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The Mystery of Being
Excerpt: His research - philosophical research - will appear therefore as an effort to put true questions (cf. Chapter IV, on Truth), which implies that he is endowed with the courage of thought inseparable from liberty.
II. A Broken World... page 18
Enquiry into one of the conclusions of the foregoing chapter, which dissociates truth and universal validity.
Is not this dissociation dangerous?
If not, how, and from what point does it appear so?
Note that the objection implies a pre-notion or anticipated schematizing of the relation between the subject and the truth which he will have to recognize.
Truth is indeed conceived as something to be extracted; this extraction is referable on principle to a universal technique, with the result that truth should be transmissible to anyone.
But we are prone to forget that the more intelligence transcends technical activity, the less the reference to anyone as inderterminate is called upon to intervene.
This objection is on the other hand a product, as it were, of a world that ignores exigencies of reflection.
This world of ours is a broken world, which means that in striving after a certain type of unity, it has lost its real unity. (These types of unity in the broken world are:
(1) Increased socialization of life: we are one and all treated as agents, registered, enrolled, and we end by merging into our own identity cards. (2) Extension of the powers of the State, which is like a searching eye on all of us. (3) This world has lost its true unity probably because privacy, brotherhood, creativeness, reflection and imagination, are all increasingly discredited in it.
Therefore - it is of the very utmost urgency that we reflect, and reflect upon reflection, in order to bring to light that exigence which animates reflection (cf. Chapter III), and in order to show that this exigence when at work transcends any sort of process whatever, and sweeps beyond the opposition of the empiric ego and the universal ego.
III. The Need For Transcendence page 39
What is the nature of this exigence, lying at the origin of philosophic research (cf. Chapter I), and danger of being smothered by the broken world of techniques and socialization?
II. A Broken World... page 18
Enquiry into one of the conclusions of the foregoing chapter, which dissociates truth and universal validity.
Is not this dissociation dangerous?
If not, how, and from what point does it appear so?
Note that the objection implies a pre-notion or anticipated schematizing of the relation between the subject and the truth which he will have to recognize.
Truth is indeed conceived as something to be extracted; this extraction is referable on principle to a universal technique, with the result that truth should be transmissible to anyone.
But we are prone to forget that the more intelligence transcends technical activity, the less the reference to anyone as inderterminate is called upon to intervene.
This objection is on the other hand a product, as it were, of a world that ignores exigencies of reflection.
This world of ours is a broken world, which means that in striving after a certain type of unity, it has lost its real unity. (These types of unity in the broken world are:
(1) Increased socialization of life: we are one and all treated as agents, registered, enrolled, and we end by merging into our own identity cards. (2) Extension of the powers of the State, which is like a searching eye on all of us. (3) This world has lost its true unity probably because privacy, brotherhood, creativeness, reflection and imagination, are all increasingly discredited in it.
Therefore - it is of the very utmost urgency that we reflect, and reflect upon reflection, in order to bring to light that exigence which animates reflection (cf. Chapter III), and in order to show that this exigence when at work transcends any sort of process whatever, and sweeps beyond the opposition of the empiric ego and the universal ego.
III. The Need For Transcendence page 39
What is the nature of this exigence, lying at the origin of philosophic research (cf. Chapter I), and danger of being smothered by the broken world of techniques and socialization?
- GenresPhilosophyReligion
237 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1960
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About the author
Gabriel Marcel
181 books124 followersGabriel Marcel (1889–1973) was a philosopher, drama critic, playwright and musician. He converted to Catholicism in 1929 and his philosophy was later described as “Christian Existentialism” (most famously in Jean-Paul Sartre's “Existentialism is a Humanism”) a term he initially endorsed but later repudiated. In addition to his numerous philosophical publications, he was the author of some thirty dramatic works. Marcel gave the Gifford Lectures in Aberdeen in 1949–1950, which appeared in print as the two-volume The Mystery of Being, and the William James Lectures at Harvard in 1961–1962, which were collected and published as The Existential Background of Human Dignity.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
March 5, 2015
"Only by not being afraid of the lion, but of the fear in you that makes you afraid of the lion, can fear be overcome.
In this area I am a total flop."
(Joe Brainard)
In this area I am a total flop."
(Joe Brainard)
Displaying 1 of 1 review