The Vision of Gabriel Marcel : Epistemology, Human Person, the Transcendent [1 ed.] 9789401205818, 9789042023949

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The vision of gabriel marcel Epistemology, Human Person, the Transcendent

VIBS Volume 193 Robert Ginsberg Founding Editor Peter A. Redpath Executive Editor Associate Editors G. John M. Abbarno George Allan Gerhold K. Becker Raymond Angelo Belliotti Kenneth A. Bryson C. Stephen Byrum Harvey Cormier Robert A. Delfino Rem B. Edwards Malcolm D. Evans Daniel B. Gallagher Andrew Fitz-Gibbon Francesc Forn i Argimon William Gay Dane R. Gordon J. Everet Green Heta Aleksandra Gylling

Matti Häyry Steven V. Hicks Richard T. Hull Michael Krausz Mark Letteri Vincent L. Luizzi Adrianne McEvoy Alan Milchman Alan Rosenberg Arleen L. F. Salles John R. Shook Eddy Souffrant Tuija Takala ˇ Emil Višnovský Anne Waters John R. Welch Thomas Woods

a volume in Philosophy and Religion PAR Kenneth A. Bryson, Editor

The vision of gabriel marcel Epistemology, Human Person, the Transcendent

Brendan Sweetman

Amsterdam - New York, NY 2008

Cover photo: © Kevin Rosseel Cover Design: Studio Pollmann The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO 9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents Requirements for permanence”. ISBN-13: 978-90-420-2394-9 ©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2008 Printed in the Netherlands

FOR DALLAS WILLARD

Philosophy and Religion PAR Kenneth A. Bryson Editor Editorial Board of PAR

Rod Nicholls (webmaster) Deane-Peter Baker D. de Leonardo Castro Elijah G. Dann Russ Dumke Carl Kalwaitis Michael Sudduth Gregory MacLeod

Harriet E. Barber Stephen Clark Gwen Griffith-Dickson Jim Kanaris John C. Duncan Pawel Kawalec Esther McIntosh Ludwig Nagl

Other Titles in PAR

Rem B. Edwards. What Caused the Big Bang? 2001. VIBS 115 Deane-Peter Baker and Patrick Maxwell, Editors, Explorations in Contemporary Continental Philosophy of Religion. 2003. VIBS 143 Constantin V. Ponomareff and Kenneth A. Bryson. The Curve of the Sacred. An Exploration of Human Spirituality. 2006. VIBS 178

CONTENTS Editorial Foreword by Kenneth A. Bryson

xi

Foreword by Kathleen Rose Hanley

xv

Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations Introduction

xvii xix 1

ONE

Marcel’s Critique of Cartesianism

7

TWO

Human Being as a Being-in-a-Situation

23

THREE

The Objectivity of Knowledge

39

FOUR

Secondary Reflection, Ethics, and the Transcendent

53

FIVE

Religious Experience, and the Affirmation of God

69

SIX

A Marcelian Critique of the Problem of Skepticism

87

SEVEN

Marcel and Traditional Philosophical Problems

103

EIGHT

Non-Conceptual Knowledge: Marcel and Maritain

121

NINE

From an Epistemological Point of View: Buber and Marcel

135

Notes

153

Bibliography

167

About the Author

181

Index

183

EDITORIAL FOREWORD Gabriel Marcel is one of those rare philosophers that should be receiving more attention in continental and analytical philosophy. Brendan Sweetman’s book goes a long way towards ensuring that Marcel’s thought will be discussed more widely. His analysis of the relevance of Marcel’s work is provocative and useful. The work is useful because Marcel is often deliberately unsystematic, or at least not always clear on pivotal epistemological issues such as the nature of intentionality. The book focuses on the depths and adequacy of situated experience as providing an acceptable ontological base for conceptual analysis. The work is provocative because it rethinks the fundamental difference between continental and analytical philosophy as a misunderstanding about the nature of knowledge. It moves philosophy beyond skepticism and relativism while providing an opportunity to rethink the epistemological connections between Thomists (Maritain), and the existential insights of Marcel (and Buber). The conceptual differences between these thinkers seem to be less glaring when they are viewed in the light of “their similar concern with the structure and development of modern society— culturally, socially, and politically”(124). The wonderful thing about Gabriel Marcel’s philosophy is that it offers a fresh, salutary, way to frame the world; Gabriel Marcel’s existential revolt against the consequences of Cartesian philosophy is far reaching. It promises a much needed change of heart in the realm of human relationships. We can use our common experiences of fidelity, faith, and hope to recast human relationships in a new direction—one in which the common values we share raise us above relativism. The relativism of place can engender misunderstanding because technological developments shrink the planet. The age of technology is generating successes and failures. If the earth cannot sustain these developments, and if human development is worse off today than it was fifty years ago, then something is wrong. My interpretation of Marcel is that he brings our age the hope of experiencing the other (and nature) from the point of view of ontological mystery. The technocratic mentality has changed what it means to be together though it takes no pleasure in doing so. The impersonal character of science has put our planet in peril and the change of heart is involuntary. Marcel did not talk about human development versus economic development but I’m sure that his work can be used to raise anew the question concerning the meaning of life. Perhaps the promise to help others in difficulty is a promise we can keep? Perhaps we can blend Marcel’s philosophy of religion with the management of technological developments? But I stray from Sweetman’s focus. The problem with the technocratic mentality is not that it focuses on the area of primary reflection, as it should, but the misleading pretence that human relationships can be reduced to that order. Marcel’s work details how

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the realm of human experience, fidelity, and promise keeping expresses an order of human interaction that provides an ontological foundation for the conceptual. The term Marcel reserves for this experience is secondary reflection or mystery. The intuition of this mystery and of the importance of keeping the commitments we make to others, point toward the existence of an absolute transcendent reality in the otherwise relativistic character of human existence. The ability we have to resonate with the presence of mystery in others is the link that joins us to God. The focus on relationships provides the starting point of existential philosophy. A case can be made for the fact that for Heidegger this starting point is the environment or world of nature. Heidegger conducts his Dasein analysis as a reflection on what it means to be in relationship with Being. Marcel, and Buber, on the other hand, ground relationships in a philosophy of intersubjectivity. Buber’s I-Thou and Marcel’s realm of mystery or secondary reflection provide a rich ontological repository for conceptual analysis. The concept or idea is formed by abstraction from the subject’s experiences of being-in-a-situation-with-others-in-a-situation. The question raised by realists, of course, is how does a subjective experience move us beyond relativism or provide a legitimate defense of the claim that knowledge is objective? Sweetman’s book introduces us to many provocative aspects of Marcel’s philosophy, including some we wish Marcel had made more explicit. The book addresses fundamental issues like skepticism and relativism. These are especially relevant in our day because they serve to bridge the divide between continental and analytical philosophy. Indeed they serve to bridge the gap that often exists among existentialists themselves. Sweetman argues that the division can be overcome because it is based on a pseudo problem—the admissibility of Descartes’s skepticism. Once we recognize the insufficiency of that starting point we can move on to the examination of more pressing issues. Of special significance is Sweetman’s chapter on Marcel and Maritain since it provides a useful dialogue between Marcel and Thomists through a discussion of their similarities and differences. While Marcel did not write on the intentionality of consciousness—and one could wish he had done so—the similarities between Thomistic philosophy, and Marcel’s existentialism, are closer than we first imagined them to be. I especially enjoyed the chapter on Marcel and Buber because this is where Sweetman draws the line in the sand between situated existence (Marcel’s secondary reflection, Buber’s I-Thou relationship) and primary reflection (Buber’s I-It relationship). The lived experience provides the ontological foundation of knowledge because it captures the subject in the primordial act of life (the pre-reflective). The process of forming concepts arises as an abstraction from this experience. The meaning of terms such as love, fidelity, availability, faith, and hope is experienced in everyday life. That level is primary. What the philosopher captures in forming concepts about that experience is the idea of love and fidelity, not the real

xiii Editorial Foreword experience but an abstraction of what it must be like to be in love and to be faithful. I am not suggesting that philosophers are unloving or unfaithful (at least not all of them), but that the mental construct always arises in the light of the lived experience. One of the questions I bring to the table when I think about the suitability of using lived experience as a primary datum in philosophy is the problem of religious fanaticism. This is an important issue in the philosophy of religion. We have seen and continue to see the fanaticism that can arise out of some of the modalities of entering into personal relationships with God. (The nature of the exilic, mimetic, and covenantal agreements with God presented in the Abraham religions and Old Testament literature is frequently far from holy). I wondered how the conceptual level could be used to falsify a belief in religious fanaticism, that is, how the fanatic’s conceptual elaboration of his or her religious experience could be shown to be in error as a lived experience. A lot depends on the nature of a spiritual or religious experience. This seems to be a problem that Buber leaves himself open to. Marcel, on the other hand, meets it through an appeal to the objectivity of knowledge as a check on any experiences one has, including esoteric ones. In this way, Marcel handles this problem the way most other epistemological approaches would through an appeal to common experiences, such as fidelity. The fact that the experience of fidelity is shared by many is proof of its reasonableness. (At the other end of the spectrum, the fact that the beliefs expressed by the Heaven’s Gate disciples were not shared by many gives us cause to question their legitimacy.) I am delighted to welcome Brendan Sweetman’s book to the PAR series of VIBS books. His critical analyses of problems such as skepticism, and relativism, and of the ontological character of personal experience, provide a sound basis for the objective character of human values. It offers hope that the experiences of fidelity, trust, faith, and hope we share with others can be viewed as absolute when they are seen as authentic experiences of the many. The centrality of human dignity raises human relationships beyond the artificial divide between continental and analytical philosophy. Kenneth A. Bryson, Ph.D. Editor, PAR special series Value Inquiry Book Series

FOREWORD This book is a “must read” for persons seriously interested in modern philosophy and its influence on various trends in postmodern and contemporary philosophy. In clear and graceful prose, the author has given us a richly enlightening and thoroughly accurate exposition of perspectives and major themes from Gabriel Marcel’s thought, clarifying his perspectives and insights about the nature of human knowledge, the human person, and Transcendence. These three themes, central to Marcel’s philosophic investigations, and his reflective clarification of them, can reveal and allow for critical verification of the nature of human existence and the scope of human experiential knowledge, including conscious encounters with the Transcendent. Brendan Sweetman has succeeded admirably in achieving this goal. Still his express purpose in examining these three dimensions of human experience is to initiate an informed consideration of how Gabriel Marcel’s philosophical clarification of the nature of human knowledge, the human person and the Transcendent, can invite, even enable, philosophers to move beyond the distinct limitations that have been Descartes’s legacy to modern and postmodern philosophy. To accomplish this goal, Professor Sweetman has, in a very clear and fairminded way, presented Descartes’s theory of knowledge, highlighting its abstract and purely conceptual nature. Descartes insistently affirms that human knowledge has as its object the intelligible nature of something, and that this intelligibility is grasped as an abstract universal concept accessible to all minds, thus providing, Descartes believed, for the reliability and universality of all knowledge. Emphasizing the purely abstract, conceptual nature of knowledge, and its universality, Descartes’s epistemology is in accord with the scientific approaches of his time, and also the development of rationalistic and analytic approaches in philosophy. However this philosophic approach of abstract rationalism gives rise to the problem of skepticism, and other problems that follow from such an abstract disincarnate theory of knowledge. In turn then, Professor Sweetman contrasts Gabriel Marcel’s description of the nature of the human person as knower, and the human process of knowing, which do not have the unnecessary limitations that followed from Descartes’s epistemology. Sweetman also shows how Marcel’s clarification of the nature of the human person, and the process of human knowing provide the basis and allow for greater scope and reliability in human knowing. Unlike Descartes’s view, Marcel’s notion of human knowledge does not derive from an abstract “cogito” and develop through abstract reasoning; rather it evolves through reflective clarification of individual persons’ incarnate encounters. Marcel first recognizes that the knower is an embodied subjectivity, in a “living situation.” On this basis, and from this perspective, we can focus on various particular aspects of a given reality or situation, taking note of, critically verifying, and reflectively clarifying one’s descriptive interpretation of them.

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With artful descriptions, and incisive critiques, Sweetman justifies the conditions of validity for phenomenological analyses and interpretations. He also dialogues with and offers fair-minded critique of others engaging in phenomenological investigation and interpretation. He reaches out even to include chapters of dialogue with Jacques Maritain and Martin Buber. Sweetman’s erudition and familiarity with authors and critical literature pertaining to phenomenological analyses provide extensive and trustworthy information. Without further commentary or delay, we encourage the reader to move on and enjoy Brendan Sweetman’s admirably clear and richly informative exposition of Marcel’s contributions to ongoing dialogue and research clarifying themes in epistemology, the human person and the Transcendent.

Katharine Rose Hanley Emeritus Professor of Philosophy Le Moyne College

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS A number of people offered valuable assistance as I worked on this book. I would like most especially to thank the editor of the Value Inquiry Book Series, Dr Kenneth Bryson, for his excellent and prompt advice, and also for his general support of the project. Professor Bryson made the editorial process much smoother than it might have been! Some of the material in several of the chapters first appeared in earlier sources, and is revised here as I attempt to bring out the significance of separate Marcelian themes for the larger questions of epistemology, and the nature of the human person. I am grateful to Kluwer Academic Publishers, International Philosophical Quarterly, Journal of the American Society for the Study of French Philosophy, Renascence, and American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly for permission to reprint material. Many people over the years helped me think through the ideas expressed in this book. In particular, I would like to acknowledge my friends at the Gabriel Marcel Society: Teresa Reed, Thomas Michaud, Thomas Anderson, Tim Weldon, Patrick L. Bourgeois, Fr Thomas Flynn, Clyde Pax, Robert O’Brien, and Astrid O’Brien. I would also like to remember the late Bernard Gendreau, who, among other things, first introduced me to the Gabriel Marcel Society, and also the late Fr Robert Lechner. A special word of gratitude to K.R. Hanley, probably the foremost Marcel scholar in the world, who was kind enough to write the Foreword to the book, for which I am very grateful. I also wish to thank Jude Dougherty, Doug Geivett, Edward Furton, Curtis L. Hancock, and Peter Redpath for their support of my work on Marcel. I owe a special debt of gratitude to Dallas Willard, with whom I first started to study Marcel’s work in detail. Dallas’s general approach to philosophy influenced my own approach to several of the questions Marcel was interested in, and introduced me to the larger debate regarding issues in epistemology, and the human person. I am extremely grateful to Dallas for these and many other insights. Finally, I would like to thank my wife, Margaret, and my three children, Brendan, John and Ciaran, for their unfailing support of my work. Brendan Sweetman President, Gabriel Marcel Society Kansas City, January 2008

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS The following abbreviations for the titles of Marcel’s major works are used in the Notes at the end of the book. Full bibliographical details may be found there, and in the Bibliography.

MBI

—

The Mystery of Being, Vol. I

MBII

—

The Mystery of Being, Vol. II

CF

—

Creative Fidelity

BH

—

Being and Having

HV

—

Homo Viator

EO

—

“Existence and Objectivity”

TWB

—

Tragic Wisdom and Beyond

PE

—

The Philosophy of Existentialism

EBHD

—

The Existential Background of Human Dignity

MJ

—

Metaphysical Journal

MMS

—

Man Against Mass Society

INTRODUCTION This book has as one of its key themes Gabriel Marcel's (1889–1973) unique, existentialist view of the human person, which not only serves as a penetrating critique of traditional Cartesian epistemology, but also has significant implications for our positive approach to human knowledge, and for our conception of various philosophical problems after Descartes (1596–1650). I will try to show that Marcel's account offers us a new understanding of the self, radically different from, and opposed to, the Cartesian view. This latter point is significant because many of the major philosophical problems of traditional philosophy, like, for example, the problem of skepticism, are ultimately motivated by, and have their origins in, the Cartesian view of the self. Marcel's critique of Cartesianism is also important because Descartes's conception of the self still has a dominant influence on much of contemporary Anglo-American philosophy, setting the agenda for many of the problems contemporary philosophers are interested in, and also defining the way they should approach these problems. I believe that Marcel's view of the human subject is unique in existentialist thought. It differs in fundamental ways from the work of the other major existentialist figures and represents, I think, the most plausible account of the existentialist view of the human subject. By “existentialist,” and “existentialist thought,” we are referring in this book to that approach to philosophy which begins with concrete human experience, and which gives concrete human experience an ontological priority when doing philosophy over a purely reflective approach that emphasizes abstract logical arguments and conceptual analysis of philosophical questions, usually divorced from the concrete lived experience of the human person. Marcel repudiated the terms “existentialist” and “existentialism” as descriptions of his thought mainly because these terms had a rather negative connotation during the 1940's because of their association (through Jean–Paul Sartre {1905–1980}) with an atheistic, pessimistic worldview, and because he didn't think philosophy could ever become an “ism” without betraying itself. So while mindful of these points, it is nevertheless appropriate to see Marcel as broadly belonging to the existentialist tradition; further, he is obviously an existentialist in the limited sense in which we are using the term in this book. I must also emphasize that my approach to Marcel's philosophy in this book differs from usual studies of his work. My general approach is motivated and informed at least in part by the approach to similar problems and concerns typical of philosophy in the English speaking world. I follow this approach because a general aim of my work on Marcel is to show how his understanding of the self has profound implications for traditional philosophical problems, problems which still continue to generate much discussion

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in contemporary Anglo-American philosophy. I will try to explicate in what follows Marcel's views on not only ethics and the realm of the transcendent, familiar themes in his thought, but also his views on epistemology, skepticism, the objectivity of knowledge, the nature of truth, and the problem of internal and external relations. Those readers familiar with Marcel's work will know that he is not a systematic thinker and writer. Indeed, he is a suspicious of systematization in philosophy because it is reminiscent of the search for a total philosophical system, an approach that had been followed by a number of earlier thinkers, but an approach that he believes is misguided. But because of his philosophical style, a certain amount of excavation of his views is necessary as they pertain to some of the subjects of this book (indeed, this is even sometimes necessary with his more familiar themes). The way of reading Marcel which I present in this volume is not developed in any detail in his thought, although I believe it is quite explicitly stated in general outline. And although a certain amount of reconstruction is necessary, as it is in the exposition of even Marcel's better known themes, I think that there is sufficient evidence both textually and thematically to claim with reasonable certainty that the views which I present in this book were held by him. At the very least, I wish to claim that the arguments which I develop in these pages are fully compatible with Marcel's thought. There is, therefore, in this book something of the spirit of dialogue and debate between continental philosophy and post-Cartesian philosophy, which I also take to include recent analytic philosophy. However, I acknowledge that it is more debate than dialogue in the sense that I regard Marcel as offering an enlightening critique of Cartesian philosophy, and post-Cartesianism and its problems, a critique which suggests to us a way beyond these problems (for example, the problem of skepticism). If Marcel's critique is successful, as I will argue it is, this would represent progress in the debate concerning these problems. In chapter 1, I illustrate Marcel's understanding of, and general critique of, traditional Cartesian philosophy, and also introduce what I call Marcel's “general argument” for the critique of modern philosophy. We will see that, for Marcel, human knowledge first arises at the ontologically prior level of being-in-a-situation, and the “objective knowledge” of Cartesianism, including scientific knowledge, is founded on abstractions from this level of being-in-a-situation and must be understood in terms of it, not vice versa. The ontological priority of the realm of being-in-a-situation over the realm of conceptual knowledge has philosophical implications of the first importance. No philosopher that I know of has subjected this aspect of Marcel's thought to a systematic, detailed analysis. Chapter 2 provides an exposition of one of Marcel's central themes: that the self, the human subject, is essentially an embodied being-in-a-situation.

