The Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel

Professor Kenneth Gallagher provides a detailed and clear elucidation of the master of Christian Existentialism Gabriel Marcel.


"THE PRINCIPAL AIM OF A BOOK ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF GABRIEL MARCEL ought to be to send the reader back to the original works in all their non-expoundable concreteness. Actually, in the case of this relentlessly unsystematic thinker, even to speak of "his philosophy" has a hollow ring, for it suggests just the kind of carefully constructed edifice of doctrine which Marcel deliberately renounces. An attempt to "expound" such a thought inevitably runs the risk of distorting it. And yet the risk seems worth running. For Marcel's thought, while original and fascinating, is so extremely elusive that it is a rare reader for whom it does not seem to cry out for interpretation. The paradox is that this elusiveness is an essential constituent of his thought, and any exposition which sought to eliminate it would be self-defeating. In the pages that follow, I have sought to find the source of this elusiveness, not in order to banish it, but rather in order to discover its philosophical significance. My hope has been that, through a progressive penetration of Marcellian themes, the animating principle behind his thought will gradually emerge. What follows, then, is an exposition—in the sense that an attempt has been made to bring the contours of Marcel's thought into clear focus—but one which preserves the freshness of his approach."—From the author's introduction