In March of 1959, French author and philosopher Gabriel Marcel gave a paper to the Pax Romana Society of University College, Dublin where he explored what humanity could – and should – expect both of and from philosophy, in reflection of a lifetime’s study of the discipline and the light of an increasingly scientific society. In his exploration of what can be ‘expected’ from philosophy, Marcel examines the contradictions facing philosophical study – the impact of the physical world on the philosopher; the impact of ‘lay’ perceptions of the philosophical tradition; and philosophy as a response to the needs of the human mind.
Gabriel Marcel, ‘What Can One Expect of Philosophy?’, Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review, Vol. 47, No. 190 (Summer, 1959), 151-162. JSTOR link: https://www.jstor.org/stable/30103592
This extract is taken from the text of a paper read by G. Marcel to the Pax Romana Society, University College, Dublin, on 11 March 1959, as translated by Reverend M. B. Crowe.
What Can One Expect of Philosophy?
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One can, then, assert that it is essential to the philosophical experience, in the measure in which it is worked out, to be confronted with other experiences already fully elaborated and, in general, organized in systems. This is even to say too little ; this confrontation is really part of the experience in question, inasmuch as the latter tries to elucidate itself and to become crystallized in concepts. This is particularly clear in a thinker like Heidegger; one can say that his thought is, as it were, engaged in a constant dialogue with the philosophers who have gone before—not all of them, of course, but those with whom. he discovers affinities, the great pre-Socratics, Plato and Aristotle and, of the moderns, principally, Kant, Hegel and Nietzsche. In this regard I shall mention a very significant fact.
Heidegger came to France for the first time in 1955 and stayed at the château of Cerisy-la-Salle where a certain number of philosophers and students had gathered to take advantage of his presence. It was hoped that he would comment upon and clarify certain particularly obscure passages in his works. There was great disappointment when it was learnt that, after an introduction on philosophy in general, he would comment on certain texts, not of his own but of Kant and Hegel. To those who discreetly gave expression to their surprise and disappointment he answered that his method consisted precisely in clarifying his thought, beginning from that of the great philosophers of whom he had made a particular study.
It is, moreover, important to remember that this dialogue, in a mind of such originality, never fails to re-interpret, one may say creatively, the thinkers thus evoked. In the present case this is notably true for the pre-Socratics and for Kant.
Beginning from there, it would, furthermore, be in place to pose the general problems which preoccupy certain philosophers, particularly in France, and touch upon the very essence of the history of philosophy. One sees nowadays, more clearly doubtless than at any other period, the need, and at the same time the difficulty, of a philosophy of the history of philosophy.
But, in any event, it seems that the philosophical experience, if it necessarily begins as an instrumental solo, in its development tends to become a concerto; it is already such in the measure in which it is opposed to other thought, for to be opposed is, in some way, to depend. It was so, for example in the relationship between Kant and David Hume or, nearer to us between Bergson and Spenser; and, if I may be permitted to mention myself in this context, I can say that my thought has defined itself by way of opposition to contemporary neo-Hegelians, Bradley in particular, as well as to certain. French exponents of neocritical philosophy.
‘But’, some of my readers will perhaps say, ‘it seems, if we understand your thought aright, that you gave a very strange and very disappointing answer to the question you posed at the beginning of your paper. You have said, on the one hand, that there is no philosophy except for one who has a personal experience in this matter or, at least, an ear for this mode of thought. Now you assert that the philosophical experience implies a living communication, a dialogue with other experiences already elaborated, that is to say, with other philosophies. But does not this amount to saying that everything in philosophy takes place within a kind of magic circle, among privileged people, or even in a sanctuary to which the uninitiated cannot have access ? Now our interest in asking you what can one expect of philosophy was in knowing just what the latter has to offer to the uninitiated or, if you will, to us, the profane, the outsiders. If it is merely a kind of game played between qualified persons we are no longer interested—exactly as a non-player has no interest in a chess-match, played under his eyes, when he does not even know the rules.’
This objection has the great advantage of leading me to make here some necessary qualifications.
First of all there is this to be said in reply. Quite evidently it would be utterly false to imagine that between the philosopher and the non-philosopher there exists anything like a barrier. This barrier, which even in other periods did not exist, does so still less today when literature itself—what everyone reads or is presumed to read—is penetrated with philosophical thought to such an extent that it is really impossible to draw any line of demarcation between them. And this obtains not alone for the essay or the novel, but for the theatre and the cinema. In this matter an example like Sartre’s is quite significant. One cannot trace genuine boundaries between the novels or plays of Sartre and his philosophical work. I will say exactly the same of myself with regard to my philosophical writings and my plays. One can also think of a writer like Paul Valery who, to tell the truth, made a profession of despising philosophy but was himself, in reality, in some way a philosopher even in his purely poetical works; so much so that a professional philosopher like Alain was found to give an exact commentary on his great collection of poems Charmes. But we must surely go further and say that in every thinking being, particularly in our time, there exists—not continuously, of course, but now and again—a rudimentary philosophical experience. I shall freely say that this experience shows itself as a sort of thrill (frémissement) in the presence of the great mysterious realities that are the concrete setting of every human life—love, death, the birth of a child, etc. We should not hesitate to say—this is my view—that every personally felt emotion in contact with those realities is something of an embryonic philosophical experience. It is only too evident that in the immense majority of cases this embryo not alone does not develop into an articulate experience but even appears not to feel the need of such development. And yet it is also true that almost every human being has, at a given privileged moment, felt this need for clarification, for having an answer to his own questioning.
It must be added, of course, that this becomes more and more true according as religion, properly so-called, declines or, at least, tends to change its nature, and as people are less and less satisfied with ready-made answers which, in another age, or so it seems, they would have accepted without demur.
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