Introduction

3

The chapter argues that Marcel's main point is that the particular ideas of each individual human subject always involve a body and a world (that is, a situation, or a context) which contribute fundamentally to, and are partly constitutive of, their particular character. We examine why Marcel believes the propositions advanced in the “general argument” are true, and do function as an important critique of much of traditional Cartesian philosophy. We will see that the uniqueness of Marcel's view is that he makes the fact of human embodiment, and the subject's contextual situation in existence, essential to the nature of the subject's particular ideas. Here Marcel differs from Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) who does not provide any phenomenology of the body, and who even suggests that dasein could exist in principle without a body. As a consequence of this emphasis on the nature of human embodiment, Marcel is able to avoid, unlike Heidegger, the problematic conclusion that there is no mental content present at all at the ontologically basic level of being-in-a-situation. His view of the human subject also allows him to avoid the conclusion, unlike both Heidegger and Sartre, that human understanding is merely interpretative, for he rejects the view that concepts (that is, abstractions) are primarily holistic. In short, he seems to be one of the only philosophers who successfully attacks the atomism of traditional philosophy in general, and of Cartesianism in particular, while at the same time avoiding conceptual and moral relativism. Chapter 3 suggests that Marcel's approach to epistemological issues can help us with a problem that has plagued recent continental philosophy, that is, with the problem of trying to ensure a significant role for the human subject in philosophy without sacrificing the objectivity of knowledge. Although it is appropriate to describe Marcel as a (Christian) existentialist philosopher, it is also appropriate, in my view, to describe him as a realist who believes in the objectivity of knowledge. Yet he is undoubtedly committed to the centrality of human subjectivity when dealing with philosophical problems, and indeed he is extremely sympathetic with the general shift of the movement of existentialism away from the abstract systems of Cartesian philosophy to a more concrete philosophy of the subject. This chapter tries to show how Marcel's philosophy offers us a way to do justice to, and maintain the priority of, human subjectivity and individuality without falling into the relativism and skepticism which has tended to accompany such notions. The next two chapters turn to Marcel's views of the ethical and the transcendent. Chapter 4 further elaborates Marcel's intriguing account of the human person by considering the key notions of secondary reflection and the realm of mystery, and then developing the implications of these notions for his approach to ethics, and the realm of the transcendent. The chapter concludes by considering some points of contrast between his approach to ethics and the analytic approach to ethics. In chapter 5, we move on to examine Marcel's unique approach to the existence of God, and its impli-

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cations for traditional philosophy of religion. After some preliminary remarks about whether Marcel thinks God's existence would admit of a rational argument, we explain his account of how the individual subject can arrive at an affirmation of God through experiences of fidelity and promise-making. We then consider how Marcel's own philosophical and phenomenological approach could be regarded as a type of argument for the existence of God. The chapter concludes by suggesting a way in which Marcel's approach offers an advance upon the views of contemporary philosophers of religion in the reformed tradition concerning the analysis of religious experience. In chapter 6, I elaborate an argument that is present, but not developed in any detail, in Marcel's thought (it is also present to a certain extent in Heidegger)—the argument that the problem of skepticism in not a real problem. We draw upon Marcel's critique of Cartesianism, and of his alternative view of the subject (discussed in earlier chapters), upon what we have called his “new epistemology,” in an attempt to illustrate how his thoughts on the nature of knowledge and being can function as an effective response to the traditional problem of skepticism. Chapter 7 examines some of the implications of Marcel's view of the human subject as a being-in-a-situation for some other well-known philosophical problems. The problems I will consider were important in traditional metaphysics, but it is with the rise of analytic philosophy that they have become especially prominent. The problems discussed in this chapter are the problem of internal and external relations, the problem of necessary connections, and the problem of identity. I argue that in the light of Marcel's account of the human subject our understanding of these problems will have to be significantly reassessed. This task is important because if Marcel's existentialist account of the human self is largely correct then it is obviously imperative to examine the implications this will have for central philosophical questions. As far as I know, no work of this kind has been done up to now. It is quite fruitful, I think, to attempt to discover whether philosophical work in one tradition in philosophy might throw new light upon some of the problems which have engaged philosophers in other traditions. In this respect, it is disappointing that the implications of the Marcelian approach for some of the main problems of contemporary analytic philosophy have not been adequately explored. Indeed, there has been a notable, and I would say regrettable, absence of dialogue between continental philosophy and analytic philosophy in the twentieth century. Since I believe that the Marcelian existentialist approach can throw new light on some of the philosophical problems that concern contemporary analytic philosophy, it is imperative in my view that dialogue between the two traditions be established. This study in general is intended to be a small gesture in that direction. Chapter 8 then extends our discussion of epistemological matters by turning to a more detailed analysis of non-conceptual knowledge. In this

Introduction

5

chapter, we consider themes common to the work of Jacques Maritain (1882– 1973) and Marcel, especially relating to the nature and significance of non-conceptual knowledge in their respective philosophies. This topic is the most interesting point of agreement between the two philosophers, an agreement neither of them was quite prepared to acknowledge in his own lifetime. From our vantage point today, I suggest that the differences between the two philosophers are not as significant as they themselves seemed to regard them. Maritain and Marcel have many substantive points in common, and both thinkers are on the same side in their philosophy of the human person, in their epistemologies, and, of course, in their overall worldviews. The last chapter continues the subject of epistemology, and considers a number of key epistemological questions from the point of view of Martin Buber (1878–1965) and Marcel. Buber's philosophy of “I-Thou” and “I-It” relationships is regarded by many as a genuinely far-reaching breakthrough in modern thought. It is also a very similar epistemology to that of Marcel's. The aim of the chapter is to identify some of the key epistemological questions as they might arise in the work of Buber and Marcel (and occasionally Heidegger as well). The “Copernican revolution” which Karl Heim (1874–1958) has seen in Buber's epistemological approach is also present, I believe, in Marcel, and it is a revolution that contains the seeds of a profound critique of the general direction of Continental philosophy after Heidegger. The chapter explores these topics by means of a discussion of various epistemological questions, including the questions: do Buber and Marcel hold that human knowledge represents the world as it really is in itself?; and how are we to characterize our knowledge of the I-Thou relation itself (or, in Marcelian language, our knowledge of the realm of mystery)? In general, this book is a little different from other books on Marcel because it does not attempt a systematic presentation of his work as a whole. This is because my aim is to move his philosophy in a different direction to focus on his intriguing existentialist view of the human person, and to illustrate the profound implications of this view not only for traditional themes in his work (for example, concerning ethics and the transcendent), but also for epistemological issues (for example, concerning questions about the objectivity of knowledge, the problem of skepticism, and the nature of nonconceptual knowledge, among others). In this way, I hope that the volume overall will make a small but distinctive contribution to the literature on Marcel.

One MARCEL’S CRITIQUE OF CARTESIANISM It has proved difficult to categorize phenomenological and existentialist philosophies, either in terms of a uniform approach to philosophical issues, or in terms of a group of common themes. Yet one of the main concerns of Gabriel Marcel's work—the nature of the human subject—is one theme which I think most scholars would agree is common to much of phenomenological and existentialist thought. Both movements are particularly concerned with the attempt to uncover the fundamental nature of the human subject, or to use existentialist terminology, the fundamental mode of being of the human subject. Many of those philosophers whom we would immediately class as phenomenologist or existentialist—Edmund Husserl (1859–1938), Martin Heidegger, Marcel, Karl Jaspers (1883-1969), Paul Ricoeur (1913–2005), Maurice Merleau–Ponty (1908– 1961)—are concerned in one way or another with this issue, and usually in a way which is central to their thought. In this chapter, my primary focus will be Marcel's dissatisfaction with Cartesianism, especially the Cartesian conception of the human subject, and the influence this conception had on the Cartesian approach to epistemology. As we will see, the foundation of both Marcel's criticism of Cartesianism, and of his alternative view (which will be the subject of later chapters) is a phenomenological analysis of the human subject. We will have three main objectives in developing Marcel's approach to Cartesianism: (1) to briefly describe Marcel's conception of philosophy, and his philosophical method; (2) to spell out Marcel's understanding, and general critique, of traditional Cartesian philosophy; and (3) to lay out, in the light of our discussion in (2), what I shall call Marcel's “general argument” for the critique of modern philosophy. (Later chapters will discuss, among other things, why he believes the propositions advanced in the “general argument” are true, and do function as an important critique of much of traditional Cartesian philosophy, and its problems and concerns.) 1. Marcel's Understanding of Philosophy It is important to appreciate at the outset both Marcel's philosophical method, and his conception of philosophy, for both are central to the way in which he approaches the various philosophical issues with which he is concerned. Turning initially to his philosophical method, we can describe Marcel's method in philosophy as phenomenological, but we must note that he himself never claimed to be a phenomenologist, and that at least one expert on phenomenology, Herbert Spiegelberg (1904–1990), regards Marcel as at best an ally, rather than a

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protagonist, of phenomenology. 1 Certainly, Marcel has no grand phenomenological project in mind as Husserl had, nor has he any elaborate statement of his philosophical method, nor any clear statement concerning the aims of his method. We should not be surprised at these points, however, for Marcel believes that the search for elaborate systems in philosophy (like, for example, Husserl's attempt to make philosophy a rigorous science) is a misguided endeavor. 2 He also holds that one's method of proceeding in philosophy should be to some extent non-systematic and non-objective. This approach will facilitate a more accurate insight into the non-transparent nature of the human subject than philosophy has achieved up to now, and an evocation of the non-objective, non-transparent “nature” of the reality of the “objects” of ordinary experience. The word “object” is intended to refer to not just physical objects, but to any aspect of experience that can become a content for the mind. A newspaper, a walk, feeling cold, and a conversation with a friend, are all possible “objects” of experience in Marcel's sense. He observes: “I am…taking the word object…in its strictly etymological sense…of something flung in my way, something placed before me, facing me, in my path.” 3 In this sense of the concept, experience itself cannot be an object. Marcel's approach therefore allows us to appreciate as our work in philosophy unfolds that philosophers should not regard the scientific approach to reality as the paradigm of knowledge. I think it is fair and accurate to describe Marcel's philosophical method as “phenomenological,” understood in a broad sense. Marcel's phenomenological approach is developed and refined over the course of his work, and is more easily identified as phenomenological the more one gets further into the body of his thought. His philosophical method involves a combination of phenomenological descriptions, emphasis on concrete examples taken from everyday life, rational argument, and consideration of objections to his position. It is important to point out that Marcel does argue his position. Yet like many of the existentialists, he does not present his argument in a formal way precisely because he believes that this is neither possible nor desirable for most of the important philosophical problems, especially the problem of the nature of the human subject. As Gerald Hanratty (1942–2003) has noted, “More than of most philosophers, it is true of Gabriel Marcel that the form and content of his thought are inseparable.” 4 K.R. Hanley (1933–) has observed that Marcel “expects readers to think right along with him, to find and verify insights in relation to their own lives . . . he wishes to encourage readers to recollect their own experiences and let them be the source of their verifications and insights.” 5 Unlike many philosophers, he makes an appeal to the direct experiences of his readers as part of the philosophical enterprise. In addition to some arguments, and a consideration of some objections to parts of his general viewpoint, he most frequently appeals to phenomenological descriptions of human experiences in order to reveal the condition and situation of the human subject in its world. In this way, Marcel proceeds in a very similar

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manner to other existentialist philosophers, most notably Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855). However, for a considerable part of his career, Marcel was not aware of Kierkegaard's work. Indeed, as one philosopher has noted, he developed almost single-handedly an independent phenomenology in France. 6 There is no doubt that the overall orientation and development of Marcel's thought owes a considerable debt to the phenomenological and existentialist traditions. Although Marcel does not discuss his philosophical method in detail, he does say many times throughout his work that his way of proceeding will be phenomenological. 7 He adds that “by ‘phenomenological analysis’ I mean the analysis of an implicit content of thought, as opposed to a psychological analysis of ‘states.’” 8 So for him the phenomenological method does not overlap with psychology (which involves an empirical or theoretical treatment of the self), and does not involve psychological analyses of states of mind. For example, in his phenomenological analysis of the meaning of the “objects” of experience for a particular human subject, these “objects” are analyzed as contents of the conscious mind, not as states of the mind. However, it is crucial to point out, and obvious from the application of his method, that what Marcel means by “content of thought” is not the objects of abstract thought, but the necessary connections which constitute the meaning of a particular human subject's experiences in his or her concrete embodied situation in existence. (Necessary connections refer to those parts of our experience, including our conceptual knowledge, that must go together in some way in order to understand the meanings present in knowledge and experience. We will illustrate this notion in more detail later as our discussion unfolds.) As we move on to discuss Marcel's conception of philosophy, we must first point out that Marcel is making a philosophical point by adopting the particular method of philosophizing which has come, in large measure, to characterize existentialist philosophy. His method is unusual (especially when compared with the method of analytic philosophy) because he is trying to open the reader up to the possibility of discovering various truths about the nature of the human subject, to give us an insight into various necessary connections that will reveal the essence of what it means to be a human being in the world of ordinary experience. He is not attempting to coerce the reader by force of logic alone into acceptance of his position, the latter approach being typical of Cartesian and recent analytic philosophy. Marcel believes that coercion by means of formal argument is not possible for most of the crucial issues that are the special concern of philosophy. This is because much of what is fundamental in human life necessarily involves the personal experience of the subject. These truths cannot, therefore, be detached from the subject's individual inquiry and presented as an “objective” result or solution which anyone could then recognize and fully understand without any personal involvement or participation on their part. We can identify at least three important points that Marcel is making about the nature of philosophy through the application of his particular philosophical

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method. First, the main aim of philosophical inquiry is the attempt to discover the most basic truths about the human condition. It will emerge from this inquiry that human being is fundamentally an embodied being-in-a-situation, and, further, that all other ways of understanding the human subject derive from this ontologically basic understanding. This most basic nature of the self cannot be fully captured by abstract argument, but must be sought out and revealed by means of phenomenological descriptions of concrete situations from everyday experience. The revelation of the realm of being-in-a-situation will therefore require Marcel's “concrete philosophy.” He observes that: “no concrete philosophy is possible without a constantly renewed yet creative tension between the I and those depths of our being in and by which we are; nor without the most stringent and rigorous reflection, directed on our most intensely lived experience.” 9 Second, true philosophical inquiry is a kind of vocation, springing from the urgent inner need of a particular human subject and there is an irreducible quality about the truth it seeks. 10 Third, the whole process of, and emphasis upon, abstraction, characteristic of modern philosophy and science after René Descartes (1596–1650), is misguided. For although abstract thinking has an essential role to play in human life, it is not sufficient by itself to discover the fundamental nature of human existence. In the twentieth century, the emphasis on abstraction has, according to Marcel, only succeeded in reducing truth to a technical activity. As he puts it, Everything that can be properly called technique is comparable to a kind of manipulation, if not always necessarily of physical objects, at least of mental elements (mathematical symbols would be an example) comparable in some respects to physical objects…and the validity for anybody and everybody, which has been claimed for truth, is certainly deeply implied…in the very notion of technique…. 11 However, this approach to truth only distorts philosophical truth for the more we get beyond truth as a technical activity, the less “universal” it becomes. 12 This critique of what Marcel sometimes calls the “spirit of abstraction” 13 is a very important part of his thought, and has influenced both his approach to, and his conception of, philosophy. We will continually note the importance of these three points about the nature of philosophy throughout this book. Marcel's method is phenomenological then only in the broad sense that he is engaged in the attempt to describe concrete cases in order to reveal the general structure of human existence. This structure, he suggests, is open to all who want to see it, and it will yield profound insights for how we understand our existence. Unlike most philosophical theories, it will not be presented in an abstract system divorced from human life. For Marcel is not attempting to hypothesize about the nature of existence, to offer yet another theory, or to observe mere “facts” (understood in the abstract sense). It is for this reason that he draws our attention

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to the point that if we reveal the mistaken assumptions concerning the nature of the self and its intentional content, which were the guiding forces of Cartesianism, our understanding of the human subject will be radically altered. He wishes to attack the Cartesian view of the self as a mind gazing out upon the external world, apprehending it by means of clear and distinct ideas. This view of the self motivated Descartes's entire epistemological project, and the epistemological project of most of the tradition that followed. Marcel wishes to show that this subject/object epistemology presupposes a more fundamental, and ontologically prior level, of selfhood, from which it is derived, and only in terms of which it can be understood. We must now elaborate this important claim. 2. Marcel's Conception and General Critique of Cartesianism Marcel's existentialist critique of Cartesianism, especially the traditional epistemological problems with which Cartesianism is mainly concerned, is essentially a critique of that account of the nature of the self upon which the traditional epistemological enterprise is based. The Cartesian picture of the self conceives the self as a discrete entity with a neatly defined “inside” and “outside,” such that whatever is “inside” cannot also be “outside” and what is “outside” cannot also be “inside.” That is to say, our ideas, which are “inside” can be fully understood without reference to the world, which is “outside.” This conception of the self has determined the agenda for philosophers working within this tradition ever since Descartes. In general, existentialist philosophers have always emphasized that the approach of modern philosophy to the important philosophical issues, especially to the issue of the origin and nature of knowledge, is motivated in the main by a view of the self. In fact, this is what they take to characterize modern philosophy as “modern”—the view of the self, which motivates and defines its particular concerns. 14 The Cartesian view of the self has, of course, also had a considerable influence on much of contemporary philosophy, especially Anglo-American philosophy, setting the agenda for many of the problems contemporary philosophers are interested in, and also defining for them the way they should approach these problems. 15 (We will come back to this point later.) The task of the existentialists, including Marcel, is to illustrate that the Cartesian view of the self is not ontologically basic for the human subject. That is to say, the Cartesian view is not a presentation of how the self actually is. If this is true, then the Cartesian view of the self should not be given primacy in philosophy, and should not be employed to define philosophical problems (particularly problems about how the self comes to gain knowledge about the world). This dispute about the true nature of the self can be expressed by means of the following question, according to Hubert Dreyfus (1929–): “What way of being makes possible every type of encountering?” 16 The answer to this question for Marcel, as for Heidegger, is that it is human being, which makes possible every type of encountering. This encountering refers to how human beings

