Summary:
Gabriel Marcel is a known French existentialist. His co-Frenchman, Jean-Paul Sartre, distinguished existentialism into two which were
coined as atheistic and theistic (Christian) wherein Sartre did mention Marcel as part of the latter in lecture on Existentialism a Humanism.
Marcel is a Christian existentialist because he included the divine even amidst
the infamous perception of existentialism as godless. Moreover, he is also
known for his non-systematic philosophy where he pointed out that the philosophical
discipline starts from where one is (referring to the particularity of the
situation); therefore, it is not from metaphysical assumptions or already laid
down theories.
Marcel’s thoughts talk about the importance and the necessity of reflection wherein he divides it into two as a) primary reflection and b) secondary reflection.
Reflection for Marcel is “nothing other than attention, i.e. directed towards
this sort of small break in the daily chain of habit”. [1] This
existential-mental activity is simply giving time to think i.e. a momentary
ceasing of work and the giving of careful attention or consciousness of
something. Moreover, such activity is personal (subjective) because each can
reflect and one could reflect through one’s own personal experiences.
Reflection is divided into two kinds respectively into how it actualizes the
subject-object relationship. The first one is called primary reflection wherein
its function is to compartmentalize or analyze. It tends to dissociate object
or objects from the subject. “It dismantles a whole into parts.” [2] To use a simple analogy, it
is like slicing a whole pizza into little pieces. This sort of reflection makes
demarcation points between subject and object. The "I" is separate with the
object, and the "I" ratiocinates the objects; thus, the objects are analyzed or is then
compartmentalized. This kind of reflection, when applied to the person, tends
to dissociate the person with any object thought of. This results to one saying
I “have” a body or I “have” you because to “have” in reflection implies that a
body is something as an extension, partly you yet also something that is
separated that is why it is thus called “having”. To have is to possess and
primary reflection causes this kind of mindset, especially when related to man
with others. It puts a gap between the two under the conception that the
relationship concerns itself with utility i.e. having “something” and later on
“using” that something.
The other kind of reflection is called secondary reflection which entails that
there is no separation or distinction of the subject from the object. It tends
to link the gap which primary reflection made. For example, in primary
reflection I have a body implies body as a possession, and
something that is extended; but in secondary reflection, one says I am body.
The “am” or “be” is different from “having” because “to be” is “not to have”
but stresses a unity with the object. Secondary reflection escapes analysis and
everything that escapes analysis is considered a mystery. The mystery implies
that there is a dissolution of subject-object into a conjoined simultaneity or
a meeting of horizons where distinctions are blurred and barely exist.
Marcel has this search for Being by which Being with capital B cannot be known.
So why quest for something that is way beyond human capacity of understanding?
But “beings” can be known because these are things that exist and are subject
to our inquiry. Beings must also be in need of thought for it to be known, not
the pure thought of Descartes in which its purity is known as the Thinking I
which has no object of thought (except the assertion of the existence of the
self that is a result of reflection coming from the doubting meditations) but
thought that always “thinks of something”. Descartes cogito is only a vacuum
wherein it holds no other beings into its awareness rather than the
consciousness of phenomenology which is always a “consciousness of something”
or in Husserl’s language, Bewusstsein von Etwas.
Therefore, being being is
always being thought of something but this time the conscious demarcation
between subject and object disintegrates towards a unity which we can call the we consciousness
and this is where secondary reflection is at play. Being then becomes not an
object nor a subject separate from each other but that which is combined making being more
of a verb than a noun i.e. a continuous action of relation with beings not just
static being. Thereafter, the mystery of being arises because when secondary
reflection takes place; such reflection is in refusal to analysis and anything
that abhors analysis is a mystery. Such merging of beings into a continuous
verb always presumes the perpetual moment of action of assimilation through being wherein
it is difficult to pin point as to the parts if taken all together in a single
time, a single now.
Another of Marcel’s thoughts is that of the “broken world”. The broken world is
the result of primary reflection which analyzes things, compartmentalizes or
divides a certain whole. Primary reflection also makes the broken world more
manifest. The world is already broken and primary reflection made it even more
broken. A person is situated with others and the result of primary reflection
is that the “I” tends to make others as objects, separate from the subject,
especially in the case of man being with others calling the other as an other other as
if the others are mere tools for some work to be done. The “I” fails to see the
other as a part of his whole being but rather an extension which the “I”
possesses. The “I” sees persons not according as a subject which is also
capable of the same possibility to reflect but as something associated with
predicates. The broken world is thus a world that is more of a machine where
the parts are bits of cogs and sprockets far from another although making the whole
system work yet anonymous to each other and maybe only knows each other only
through a utilitarian framework of functionality. “Anonymity is another
hallmark of this broken world.” [3] Anonymity is due to a person’s being
“being” just a being through the others. The person has no other identity of
himself other than a tool but gains his pseudo-identity in comparison or
contrast to the other which is a result of the compartmentalizing feature of
primary reflection. For example, I am the son of Alexander the Great or He is
the neighbor of Paris Hilton. The person which is in the former I and the
latter He, has nothing on his own but gains his recognition through others.
