system, he is non-systematic and non-objective. He demonstrates that the scientific approach to reality, should not be regarded by philosophers as the paradigm of knowledge. The scientific approach seeks universal, demonstratable solutions that are available to everyone, but philosophical inquiry requires the existential involvement of the person engaged in the task of philosophy. A philosopher cannot detach oneself from the work/research in the way that a chemist can.

Marcel expects the reader to think along with him, to clarify his insights in relation to their own experiences. “The main aim of any philosophical inquiry is the attempt to discover the most basic truths about the human condition.” Marcel wants to reveal the necessary connections that make up the meaning of a particular human subject’s experiences in his or her individual embodied situation in existence. (this does include conceptual knowledge). But, Marcels’ approach does not avoid the objectivity sought in science… but, like art, philosophical inquiry seeks objective truths about the human condition that are open to minds of a certain sort. So, truth is not a “thing”, and philosophy does not have as its goal, practical results, but rather it tries to get at human experience in a way that reveals its own essential structures. ]

The Nature of Philosophy.
“… philosophy, like art or poetry, rests on a foundation of personal involvement, or to use a more profoundly meaningful expression, it has its source in a vocation, where the word “vocation” is taken with all it etymological significance. I think that philosophy, regarded in its essential finality, has to be considered as a personal response to a call.” From: Tragic Wisdom and Beyond.

When I called these lectures a search for, or an investigation into, the essence of spiritual reality, I choose the word carefully. The best description of philosophy is that of a search or an investigation. It’s an aid to discovery, not demonstration. If a philosopher attempts to expound on certain truths that he has discovered, he runs the risk of altering their nature.
When I was nominated to give the Gifford lectures, my first reaction was one of intense inner disturbance. I was being asked to do something that I had determined not to do: to present a systematic form to material I considered to be part of a quest.

It is known that I do have my own line of development, with a specific character. Can we talk about results in the realm of philosophy?
Take for example a chemist who invents a more cost effective way to obtain a needed substance. The specifics of that method and its processes have a separate existence. If I need the substance, all I have to do is go to a shop and ask for it… there is no need for me to learn about the processes that lead to its creation. The same is true of forecasts of eclipses. We need not trouble ourselves with the complicated calculations.

“One might postulate it as a principle, on the other hand, that in an investigation of the type on which we are now engaged, a philosophical investigation, there can be no place at all for results of this sort. Let us expand that: between a philosophical investigation and its final outcome, there exists a link which cannot be broken without the summing up itself immediately losing all reality. And of course we must also ask ourselves here just what we mean, in this context, by reality.”

In chemistry, a technician has an idea of what he is looking for. But, in philosophical investigations, one cannot know what one is looking for ahead of time. Not that an investigator would start out at random. And let’s not forget that some scientific discoveries have come about by happy accident. But, this can never be the case with philosophic investigation.
In the case of technicians and scientists, the operations are such that anybody could carry them out in his place. The sequence of the needed operations can be laid out in universal terms.

“The greatness and limitations of scientific discovery consist precisely in the fact that it is bound by its nature to be lost in anonymity. Once a result has been achieved, it is bound to appear, if not a matter of chance, at least a matter of contingence, that it should have been this man and not that man who discovered such and such a process.” There is no point in considering the personal or tragic background in which some discovery was made.
But, this is not and cannot be true in the same way for the kind of investigation presented in these lectures. “How can we start out on a search without having somehow anticipated what we are searching for?

The scientific is practical and universal and objective, while philosophical investigations are subjective and personal. Marcel portrays “the men of metaphysics” as being inept, in that they “find it impossible to conceive of a purpose which lies outside the order of the practical, which cannot be translated into the language of action….”
Marcel also asks whether there is a risk of some philosophical investigation merely reducing itself to an account of the succession of stages by which Marcel himself makes progress that is nothing more than subjective value… the investigation of which might lead from a starting point of suffering to one that is no longer one of suffering, but one that is accompanied by a certain joy.

Marcel compares this investigation to art. Just as great works of art are not able to be appreciated by literally everyone, this type of philosophical investigation might not be appreciated by everyone.
“It is none the less certain that when a genuine emotion is felt at the impact of a work of art it infinitely transcends the limits of what we might call consciousness...”
“… The task of philosophy, to my mind, consists precisely in this sort of reciprocal clarification of two unknowns, and it may well be that, in order to pose the true questions, it is actually necessary to have an intuition, in advance, about what the true answers might be. It might be said that the true questions are those which point, not to anything resembling the solution of an enigma, but rather to a line of direction along which we must move. As we move along the line, we get more and more chances of being visited by a sort of spiritual illumination; for we shall have to acknowledge that Truth can be considered only in this way, as a spirit, as a light.” From: The Mystery of Being Volume 1.

