MARCEL ON FREEDOM

by a student

It seems to me that there can be no appreciation of Marcel's idea of freedom Without

understanding his view of reality or of his philosophy, if philosophy can be said to belong to
someone. Marcel is said to be 'relentlessly unsystematic' in his thought, perhaps because of his
fidelity to his insights. His thinking starts from and continually refers back to the concrete experience.
He is aware that concepts are an attempt at explicating an encounter with reality, and since reality is
so rich, it cannot be fully explicated. Concepts draw their strength from the insight and is often an
inadequate expression of that insight into reality. This is the reason-why concrete examples are not
merely demonstrative or accidental or accessory to Marcel's thought. The examples are part of the
insight, the expression is part of the insight, it shows how the insight was born and how it could
grow. There is often a sense of mystery, of in reality from the way Marcel looks at it. And so Marcel
appears disorganized, always after some rewarding but illusive insight. But we can try to find a hold
to grapple with Marcel's thought. His notion o! having and being seems to offer a central insight
around which the others may revolve or at least be seen coherently. Even Marcel's celebrated
distinction between problem and mystery may be viewed in terms of this central insight. And as we
shalb see tYs insight into being and having will be the key to our understanding of authentic freedom
which Marcel insists cannot be in the realm of having but in that of being.
When can we speak of having? If we carefully analyze the meaning of to have, we find that we
can have only things that are outside of ourselves, or at least conceived of as outside of, distinct from
and independent of ourselves; thus, I have a pen, a house, an acre of an opinion. This independence
from me passes on to a certain impenetrable quality of the object I pssess. It does not commune with
me; its being is not capable of participation or subjectivity. It is autonomous. Marcel remembers
having played with a quija board. He would pose questions to it and wait for an unpredictable
response, from the board. In the midst of the game it just dawned on him that although the quija
board always produced an answer, it never in the process. It had not intersubjective communion. It is
opaque, a closed system. But though impenetrable, what I can have is at the same time accessible to
all. It can be, or at least considered to be capable of being grasped, circumscribed, and made a
common possession of all, so to speak.
What I can have is as when a man considers his life a possession. "My life" is conceived as a
sum of money which is spent slowly but irretrievably. Finitude or exhaustibili is one of the main
characteristics of those we can have.
We have spoken only of what we can have, but when are we said to have them? Again, if we
look closely it the question, we see that we have only those make those things which have an
instrumental relationship with us. And.it is Through my body that I have them. My instruments are in
are in a way extension of my body.