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experience the world, and it is through these experiences that knowledge and meaning arise. What is in dispute between the existentialists themselves, and particularly between the existentialists and those motivated by the traditional approach after Descartes, is how “human being” should be understood. According to Marcel, the Cartesian approach to knowledge takes a definite stand—without demonstration—on how “human being” is to be understood, even though this stand is not always overtly expressed in accounts of the methodology of Cartesianism. Cartesianism operates with certain assumptions about the nature of the self. One of its crucial assumptions is about the way the self enters into and gains knowledge. According to Marcel, Cartesianism implies “that we know in advance . . . what the relation between the self and the truth it recognizes must be.” 17 That is to say, knowledge arises, for the Cartesian, by means of a subject “looking out” upon a world. The self looking out upon the world is conceived of as a self which apprehends the world by means of what Descartes called clear and distinct ideas, or, more generally, by means of consciousness and its intentional content. Now the task of the epistemologist operating with this view of the self is generally conceived to be threefold: to provide (1) a clear account of how the mind arrives at its intentional content; (2) some theory proving that this content does, in fact, represent reality as it really is; and (3) an examination of our clear and distinct ideas in order to gain knowledge of reality. Descartes was mainly concerned with (1) and (2), and we will follow him in this. 18 For Descartes, (1) and (2) really coincide, for he believed that reality, by means of clear and distinct ideas, is “transparent” to thought. Another way we might put this is to say that thought has “transparent access” to reality. That is to say, clear and distinct ideas do, in fact, represent reality as it really is. All we must be sure of is that we really have these ideas, that the processes by which we obtained them are reliable, and that there are no other reasonable grounds to doubt them. So, for Descartes, this conception of the self as a subject looking out upon a world determines the nature of the central problem of epistemology: how do I know that my clear and distinct ideas are true? 19 When Descartes has established (2) by means of the cogito, and the ontological argument, etc., he then believes the way is open to obtain knowledge of the world according to the project laid out in (3). 20 The self, according to the Cartesian view, regards itself as a self contemplating a world of objects. The self is regarded as “inside” (“subjective” experience), and the objects are “outside” in the “objective” world. Hubert Dreyfus has put this point well in his discussion of Heidegger's position: The whole array of philosophical distinctions between inner subjective experience and the outer object of experience, between perceiving and the perceived, and between appearance and reality arise at this point, and it becomes the evident point of departure for problems of epistemology. 21

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Marcel is suggesting that this Cartesian view of the self is mistaken. For this is not how the self primarily encounters the world at all, and is not how the self gains knowledge of the world. According to Marcel, “Cartesianism implies a severance . . . between intellect and life; its result is a depreciation of the one, and an exaltation of the other, both arbitrary.” 22 Our first contact with the world, according to Marcel, is just that—contact, without any mediation from clear and distinct ideas (that is, abstractions), or clear representations. Rather, our fundamental situation in the world will define our “ideas,” for Marcel, and any analysis or description of them must involve a reference to a human body and its place or “situation” in existence. This is what Descartes overlooked. This account of Descartes's view of the self is supported by S.V. Keeling (1894–1979), who has pointed out that, according to Descartes, we never Perceive the natural world or bodies that people it; we perceive only that which represents, and indeed mainly misrepresents in sensory media, that world and its bodies. Knowing being a function of the self's intrinsic nature, is logically independent of the knower's body and its activities. By pure thought alone do we acquire knowledge of the nature and existence of a physical world and by pure thought too do we come to know its nature and existence to be independent of our minds. 23 It is this kind of Cartesian approach to how knowledge arises that Marcel wishes to resist. He claims that Descartes has not attempted to describe his ideas at all. Rather, Descartes is operating with certain assumptions about how the mind knows the world. The task of the phenomenologist is to describe things as they are, and consequently expose the assumptions behind theories, which tell us how things “must” be. Descartes holds a “container” view of the mind. According to this view, the mind is full of ideas of all kinds, which are essentially shut off from the world, and his task is to show that these ideas (at least those that are “clear and distinct”) do actually reflect the way things really are. This sets up for him the problem of knowledge (which ended up being the problem of skepticism). The philosopher aims for clear and distinct ideas for it is by means of these ideas that true knowledge of reality is to be attained. Descartes's most complete statement about clear and distinct ideas occurs in the Principles of Philosophy: The knowledge upon which a certain and incontrovertible judgment can be formed, should not alone be clear but also distinct. I term that clear which is present and apparent to an attentive mind, in the same way as we assert that we see objects clearly when, being present to the regarding eye, they operate upon it with sufficient strength. But the distinct is that which is so precise and different from all other objects that it con-

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It is obvious from this passage that Descartes does not provide a very clear definition of clear and distinct! Distinctness is defined partly in terms of clarity, and both notions are defined by comparisons, which still leaves his position rather vague. It seems that there can be clear but indistinct perceptions, but no distinct perception that is unclear. 25 However, although Descartes has no clear exposition or account of what he means by “idea,” as Anthony Kenny (1931–) has pointed out, 26 and does not do a very good job of carefully and consistently distinguishing between the different kinds of ideas, we can discern that he thinks ideas can be either unclear, or clear but indistinct, or clear and distinct. 27 It is only the latter type that can give us true knowledge. It will turn out that clarity is linked closely with “objectivity,” in a way which we will explain in a moment. Descartes's famous analysis of the piece of wax in Meditation II is very revealing of his assumptions. 28 It is by means of clear and distinct ideas of the objects of our experience that we gain knowledge of these objects, as long as we have removed all doubt that these ideas do actually match up with the objects. In the case of the wax, we have a clear and distinct idea by means of which we gain ordinary, everyday knowledge of the wax. This idea has parts—both primary qualities (extension, shape, magnitude, etc.) and secondary qualities (taste, smell, sound, color, etc.). However, Descartes believes that we must go further and ask about the true or real nature of the wax itself. He proceeds to examine the wax through many changes in order to discover its real nature. The wax can be radically altered so that we cannot perceive it to be the same piece of wax (although we think we do perceive it to be the same). Yet we do know that it is the same piece of wax. But it cannot be the secondary qualities which make us conclude that it is the same piece of wax, for, in Descartes's example, he has melted the wax to liquid, so that the secondary qualities are completely changed. So what is it that leads us to conclude that it is the same piece of wax? He concludes that it is by means of our faculty of judgment that we know it is the same piece of wax throughout. The only properties, therefore, that belong to the wax throughout the whole history of its alterations by means of which we can judge it to be the same piece of wax are its extension, figure, quantity or magnitude, place and time, etc. 29 These are all, therefore, that we see clearly and distinctly to belong essentially and permanently to the material body of the wax. This analysis means that for Descartes we have (1) clear and distinct ideas of everyday material objects (for example, of the wax), and (2) clear and distinct ideas of the true nature of material objects (for example, of the true nature of the

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wax). Our task then, for Descartes, in our analysis of the true nature of the material world, is to replace our confused ideas acquired through sense experience (which we accept in daily life, and which do represent the objects as they appear to us) as marks of the “materiality” of objects, by a set of clear and distinct ideas acquired through mathematical study. The key point of this conclusion is that it is only the so-called primary qualities that belong truly to objects independently of being perceived. The secondary qualities are supplied by the mind. Descartes's sole argument for this conclusion is that it is only by means of the primary qualities that we can judge an object to be the same through many changes. Whatever Descartes perceives as clear and distinct in his idea of “material body” is real, and whatever he does not perceive as clear and distinct in this idea is not real. We must ask, however, why Descartes advances this particular argument? For, after all, in his idea of the wax he sees the secondary qualities just as clearly and distinctly as the primary qualities. The secondary qualities are “present and apparent to the attentive mind” no less that the primary qualities are. His analysis of the clear and distinct idea of material body was influenced, as we have seen, by his belief that only that which makes an object the same object over time belongs to its real nature. One reason he adopts this criterion is his commitment to the view that clear and distinct ideas must give us “objective” knowledge. “Objective” in this case does not simply mean true and absolute independent of our beliefs, but also knowledge which can be universally demonstrated to all. He assumes that all “objective” knowledge will have to be universally demonstrable knowledge, or else it will not be truly objective. Hence, his conclusion that only the primary qualities really belong to material bodies. Another important reason, which leads him to adopt his view of primary and secondary qualities, is the influence of the scientific approach on his thought. Descartes wants his philosophical results to accord with the results of science (just as John Locke {1672–1704} later did). This is because he thinks that the scientific view of knowledge is the paradigm of knowledge. So, in an important sense, the scientific view of knowledge sits in judgment on the philosophical approach to knowledge, rather than vice versa. Now these considerations concerning the faculty of judgment also lead Descartes to conclude that thinking is the essence of the human being, and that the mind and the body are therefore easily separable. In order to know the human mind, and its operations, it is not necessary to even know that I have a body. This, after all, is the predicament Descartes's methodic doubt places him in, and why he must rely purely on the cogito to try to establish the validity of human knowledge, and very important, it is also the reason he runs into the problem of the Cartesian circle, thereby precipitating what Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) called the “scandal of philosophy,” the problem of skepticism. For Descartes, the mind is simply encased in a body apprehending the world through clear and

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distinct ideas. The thinking self is not essentially related to a body and a world, and so it is possible to divorce our mental states, our concepts and beliefs, from the existence of everything else, including our own bodies. As Marcel puts it, “The subject of the cogito is the epistemological subject.” 30 This view of Descartes's assumptions and motivations is well established in philosophy, is not very controversial, and is borne out clearly by appeal to his work, as we have seen above. It is clear even from the very beginning of the Meditations that Descartes conceives of any proper inquiry as detached from the context of the inquirer, and he is careful to ensure that he delivers his “mind from every care” 31 of ordinary experience. When we consider his examination of his ideas we should note two important points. First, he is not well disposed toward an examination of his ideas and beliefs individually, because he believes that they are all based on some foundation and “the destruction of the foundations of necessity brings with it the downfall of the rest of the edifice.” 32 This attitude indicates that Descartes regards the self as looking out upon a world, hoping to form clear and distinct representations according to certain principles, for example, that sense perception yields clear and distinct ideas, etc. Therefore, we should not worry so much about the beliefs we have, but about the principle upon which the beliefs are based. Second, when Descartes does examine some of his ideas, the descriptions he provides are very vague, giving no details, and are obviously influenced, not by any problem encountered in trying to describe ideas, but by the assumptions he has already made about the origin and nature of our ideas. Descartes offers a clear indication of his assumption about the nature of the self and its intentional content when he says in Meditation II that the images of corporeal things “are framed by thought, which are tested by the senses . . . .” 33 This is another indication that he regards the self as a mind gazing upon a world, that is, as a spectator of the world. 34 The assumption in his work is that if I have an idea of a house, the idea is an isolated substance which does not imply a body and a world. He presupposes that we can describe the properties of this substance in such a way that they do not involve other things, such as our other ideas, as well as the body and situation of the subject who has the idea. Descartes's assumption here is one which was common in modern philosophy: that whatever is distinct must therefore be separable. 35 Therefore, it is possible to doubt whether our ideas do actually correspond to reality. This, according to Marcel, is his mistake, for our ideas, as we shall see, are defined in part by their relation both to other objects of our experience, and to our embodied concrete situation in existence. And although concepts (abstract ideas) may have a certain distinctness, they are not essentially separable from the “situated involvement” of the individual subject who has the concepts. They are, in fact, internally related to the context of the subject who has the concept. (We will elaborate exactly how this is to be understood in Chapter 2, when we turn to a detailed analysis of Marcel's positive account of the human subject.)

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Descartes, in his analysis of the wax in Meditation II, ignores the context in which the wax is embedded in his concrete situation in existence, and operates with an assumption about how the wax “must” be appearing to him. He assumes, first, that his (abstract) clear and distinct idea of the wax accurately represents his experience of the wax, and, second, he also assumes that when we want to get to the true nature of the wax, we must even ignore some of those qualities which actually appear in our idea of the wax (namely, secondary qualities). What he should do, according to Marcel, is try to describe his particular idea of the wax. He should try to discover how the wax enters into his own particular experience as an embodied being-in-a-situation. It is his failure to do this that has led him to misdescribe the true nature of our ideas. Here is how Marcel puts it in his Metaphysical Journal: The reality that the cogito reveals—though without discovering an analytical basis for it—is of quite a different order from the existence that we are trying here not so much to establish as to identify in the sense of taking note of its absolute metaphysical priority. The cogito introduces us into a whole system of affirmations and guarantees their validity. It guards the threshold of the valid . . . but it certainly does not follow from this that the objective world to which access is opened up to us by the cogito coincides with the world of existence . . . it is important to be very clear in our minds that the existent can in no way be treated as an unknowable object. 36 Descartes has set up his system, and then within his system, he proceeds to describe and classify objects. But, on close examination, we can see that he offers virtually no descriptions of his idea of the wax, for instance. This is because he already has assumed that ideas are little substances, more or less representing the world as it really is, and which can be understood without reference to the world. Marcel's claim is that if we examine our ideas carefully we will discover, first, that they involve a body and a world, and, second, that so called “clear and distinct ideas” are simply abstractions from a more fundamental level of “situated involvement” in which the “objects” of our experience have very different meanings for the individual than the meaning presented in the mind in “clear and distinct” ideas. The superficial, and in most cases complete lack of, description of ideas in the Meditations makes it seem quite plausible that Marcel and the existentialist movement in general have a point in their criticism of Descartes. It is important to emphasize that Marcel does not hold a holistic view of concepts; that is to say, he does not hold that the meaning of a concept depends almost entirely on its relations to other concepts in a linguistic system. He believes that there are necessary representational similarities involved in a concept and the object to which it corresponds. This is because concepts are

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formed essentially by the mind conforming to the object, and by the object dictating to the mind the manner in which it shall be known (at the level of conceptual knowledge). In this way, objects at the level of conceptual knowledge (the level of “primary reflection,” for Marcel) have a fairly constant identity over history. Marcel has no wish to deny this basic realist analysis of the relationship between a concept and its object. His crucial point is that at the level of “situated involvement” the “identity” or “nature” of an object is not mediated through concepts at all (that is, abstractions) but will depend upon the embodied contextual situation of each particular human subject. Therefore, his claim is not simply that the mind does not, as we have all thought, grasp reality immediately in clear and distinct ideas, but that this grasping takes place over a period of time. Rather, his point is that the self does not naturally experience the world and does not come to know the world in this way at all. We do not experience the world by forming clear and distinct ideas of objects which can then be understood without reference to the world. At the level of “situated involvement” we do have images and pictures in our mind, according to Marcel, but at this level of involvement they are not disinterested, but are intimately defined by the embodiment and particular situation of the individual existential subject. Also, they do not come between the subject and the world, as Descartes's clear and distinct ideas do. 37 The existential subject experiences the world conceptually (that is, clearly and distinctly) only at a level of abstraction, which by its very nature is derivative, and which does not take the “situated involvement” of the existential subject into account. As I have already indicated, Marcel believes that at the level of “situated involvement,” we do have images and pictures in our mind. Here he is in fundamental disagreement with Heidegger. Heidegger appears to have held the view that at the level of what he called being-in-the-world, and what one of his main interpreters, Hubert Dreyfus, calls “absorbed coping,” mental content is not required for dasein to cope with the world. According to Dreyfus, Heidegger introduces “a new kind of intentionality (absorbed coping) which is not that of a mind with content directed toward objects.” 38 Dreyfus identifies mental content with self-referential mental content. One of the advantages of eliminating mental content at the level of absorbed coping is that it leads readily to a dismissal of the traditional problem of skepticism. As Dreyfus puts it: The problem of the external world arises for those from Descartes to Husserl and Searle who believe that all our activity is mediated by internal representations, for then we can ask if our intentional contents correspond to reality . . . . But if, in everyday Daseining, coping takes place without intentional content, the question of the satisfaction of intentional states cannot be raised. 39 Coping practices do not represent, and so cannot misrepresent.

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Marcel rejects this position, and in my view this is one of the major advantages of his view over Heidegger's. Marcel believes that at the level of being-in-a-situation, mental content is required to “cope” with the world. However, Marcel will still attempt to reject the traditional problem of skepticism (as we will see in detail in Chapter 6). He does this by developing an account of the embodiment of the subject which places that subject in contact with the world, and which defines a different sort of mental content than Descartes's “clear and distinct” ideas which can be understood without reference to the world. It is interesting to note that Heidegger has no phenomenology of the body at all, and Dreyfus even suggests that Heidegger did not think that having a body belongs essentially to Dasein's essential structure. 40 The Cartesian approach to knowledge might be called taking the “reflective standpoint.” It is reflective because it occurs by abstracting in reflection from the personal involvement of the subject. In the reflective standpoint, intentionality necessarily involves sharable mental content. This is why Marcel calls this traditional view of the self the “universal” ego, because all personal involvement is removed in the act of abstraction, so that all we are left with is isolated, sharable, and therefore disinterested concepts. It is precisely the sharable content of our conscious acts that concerns Cartesianism because this content is available for all to consider. Marcel expresses this point in this way: “Inasmuch as I think, I am a universal, and if knowledge is dependent on the cogito, that is precisely in virtue of the universality inherent in the thinking ego.” 41 Motivated by this understanding of the self, and coupled with a commitment to the scientific method, it is clear that one of the key notions in Descartes's understanding of how the mind knows the world is “transparency.” 42 Descartes sees perfected thought as transparent. This means that thought illumes reality (presented in the content of thought) and has a direct access to reality. Therefore, we must strip our own particular thoughts of their individuality so that they become sharable and disinterested. Then we can be “objective.” This approach presents the task of gaining objective knowledge about ourselves and the world as basically a very straightforward one. Descartes himself certainly thought that he had solved most of our philosophical problems about knowledge, except perhaps problems concerning the mind/body nexus. Philosophers ever since have been consequently attracted to the Cartesian starting point. According to Marcel, “the seductiveness of the cogito for philosophers lies precisely in its apparent transparency.” 43 As Dreyfus has noted, the legacy of Cartesianism for contemporary epistemology is the underlying assumption that in order for us to perceive, act and relate to objects there must be some content in our minds—some internal representation—that enables us to direct our minds toward each object. 44 Modern epistemologists across the whole spectrum have been influenced by this way of thinking about the knowing subject and its relation to the objects of knowledge, even as they have differed with Descartes over the correct account of how human knowledge occurs, and

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even as they have differed (often sharply) among themselves over possible alternative accounts. Many have also fallen under the sway of the epistemological skepticism that is often the upshot of the Cartesian approach, and many have also supported a form of scientific reductionism about knowledge as a possible way out of the impasses of skepticism and anti-realism that have recently bedeviled a basic Cartesian approach to epistemology. Few contemporary philosophers now share Descartes's optimism for the success of his project largely because of the problem of skepticism that was a consequence of his approach, and also because they would likely reject his view of the make up of the event or act of knowing. We will return to many of these interesting issues throughout the chapters that follow. 3. Marcel's General Argument for the Critique of Cartesianism Let us now try to bring together in a slightly more formal way some of the points we have been making. The particular argument which I will sketch in this section is nowhere precisely stated in the course of Marcel's work. Also, since Marcel focuses on some aspects of the argument more than others, which he often does not develop in detail but instead leaves tantalizingly vague, a certain amount of reconstruction of his basic position has been necessary. Nevertheless, the view which I will sketch, is faithful to his work, and there can be little doubt that Marcel clearly intended this argument to provide a forceful critique of the project and concerns of traditional philosophy after Descartes. The central argument I wish to highlight can be stated as follows: (1) Being-in-a-situation is the fundamental mode of being of the human subject. That is to say, the human subject is in essential and immediate contact with the world through “situated involvement.” (2) Being-in-a-situation is ontologically basic for the human subject. Any and all other “levels” of selfhood must be explained and understood in terms of being-in-a-situation. (3) The view of the self as a detached, disinterested, universal ego, on which Cartesian philosophy is founded, is based on an abstraction from the ontologically prior level of being-in-a-situation. (4) The human subject's particular ideas as a being-in-a-situation are not abstractions, but involve a body and a world; further, they do not come between the subject and the world. Therefore, the subject is sure of its own existence, of the existence of others, and of the existence of the external world.