I assert that an investigation of the sort I have in mind, can only appeal to minds of a certain sort. Minds that already have a bias. Marcel acknowledges some objections to this: “Does it not imply a perversion of the very notion of Truth?” Truth is usually thought of as involving a universal reference. Something that is true for anybody and everybody. “What the objection implies, in fact, is that we know in advance, and perhaps even know in a quite schematic fashion, what the relationship between the self and the truth recognizes itself to be.”
Marcel says that in the last 200 years, there has been a great deal of critical reflection on the subject of truth. In their everyday thinking, people believe that there are established, legitimate ways of arriving at the truth, and if a man steps aside from those ways, he is in danger of losing himself in a place where the difference between truth and error vanishes away. It is this image of truth itself that needs to be critically examined, if we want to grasp the gross error on which it rests. “What we must above all reject is the idea that we are forced to make a choice between a genuine truth (so to call it) which has been extracted, and a false, a lying truth which has been fabricated.” No matter what truth is, it is not a thing. It’s not a physical object, and the search for truth is not a physical process. No generalizations that can apply to physical objects can also apply to truth.

On the other hand, anybody and everybody has access to certain minimal aptitudes. Marcel gives the example of a failed experiment wherein he was supposed to show the laws of electrolysis. Even though the experiment was a failure (because he was not able to hook up certain wires correctly), he knew what would have happened, had the experiment been a success. His own clumsiness aside, it remained true in principle that anybody and everybody could do the experiment correctly, and arrive at the correct results.
Conversely, the further the intelligence passes beyond the limits of purely technical activities, the less likely we are able to say, “anybody at all” can do this. “One might even say, as I indicated in my first chapter, that the philosopher’s task involves not only unusual mental aptitudes but an unusual sense of inner urgent need; and as I have already suggested, towards the end of the last chapter, we shall have to face the fact that in such a world as we live in urgent inner needs of this type are almost systematically misunderstood, and are even deliberately discredited.” From: Mystery of Being Vol 1.

“The kind of inquiry I have in mind will be governed by an obligation which is not easy to formulate; it is not sufficient to say that it is an avowal of fidelity to experience; an examination of philosophical empiricism shows the extent to which the term ‘experience’ is vague and ambiguous.” In philosophy, experiences become aware of themselves, and apprehend themselves. But at what level? “My only comment here is that we must distinguish not only degrees of clarification but degrees of intimacy with oneself and with one’s surroundings- with the universe itself.”
This inquiry must be based on a certitude that is not rational or logical, but rather existential. We must start with existence. From : Creative Fidelity.

“What does it mean to philosophize concretely?” It’s not a return to empiricism.
A philosopher should “know” the history of philosophy. But he should know it in the same way a composer knows harmony. Composers don’t become a slave to harmony, they use it as a tool.
A philosopher will never become accustomed to the fact of existing. It will involve a continued astonishment. There will always be a sting of reality.
No concrete philosophy is possible without a constant creative tension “between the I and those depths of our being in and by which we are; nor without the most stringent and rigorous reflection, directed by our most intensely lived experience….”
A concrete philosophy cannot fail to be attracted to Christianity, perhaps without even knowing it. And this shouldn’t shock anyone. For the Christian, there is an essential agreement between Christianity and human nature. The more one understands human nature, the more one “finds oneself situated on the axes of the great truths of Christianity.” An objection: “You affirm this as a Christian, not as a philosopher.” But: “the philosopher who compels himself to think only as a philosopher places himself on the hither side of experience in an infrahuman realm; but philosophy implies an exaltation of experience, not a castration of it.” From: Creative Fidelity.

You're very welcome.

Thanks for the link! My own experience has been that there is something missing from analytical philosophy. I've been looking for something a little more personal. Something that ties in with my past history and my own experiences.

This 13 minute video gives a decent overview of Marcel's philosophy, IMHO.

Chapter 2 On Epistemology and the Nature of Knowledge

[From the translator: Marcel’s essay On the Ontological Mystery is one of the clearest presentations of his work. It’s a good introduction to his phenomenological ontology, in which he concerns himself with what kind of beings we are, and how we come to gain knowledge and understanding. It’s also a good illustration of the experimental dimension of Marcel’s thought, and provides an overview of his central themes, which include: being, reflection (primary and secondary), fidelity, hope, presence, spiritual availability, and the relationship between his philosophy and Christianity.

The essay starts with Marcel noting that humans are being defined by their functions: vital, social and psychological. Our world is one in which there are problems that require technical solutions… this leaves no room for mystery. The situation causes despair because the need for being is being suppressed. He admits that being is hard to define, but suggests it is primarily an experience, one that defies an exhaustive description. Being also refers to the life of the spirit, a life that modern thought denies. From a philosophical point of view, being is a realm where the real human self is revealed through careful phenomenological descriptions, a real that we have access to through secondary reflection. Being is not deduced from an analysis of theoretical thinking, but rather through the intuition of reflective thought. This is the realm of mystery where the distinction between subject and object breaks down. Marcel uses several examples: the union of body and soul, the experience of evil (not just considering evil), inter-personal relations (esp. love), religious experiences, fidelity, and experiences requiring ethical responses. Marcel acknowledges that these can be difficult to describe, but he argues that this realm of being is objectively real, and can be revealed to some extent in conceptual knowledge, especially philosophy. “The problem is that one cannot dissociate the idea of being from the certainty that pertains to it. Indeed, the idea is an assurance of itself, a view that is the antithesis of the Cartesian approach, which is founded on the idea that being and thought are initially separate (and so the problem is how to get them back together).”