The body is a limit case of having. First of all, my body cannot be rightly conceived as distinct from
me, for I am an embodied spirit. The condition for the existence of the non-body aspect of me is my
body. Indeed my point of contact with other existents is through my body. And there are times as in
pain, when I am my body. After a blistering walk I may well say "I am an aching toe!" Marcel does
not hesitate to say "I am my body," in a qualified sense of course.
In asserting 'I am my body' one is actually making a negative judgment; 'It is neither true nor
meaningful to assert that I am other than my body,' more precisely, 'It is meaningless to assert that I
am a certain thing bound in some manner to a certain other thing which is or would be my body.' We
cannot assert any truths the relation R between an unknown X and my body, which means that the
relation cannot be thought. (Creative Fidelity, p. 79)
Again I cannot rightly speak of my body as an instrument and therefore a possession. The refusal to
put my body in the category of having is precisely the denial of an instrumental relationship, of an
objective relationship between my soul and my body. I possess things only in relation to my body.
But how can my body which makes possible the category of having be said to be inside or belonging
to that same category? Besides the instruments I have are an extension of my body; they share in
some way to the nature of my body which makes possible my being able to handle and manipulate
them. Now if my body is simply an instrument, by whom is it disposed of? By something bodily. And
we have an infinite regress. My body then is a limit case of having.
There is however a dimension of reality where we cannot speak of having but only of being.
This is the realm of participation, permeability, openness to others, non-autonomy, creativity,
experience with a plenitude. This is the category of the non-conceptualizable, for here the essence ofa
thing is to be more than its essence, since its reality is found only in participation with another reality.
A person for example, is inextricably linked with his freedom and the duality is irreducible to any
objective relation, so that when he investigates his freedom, he runs not into a concept but a mystery
where he can only be more deeply aware of his freedom and strive to live it more intensely.
. . . As soon as we are in Being, we are beyond autonomy
…The more I am, the more I assert my being, the less I think myself autonomous. (Being and
Having, p. 132)
Freedom is beyond the category of having, it is in the realm of being. For freedom is simply
irreducible to an object or an attribute. We cannot speak of freedom as distinct from us, for what are
we without freedom? It is precisely because "we are identified with freedom that our freedom seems
sometimes unrealizable." Nor is freedom a possession. For a thing possessed may be used or
neglected by its owner without losing its character, without deteriorating. But with freedom. its very
denial is a betrayal of it. Freedom breaks out of the confines of having; it is on affirmation of my
being, which is essentially openness, a creative belonging with other being and with the fullness of
Being itself. With my freedom I create and betray myself.
(Man is) a being to whom the strange power has been imparted of asserting or denying himself.
He asserts himself in so far as he asserts Being and opens himself to it: or he denies himself by
denying Being and thereby closing himself to it. In this dilemma lies the very essence of his freedom.
(Being and Having, pp. 120-127)
Man is essentially a being in a situation, whose concrete existence is to be in every way
-involved with other Marcel says that "If we thoroughly examine being in a situation: we should find
not so much a synthesis as juncture of externality and internality." Participation constitutes man's
being. Incarnation, the first given of metaphysical reflection on man is a form of participation. He is
an embodied spirit. Through his body he is inserted into the world pf existents, made part of it and in
ways immersed in it. Sensation is one level of participation. Marcel makes a good analysis of
sensation, denying the explanation that sensation is a message interpreted by a receiver, i.e. the sense
faculty, but finding that sensation is created both by the pre-sensible event and the sense faculty of
man. It is not an objective relation between the event and the sense faculty that makes sensation; it is
the presence of both that makes the sensation. On the level of persons, the "I" is authentic only in
communion with a thou. A person's identity is determined by his relation to other "thous". This
relation is not a simple juxtaposition of an autonomous I and an autonomous thou, for there is really
no I apart from a thou. And between them exists not an objective relation, but a presence-the being of
one co-present with the being of the other. The I and the thou remain distinct yet are. only in
communion with each other. Marcel gives the example of a player in an orchestra. He plays his own
score but his music is in and part of the music of the orchestra. In a way the essence of his music is to
be more than itself. Or again the individual notes of a music piece, they find their identity only in
relation to the other notes; each note cannot be autonomous. Going back to persons this is the reason
why we cannot conceptualize a thou, it is only by destroying the relation, the presence, by turning the
thou into a he that we can conceptualize him. The relation between the I and the thou is that of an
appeal, "be present to me" and a response to it And it is only when we are capable of such a respons?
that we are frilly ourselves.
Before a thou, I put no barriers or walls. I .am completely open. able to go beyond myself,
trusting, defenseless if you wish; I am totally present boh to the thou and to myself. This ability to
respond to a thou, to be to is the of a At the core of this quality is openness, a welcoming of the other,
as when we invite our guest "to feel at home" with us. It is really the ability to break out of an
isolation, to place the center of our life in another outside of us. And here is where freedom becomes
a decisive factor. For each personal encounter is rooted in our free consent to it. I could withdraw
from other men or refuse to broaden my experience of reality, or I could open myself to others

On the ontological plane where we encounter Being, as the Absolute thou. It is again in
openness, a participation with a certain inexhaustibility. It is the experience of Being that we have,
when we admire a beautiful face, a sunset, or a work of art; when we pray, when we experience a
freshness in reality (as contrasted with that staleness we feel with routine and worn out ways), a sense
of creation, an awareness of something perennial, indissoluble, a certain plenitude. Marcel does not
define being. He relates it with our need for it. There is that inward lack in man he calls an exigence
of Being, a certain craving for fullness which though we have not yet experience, yet we have a pre-
notion of. The despairing man denies that there is anything at all out there in reality to satisfy his
inner craving. The believer on the other hand, affirms that there is a fullness that can fill this void in
him.
This lack in man can be interpreted as an appeal to transcendence, and it is in answer to this
appeal that a man fulfills betrays his freedom.
 This openness to transcendence is in reality a participation again. But the quality of being
creative is strongly felt in the experience of Being. It is a certain newness, an exhilaration, a sense of
being alive as when an artist is given an inspiration, or when we encounter a truly generous person, or
when we read simple but inspiring line from a friend, e.g. "Rejoice with me for I shall be ordained a
priest." It is a feeling of expansiveness, an affirmation of reality as indissoluble, perennial. This
creative feeling is really the touchstone of communion with being. And when freedom consents to
commune with being, it becomes creative participation.
Behind this appeal to transcendence, of this sense of the real, of this denial of a death is an
Absolute thou. For it is only to a thou that an appeal can come, and it is only to a thou that a creative
response is possible.

When we analyze the different aspects of man's being in which he is essentially a participator,
the whole purpose is to show the permeability of man, the denial of any autonomous existence for
him. He is only when he is to others. Marcel says that when he is most himself, he is least
autonomous. The whole meaning of man's freedom is to affirm, to engage in communion with other
persons, with Being. Man's freedom viewed this way becomes truly creative of the self, for every
encounter with a response to another is ultimately rooted in man' s freedom.