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(5) Human knowledge initially arises at the ontologically prior level of being-in-a-situation, and the “objective knowledge” of Cartesianism, including scientific knowledge, is founded on abstractions from this level of being-in-a-situation and must be understood in terms of it, not vice versa. Marcel wishes to draw important conclusions from these central points: (1) The epistemological problems of traditional and recent philosophy are pseudo-problems. (2) The detached, disinterested, universal ego of Cartesianism is not the most basic nature of the human subject (if it is anything at all). (3) The scientific view of knowledge is not the paradigm of knowledge. (4) Although abstract reflection plays an important and essential role in human life, it is not the most fundamental mode of reflection of the human subject. This reconstructs my interpretation of the essential steps in Marcel's critique of modern philosophy after Descartes. Obviously, we have here a large and complex argument. The chapters that follow will, in one way or another, flesh out the detailed discussions involved in, and required by, the premises and the conclusions, and will subject the specific steps and well as the overall argument to analysis and critical discussion. I will be arguing that Marcel's thought represents a genuine advance in continental philosophy, because he skillfully avoids compromising either human subjectivity or the objectivity of knowledge, and thus avoids the relativistic and skeptical excesses that have plagued recent thought ever since Heidegger and Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980). And, just as important, we will also see that he sidesteps some of the traditional philosophical problems that have vexed analytic philosophers in this generation. 45

Two HUMAN BEING AS A BEING-IN-ASITUATION A key claim of Marcel's existential philosophy of the human person is that our being-in-a-situation is ontologically prior to what Dreyfus has called “just looking at things.” 1 He will aim to establish this point in part by means of concrete phenomenological descriptions of various human experiences. This is the most appropriate way to attempt to illustrate this conclusion, since he is attacking the belief that conceptual knowledge is adequate to the task of capturing the nature of human experience. In this and the next chapter, I will attempt to provide an exposition of the main claims (identified in the previous chapter) of Marcel's positive view in a way which seems to me to provide the clearest and most cogent elaboration of his position. In this chapter, this will involve, first, a consideration of Marcel's phenomenological analysis of human embodiment; and, second, a phenomenological description of how the embodied situation of the subject defines both the subject's experiences and the subject's ideas. 1. The Nature of Human Embodiment It is phenomenological reflection on the intriguing, but elusive, nature of human embodiment that initially leads Marcel to think that we may not be related to and may not experience the world in the way Descartes thought, a way which later came to dominate modern and much of contemporary philosophy. Marcel attempts to describe the relationship human beings have to their own bodies in order to uncover or reveal the significance of our embodied context for our personal situation in existence, for our concrete experiences, and, above all, for our individual ideas. He is convinced that the Cartesian analysis of the relationship of mind (or self) to body is superficial. It is important at the outset to point out that Marcel is not concerned with an exploration of issues which would be more appropriate to the subject matter of the philosophy of mind. Indeed, he shares Descartes's conviction that the mind cannot be reduced to the body, noting that: “On this point, Descartes was right…consciousness is essentially something that is the contrary of a body, of a thing….” 2 He is concerned rather with the human subject's experience of his or her own body, and the significance of this experience for the subject's involvement in existence. The problem of embodiment, for Marcel, is one where we must specify the relationship between the conscious subject (or the subject who is aware of itself) and his or her embodiment (the fact that he or she is an embodied subject). I will concentrate on the following aspects of Marcel's analysis, and in the

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order stated, for this approach seems to me to reflect the strongest statement of his view on the issue of human embodiment 3 : (1) the non-instrumental nature of the body, and the fact that the body cannot be regarded as a possession; (2) the “mysterious” relationship of the body to the conscious subject; (3) the critique of the traditional view of sensation; (4) the positive account of the nature of feeling; and (5) the non-“problematical” nature of embodiment. One of the legacies of the Cartesian position (described in detail in chapter 1), is that the mind is in a sense located in a body apprehending the world through clear and distinct ideas. In addition, according to Descartes, the mind is more easily known than the body, and exercises control over the body. This view leads Descartes to conclude that, in order to examine and understand the content of our ideas, we do not need to consider the fact of our embodiment at all. In fact, for Descartes, so unconnected to the subject's ideas is the fact of embodiment that it is even possible to doubt that we have a body. It is just such speculations that convince Marcel that something is radically wrong with the Cartesian analysis. Descartes offers an essentially instrumentalist interpretation of the body. On this view, the body is regarded as merely an object or an instrument over which the self (ego) has control. Marcel holds, however, that our “situated involvement” in existence defines a different relation. He notes that, body and soul . . . are treated as things, and things, for the purposes of logical discourse, become terms, which one imagines as strictly defined, and as linked to each other by some determinable relation. I want to show that if we reflect on what is implied by the datum of my body, by what I cannot help calling my body, this postulate that body and soul are things must be rejected; and this rejection entails consequences of the first importance. 4 Marcel will reexamine this traditional understanding of the relationship between the mind and the body. In this way, he will be critically examining the Cartesian standpoint on one of its central and most influential tenets. According to Marcel, the human self is discovered to be, on phenomenological analysis, fundamentally an embodied subject. 5 This embodiment situates the subject in a particular context in the world. Because of the fact of embodiment, the subject is involved in a complex system of relations in its world, relations to events, circumstances, the objects of its experience, and to other people. These relations define an involvement with, and knowledge of, the world, which is not fully accessible to thought in clear and distinct ideas. That is to say, our involvement with the world in our ordinary everyday embodied experience is not transparent to thought (as Descartes believed it was). Nevertheless, our involvement in the world is manifested and recognized at the ontologically basic level of being-in-a-situation. The experiences of the subject are not simply experiences which the ego obtains through the medium of a body.

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The body is more than a medium, for Marcel; it is, in fact, partly constitutive of the kinds of experiences I have, and these experiences make me the person I am. In order to illustrate that the embodiment of the human subject is crucial to the subject's situation in existence, that is, to the subject's own particular experiences in its world, Marcel concentrates initially on the relationship between the conscious subject and its body. A. The Non-Instrumental Nature of the Body One of the major insights of Marcel's phenomenological analysis of embodiment is that the body is not an instrument, or a possession. An instrument is an artificial means of extending, developing, or reinforcing a pre-existing power, which must be possessed by anyone who wishes to make use of the instrument. This is true even of simple cases such as cutting bread with a knife. 6 It is, of course, possible to consider my body as an instrument, as if it were interposed between objects and me. Here it takes on the role of an instrument, and like all instruments, it can be described by an observer. In this case, I look upon my body from the point of view of a third person. But Marcel argues that if I regard my body as an object, or as an instrument, I run into serious problems. For instance, if we regard our own body as an instrument we will not be able to avoid falling into an infinite regress. If we hold that the body is an instrument of the self, are we not, Marcel asks, in some way treating the self as also bodily (that is, as an extended thing which uses the body)? But if this is the case, then it itself can also be seen as an instrument of something further, and this leads to an infinite regress. 7 We would be forced to end the regress by saying that an instrument can be utilized by a principle which has a nature quite different from itself, that is, by saying that a non-extended mind could act on an extended body, and this is not satisfactory either. (This is a similar criticism to the one Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia {1630–1714} made to Descartes. 8 ) These problems bring out a misunderstanding in our initial analysis. They illustrate that the self is not related to the body in any instrumental way. An analysis of the relationship of the self to the body, which depicts the latter as an instrument of the former, treats the body as if it were something outside of me, external to me, which I possess. But it is precisely this understanding of the relationship between mind and body which we must reject, according to Marcel. Reflection upon the notion of ownership, Marcel suggests, reveals that I do not regard my body as my possession. 9 Rather, the body is the model (not shaped, but felt) to which I relate all other kinds of ownership. For example, my ownership of my dog is understood in relation to the fact of my embodiment, and my feeling that my body is mine. The fact that I can say I own a particular dog means that the dog has a special relationship to me as an embodied subject, which it does not have to any other person. This feeling is always present when I own something. There is a kernel, which I feel to be there at the center in all

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experiences of ownership. This kernel is an experience by which my body is mine. 10 The body is, therefore, a condition of possessing something, and so cannot itself be possessed. In this way, ownership involves a relationship to the body, and not simply a relationship to a dematerialized ego. Marcel adds that it is difficult to imagine how a dematerialized ego could be understood to possess anything. 11 He describes our possessions as felt additions to our bodies. This notion becomes clearer, he holds, when we consider how we feel when one of our possessions is taken away from us. Our sense of dispossession intimately involves our experience of our embodiment. Marcel argues that, in fact, my body is my body just in so far as I do not regard it as an instrument. 12 In the case of the body, possession cannot be dissociated from the possessor, if only because the body, unlike other possessions, has no independent existence of its own. Rather, there is an unusual and intimate relationship between me and my body, which cannot be accounted for in instrumentalist terms. My body cannot be exchanged or disposed of without completely dissolving the bond that makes it mine. To think of the body as a possession is to banish the self to “an indeterminate sphere from which it contemplates, without existing for itself, the anonymous play of the universal mechanism.” 13 But this purely objective conception of the body fails to take note of the bond that exists between my body and me. This relationship is far more intimate than a normal relation of possession or instrumentality. John B. O'Malley has pointed out that, as examples of noninstrumental communion between me and my body, we may think “of an ingrained habit, of a perfected skill, and of the ascetic grace of a saint.” 14 These experiences are non-instrumental because the activity is an integrated functioning of the whole self, and is not just a bodily operation. These reflections indicate that my body should not be regarded merely as something which I have. As Marcel puts it, “Instrumental mediation can only take place within a world of objects, and between bodies, of which none are regarded as my body.” 15 The self and the body are in a mysterious unity, which is not explicable by means of the traditional idea that the body is an instrument of, or a possession of, the self. B. The “Mysterious” Relationship between the Body and the Conscious Subject Although Marcel's phenomenological reflections on the relationship between the conscious subject and the body lead him to criticize the traditional Cartesian view, he wants to argue that this relationship is not a simple one to characterize. Rather, it is an elusive relationship, and part of the mistake of Cartesianism was in not recognizing this fact, and treating the relationship as if it were completely accessible to reflective thought. According to Marcel, not only can I not look upon my body as an instrument of the mind, but I also cannot look upon my mind and body as being somehow the same thing. Neither of these alternatives

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properly expresses my relationship to my own body. Rather, the human subject is incarnate, and “disincarnation…is precluded by my very structure.” 16 Reflection on the nature of the relationship illustrates that the relationship of the self to the body cannot be fully captured, and accounted for, in objective thought. Marcel, therefore, describes the relationship as “mysterious,” not because it is unknowable, but because, although it can be known by the subject, it nevertheless cannot be fully articulated in conceptual analysis. This is how Marcel expresses it: This [existential] philosophy is based on a datum which is not transparent to reflection, and which, when reflected, implies an awareness not of contradiction but of a fundamental mystery, becoming an antinomy as soon as discursive thought tries to reduce or problematize it. Existence (or better, existentiality)…is participation insofar as participation cannot be objectified. 17 It is this antinomy that Marcel is referring to when he says that the relationship between body and mind “resists being made wholly objective to the mind.” 18 He concludes that our relationship with our own bodies is not transparent to itself, and this non-transparency is implied in the fact that I cannot consider myself existing apart from my own body. 19 This analysis gives us a clue to the fact that an appreciation of the nature of the relationship between the body and ourselves as conscious subjects is crucial for an adequate understanding of the way in which we experience the world, a fact which Cartesianism had ignored. This is because my own body, by virtue of the simple fact that it is mine, is privileged in my experience, and, as Marcel has already suggested, plays a part in—that is, is partly constitutive of—my experiences, for example, of ownership. But what the traditional interpretation wished to do was to treat this relationship as if it was not privileged. 20 But all this succeeded in doing was distorting the way in which the human self as knower experiences the world. These reflections about the nature of the relationship between the body and the conscious subject lead Marcel to seriously doubt the accuracy of the Cartesian analysis. But he does not make the mistake of proposing an alternative clear definition of the relationship between mind and body. In fact, this is precisely what he thinks cannot be done, and a major mistake of modern philosophy is to think that it can. Rather, for Marcel, the relationship between mind and body is “just that massive, indistinct sense of one's total existence which…seems to be prior to all definition, [but which we are trying to give the] name to, and evoke as an existential center.” 21 It is interesting to note that Descartes himself appeared to suggest much the same thing in one of his letters to Princess Elizabeth when he talked of “the union which everybody always experiences in himself without philosophizing, namely that he is a single person who has both a body and a mind….” 22 But Descartes's “official” position, of

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course, is that the relationship between mind and body can be easily established in just the way he himself proposes. Peter A. Bertocci (1910–1989) has suggested a reply which Descartes might make to Marcel's criticism, and it is instructive to briefly consider it before continuing with our account of Marcel's analysis of embodiment. Bertocci says that Descartes would reply to Marcel in the following way: “Unless you can show that the mind and body are not distinct types of being, you too are faced, in any theory of union or incarnation, with my problem. What you insist on in a mysterious presence I am willing to accept as psychological certitude until I become philosophical.” 23 However, the problem with this kind of criticism from Marcel's point of view is that it seems to arbitrarily give priority to objective (philosophical) thought, and assumes that the relationship between the body and mind both can and must somehow be made objectively demonstrable. Bertocci is insisting that Marcel provide an objective account in terms of conceptual knowledge (clear and distinct ideas), and clear logical relationships, of the relationship of the body to the mind, the kind of account that would be part of what Marcel refers to as the domain of primary reflection. He is saying that the mind and the body can only, indeed “must,” be approached in a philosophical way, according to his own (Cartesian) understanding of philosophy. But Marcel has been trying to show that this is not the only way, or indeed the correct way, to approach the matter. Recall that, according to Marcel, when we use the term “objective” we usually mean depersonalized and disinterested concepts which are therefore sharable, “public” and universal. Marcel, as we have seen, denies that this kind of knowledge of the relationship between the body and the mind is possible. This relationship cannot be fully known by objective thought, and this fact has consequences of the first importance for our understanding of the nature of human experience, and also for the nature of philosophy. It is this point he is expressing in Creative Fidelity when he says, “Philosophy provides the means for experience to become aware of itself, to apprehend itself…this enquiry must be based on a certitude which is not rational or logical but existential . . . .” 24 We must now develop Marcel's analysis further by turning to a consideration of the important notion of feeling, which is obviously a crucial part of embodiment. C. Critique of the Traditional Theory of Sensation Marcel further supports his analysis of human embodiment by an analysis of what goes on in sensation. Let us briefly examine his critique of the traditional view of sensation, before considering his phenomenological analysis of what actually happens in sensation. In his critique of the traditional view, Marcel wants to illustrate that sensation should not be understood in the way usually proposed by philosophers who are inspired by the Cartesian tradition, that is, as the reception of a message. If Marcel is correct, then this is a further argument against the view that the self just initially looks at things and forms clear and

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distinct mental representations from this looking. Marcel argues that we find it very difficult to avoid treating sensation as something which is emitted by X and received by a subject, that is, as a message. 25 We are convinced that to sense involves a communication. But this view involves an assumption. It is only when we consider sensation from the point of view of the level of conceptual knowledge that sensation seems to be the translation of a message received from a physical object. A closer analysis will reveal that this account is inaccurate. Traditional epistemology has approached the analysis of sensation from the assumption that the self is in a world receiving messages in the form of inputs from “external objects.” Indeed, this view is now very prevalent in contemporary philosophy. The uncritical view here is that an object in the world sends out stimuli, which impinge on my sense organs. This whole process is physical and pre-sensorial. I am then supposed to “translate” this purely physical event into some kind of psychical event which somehow produces a sensation. Marcel argues that this traditional view is conceived in terms of transmitter and receiving station. The receiving station translates and produces what I call my sensations. Marcel argues that the problem with this view of sensation is simply that it assumes conditions that cannot be realized. A translation is the rendering of one set of data in terms of another set of data; but this translation would be impossible to achieve for a subject which did not possess the data in the first form. But the physical events which are supposed to be given to me, and which I am supposed to be translating, are not known to the subject, who is supposed to be doing the translating. They involve, after all, complex physical, and indeed psychical, operations, of which the person who has the related experiences has no knowledge. The events are not given to me as sense data at all. If they were given, this would mean that they would already be sensations, and we would be still stuck with the problem of explaining how they got to be sensations. Marcel holds that we are led astray here by the crude spatial image from which we cannot get away. According to Kenneth T. Gallagher, there is, in fact, “no way in which the data can be given to the senser, for it is of the very nature of a physical event that it be infra-sensorial and not given to me as a datum.” 26 If we interpret the event as an unconscious sensation so that we can claim that it is in some way already given, we have still not explained how it is possible, and if we say it is simply primordial, we have then failed to uphold the claim that sensation is a message. D. Feeling as Constitutive of my Situation However, despite this critique of the traditional view of sensation, the notion of sensation still remains one of the central notions in Marcel's analysis of embodiment. He draws particular attention to one of our most special feelings—the intimate feeling I have that my body is mine. Marcel claims that human emb-

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odiment involves a fundamental act of feeling, which cannot amount to mere objective possession, nor to an instrumental relation, nor to something which could be treated purely and simply as an identity of the subject with the object. 27 He develops this crucial point by an elaboration of the role feeling plays in my situation. Embodiment places me in a situation, but embodiment intimately involves feeling, therefore, it is by means of feeling that I am placed in a situation. He invokes the example of our sense of touch. I cannot touch your hand without feeling that I am being touched at the same time. My body is at the same time what feels and what is felt. This body-feeling has an absolute priority, because in order to feel anything else, I must first of all feel my body as mine. Now this immediate contact with my body puts me at the same time in direct contact with the world. To illustrate this point further, Marcel introduces the example of being out walking with a friend: I say I feel tired. My friend looks skeptical, since he, for his part, feels no tiredness at all. I say to him, perhaps a little irritably, that nobody who is not inside my skin can know what I feel. He will be forced to agree, and yet, of course, he can always claim that I am attaching too much importance to slight disagreeable sensations which he, if he felt them, would resolutely ignore. It is all too clear that at this level no real discussion is possible. For I can always say that even if what he calls “the same sensations” were felt by him and not by me, still, they would not really be, in their new setting, in the context of so many other feelings and sensations that I do not share, the same sensations; and that therefore his statement is meaningless. 28 I do not share his feelings because his embodiment places him in a fundamentally different personal situation to mine, even though we are both in roughly the same location, and undergoing similar experiences, that is, out walking together along the same route, etc. (and there may be many other similarities as well). This analysis illustrates that sensations, therefore, are intentional: they are “about” or “of” something; and they give meaning. Marcel's example reveals, first, that I am a being in a particular situation which is defined in part by my feelings, and, second, that I am fundamentally an embodied subject. Marcel holds that all of my experiences bear the marks of association with this body, which is mine. As he puts it, I never go “beyond various modifications of my own self-feeling.” 29 Marcel's phrase “I am my body” 30 is meant to convey, not that I am identical with my body, but the fact that I am bound up with my body, and not simply in possession of my body. My body and I are not, therefore, mutually exclusive; rather, each implies the other. This analysis is an attempt by Marcel to close the gap between me and my body, which he believes traditional philosophy had created.