Marcel offers some reflections on “recollection” (secondary reflection). He describes it as a process of reflection that helps us to recover the experiences that exist in the realm of being. Secondary reflection can be best described as both the act of critical reflection of primary reflection, and process of recovery of the “mysteries of being.” Despair is one possible, but misguided, response to the human condition. The counter to despair is hope. Hope being an experience of trust or confidence in human life, and its meaning and value. Hope is grounded, not in external events, but in the depths of who we are as human beings… “it is an ontological experience that ultimately points in a transcendental direction.”
These experiences are ultimately mysteries, not problems. Marcel analyses the experience of fidelity in a similar manner, and introduces “presence”. This presence leads him to the idea of “spiritual availability”- we should approach others with openness and humility, not with selfishness or egotism. He considers various objections, and discusses the relationship between philosophy and Christianity.

In Part 2 of the chapter, Marcel critiques Cartesianism and the view of the self that arises from it… which leads to skepticism. It’s why modern analytical philosophy is searching for what is objectively and demonstrably knowable… and has led to relativistic and anti-realist alternatives (postmodernism). Skepticism for Marcel artificially divorces the knowing subject from the world of external objects. “At the level of ordinary primary reflection, the problems of the existence of external objects, of the existence of the body, and of the relationship of these objects to the mind, do not arise.” In the traditional view of the self, personal experience is removed, and all we have left id sharable disinterested concepts- primary reflections. “But it is no possible to motivate any kind of global skepticism from this vantage point.

“In Part 3, Marcel argues that the self is fundamentally an embodied subject”- my experience are what make me what I am. Reflection on the body and ownership reveal that we don’t “own” our bodies, we cannot regard our body as a possession. Bodies own other items, they cannot themselves be owned. The relationship of the body to the self cannot be processed objectively. The relationship is mysterious- it cannot be articulated in conceptual analysis. Descartes view is problematic in that it is not logically possible for me to regard the existence of my body as a problem. It is not possible for any person to see his body as a subject for disinterested inquiry. My body is me, so if I regard it as a problem, I no longer see it as “my” body.

In Part 4, Marcel turns to primary and secondary reflection. He points out that primary reflection dissolves the unity of experience by looking at various features of it as problems to be solved. Secondary reflection is an attempt recover the unity of experience. He speaks of embodiment, the foundation of unity, because it places us in the realm of experience (something that reflection breaks apart), and confirms our own existence in the world. In Part 5, he continues the themes of problem and mystery, and emphasizes that “mystery” does not refer to a gap in our knowledge.

“Marcel has been striving in these selections to reach a vantage point from which his main themes can be best understood, and from where he can be seen as offering a unified account of the human condition.” This brings him to the notion of being in Part 6, “where he brings together a number of important themes. The themes being: that it is impossible not to adopt the realist solution to the problem of being; the relationship between thought and being….”, “how various philosophical approaches can either deny or affirm, but cannot avoid being; how the realm of being provides a powerful illustration of the differences between a mystery and a problem; how the realm of being points us in a transcendental direction; and the important relationship between being and value.”]

I just thought I'd mention that I've found the book Gabriel Marcel by Seymour Cain to be a better place to start, if one was interested in learning the basics of Gabriel Marcel's ideas.

And it's has the advantage of being short.

On Reading Marcel for the first time in 30 years.
I bought a copy of Gabriel Marcel’s The Existential Background of Human Dignity at a used-book store and have started reading it. I don’t remember if The Mystery of Being was this frustrating to read or not (I last read it over 30 years ago), but this “stream-of-consciousness“ style is frustrating, at times even infuriating, in a philosophical work. If this was a student’s paper I was grading, I’d have to say he had no idea what a coherent paragraph looked like.

His autobiography is easy to read, and I really like his plays (my favorite so far is A Man of God). I've been easing into his essays and philosophical books, because I've been warned that his style is non-systematic. I've been lead to understand that while his earlier works can be difficult to parse because of the their style, he developed a systematic (or concrete) way to describe his thoughts later in life.

I'd be interested in seeing an essay comparing and contrasting Marcel'sBeing-in-Situation, Heidegger's Being-in-the-World, and Sartre's Being always in a situation.

You might enjoy this article comparing Marcel's and Sartre's ideas. Atheistic and Christian Existentialism: A Comparison of Sartre and Marcel. I was fascinated to learn that Sartre modified his views on several topics later in life, including morality and the meaning of life.

After reading the article, I've had a desire to read some of Sartre's later works. For example:
Critique of Dialectical Reason- 1960

Twenty years after the publication of his 1943 phenomenological ontology, in 1964, Sartre presented a public lecture in Rome in which he set out at some length what he later called his second ethics. — Thomas Anderson

(Sartre's Second or Dialectical Ethics)

The Family Idiot. 1971

Notebooks for an Ethics - Published posthumously in 1983.

Cain defends Marcel's early writing style by explaining that he can be compared to a scientist recording raw empirical data, only Marcel was a phenomenologist studying human consciousness itself from a first hand perspective.