Marcel Gabriel (1889–1973), French philosopher and playwright, a major representative of French existential thought. He was a member of the Academy of Political and Social Science of the Institute of France. Musician, drama critic, and lecturer of international renown, he authored thirty plays and as many philosophic essays. He considered his principal contribution to be that of a philosopher-dramatist. Together, his dramatic and philosophic works cut a path for the reasoned exercise of freedom to enhance the dignity of human life. The conflicts and challenges of his own life he brought to the light of the theater; his philosophic works followed as efforts to discern critically through rigorous, reasoned analyses the alternative options life offers.
His dramatic masterpiece, The Broken World, compassionately portrayed the devastating sense of emptiness, superficial activities, and fractured relationships that plague the modern era. This play cleared a way for Marcel to transcend nineteenth-century British and German idealism, articulate his distinction between problem and mystery, and evolve an existential approach that reflectively clarified mysteries that can provide depth and meaningfulness to human life. In the essay ‘On the Ontological Mystery,’ a philosophic sequel to The Broken World, Marcel confronted the questions ‘Who am I? – Is Being empty or full?’ He explored the regions of body or incarnate being, intersubjectivity, and transcendence. His research focused principally on intersubjectivity clarifying the requisite attitudes and essential characteristics of I-Thou encounters, interpersonal relations, commitment and creative fidelity – notions he also developed in Homo Viator (1945) and Creative Fidelity (1940).
Marcel’s thought balanced despair and hope, infidelity and fidelity, self-deception and a spirit of truth. He recognized both the role of freedom and the role of fundamental attitudes or prephilosophic dispositions, as these influence one’s way of being and the interpretation of life’s meaning.
Concern for the presence of loved ones who have died appears in both Marcel’s dramatic and philosophic works, notably in Presence and Immortality. This concern, coupled with his reflections on intersubjectivity, led him to explore how a human subject can experience the presence of God or the presence of loved ones from beyond death. Through personal experience, dramatic imagination, and philosophic investigation, he discovered that such presence can be experienced principally by way of inwardness and depth. ‘Presence’ is a spiritual influx that profoundly affects one’s being, uplifting it and enriching one’s personal resources. While it does depend on a person’s being open and permeable, presence is not something that the person can summon forth. A conferral or presence is always a gratuitous gift, coauthored and marked by its signal benefit, an incitement to create. So Marcel’s reflection on interpersonal communion enabled him to conceive philosophically how God can be present to a person as a life-giving and personalizing force whose benefit is always an incitement to create. See also BUBER, EXISTENTIALISM , PHILOSO- PHY OF LITERATUR. K.R.H.