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E. The Non-“Problematical” Nature of My Embodiment In further support of his view of the nature of the embodied subject, Marcel goes on to attack yet another central tenet of the Cartesian view. He argues that, contrary to one of the important steps in Descartes's development of the problem of skepticism, it is not, in fact, logically possible for me to regard the existence of my own body as the occasion for a problem, that is, as a subject for a disinterested inquiry. When we examine what is meant by a problem it becomes clear that the body could never be so regarded. Marcel famously argues that a problem is something that requires a solution that is available for everybody (we will come back to this concept later in the chapter). In order to regard my own body as a problem I would have to isolate myself from my immediate contact with the world and focus on a disinterested representation of my own body. That is, the problem of “my body,” like all problems, demands a detached, disinterested inquiry so that any conclusions drawn about it can be presented for all to inspect (including me). Features of experience can only be presented as problems for the mind if the mind first abstracts from the “situated involvement” defining the lived experience of the inquirer, and can only be maintained and discussed as problems if everyone involved in their appraisal does likewise. This is precisely how problems are defined by the view which defines them, the scientific view, which has had so much influence on traditional philosophy. It must be possible in principle for everyone to put himself or herself in the place of the inquirer, or inspector. Marcel expresses it thus: “For there is only a problem when a particular content is detached from the context that unites it with the I.” 31 However, this is precisely what cannot be achieved, according to Marcel, in the case of a consideration of the experience of “my body,” for my body involves me, and as soon as I regard it as a problem, I no longer regard it as my body. The point is that I cannot consistently regard “my body” as a problem. I can only set up the relationship of “my body” to me as a problem “by very reason of the detachment from myself to which I have proceeded so as to isolate and define this totality of terms.” 32 But here I cease to look on my body as my body. I arbitrarily deprive it of that absolute priority in virtue of which my body is posited as the center in relation to which my experience and my universe are ordered. Marcel continues: “Thus my body only becomes an occasion for a problem under conditions such that the very problem [that is, the problem of “my body”] we intended to state loses all meaning.” 33 It would only be by some sort of mental sympathy that I could succeed in stating this problem in universal terms, that is, in considering my body as if it were not mine. But as regards me, this problem cannot be stated without contradiction. What Marcel means here is that when I think my body (and not that of another person to whom I give my name), I am in a situation which it becomes impossible to account for in objective terms as soon as I substitute for it the idea

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of a relation between terms that are hypothetically dissociated. 34 For, in ordinary experience, I do not experience my body as an abstract object, but rather as that which is definitive of the self as involved in the world. Marcel puts it this way: “For if I effect this substitution I place myself in conditions [that is, in the condition of a third party] that are strictly incompatible with the initial state which it was my business to explain [that is, the problem of my body].” 35 Descartes might reply that I can still look upon my body in an objective sense, and this is, of course, true. But Marcel's point is that to look upon my body as a third party— that is, to first isolate myself from my involvement in existence—and then to wonder whether my body actually exists is an absurdity. 36 (We will come back to this point later in Chapter 6.) This analysis of embodiment has illustrated that the body should not be regarded primarily as an instrument, or as a possession. We have seen that our experience of our embodiment places the subject in a situation and is partly constitutive of the subject's experiences, and therefore of the subject's particular ideas; further, my experience of my embodiment logically cannot be regarded as a problem. These important insights undermine the Cartesian view, and lead Marcel to propose that the human subject is fundamentally a being-in-a-situation. It is to this crucial claim that we must now turn. 2. Human Being as a Being-in-a-Situation When Marcel argues that the human subject is a being-in-a-situation he means that the fact of the subject's embodiment and the subject's situation—which place the subject in a context and thereby in a world—are implicit in, and intimately intertwined with, the subject's particular ideas. The very nature of the subject depends on his embodied context—the subject's fundamental situation—not on the causal system in which the subject is physically located. For a causal system is not a context. We live in a context, not in a causal system. 37 It is by means of his embodied context that the subject is in contact with reality—is involved in it—and is not just simply gazing out upon it, through the medium of a body. In her discussion of Marcel, Sonia Kruks has identified well those features of existence which place the subject in a unique situation: Firstly…the notion of subjectivity must itself be broadened to acknowledge that the self is irreducibly sentient: it is not to be conceived as an exclusively, or perhaps even a primarily, thinking, knowing, or self-conscious subject. Secondly . . . through the contingencies of physical birth, subjectivity comes to discover itself as being of a particular physique, race, gender, etc., and as born into a human situation—a particular spatial and temporal location, a general and a personal history, a cultural and economic context, etc. 38

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Marcel also sometimes calls this state of the subject the “non-contingency of the empirical datum.” 39 Earlier we tried to illustrate how embodiment places the subject in a context, which defines in part the subject's ideas. Now we must attempt to elaborate that claim by considering what happens when we encounter the objects of our experience, particularly physical objects. This is a very crucial issue because is this particular aspect of Marcel's thought—and indeed of existentialist thought in general—that is likely to receive the most opposition from those philosophical traditions Marcel is attempting to criticize. So far as I can discover, no philosopher has developed this issue in Marcel's thought in any detail. 40 Marcel tries to illustrate his claim that the subject is fundamentally a being-in-a-situation by a phenomenological description of what we mean when we say that something exists. Let us draw on his analysis and try to supplement it with a detailed example. He claims that when I affirm that something exists, I always mean that I consider this something as fundamentally connected with my body. 41 The object always holds some initial significance for me by means of which I affirm it as an object. Let us take an example to illustrate this claim. It will be helpful to make the example as concrete as possible in an attempt to clarify his main point. We will focus on the situation where I am sitting at my desk working. I pick up a book that is lying on the desk. When I pick up (say) a novel from my desk, I do not see it merely or fundamentally as just a book, that is, as an instrument, or as an object about which I wish to obtain knowledge, understood in the traditional philosophical sense. I do not “just look at it” and see it as an isolated object located in the cause and effect world of space and time, all ready for inspection for the purposes of obtaining knowledge about it. According to Marcel, this is not what goes on in ordinary everyday experience, what Heidegger calls “everydayness” (this is how John Richardson {1951–} translates the German word “Alltaglichkeit”), 42 and what I have called “situated involvement.” Rather, I am “already” in a contextual situation which involves both my past and my future; I am caught up in my context, and I see the “object” as related to me in a way which is defined by my situation as an embodied subject. I am, in short, internally related to (in a way that is hard to describe clearly) the various “objects” of my experience. Suppose I am working at my desk, engaged (let's say) in writing an essay for a volume on Twentieth Century Anglo-Irish Literature. Books and notes relevant to my project surround me. I pick up James Joyce's (1882–1941) Ulysses in order to search for passages supporting my interpretation of Joyce's views on language. I will immediately regard Ulysses as “familiar,” “necessary,” and “relevant,” “very helpful,” etc., for my work. My immediate attitude if I had picked up (say) Thomas Kilroy's (1934–), The Big Chapel, would likely be that it will not be very helpful, as Kilroy is a lesser known Irish writer. I will experience the book as fitting into a set of complex relationships. I will most likely

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recognize the book, identify it as having a certain history, and as relevant for certain future tasks. I will recognize that this is the copy of Ulysses which I bought at Eason's bookstore in Dublin, which I have had for ten years, and which is looking slightly the worst for wear. This is part of what the book means for me, that is, it is part of my particular idea of this particular book. To look at the issue from the other direction, there are no “books” (understood in an abstract sense) in my experience at the level of “situated involvement.” There are only copies of Ulysses (Revised fifth edition, paperback), The Big Chapel (first edition, hardback, front cover torn off, $2.50 used, a great bargain bought at a bookstore in a Dublin side street, which I only discovered because I had nowhere to park!), etc. These experiences of these books will be constituted, not by some preformed judgment about what constitutes a “book” (that is, not by some abstract concept I have of “book” which I then apply to all objects of this kind which I encounter in my experience), but by the fact that I am habitually in contact with and involved with books as meshed in my contextual situation, that I have certain expectations with regard to them, certain attitudes toward them, certain memories of them, and so on. My experience of Ulysses will clearly bear the marks which are peculiar to, or which arise in, just my situation in existence, a situation in which I am involved with Ulysses. Other books on my desk will mean other things to me, but their meaning will never fully correspond to some abstract sense of “book,” but will always involve some relationship to my projects and practices which will involve my embodiment. Perhaps I will regard one of the books as initially significant for the project I am engaged on; where I obtained the book (bookstore? library? borrowed it from a friend?) might well be significant for evaluating its use for the project. If an expert on Anglo-Irish literature recommended it to me, this might be an indication that it will be of importance for my essay; if it came from the library, I would feel that it might be useful (and then again it might not), etc. When and how I previously used the book might be significant. These are all possibilities of how the book might affect me. They are all defined by the web of relationships the book enters into with regard to my particular situation in existence; Marcel expresses it thus: “[The] object possesses . . . the power of affecting in a thousand different ways the being of the person who contemplates it . . . .” 43 (This insight influenced both Merleau-Ponty and Paul Ricouer. 44 ) This analysis explains the feeling we often have that our ideas do have our personal quality or stamp on them, why a book appears short to one person but long to another, relevant to one person but irrelevant to another, how a profound experience (for example, bereavement) can change a person, why we feel at home in one place, and a stranger in another, why even the taste of raspberries can have different meanings for different people, and so forth. 45 In the ordinary, everyday world of the individual subject, the “objects” of the subject's experience bear a certain relation to him which they do not bear to

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anybody else. This is because these objects are defined by the subject in virtue of the subject's embodiment in a particular situation in a world with other human beings. To treat the object in isolation from the subject's own experiential context is to distort the meaning of the object for the individual in question. It is to resort to an (abstract) object, which, in fact, is not any particular subject's object. In the realm of experience, we are in a kind of existential contact with reality, and are not primarily mediating reality by means of clear and distinct ideas. That is to say, the world is not primordially mediated through concepts (or, in more contemporary philosophical language, through theories). Rather, “our fundamental situation” 46 in the world will define our “ideas,” for Marcel, and any analysis or description of our ideas must involve a reference to a particular human body, and to its particular place or “situation” in existence. As Marcel puts it, “A man’s given circumstances, when he becomes inwardly aware of them, can become . . . constitutive of” the self, and so “we must resist the temptation to think . . . of the self’s situation, as having a real, embodied, independent existence outside the self . . . .” 47 This is just what Descartes overlooked. His mistake was to think that we primordially experience the world through clear and distinct ideas, or through conceptual representations of one kind or another. A more careful description of his own ideas would have led him to see that our ideas “involve” both a body and a world. That is to say, my ideas bear the marks of my situation in existence, and this must involve reference to both my embodiment and my world. Thus, we can identify some of the features of embodied existence. The first thing to note is that the experience of embodiment ensures that I am a being-in-a-situation, and, according to Marcel, “The essence of man is to be in a situation.” 48 The fact that I am of necessity in a situation means that my experience and knowledge of the world will be shaped by my situation. For, as we saw above, my situation determines the complex web of relations I find myself intimately involved with at any given moment of my existence. The second closely related point is that my situation ensures that I am a “being on the way.” 49 As Marcel says, “Our itinerant condition is in no sense separable from the given circumstances, from which in the case of each of us that condition borrows its special character….” 50 Our situation in existence is that of a wanderer. To be in a situation, and to be on the move, are two complementary aspects of our condition. This means that I am not a spectator of life—mine or anyone else's, nor am I a spectator of the world. I am intimately involved in the various projects and practices which shape and define my life. This is part of my essential structure as a human being. “Experience is not an object (gegenstand) . . . of something flung in my way, something placed before me, facing me, in my path.” 51 What happens when we abstract from this involvement with reality is that we attempt to disregard or “stand back” from the nexus of relationships which define the meaning of objects for us in the world. In the act of abstraction, thought becomes disinterested, and is not faithful to how objects actually affect

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us in our experience. We might say that in our ordinary everyday experience of “situated involvement” we are operating at a level of, to use another of Marcel's phrases, submerged participation, and that in reflective thought we disengage from this submerged participation by means of a process of abstraction that is an integral part of the process of thought. We must now attempt to elaborate this point. My experience of an object is prior to the level of reflective thought. I am not standing back from my fundamental situation when I pick up Joyce's Ulysses, and delineating those aspects of my idea of Ulysses in an explicit act of attentive discrimination. Rather, the act of reflection in which I attempt to identify some of the “facts” about my experience of Ulysses will only occur as an abstraction from my situation in everyday experience, and, therefore, as a derived reality only. This act of reflection would usually, but not always, be prompted by problems which arise in my experience. To continue with our example, if, when I picked up Ulysses, I noticed that it had tea stains on the front cover, I might abstract from my fundamental situation in existence and consider the book as a damaged object, assess the damage to it, and its likely causes. Here I would not consider the marks which arise in, and which are unique to, my particular embodied context. I would instead regard the book as an abstract object, concerning which I had a problem to solve. Or if, when I picked up the book, it appeared strange or unfamiliar to me, I might “stand back” from my involvement with the world and notice that it was not my copy of the book at all, but a copy which a friend had forgotten. In this “standing back,” I am no longer operating at the level of “situated involvement,” but at the level of thought, or of conceptual knowledge. In the act of abstraction, we do not take the fact of embodiment, and the nexus of relationships defined by our situation as embodied subjects, into account. Rather, we try to set all of this aside. What happens at the level of thought is that the images and pictures we have in our mind are separated from our “situated involvement” with the world, and isolated and fixed in the language of concepts. These concepts are not holistic (as we saw in Chapter 1). As we saw there, Marcel is not saying that we have no mental content at all in our primordial contact with the world, if I read him correctly. Rather, his claim is that we do not naturally experience the world by gazing upon it, and forming clear and distinct mental representations about it, which we then examine without reference to the world for the purposes of obtaining knowledge about the world. Rather, the subject's particular ideas at the level of “situated involvement” bear the marks of the embodied situation of the subject, and are not “clear and distinct” ideas. This process of abstraction comes later, if at all. In fact, I take Marcel to be saying that this process of abstraction does not occur with any degree of clarity for most of our ideas, and, for many of them, often cannot occur, such as our ideas of love, and other central human experiences, including even the experience of knowledge itself. This is borne out in Marcel's text by remarks such as the following: “The more I actually participate in being, the less I am

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capable of knowing or of saying in what it is that I participate, or more precisely, the less such a question has any meaning for me.” 52 Like Heidegger, Marcel rejects the idea that it is appearances that are the objects of experience. 53 At the level of submerged participation, the mind directly experiences the world without mediation from appearances. The term “mental representation” then may be employed in Marcel's philosophy to refer to the particular ideas, images, pictures, etc., of the world that the human subject has at this level of participation. However, we must be careful not to allow this terminology to mislead. Mental representations—ideas, pictures, images, etc. —at this level are not appearances, and do not come between the subject and the things themselves. As Marcel says, “I am in the world only insofar as the world is not a representation . . . .” 54 Ideas in the Cartesian sense, on the other hand, for Marcel, are concepts which we form by abstracting from our experiences in “situated involvement,” and by isolating certain specific features of the experience in a conceptual representation, which we can then present as an “object” of knowledge for all to consider. There is nothing wrong with this process, of course, and indeed it is an essential operation of the mind. But we must not make the mistake of thinking that our abstract ideas, therefore, represent the world as we actually experience it, and, further, that it is possible to finally understand these ideas without making reference to the world of “situated involvement” from which they are abstracted. It is just this fallacy that has led to the myriad problems that have bedeviled Cartesianism, not least the problem of skepticism, which still engages contemporary analytic philosophers. According to Marcel, all of these philosophers have made the mistake of forgetting that “a philosophy which begins with the cogito . . . runs the risk of never getting back to being.” 55 The process of abstraction forces discreteness on our experiences, and this is a useful, and indeed necessary, part of the function of thought. But it is crucial to realize that experience itself is not discrete, and that knowledge of it cannot be fully obtained by the discreteness that characterizes thinking. Therefore, the way to attain knowledge is the way Marcel himself follows—by means of phenomenological descriptions which attempt to elicit or evoke certain experiences in the reader in order to “recover”, or to “reveal” in Marcel's phrase, the mystery of being, or the unity of experience. Marcel recognizes that phenomenological descriptions are sometimes hard to arrive at, depending on the subject matter we are trying to describe, yet it is necessary for the philosopher to attempt to reveal the necessary connections involved in the structure of human beings in their contextual situations. Some conceptual analysis is also required, of course, but it must not be pursued exclusively, and at the expense of the attempt to provide phenomenological descriptions. (We will come back to this point in the next chapter.) Reflective thought involves reference to me as a universal subject, and, in fact, is often itself usually only the result of a project of a specific type, as Heidegger has pointed out. 56 But I can only refer to myself as a universal subject

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if I first of all renounce my existential situation, that is, if I renounce my existence. I can establish the universal subject only if I consider myself not to be. I can think about the object only if I acknowledge that I do not count for it, that is, that its particular relationship to my existential situation can be disregarded in the act of abstraction. In my existential situation, the object is given to me as part of my particular condition in the world, it is present to me in a way in which the “objects” considered by scientific knowledge are not. At this level, my knowledge of the world is, as Gallagher has put it, “forever recalcitrant to inclusion in a totality which is available for anybody.” 57 Marcel's analysis has important consequences. For instance, the instrumental interpretation of reality, which is the basis of science, now seems to be founded on abstractions from our experience, from that level of involvement in which we do not naturally and primordially experience, or come to know, objects as instruments. This is a first indication that the scientific view (that is, the way of primary reflection, which deals with the realm of problems) may not be the paradigm way to do philosophy, for it now appears to be parasitical upon the level of “situated involvement.” A second issue raised by his view relates to the status of objective knowledge. How, on Marcel's view, is the realm of conceptual knowledge to be understood, and how do we avoid epistemological relativism? Is there not a danger on the view that Marcel has been developing of relativizing objective knowledge to each individual subject (a danger, perhaps, that some of the existentialist thinkers, including Heidegger, fell into)? We take up these questions in the next chapter.

