Gabriel Honor Marcel

BACKGROUND
7 december 1889 8 October 1973) was a French philosopher,
playwright, music critic and leading Christian existentialist. The
author of over a dozen books and at least thirty plays, Marcel's work
focused on the modern individual's struggle in a technologically
dehumanizing society. Though often regarded as the first French
existentialist, he dissociated himself from figures such as Jean-Paul
Sartre, preferring the term 'Philosophy of Existence' or "neo-
Socrateanism" to define his own thought. The Mystery of Being is a
well-known two-volume work authored by Marcel.
DEFINITION OF HER PHILOSOPHY
In his introduction to The Philosophy of Existentialism, Gabriel Marcel
describes the first three essays, which make up most of the book. The
first, On the Ontological Mystery, gives the main outlines of Marcels
own thinking. The second, Existence and Human Freedom, offers a
critical discussion of the work of Jean-Paul Sartre. The third,
Testimony and Existentialism, gives Marcels own perspective on
existentialism. These three essays also appear in chronological order,
since Marcel wrote them in 1933, January of 1946, and February of
1946, respectively. A fourth, short autobiographical piece, An Essay in
Autobiography, published in 1947 in a collection of writings devoted
to Marcels work, appears at the end. Thus, the four essays can be
taken as representing the development of Gabriel Marcels thought and
as his response to existentialist philosophy in its heyday in the late
1940s. On the Ontological Mystery poses a distinction between
problems and mysteries. Problems are questions that are, at least in
theory, resolvable. However, the ontological, which Marcel defines as
the sense of being, is not a problem, but a mystery.
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