Gabriel Marcel

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Gabriel Marcel (right; photo from 1969)
Gabriel Marcel signature.jpg

Gabriel Marcel (born December 7, 1889 in Paris , † October 8, 1973 ibid) was a French philosopher and the leading exponent of Christian existentialism . He is considered the closest existential philosopher of the 20th century to Søren Kierkegaard .

Life

Marcel was the only child of a senior civil servant and got to know other countries and their literature from an early age. After studying philosophy at the Sorbonne , he was a grammar school teacher for philosophy (1912 Vendôme , 1915/18 Paris). During the First World War he looked after the missing persons files in the service of the Red Cross - for health reasons not suitable for use at the front. During this time (from 1914) his Metaphysical Diary was created . In addition to his teaching activities (later also in Sens , again in Paris and Montpellier ), he also worked as a lecturer and theater critic in the publishing industry. As the son of non-practicing Jewish parents, he was initially an atheist , but converted to Catholicism in 1929 under the influence of his friend Charles Du Bos and François Mauriac . Marcel's turn to the “ mother church ” has been interpreted as a compensation for the early death of the mother ( see v. Kloeden in the BBKL , see below under web links ).

Create

Influenced by Henri Bergson and Karl Jaspers , Marcel turned to existentialism even before Jean-Paul Sartre . However, since this term seemed to him to have too much atheistic connotations, Marcel preferred to call himself a “neo- Socratic ”. With his Christian attitude he brought u. a. Daniel-Rops returned to faith and stimulated his life-Jesus research .

Marcel tried to overcome the alienation of humans in a world in which "having" has become more important than "being" and which is therefore dominated by "not being available" ("indisponibilité") through the man empties himself in mere “problem thinking”, which does not grasp him deeply like the mystery. In his most important works Être et avoir ( To be and to have, 1935), Le mystère de l'être (The secret of being, 1951) and L'homme problematique (Man as a problem, 1955), Marcel turned against the objectified, materialistic and technocratic Thinking of modern times. The level of “having” must be transcended in love , for which the other is no longer an object (“he”), but a counterpart that can be experienced in dialogue (“you”). Marcel rejected Sartre's atheist-radical concept of freedom: Freedom was not autonomous, but had to be filled by love , hope and “creative loyalty”. Marcel saw the bond with God as the "absolute you" as a worthwhile goal in life.

Marcel also wrote 28 plays that often deal with the fragility of human existence, including Le monde cassé (The Broken World, 1933).

His thinking was close to the German Christian existentialist Peter Wust ; both knew and valued one another. In post-war Germany in particular, Marcel gave numerous (partly published) lectures. In 1948 he received the Great Literature Prize from the Académie française for his complete works, in 1952 he was accepted into the Académie des sciences morales et politiques . In 1964 he was awarded the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade .

effect

Marcel was one of the earliest existential thinkers and pioneers of existential philosophy and phenomenology in France. On his philosophical Friday evenings in Paris' rue de Tournon, u. a. Emmanuel Levinas , Peter Wust , Paul Ricœur , Max Picard and Jean-Paul Sartre attended. Influences of his thinking on these philosophers as well as on Maurice Merleau-Ponty , Emmanuel Mounier and Jeanne Parain-Vial (1912–2009) can be proven. However, Marcel did not found his own school. Theologians of both denominations took up his thoughts on love, hope, loyalty, death and immortality .

“(We honor) by awarding a peace prize to Gabriel Marcel the creative thinker, the founder of a philosophy of encounter and hope, the fighter against the humiliation of man, the admonisher of a realistic order of peace, the writer who is rich in his literary work draws equally from the sources of the French and German spirit and serves a lasting friendship between both peoples. "

- Justification, Peace Prize 1964

Works (selection)

  • To be and have . Paderborn 1968 (French original 1935)
  • Homo Viator , Philosophy of Hope. Düsseldorf 1949
  • Secret of being . Vienna 1952
  • Metaphysical diary . The philosopher of hope in his spiritual career. Vienna 1955
  • Man as a problem . Frankfurt 1956
  • Philosophy of hope. Overcoming nihilism. Munich 1957
  • The downfall of wisdom. The darkening of the mind . Heidelberg 1960
  • Presence and immortality . Frankfurt 1961
  • Creative fidelity . Paderborn 1963
  • The humiliation of man . Frankfurt 1964
  • The philosopher and peace. The violation of privacy and the deterioration of values ​​in today's world. Frankfurt 1964
  • French literature in the 20th century. Eight lectures. Herder Library, 259. Herder Verlag , Freiburg 1966

literature

  • Vincent Berning: The Risk of Loyalty. Gabriel Marcel's way to a concrete philosophy of the creative. Alber, Freiburg 1973 ISBN 3-495-47273-8
  • Marie-Madeleine Davy: Gabriel Marcel, a wandering philosopher. Knecht, Frankfurt 1964
  • Kenneth T. Gallagher: The Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel . 3. print. with rev. Fordham University Press, New York 1975 ISBN 0-8232-0471-5
  • Friedrich Hoefeld: The Christian existentialism Gabriel Marcel. An analysis of the spiritual situation of the present. Zwingli, Zurich 1956
  • Wolfdietrich von Kloeden :  Marcel, Gabriel. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 5, Bautz, Herzberg 1993, ISBN 3-88309-043-3 , Sp. 761-769.  ( Article / beginning of article in Internet archive )
  • Joseph Konickal: Being and my being. Gabriel Marcel's metaphysics of incarnation. Peter Lang, Bern 1992 ISBN 3-631-45500-3 (European university publications , 20, 385)
  • Jeanne Parain-Vial: Gabriel Marcel. Un veilleur et un éveilleur. L'age d'homme, Lausanne 1989
  • Hartmut Sommer: On the way to the secret of being. Gabriel Marcel's "Château du Peuch" in Corrèze , in: Revolte and Waldgang. The poet philosophers of the 20th century . Lambert Schneider, Darmstadt 2011 ISBN 978-3-650-22170-4

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Störig: Brief world history of philosophy. Fischer, Frankfurt a. M., 1996, p. 600
  2. ↑ Fritz Heinemann: Existential Philosophy. Alive or dead? , Kohlhammer, 4th ed., 1984, p. 158
  3. ↑ http://www.friedenspreis-des-deutschen-buchhandels.de/sixcms/media.php/1290/1963_v_weizsaecker.pdf
  4. ↑ Ehlen, Peter; Gerd Haeffner; Friedo Ricken: Philosophy of the 20th Century. - 3rd edition - Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2010, p. 72; s. a. English page
  5. Jump up ↑ Horst Robert Balz, Gerhard Krause, Siegfried M. Schwertner, Gerhard Müller: Theologische Realenzyklopädie , 22. de Gruyter, 1992, p. 82
personal data
SURNAME Marcel, Gabriel
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French philosopher and founder of Christian existentialism
DATE OF BIRTH December 7, 1889
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris
DATE OF DEATH October 8, 1973
Place of death Paris