Three THE OBJECTIVITY OF KNOWLEDGE 1. The Problem of Relativism We have seen that Marcel, when he is working through philosophical and phenomenological issues, is concerned to place the human subject at the center. This means that we must take into account the contextual situation of the subject—the fact that the subject's experiences and ideas involve both embodied existence and a world—when we are analyzing philosophical problems. Marcel has argued that the fact that the subject is best described as a being-in-a-situation has profound significance for our understanding of various matters that have attracted the attention of philosophers, such as the relationship of body to mind, the nature of ideas, the nature of knowledge, and various other problems that we will get into further in later chapters. However, any emphasis on the contextual situation of the subject in an analysis of philosophical problems brings with it a major problem of its own— what we might call the problem of relativism. There is the danger that we may end up relativizing some of these important matters (especially knowledge itself) to the contextual situation of the subject who is doing the knowing. And if everyone's contextual situation is importantly different, one wonders how we can prevent this view from falling into a wholesale relativism. It is fair to say that this is a problem that has bedeviled twentieth century continental philosophy. Indeed, one of the most disconcerting features of twentieth century movements in European philosophy for many people is the attack on the objectivity of knowledge that one finds running throughout the work of many of its major thinkers. Martin Heidegger is an example, especially in his use of the concept of “thematizing.” 1 Heidegger develops this notion against the backdrop of his distinction between the realm of being-in-the-world and the realm of conceptual knowledge. He suggests that conceptual knowledge itself is very often carried out by the human subject in relation to the subject's everyday, particular projects, and may be, therefore, in some crucial sense, relative to the context in which it is practiced. John Richardson has noted of Heidegger's view that “the theoretical attitude [is not] an unmediated relationship in which we encounter bare facts; it depends on a special projection all its own, in which we sketch in advance the Being of the entities we then go on to discover.” 2 While this approach carries with it the advantage of doing justice to human subjectivity in the acquisition of knowledge, and also of recognizing, at least in Heidegger's work, the need to excavate the primary level of being of dasein (the human subject), it also runs the risk of falling into a kind of contextual relativism about knowledge claims. It has to be

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said that many philosophers in the continental tradition fall into this mistake, especially in the movements of structuralism, hermeneutics, critical theory, and deconstruction. It is hard to find any clear, detailed analysis of the exact nature of the relationship between the realm of being-in-the-world and the realm of conceptual knowledge in the work of philosophers from any of these movements, yet the main point suggested by Heidegger's approach became a mainstay of contemporary European thought: that, in a crucial sense, conceptual or theoretical knowledge of any type is not objectively true, but is relative to the context (however broadly or unclearly this context is defined) in which the human subject lives, or in which the community of inquirers live. A further example of this type of approach can be found in the work of Roland Barthes (1915–1980), who advanced the view that there can be no objectively true, trans-historical meanings, no timeless or extra-linguistic essences, and that any attempt to suggest otherwise can be unmasked as nothing more than an attempt to impose a particular ideology on the masses. 3 In some fascinating essays, Barthes challenges the traditional view of language and meaning, and by extension the traditional understanding of knowledge and truth. He develops his critique through an interesting, but radical, theory of literary criticism, one which holds that traditional literary criticism is often misguided, in part because it is founded on a traditional philosophical approach. For Barthes, we need a new understanding of how language, meaning and representation work in texts. He proposes a new view that would revolutionize the study of literature and texts generally, and by extension, our understanding of reality itself. His view involves emphasizing human subjectivity and the human context in the reading and deciphering of signs. But his position faces a serious problem because he develops this new view of language and meaning at the expense of the objectivity of knowledge. And like many thinkers in the same tradition, he nowhere tells us how we can deal with the practical effects of this relativism in ordinary life. The problems facing both epistemological and moral relativism are well documented, yet Barthes gives them no attention. Nor does he explain how the objective claims he himself is making about language and meaning, the nature of signs, how representation works, etc., do not themselves fall victim to the very relativism he is espousing. This move toward relativism and ultimately skepticism about the nature of knowledge reached its fullest and most ingenious expression in the work of Jacques Derrida (1930–2004). Derrida is famous for arguing that all western philosophers have been mistaken in their belief that being is presence, and presence is to be understood as something which is akin to substance, sameness, identity, essence, clear and distinct ideas, etc. For, according to Derrida, all identities, presences, and predications depend for their existence on something outside themselves, something which is absent and different from themselves. This means that all identities involve their differences and relations; these differences and relations are aspects

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or features outside of the object—different from it, yet related to it—yet they are never fully present. Or to put his thesis in a way that sounds a lot like Barthes: reality itself is a kind of “free play” of différance (a new term coined by Derrida); no identities really exist (in the traditional sense) at this level; identities are simply constructs of the mind, and essentially of language. 4 A consequence of these views is that no knowledge claim can be objective in the sense that it is trans-historical or transcendental, or independent of all viewpoints or contexts. Rather, all identities (and hence all meanings), including those which make logic and rationality possible, are relative to history and culture. I believe that these relativistic and skeptical tendencies in the thought of Derrida and Barthes, and of other continental philosophers who hold very similar views (such as Michel Foucault{1921–1984}), cannot be successfully defended, yet that issue is not my concern here. The problems with these views have been well documented, but let me just summarize two here, before moving on to discuss how Marcel's work tackles these difficulties. Postmodernist thinkers, it seems to me, cannot avoid either of two very serious objections, both of which are fatal to the postmodernist attack on the objectivity of knowledge and meaning. First, if deconstruction itself is a true theory, that is, a theory which tells us the way the world really is, or how things essentially stand, then its proponents appear to be committed to those extra-linguistic truths, and timeless essences, which they officially deny. Here are some examples of metaphysical statements from their works: “There is not a single signified that escapes . . . the play of signifying references that constitute language” (Derrida); or “The book itself is only a tissue of signs. . .” (Barthes). 5 That is to say, any philosopher who advocates epistemological relativism runs into the problem that they themselves are making objectively true claims in their defense of their view. They are making objectively true epistemological claims that are not themselves subject to the relativizing tendencies of the mind and/or culture and/or language that other (contrary) epistemological claims are subject to! What this means in practice is that these philosophers are in fact claiming that their own ways of knowing, and their own minds, can get out to reality—past the relativizing structures—to see and discover things as they really are. But if they can do this, then so can others; further, they are obliged to debate their conclusions with those others (such as Marcel) who agree that the mind can get out to reality in many circumstances, but who disagree with these philosophers about the nature of reality. The second problem is a variant of the first. This is the point that all relativistic theories involve a contradiction. We can illustrate this point briefly in Derrida by noting that if the view of identity and presence, and the view of language and reality, which he advances in his works is true, then it would be true to say that, for Derrida, reality is différance, and not presence. This point is nicely supported by the fact that, as just noted, Derrida's works are full of

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substantive (or metaphysical) claims about the natures of language and meaning. Here are a few more examples: “Writing can never be totally inhabited by the voice.” 6 Or: “The trace is nothing, it is not an entity, it exceeds the question What is? and contingently makes it possible.” 7 Or: “. . . the notions of property, appropriation and self-presence, so central to logocentric metaphysics, are essentially dependent on an oppositional relation with otherness. In this sense, identity presupposes alterity.” 8 These are the literal meanings which Derrida wishes us to take away from his texts. For Derrida, it would be false to say, for example, that identity does not presuppose alterity, or that logocentric metaphysics does not involve an operational relationship with otherness, and so on. Derrida is making metaphysical claims about the nature of knowledge, and so contradicting his general view that there are no objectively true metaphysical claims to be made about knowledge, language and meaning. 9 So we must therefore note carefully a serious problem afflicting the Heideggerian-BarthianDerridean route toward a philosophy based on human subjectivity. In their desire to give almost absolute priority to the human subject, these philosophers seem unable to avoid relativism, skepticism and ultimately nihilism about knowledge, language, and meaning. And eventually the self too has to succumb to their critique. This was a problem that haunted existentialist philosophers such as Sartre and Albert Camus (1913–1960) in the domain of ethics; in subsequent philosophical movements, it haunts philosophers in the domains of metaphysics and epistemology. 2. Particular and Abstract Ideas In what follows I will suggest that Marcel's work can help us with precisely this problem: that is, with the problem of trying to ensure a significant role for the human subject in philosophy without sacrificing the objectivity of knowledge. Although it is appropriate to describe Marcel as a (Christian) existentialist philosopher, it is also appropriate, in my view, to describe him as a realist who believes in the objectivity of knowledge. I believe that Marcel is a realist in the sense that he holds the view that the human mind can come to know reality just as it is in itself. That is to say, Marcel believes that the objects of our experience are real, and can be known objectively by all in conceptual knowledge just as they are in themselves. In Being and Having, he acknowledges that in answer to the question “Does our knowledge of particular things come to bear on the things themselves or on their Ideas?” we must say that it is “Impossible not to adopt the realist solution.” 10 In The Existential Background of Human Dignity, he says he prefers the term “existential realism,” because this term specifies that the existence of things is apprehended by incarnate beings “like you and me, and by virtue of our being incarnate” [and therefore not primarily in virtue of an abstract concept matching up with an object outside the mind]. 11 Yet there is no doubt that Marcel is sympathetic with the general shift of the movement of exist-

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entialism away from the abstract systems of Cartesian philosophy to a more concrete philosophy of the subject. He is also committed to placing human subjectivity at the center of the philosophical task. I will attempt to outline how Marcel's philosophy offers us a way to do justice to, and maintain the priority of, human subjectivity and individuality without falling into the relativism and skepticism that has tended to accompany such notions. The way of reading Marcel which I will develop in the rest of this chapter is not developed in any detail in Marcel's thought, although I believe it is quite explicitly stated in general outline. And although a certain amount of reconstruction is necessary, as it is in the exposition of many of Marcel's main themes, I think that there is sufficient evidence both textually and thematically to claim with reasonable certainty that the view which I will outline here was held by him. I will concentrate on an analysis of the two realms of knowledge identified by Marcel, that of being-in-a-situation, or what I sometimes call “situated involvement,” and that of conceptual thought. I will attempt to illustrate the difference between the two realms, as well as the nature of the relationship between them, in terms of what I call particular and abstract ideas. Although Marcel does not use these terms, I think they do help to clarify further both of the main realms of knowledge in his thought. It is an important theme in Marcel's work that our ideas essentially involve both a body and a world which contribute fundamentally to their particular character. Marcel holds that if we examine our ideas phenomenologically we will discover, first, that the fact of embodiment, and the context of the subject, are internally related to our ideas and, second, that so called “clear and distinct ideas” (or abstract ideas) are simply abstractions from this more fundamental level of “situated involvement” in which the “objects” of our experience have very different (personal, particular) meanings for the individual than the meanings presented in the mind in “clear and distinct” (abstract, public) ideas. (A reminder that the word “object” should be understood in a broad sense in the context of Marcel's thought, and can refer to any aspect of experience which can produce meaningful content for the human mind.) We must now elaborate these points in more detail. According to Marcel, when I encounter an “object” in my experience I do not simply “regard” it as an “object” in the abstract sense of object (that is, in the sense of “object” to which our concept would correspond). I do not “just look at it” and see it as a conceptual problem, part of the cause and effect world, ready to be studied in theoretical thinking. 12 This would not be an adequate phenomenological description of ordinary experience. For in ordinary everyday experience, there are certain features of existence that place the subject in a unique situation. First, the subject, for Marcel, is irreducibly sentient, and is not exclusively a thinking, or knowing, or self-conscious subject (though Marcel does not wish to deny the importance of these aspects of human experience). He notes that “we think of this impenetrability…but we think of it as not completely

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thinkable. Just as my body is thought of in so far as it is a body, but my thought collides with the fact that it is my body.” 13 Second, as noted in chapter 2, through the contingencies of physical birth, the subject is placed in a specific context by its physique, race, gender, spatial and temporal location, national identity, cultural and economic situation, etc. 14 As Marcel has noted, “The essence of man is to be in a situation.” 15 I would like to draw attention here to what I call the subject's particular ideas in an attempt to illustrate the way in which the embodied context of the subject influences a subject's ideas. I am introducing the term “particular idea” here to distinguish this kind of idea from an “abstract idea.” A particular idea is the idea of an object a particular human subject in a particular human situation has; whereas an abstract idea is the idea of that same object that all human subjects share. A further, and higher, level of abstraction would reveal the general idea of objects of that kind. For example, my idea of my copy of Marcel's Being and Having is a particular idea, different in important respects from the particular idea others have of Marcel's book, and also different from the abstract idea of that same book which all people acquainted with the book share. The concept “book” would then involve a further level of abstraction. Obviously there will be points of similarity and overlap in any comparison of different subjects' particular ideas of Marcel's book. Yet the differences are crucial because it will turn out that the particular ideas of each subject bear the marks which are peculiar to, and which are unique in, that particular subject's embodied situation in existence. And since no two subjects have identical embodied situations (although they may have similar situations), then each subject's particular ideas will be importantly different from every other subject's particular ideas. Of course, this distinction needs to be explained and elaborated in more detail by means of an example. Marcel refers to the example of the peasant and his relationship to the soil. It will be helpful to make this example as concrete as possible (more concrete than Marcel makes it) in an attempt to clarify Marcel's main point. Suppose the peasant is plowing his favorite field in order to plant potatoes. This is the field for which he saved his earnings over several years, and then acquired by a skillful piece of bidding at an auction. Let us say that he also took something of a risk in buying it. But it has consistently yielded good crops of potatoes for him. In addition, he always seems to get a good financial return for the crops harvested in this particular field. He nearly always plants this field at his favorite time of year, and it plows easily. In this peasant's unique existential situation, it is quite easy to see that he does not see his land as an (abstract) “object.” The meaning of the concept “field” is not identical with the meaning the field has for him in his personal experience. So when he says to the neighboring farmer, “I am ready to plow the field this week,” the concept “field” which is referred to in this remark, and which both men share, and which makes possible communication between them, does not fully capture, convey, or

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adequately represent the actual meaning the field has for the peasant in his unique existential situation. Nor will the concept capture the existential meaning the field has for the neighboring peasant either. Nor is it intended to. Of course, the (abstract) concept “field” has a similar meaning for both peasants. The different existential meaning the field in question has for both men will be defined by each one's unique existential situation, or condition, in their world. Further, the peasant does not need to appreciate in any clear way the distinction between the conceptual meaning of the field and what we might call its nonconceptual, existential meaning. However, it is a crucial distinction nonetheless. Let us speculate further on what the field in question might mean to this particular peasant. That is, let us try to describe phenomenologically the peasant's particular idea of this field, rather than his abstract idea of the field. It is clear that he does not look upon this piece of land as just another field, as the passerby might look upon it. Rather, as Marcel puts it, his soil transcends everything he sees around him; and in some mysterious but yet tangible way it is linked to his inner being. Marcel notes that, .

We have thus progressed…toward a concept of real participation which can no longer be translated into the language of outer objects. It is perfectly clear that the soil to which the peasant is so passionately attached is not something about which we can really speak. We can say the peasant's soil transcends everything that he sees around him, that it is linked to his inner being, and by that we must understand not only to his acts but to his sufferings. 16 In other words, the peasant's experience with, and participation in, the activity of plowing the soil in this particular field in order to plant his potatoes is internally related to his embodied situation in existence: to his past activities in relation to this field (how he acquired it, worked it in the past, etc.); to his future projects with regard to the soil; to his day to day relationship with the soil, and so forth. All of these experiences help to define the meaning of this field for this particular peasant. And since no two individuals have identical situations in existence, the existential meaning of any common object of their experience will never be identical for both of them. (It was in this sense that Henry Bergson (1859–1941) argued that conceptual knowledge had a practical use. For it allows us to speak of objects, and to utilize objects, which each person inevitably experiences differently. 17 ) There is also a real sense in which the meaning of the peasant’s life is defined for him by his particular ideas, since the ideas are defined by his situation, and the ideas help to define his experience of self in a very significant way. Marcel compares the peasant's experience of the soil with that of the tourist or artist, saying that “the contrast between the soil experienced in this way [by the peasant] as a sort of inner presence, and anything that a landscape may be to

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the amateur of beauty who appreciates it and who selects a few epithets from his stock to pin down its salient notes, is surely as deep and as firmly rooted as could be.” 18 An artist, for example, will also participate (or be “involved”) in such a landscape, but in a way that will be quite different to that of either the peasant or the tourist. The meaning of the field for the artist will be defined by his work as an artist, and so the field will inevitably have a different meaning for him. He might see it as source of an exciting landscape for his work; or as potentially part of a larger project; or as a way of illustrating a theme he has been thinking about. The tourist will have yet different experiences with regard to the field. The point is that the particular idea each has of this field is defined by the embodied context or “situated involvement” of each in their world, or, in other words, by the “situated involvement” of each one's life. As Marcel says, “Our itinerant condition cannot be separated from our given circumstances, from which in the case of each of us that condition borrows its character.” 19 It will be helpful to make some further clarifications in our description of the peasant's experience of the soil. We might wonder if these various experiences that people have with regard to the field are merely passing experiences that are affected by a thousand different things in the life of the person who has the experience, but which are not really lasting experiences that could be said to have meaning in the sense of giving significant knowledge to the peasant or the artist. Are we making too much of the admittedly various (but perhaps still quite insignificant?) ways that objects can affect us is our particular lives? It is important I think to point out that for Marcel these experiences or attitudes are not just suggestions that the soil and landscape throw out to the peasant or to the artist, nor are either simply being reminded of past events through their various present experiences of the soil, nor are they engaging in simple imaginings, or sentimental flashbacks. Rather, this is what the soil means for each. In the language of existentialism, their experiences take place at the level of existential contact, and not at the level of reflection. Undoubtedly, there is an important relationship between the concept (the abstract idea) and the particular idea of each object of experience (and the history of philosophy has yielded different accounts of this relationship), yet the key point for Marcel is that the concept is abstract, general, public, whereas the particular idea the individual has is particular, personal and somewhat private. In short, the experiences each person has (which give rise to the particular ideas) are what they are through the involvement of a particular embodied subject with this soil. It is this level of existential contact that we must evoke in order to get even a glimpse of the meaning of each individual's experiences. As we noted in chapter 2, each human being encounters the “objects” of their experience in different ways, even though much about their respective experiences may be quite similar. If we insist on continually approaching epistemological issues by considering the object in isolation from the subject's own experiential context, and insist that this is the way it should be exclusively regarded, we end up with misleading and ultimately