Therefore, that person is anonymous because he is not known in himself and
through himself but by others. To clearly show the picture of “anonymousity” of
the person, remove the predicates and the I or he is now known and ironically
it is just a floating pronoun or name which resembles nothing.
Man is situated in a world with others so he is inevitably with others. To be
with others rather than to have others implies that this statement is the
product of secondary reflection because “I with others” refers not to being
near but an inner feeling of closeness or a conceptual fusion of apparently two
beings. Contrary to the statement “I have others” wherein the other is merely
an object that the “I” has no inner bond with the “Thou” or the “You”
(referring to the other person). Man is immersed in a possible “we-reality”
where he can be not alone but can “with” someone or something to live. The
“withness” is not synonymous with physical distance but an inner “feeling” or
“conception” of distance and this is what comprises mystery because the inner
feeling or thinking (not everyday thinking) is something that escapes analysis.
It just happens that the “I” cannot even know why and this is the result of
what we call intersubjectivity wherein the interrelatedness of man with others
is the consequence, realization or the actualization of a “we-reality”. The
“we-reality” is the key to the encounter of the “Absolute Thou”. Even before
reaching to the point of the divine, the “thou” can also be experienced if man
is relation of others authentically.
Marcel talks about the absolute Thou as God and in order for God to be
authentically experienced He must also escape the curse of primary reflection.
Man tends to abstract Him like how classical theology did however, God is
“encountered”, not rationalized. If the tendency is to rationalize Him, thee result
is to break God into certain predicates and will consequently lead to some
problems with His existence (especially explicated in the essence of the
logical problem of evil that accounts for the contradictory existence of an
absolute good God and the fact of evil) but secondary reflection tends to
transcend these logical problems and simply puts God as being there and
can be encountered by the “I” relating with the “thou” (referring to persons).
For the “I-thou relationship in this approach is essentially based on fidelity
of God”. [4] Fidelity stems from the belief or faith in Him wherein such
shatters the confusions set by reason which categorizes beings with non-being
via principle of non-identity and renders apparently different beings to be
conjoined in a mysterious union. Thus, a divine experience can be felt if man
is one with being, others and even God. (The limit of the language makes it
hard also to dissolve beings into just the continuing verb which is being.)
Reflections and Conclusions:
The heading of this part is already an attempt to apply Marcel. So primary
reflection is the source and the giver of more manifestation of the brokenness
of the world. Let me say that primary reflection is like Hegel’s Understanding
that sees not the whole but sees particulars or parts within a whole but not
yet the Absolute wherein everything has already condensed to totality. This is
also manifest in Science where the discipline tends to compartmentalize,
analyze and break everything into understandable parts. Within the social
reality, I see people not as a person but someone associated with predicates.
For example, I see Johannah Joy A. Batiancila as a “beautiful HRM student” but
the predicate is not her whole being but a part of who she is. I might be
affectionate to her because of the predicate but not the “thou” or the
wholeness of her being. That makes her a broken world most especially I only
relate to her through her predicates but secondary reflection boils down all
her possible predicates into one word which is her name which in all
ineffableness encapsulates her whole being. Secondary reflection makes me see
the beautiful, cute and all other predicates conjoined in one as herself, the
totality of her as a person. The I-Thou relationship makes me treat her as
myself, not as a possession to have but someone with dignity (dignity sounds so
mysterious but that is the point). It is like an encounter with the holy,
treating her not as a separate entity but a person within me that I can relate
to with all due respect.
Both
reflections are of great importance wherein one leads to analysis then the
other leads to mystery. Even though primary reflection makes the world more
broken but it also helps us to see the world clearly and scientifically.
However, it is in the encounter of mystery, the awe of the profound and the
ineffable that is far from analysis and this mysterious drive gives value to
the facticity with the others as others not
as possessions.
[1] Elinita, Garcia. “Gabriel Marcel: Primary and Secondary
Reflection”. Sophia. p. 52
[2] Ibid. p. 52
[3] Ibid. p. 59.
[4] Ibid. p. 62
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