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irresolvable philosophical problems. 3. The Relationship between Experience and Reflection It is an important part of our analysis to also consider the relationship between the two realms we have been discussing in this chapter: the realm of being-in-asituation (particular ideas), and the realm of conceptual knowledge (abstract ideas). This will also require us to pay close attention to Marcel's notion of the realm of primary reflection, and how this realm differs from the realm of beingin-a-situation. This will help us to explain how Marcel safeguards the objectivity of knowledge. The key point to note is that the objectivity of knowledge is preserved precisely in the move to abstraction. Acts of abstraction leave out the contextual situation of the object in our experience. Our special context, and the meanings present there, are bracketed out in the move to conceptual thinking. Marcel is drawing attention to the point that, prior to conceptual knowledge, all the “objects” of the individual's experience are permeated with special, particular meanings, meanings that are defined and conditioned by the individual subject's embodied situation in the world. But in conceptual knowledge certain essential features of these meanings are (in some cases often with great difficulty) abstracted by the intellect and presented as “objects” of knowledge available for all to consider. But obviously something will be lost here in this process of abstraction—that which has been mine in the experience, that which “situates” it in my life and makes it personal. 20 This explains why it is often very difficult for us to adequately express many of our experiences at the conceptual level. Marcel has tried to develop a way around this problem, not just by appealing to the phenomenological method, but also by his emphasis throughout his work on the creative role of the artist, and on dramatic art, as a way to evoke or reveal the nature of the human subject in its world. 21 Focusing on the process of abstraction brings us to consider what Marcel calls the realm of primary reflection. According to Marcel, primary reflection “tends to dissolve the unity of experience which is first put before it” 22 ; and he also says that reflection “is in a sense one of life's ways of rising from one level to another.” 23 Primary reflection includes normal, everyday reflection, as well as more complex theoretical thinking, and it involves conceptual generalizations, and the use of abstract thinking. This kind of thinking seeks demonstrable, functional connections and is operative in the sciences, mathematics, and “theoretical thinking” of any kind, including philosophy itself. It involves a “standing back” from, or abstraction from, our fundamental involvement with things, and engages in an inquiry which proceeds by means of disinterested concepts, which have shareable, public, and, therefore, universal content. According to Marcel, primary reflection normally arises when the individual is confronted by a problem at the level of experience. However, a problem requires a solution that is available for everybody. But essential features

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of experience can only be presented as “problems” for everybody to consider if the individual first abstracts from the “situated involvement” which defines the lived experience of the inquirer, and these essential features can only be maintained and discussed as problems if everyone involved in their appraisal does likewise. Marcel refers to an example from his school days: There is a story . . . that I often tell of how I had to pass an examination in physics which included, as a practical test, an experiment to determine one of the simple electrical formulae . . . . and I found myself quite incapable of joining the wires properly; so no current came through . . . It remains true in principle that any body and everybody can join up the wires, enable the current to pass through . . . Conversely, we must say that the further the intelligence passes beyond the limits of a purely technical activity, the less the reference to the “no matter whom,” the “anybody at all,” is applicable . . . . 24 We can apply this point to the peasant example. Suppose that the peasant is plowing his field when the tractor suddenly stops working. In this instance, the peasant will “abstract” (or disengage) from his “being-in-a-situation” of plowing the field and focus on the problem, that is, on the broken tractor itself. Perhaps the peasant will notice that the distributor cable is damaged, and will set about repairing it. This problem, however, is one that could, in principle, be identified and solved by the peasant's neighbor, or by any person. Primary reflection is, therefore, problem-solving thinking. It requires abstract concepts that allow us to publicly formulate and hopefully solve problems. This is true no matter how complex the problem is. It should be clear that the level of primary reflection is in fact the level where we can obtain objective knowledge. We move to this level from the level of experience. It is here that later continental philosophers could not avoid relativism. But Marcel avoids this trap, because when we move to the level of conceptual knowledge in the act of reflection, there is nothing going on in the relationship between our beliefs and the world which would relativize our knowledge claims. That which might be responsible for relativizing knowledge, the contextual situation of the subject, is precisely what is set aside in the act of abstraction. And so the concepts employed at the theoretical level are objective in two crucial senses. First, they represent essential features of the objects of experience (at an abstract level) as they really are in the objects, and second, these essential features are also objective in the important sense that they are understood by everyone in the same way. This is clear from Marcel's example of the electrical experiment. How else would human beings be able to collectively analyze and understand electrical theory, add to our knowledge of it, and establish that the laws of various electrical theories are true? If we apply this conclusion to our example of the peasant's problem with the

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distributor cable, we see that his (and indeed everybody's) conceptual analysis of this problem will involve concepts which adequately represent essential features of the object in question as they really are, for example, the shape of the distributor cable, its length, physical make-up, color, relationship to other engine parts, etc. Also, the neighboring peasant (and indeed anybody who contemplates the object) will understand conceptually these features in exactly the same way as the peasant. Hence, this knowledge is objective because, first, it adequately represents essential features of the objects of experience just as they are in themselves, and, second, it represents these features in the same way for all, regardless of each person's embodied situation in existence. Yet, in our example, the peasant and his neighbor will still have different particular ideas of the engine part. For example, the peasant may be particularly adept (and experienced), and his neighbor particularly inept, at repairing engines. These respective experiences (and various others) would therefore affect each man's particular ideas of engine parts. The examples I have discussed are simple examples of conceptual abstraction, but Marcel's insights apply also to all kinds of conceptual knowledge, including more complex types, such as theories. Theories consist of organized bodies of concepts, between which there will usually be complicated logical relationships; but these concepts are still abstracted from experience. So theories too will be objectively true (if they adequately represent reality) in the sense just described. A scientific theory, for example, would be objectively true if the parts of reality represented by the concepts utilized in the theory are represented just as they really are. And, of course, all who contemplate them will understand these concepts in the same way. 25 This would be true, for example, for all those who work on the theory of evolution. They will all understand and utilize the main concepts of the theory (such as macroevolution, mircoevolution, natural selection, survival of the fittest, etc.), in more or less the same way. Otherwise, collective work on the theory would not be possible. It is true that Marcel does not elaborate in any way exactly how the mind in conceptual knowledge adequately represents key features of the objects of experience as they are in themselves. In short, he has no detailed, positive account of intentionality. (It must be pointed out that, in this respect, he is similar to most contemporary European philosophers, including Derrida). But I believe I am right in arguing that Marcel nevertheless holds that knowledge is objective in the two crucial senses which I have described. In this way, Marcel's analysis of the realm of primary reflection and the realm of experience (or existential contact) clearly does justice to the individuality of human experience, while also safeguarding the objectivity of knowledge. Marcel has attempted to develop a way that allows him to place the contextual situation of the human subject at the center of epistemology in a way that previous thinkers did not (such as Descartes), but also without falling into the problem of relativizing all knowledge claims to the contextual situation of the

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subject. This was where many continental philosophers (some inadvertently perhaps) fell into relativism. For it was in the move from the realm of experience (or being-in-the-world) to the realm of conceptual knowledge that many influential contemporary European philosophers (for example, Heidegger, Barthes, Foucault, Derrida) made a fatal mistake, a mistake which took them (and nearly all of the movements of which they were a part) inexorably in the direction of relativism about knowledge. As mentioned at the outset of this chapter, recent philosophers such as Derrida, influenced by Heidegger, claimed that conceptual knowledge itself, just like every other experience of being-in-the-world, is relative to the context of the inquirer. This applies also, and perhaps especially to, theories, although it must be pointed out that Derrida and his followers never provide a single clear, detailed description of a concrete case illustrating exactly how conceptual knowledge is permanently compromised by the ineluctable priority of human subjectivity. Marcel avoids these difficulties, and the relativism which gives rise to them, in the way we have just seen. He avoids these unpleasant consequences by holding that the level of being-in-a-situation, or situated involvement, is what it is because of a particular context, but that this particular context does not compromise in any way the objectivity of knowledge, which remains secure on the abstract, conceptual level. Marcel, however, famously warns against placing too much emphasis on the objectivity which is the defining characteristic of primary reflection. He does this because of his work in phenomenology which leads him to conclude that many of the human subject's most profound experiences simply will not submit to the requirements of primary reflection. This is because many of the individual subject's personal experiences cannot be fully captured in concepts, which, after all, are supposed to be essentially disinterested, and have sharable, public content. He is particularly keen to ensure that the human subject itself is not treated in primary reflection as just another object among objects. 26 This is very important because one of the great abuses of modern thought has been its tendency to try to objectify all human experience in concepts, and failing this, to judge that any experience which cannot be so objectified is not worthy of serious philosophical consideration. In opposition to this, Marcel holds that there is a whole range of experiences that cannot be fully objectified in conceptual knowledge. 27 These experiences occur in what Marcel sometimes calls the realm of mystery, not because it is an unknowable realm, but because it is a realm, which cannot be fully captured in primary reflection. 28 Some of the “mysteries” of Being, according to Marcel, include our particular being-in-a-situation, our experience of our own embodiment, the unity of body and mind, the nature of sensation, and the higher levels of Being: the “concrete approaches” of love, hope, fidelity and faith. 29 (In the next chapter, we will consider the realm of mystery more closely.) By drawing a clear distinction between the level of being-in-a-situation, and the level of conceptual knowledge, and by profoundly illuminating the nature of

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the relationship between them, Marcel wishes to show not only the importance, but also the limits of primary reflection. At the same time he wishes to preserve the integrity and dignity of the human person by doing appropriate justice to human subjectivity. Approaching the matter from the other direction, we might say that Marcel wishes to show not only the importance, but also the limits of human subjectivity, and at the same time in doing this he preserves the objectivity of knowledge. This is a crucial achievement because there is probably no tendency more than relativism about either epistemology or morality that has given philosophy a bad name in the twentieth century. Marcel realizes that if philosophy is to have any value, and is to help people understand better the human condition, their experiences and the universe, it must at least aspire to the objectivity of knowledge. We must attempt at least to develop our philosophical positions and our worldview in an objective way, no matter what the obstacles presented by the subject matter, and no matter what the resistance might be within the philosophical community. It is to an elaboration of these matters that we must now turn.

Four SECONDARY REFLECTION, ETHICS AND THE TRANSCENDENT 1. Marcel's Theistic Worldview Gradually over the course of his career, Marcel came to adopt a fundamentally Christian worldview, informed especially by a Christian existentialist view of the human person. Although present in a more inchoate way in his early work, this view became progressively more explicit in his later thought, eventually being responsible for earning him the label “theistic existentialist.” Marcel's early works, Metaphysical Journal and Being and Having, written mostly in a diary format, offer a set of probing, but inchoate and often scattered thoughts on a variety of subjects. Yet his reflections in these early works laid the seeds for his religious conversion. He came to realize that his fundamental ideas, although developed within an existentialist framework, were nevertheless compatible with (and later came to require) a religious view of the world, as a way of giving expression to his experiences of the transcendent. Marcel’s ideas were steadily progressing in a spiritual direction. As he later put it in The Philosophy of Existentialism: “It is quite possible that the existence of the fundamental Christian data may be necessary in fact to enable the mind to conceive some of the notions which I have attempted to analyze; but these notions cannot be said to depend on the data of Christianity, and they do not presuppose it . . . I have experienced [the development of these ideas] more than twenty years before I had the remotest thought of becoming a Catholic.” 1 The compatibility of Marcel's vision of the human person with Christianity was to have a quite profound significance for his own life. It led him in 1929 to convert to Catholicism, at the age of forty. Marcel had just published a review of a novel (Souffrance du chrétien) by the French Catholic writer, François Mauriac (1885–1979). Mauriac recognized that the review appealed to various themes about human nature and morality that indicated Marcel's familiarity with and acceptance of important Catholic themes concerning forgiveness, moral character and the religious justification of the moral order. After Mauriac read the review he wrote to Marcel and explicitly asked him whether he ought not to join the Catholic Church. He had picked a fortuitous time to write to Marcel, who records that he was at this point in his life enjoying “a period of calm and equilibrium,” leading him to treat Mauriac's request as prophetic, saying “he was but a spokesman and the call came from much higher up.” 2 It was as though a more than human voice was questioning him and asking him if he could “really persevere indefinitely in that equivocal position of yours?” 3 It was as if the voice

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said to him: “Is it even honest to continue to think and to speak like someone who believes in the faith of others and who is convinced that this faith is everything but illusion, but who nevertheless does not resolve to take it unto himself? Is there not a sort of equivocation here that must be definitively dispelled; is it not like a leap before which you are obliged to decide?” 4 He decided that he could only reply to this last question with an assent. And it is important to point out, but not at all surprising, that his conversion did not significantly change his philosophy, although it did cause him to explore further the role of the transcendent in his work overall. In particular, he became very interested in the ways that ordinary human experiences, especially moral experiences, call forth the realm of the transcendent in human life. He also became interested in the objective nature of such knowledge, and how the philosopher could reveal its objectivity. We saw in the last chapter how Marcel attempts to ground the objectivity of knowledge in general. In this chapter, we shall continue this theme, paying special attention to the recondite areas of moral knowledge, and knowledge of the human relationship to the transcendent. During this time Marcel did not hold a formal third-level position as a philosopher, but rather worked as a lecturer, reviewer, playwright and drama, and music critic. He eschewed the label of “professional philosopher,” but was still very active in the French intellectual scene where he knew and frequently met other luminaries of the time such as Jacques Maritain, Jean Paul Sartre, Charles Du Bos (1882–1939), and Jean Wahl (1888–1974). In fact, a group of philosophers used to meet regularly at Marcel's house in Paris to discuss philosophy. This group included Paul Ricoeur, Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986), and Nicolas Berdyaev (1874–1948), in addition to the philosophers already mentioned. As a result, Marcel had much more of an influence on these philosophers than is generally supposed. Marcel was often the theistic voice in these discussions, challenging some of the more secular tendencies of Sartre, for example, though he has observed that, although there was good will all round, and the discussions were fruitful, there was usually little meeting of minds! Although Marcel was a fairly trenchant critic of Sartrean existentialism (with which the meaning of “existentialism” has, erroneously, come to be identified), he is nevertheless clearly an existentialist in two crucial senses. First, he accepts that philosophical inquiry must begin with human experience, that is, with the concrete lived experience of the individual human subject in the world. Marcel believes that we can identify by means of the descriptive method of phenomenology (first proposed by Edmund Husserl) the philosophical structure of human experience, and probe the implications of this structure for other issues, such as the nature of knowledge, human relationships, and moral behavior. Second, Marcel (unlike Sartre) does not believe that “existence precedes essence,” a phrase which is often taken by many to be a kind of definition of existentialism. But the notion that existence precedes essence, in Sartre's sense, only makes sense within an atheistic existentialism, such as that of Sartre or perhaps

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Heidegger (though he denied this), or José Ortega y Gasset (1883–1955). In his well-known essay “Existentialism is a Humanism,” Sartre had defined existentialists (in whose number he explicitly includes Marcel) as holding that “existence precedes essence, or, if you prefer, that subjectivity must be the starting point.” 5 However, Sartre is mistaken in thinking that these alternatives are the same, for Marcel accepts that subjectivity must be the starting point for philosophical inquiry but he does not accept that existence precedes essence. Marcel points this out when he notes that Heidegger also rejected the idea that existence precedes essence, and comments that this was an idea “that I, for my part, have never admitted as such.” 6 Toward the end of his life, Marcel more or less broke with Sartre completely, mainly over ethical questions. As we shall see, Marcel explicitly bases his Christian view of the person—and its implications for human relationships, ethics and the transcendent—on the view that essence precedes existence. Our focus in what follows will be primarily on his approach to ethics, with some discussion of his approach to the realm of the transcendent also (a theme that we will further develop in chapter 5). Marcel did little direct writing on either religious belief or on moral philosophy in general, or on specific ethical problems, yet his work is deeply ethical and is very much concerned with correct ethical behavior. Indeed, from one point of view, the whole of his thought is a sustained discussion on how to live ethically in a world that is making it increasingly difficult to do so. Examining his philosophy from the point of view of ethics is very rewarding, and one of the best ways in which to approach Marcel. The implications of Marcel's view of the human person are revealed by him—as they are for many existentialists and phenomenologists—in phenomenological descriptions of the intentional structures of moral agency, descriptions grounded in human experience rather than in a logical analysis (in terms of rules and regulations) of how an authentic self would behave in specific situations. Marcel agrees with many who hold that if one takes care of one's character, the specific moral issues will take care of themselves, a major theme, of course, of Aristotle's (384–322 BC) ethics. But if one neglects one's moral character (or from the philosophical point of view if one misdescribes or completely misses the intentional structures of moral agency), then a logical analysis of moral situations, moral rules, and moral concepts will be of little value in one's life (even though it might have value from the point of view of contributing to one's intellectual understanding of a particular issue). 2. Secondary Reflection and the Realm of Mystery As we noted in earlier chapters, Marcel's problem with the realm of conceptual knowledge is that it is unable to give an adequate account of what he calls the “being-in-a-situation,” or what I call the “situated involvement,” of the subject in his or her world. We noted in chapter 2 that the subject is for Marcel fundamentally an embodied being-in-a-situation, and is not solely a thinking or

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knowing subject. This analysis leads Marcel to reflect further on the nature of reflection itself. Reflection, according to Marcel, is “nothing other than attention” 7 to our pre-reflective lived experiences, which are habitual and ontologically primary. However, it is possible to distinguish between primary and secondary reflection. According to Marcel, “we can say that where primary reflection tends to dissolve the unity of experience which is first put before it, the function of secondary reflection is essentially recuperative; it reconquers that unity.” 8 As noted in chapter 3, primary reflection is “ordinary,” everyday reflection, which employs conceptual generalizations, abstractions, and an appeal to what is universal and verifiable. This kind of reflection aims at abstracting from our everyday situation, and seeks “public” concepts that are accessible to everyone in the same way regardless of their actual “situated involvement” in existence. This type of reflection typically deals with problems of various kinds that confront human beings in the course of their everyday lives. A “problem,” as Marcel understands the term, is a project that requires a solution that is available for everybody. 9 A problem presupposes a community of inquiry in which the problem can be publicly formulated, discussed, and solved. In order to set up a “problem,” it is necessary to perform an act of conceptual abstraction, abstraction from our ordinary, everyday way of living. Suppose, for example, that a man is walking in the woods, lost in thought, when he suddenly hears a noise. In this instance, the individual will “abstract” from, or stand back from, his “situated involvement” of walking in the woods, and will focus on the “problem” presented, that is, on the woods themselves and this particular noise as “objects.” Perhaps the man will listen further and hear voices, and conclude that there is a group of people nearby, who are the source of the noise. This “problem,” however, is one that could, in principle, be identified and solved by any person. Primary reflection is, therefore, the means by which it is possible for the community of human beings to collectively formulate and discuss problems, and to attempt to arrive at solutions to them. Characterized in this way, primary reflection is obviously a very important feature of the ontological structure of human beings, a fact that Marcel does not wish to deny, and he does acknowledge also that “experience cannot fail to transform itself into reflection.” 10 (Indeed, he has no real problem with primary reflection in itself; his problem is with those philosophers who want to make it the paradigm way of obtaining knowledge.) Yet the level of primary reflection is a level where human beings do obtain objective knowledge. This is because the concepts employed at the theoretical level are objective because they represent essential features of the objects of experience (at an abstract level) as they really are in the objects, and second, these essential features are also objective in the crucial sense that everyone understands them in the same way. So, to continue with our example of the man walking in the woods and hearing a noise, his (and indeed everybody's) conceptual analysis of this problem will involve concepts which adequately

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represent essential features of the object in question as they really are, for example, the type of noise it is, the loudness of the noise, the direction it came from, its significance in that context, etc. Also, another passerby in the woods (and indeed anybody who contemplates the object) will understand conceptually these features exactly as the first man did. This latter kind of knowledge, as we explained in detail in chapter 3, is objective knowledge in the usual understanding of that term. It is a mistake, however, to move on from this analysis to the conclusion that all human knowledge is to be understood in this way. For Marcel argues that primary reflection, understood in his sense, cannot give a satisfactory account of the actual “situated involvement” of the individual in his or her particular situation in the world, nor should it be required to. What this means is that there can be no “scientific” or “theoretical” account of human life in its fullness. This fundamental involvement of human beings in the world brings us again to one of Marcel's best known themes, the realm of mystery. Marcel holds that the sense of mystery has a quite revelatory role, a role that he tries to restore to philosophy, and as Ralph McInerny (1929–) notes, “If he had done nothing else, his success in this matter would constitute a major contribution to philosophy.” 11 The realm of mystery, for Marcel, is a realm where the distinction between subject and object breaks down: “A mystery is something in which I am myself involved, and it can therefore only be thought of as a sphere where the distinction between subject and object, between what is in me and what is before me, loses its meaning and its initial validity.” 12 The most basic level of human existence, being-in-a-situation, or situated involvement, is the level at which the subject is immersed in a context, a level where the subject does not experience “objects” (in the abstract sense of “object”). This realm of human existence is best described as “mysterious,” from the philosophical point of view, because it cannot be fully captured and presented in concepts. It is even difficult to reveal or evoke in phenomenological descriptions. Many human experiences are “mysterious” because they intimately involve the questioner in such a way that the meaning of the experience cannot be fully conveyed by means of abstract conceptual thinking, that is, by cutting the individual subject off from the experience. This would include experiences of fidelity, inter-personal relationships, religious experiences, and experiences involving ethical responses to human beings and situations. Yet Marcel is arguing that this realm of being is still objectively real, and that it can be revealed to some extent in conceptual knowledge, especially through philosophy, 13 which is what he is doing in his own work. 14 This brings us to the notion of secondary reflection. The above analysis of human experiences prompts the following question: if the realm of mystery is non-conceptual and evades conceptual knowledge in a significant sense, how is it known? Marcel introduces the complex notion of secondary reflection, or of non-conceptual knowledge, to address this matter. This notion is one of Marcel's most difficult concepts, and resists easy descript-

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ion. Here is one of his clearer statements about how secondary reflection helps us recover the realm of mystery: The recognition of mystery, on the other hand, is an essentially positive act of the mind, the supremely positive act in virtue of which all positivity may perhaps be strictly defined. In this sphere everything seems to go on as if I found myself acting on an intuition which I possess without immediately knowing myself to possess it—an intuition which cannot be, strictly speaking, self-conscious and which can grasp itself only through the modes of experience in which its image is reflected, and which it lights up by being thus reflected in them. The essential metaphysical step would then consist in a reflection upon this reflection. By means of this, thought stretches out toward the recovery of an intuition which otherwise loses itself in proportion as it is exercised. 15 This is a very profound statement by Marcel of one of the most important notions in his philosophy, a notion to which Marcel scholars have given much attention. Kenneth Gallagher has argued that secondary reflection is a real form of reflection but that it is “illuminated” in some way by the mystery of being. David Appelbaum has argued that it is a pre-reflective type of consciousness, which involves sensation and embodiment. As we will see in a moment, I think Applebaum has the emphasis in the wrong place in his analysis of secondary reflection. Others have said that the notion of “intuition” in Marcel's thought provides an insight into how secondary reflection works, while Thomas Busch has suggested that it is a philosophical type of reflection that allows us to at least partially express those areas of experience that are beyond ordinary conceptual description. Tom Michaud, in a very insightful analysis, has argued that the key to understanding secondary reflection is its correlation with Marcel's problem/ mystery distinction. Secondary reflection, according to Michaud, is “a reflection on an intuitive encounter with mystery: a philosophical reflection which 'lives off' a blinded and mute intuition of a mystery of existence and which can illumine and articulate such an intuition to express a philosophically intelligible and satisfying account of the nature of the mystery.” 16 Michaud's analysis draws attention to the fact that secondary reflection helps us to move beyond primary reflection, and provides us with some reflective insight into those experiences ultimately beyond primary reflection; he also points out that secondary reflection is not only intelligible, but satisfying, at least to the extent that we can identify the experiences, recognize their value, and their ultimate inaccessibility to primary reflection. Secondary refection, therefore, allows us to avoid collapsing into an area of total mystery, and so allows us to avoid irrationalism and mysticism. So, despite Applebaum's view, secondary reflection does not seem to be

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pre-reflective, but is more post-reflective (if “reflective” here refers to ordinary reflection, that is, primary reflection). According to Marcel, secondary reflection helps us to recover those experiences that are beyond primary reflection. Yet he also describes it as a “second reflection” on primary reflection. 17 So I think the most accurate characterization of the concept is that secondary reflection can be understood as both the act of critical reflection on primary reflection, and the process of recovery of the “mysteries of being.” Therefore, I suggest that secondary reflection is best characterized in the following way: secondary reflection begins as the act of critical reflection (a “second” reflection) on ordinary conceptual thinking (primary reflection). This “second” or critical reflection enables the philosopher to discover that the categories of primary reflection are not adequate to provide a true account of the nature of the self, or of the self's most profound experiences. Here secondary reflection involves ordinary reflection, but with the crucial difference that, unlike ordinary reflection, it is a critical reflection directed at the nature of thought itself. 18 This first move of secondary reflection then progresses by bringing the human subject out of the realm of the conceptual into the realm of actual experience. Marcel suggests that the act of secondary reflection culminates in a realization, or discovery, or in an assurance of the realm of mystery, and motivates human actions appropriate to this realm. What is this discovery or assurance? It is a kind of intuitive grasp or experiential insight into various experiences which are non-conceptual, and which conceptual knowledge can never fully express. “Secondary reflection” is a general term that refers to both the act of critical reflection on primary reflection, and the realization or assurance of the realm of mystery beyond primary reflection. Since secondary reflection has this dual meaning, it is easy to understand why the term has often been misleading, a point that Marcel himself has recognized. 19 It is necessary to illustrate this notion further with a concrete example. Let us consider the experience of fidelity, from the many examples Marcel discusses throughout his work. Marcel's basic point about the experience of fidelity is that a complete and precise conceptual analysis of the meaning of the experience of fidelity is not possible. If we try to describe conceptually the meaning of fidelity, we fail because we keep running into the problem of trying to state what conditions would be necessary for an act to be an act of fidelity, but the problem is that fidelity appears to have an unconditional, experiential element to it, an element that is impossible to describe completely in conceptual terms. When we try to state necessary conditions for fidelity, the task becomes impossible because we can readily imagine a new case of fidelity that does not satisfy the necessary conditions—that is, we recognize the inadequacy of the description and the conditions in the face of the actual experience. We might, for example, think that one basic necessary condition is that the person we wish to be faithful to must at least be a living person, but Marcel believes that we can easily imagine cases where we should show fidelity to a lost loved one. Yet despite these conceptual diff-

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iculties, he holds that we can recognize and appreciate the experience of fidelity quite easily when we are in the presence of fidelity, and we also find it quite easy to recognize whether a particular act was a true act of fidelity or not. (We shall return to this fascinating example in more detail in chapter 5.) The concept of secondary reflection brings us to a new dimension, a dimension to which secondary reflection allows us access, the realm of being, or the realm of the unity of experience. This realm, as we have seen, cannot be deduced in the logical sense from the structure of thought, 20 and, as Marcel points out, this realm is itself the guide (the “intuition”) of reflective thought. 21 So Marcel holds that conceptual knowledge is a vital aspect of experience, but as philosophers we must identify its place and its limits. We must also be aware of the possibility of non-conceptual knowledge, and he suggests that the identification and elucidation of this realm belongs to philosophy. It is to be achieved by means of phenomenological descriptions in which necessary connections are discovered in the realm of mystery. We have seen above that Marcel develops the view that human beings are fundamentally beings-in-situations first, and then thinking or reflective beings second. We have also seen that in developing a critique of the obsession with primary reflection (with the world of “having)” he does not mean to advocate any kind of relativism, or to hold that conceptual knowledge is not important; he only wishes to illustrate where it fits into the analysis of the human subject, and to point out that it is important not to overstate its range or its value. All of this has important implications for our understanding of the realms of the ethical and of the transcendent. 3. Ethics and the Transcendent Marcel, like many of the existentialists, would reject the fact/value distinction in ethical analysis. This distinction, which can be traced back to David Hume's (1711–1776) discussion of the is/ought problem, became crucial in the work of A.J. Ayer (1910–1989), C.L. Stevenson (1908–1979), and R.M. Hare (1919– 2002), and later became very influential within analytic philosophy in general (although it should be noted that several philosophers within the analytic tradition had little use for the fact/value distinction, including G.E.M Anscombe {1919–2001}.) 22 Yet Marcel and many of the existentialists reject it as a fundamentally flawed way of approaching moral philosophy. This is because the separation of human existence into a realm of “facts,” and then the quest to deduce a realm of “values” from these facts, with which to judge these facts (and therefore regulate human behavior) is entirely artificial. The distinction emerges from a failure to recognize an essential point about the nature of human existence—that it is impossible for it to be indifferent to value from the outset. Marcel believes that being, to use his special term for the plenitude of human existence, is endowed with value by virtue of its very existence, and can have no

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ethical significance if this is not so. We cannot first have existence entirely devoid of value, and then “derive” value from some independent source and add it to being. Marcel does agree that it is possible to refuse to recognize the fact that being has value, which is really to refuse to recognize the true nature of human beings. But the point here is that this is a refusal, and not a sincerely held result arrived at by means of a philosophical analysis of the evidence. 23 There is a depth to reality that a certain type of cynicism or nihilism can refuse to recognize, for a variety of reasons. 24 To refuse to recognize the value of being for Marcel means that we withdraw from the intersubjective nature of human relations, and the behavior appropriate to these relations, and focus instead on one's self as the center of meaning and value. We are indeed free to refuse, and nobody can really force us into the path of being and truth. Yet we do have a need for being, according to Marcel, a need for fullness and plenitude in our relations with others, yet “the ontological need…of being can deny itself.” 25 His work involves an attempt to recover this need, or reawaken the awareness of this intuition of the realm of “situated involvement,” and establish its role as the inspiration and guide of thought. There is a crucial difference between Marcel's approach to human existence and what might be described as a modern, secularist, evolution-based approach. Marcel insists on something that the modern approach has difficulty accepting: that human existence by its very nature is already endowed with value. Secularist versions of modernism have special difficulty with this, not so much because they want to deny it (which they do), but because modern secularists cannot see a way to include an underlying realm of value in their overall account of reality, including human reality. If a person is committed to the worldview that holds that the universe has no ultimate design or purpose to it, that human life was a random accident, due purely to the blind forces of physics operating by means of the evolutionary process, it is hard to see how he or she could arrive at any theory of morality from such a view. The problem is not how can we be inspired to live morally based on this value-less view of human existence and the universe, but how can we justify our moral theory based on this view? As Charles Taliaferro has succinctly put it, “In a theistic cosmos, values lie at the heart of reality, whereas for most [secularists] values are emergent, coming into being from evolutionary processes that are themselves neither inherently good or bad.” 26 These two fundamentally different ways of understanding reality are often at the heart of many disputes today, both on moral issues and other topics, and are often at the heart of some contemporary objections to Marcel's position. Marcel has a striking metaphor to describe how reality is already endowed with value: “For what we call values are perhaps only a kind of refraction of reality, like the rainbow colors that emerge from a prism when white light is passed through it.” 27 He pushes this analysis further to suggest that this experience of the value-laden nature of being also gives us an insight into the

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transcendent nature of human existence. The idea here is that there is a transcendent aspect to human existence because it is already endowed with value, which no individual brought to it, or created, but which we recognize, and which will exist after we are gone. This view of transcendence does not emphasize transcendence understood in the sense of being the result of an objective demonstration (though Marcel does not deny this sense either), but rather in the sense that it is something we can recognize in our own experience. In this sense, Marcel suggests that perhaps the experience of transcendence should not be primarily understood as something which comes from outside us, although it clearly has an independence from any one individual. But transcendence can also be understood as a kind of reaching out of myself toward the intersubjective nature of existence, a reaching out which is an essential part of the human condition, and without which we are not fulfilled. For Marcel, this experience of transcendence can eventually lead to the affirmation of God (the subject of chapter 5). Marcel next introduces his well-known notion of disponibilité (usually translated as “availability” in English), a key ethical notion in his work. If the above analysis of human existence sets up the foundation for Marcel's approach to ethics, then the notion of availability can be seen as a more practical statement of how our actual behavior toward other human beings is to be conducted. The notion of disponibilité is meant to convey the idea of a kind of “spiritual availability” which we should have toward other human beings. 28 It is the idea that we should approach other human beings with an openness and humility; we should not be aloof or egocentric, or obsessed with our own affairs. It is to approach other people and events with an attitude that has plenty of “give” in it. On the other hand unavailability (indisponibilité), says Marcel, is a “hardening of the categories in accordance with which we conceive and evaluate the world.” 29 Modern society, with its emphasis on primary reflection, scientism and naturalism, has smothered disponibilité, ushering in a new kind of alienation (a theme of several of Marcel's plays). Marcel believes we need a reawakening of all that is spiritual in humanity, including our sense of the transcendent, both in inter-personal relationships and in our relationship with God. He introduces the notion of presence as a useful metaphor to convey this point: It is an undeniable fact, though it is hard to describe in intelligible terms, that there are some people who reveal themselves as “present” —that is to say, at our disposal—when we are in pain or in need . . . while there are other people who do not give us this feeling, however great is their goodwill. It should be noted at once that the distinction between presence and absence is not at all the same as that between attention and distraction . . . there is a way of listening which is a way of giving, and another way of listening which is a way of refusing, or refusing

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oneself . . . . 30 He gives an intriguing example of how I can be present to a person who is half way across the world from me, and yet not be present to a person who is in the same room as me! He is undoubtedly right about this, yet it is hard to present this truth as the result of an objective demonstration. As he puts it, “though nobody would attempt to deny that we do have such experiences, it is very difficult to express in words, and we should ask ourselves why.” 31 It is, therefore, a good illustration of what Marcel means by saying that, although we cannot demonstrate truths like this in the sense of “demonstrate” required by primary reflection, we can nevertheless “know” such truths in our own experience; they bring with them an assurance which gives certainty, even if they are not objectively demonstrable. This is not to reject the category of objective demonstration, of course, but simply to point out that it is not quite appropriate here and, if insisted upon or championed as the paradigm way to knowledge, then something fundamental about human existence will be lost. Another more helpful way to understand Marcel's notion of disponibilité is in terms of Buber's distinction between I-It and I-Thou relations, an analysis of human relations which Marcel wholeheartedly endorses. 32 (We will consider Marcel’s thought in relation to Buber’s in more detail in chapter 9.) The I-Thou relation is spoken with our whole being, according to Buber; it involves a dialogue with the other, in which I am a participant and not merely a spectator. Such relations involve risk and sacrifice, they are the basis of true freedom, and they lead to the fulfillment of the human person. As K.R. Hanley astutely puts it: “An incitement to create is always the distinctive mark of such gifted moments of presence.” 33 We can refuse these relations as we said earlier, and the modern world is becoming increasingly dominated by I-It relationships, yet the phenomenological analysis of I-Thou relations accurately captures the inexpressible depth of these relationships. This depth of human relationships can be clearly seen in the experience of fidelity which is the basis of so many of our human relationships, from simple promise-making, to friendships, to marriage vows, to a commitment to general welfare of our fellow human beings. This experience evokes in us a sense of an eternal, timeless, unchangeable value, to which the individual is faithful. Its value is so high that it demands of us an unconditional, rather than a conditional, commitment. It is something that comes to us from outside, whose value we recognize and acknowledge in our commitment. In this sense, Marcel argues that values are not created, and he is critical of Sartre's position on this issue. We see the truth of this in our own experiences of unconditional commitments, and also in the fact that where values are created there are severe problems with maintaining the commitment and in justifying it logically. As he puts it: “If I examine myself honestly . . . I find that I do not 'choose' my values at all, but that I recognize them and then posit my actions in accordance or in contradiction with

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these values.” 34 Marcel goes on to argue that in this way we can easily come to regard reality as a gift, which is ultimately to be trusted, and which is the basis of the hope which undergrids human life (and which rejects despair and nihilism). 35 The world of disponibilité is the complete opposite to the world of I-It, of primary reflection, which, we have seen, is the world of abstraction, manipulation, possession, a world which seeks solutions to universal, public problems of various sorts. Marcel argues that the problem with the modern attitude is that it is more and more dominated by primary reflection; increasingly everything in the modern world must come under this realm, including the human subject, so that the subject simply becomes another object that needs to be analyzed in the way all objects are analyzed. He describes the modern world as a “broken world” (le monde cassé) to reflect the fact that we are losing the realm of being and availability, upon which authentic human relationships and the spirit of transcendence are founded. “Therein lies the reason,” he argues, “that we may appear to have entered into the age of despair: we have not ceased believing in techniques, that is, envisioning reality as an ensemble of problems, and yet, at the same time, the global bankruptcy of techniques as a whole is as clearly discernable as are its partial successes.” 36 Elsewhere he notes that: “It can never be too strongly emphasized that the crisis which Western man is undergoing today is a metaphysical one; [our] sense of disquiet . . . rises from the very depth of man's being.” 37 At this point Marcel is well aware that many people working through his view will refuse to go with him all the way, right to a recognition of those experiences that are beyond primary reflection, and which reveal to us its place and limits (which is, of course, a crucial philosophical point that any honest philosopher must be interested in revealing). What if our participant in discussion refuses to recognize the realm of being and the fact that being and value are inseparable, or the philosophical and ethical significance of various other experiences (for example, fidelity) that Marcel describes? What if, even after going (systematically) through the essential points in Marcel's phenomenological project, our participant still refuses to appreciate what Marcel is referring to? At this point, there is little more one can do. Here is William James on the same issue: “The minds of some of you, I know, will absolutely refuse to do so, refuse to think in non-conceptualized terms. I myself absolutely refused to do so for years . . . No words of mine will probably convert you, for words can be the names only of concepts . . . I must leave life to teach the lesson.” 38 Marcel agrees, but he thinks that philosophy, and also literature and drama, can help in this regard as well. Human beings, for Marcel, are dislocated, especially in contemporary culture, cut off for the most part from those experiences which most give expression to their fundamental natures. This is because our preoccupation with abstraction—with our desire to master and control reality in terms of the categories of primary reflection—cuts us off from who we are: beings-in-situations-with-others. Nowhere, Marcel points out forcefully, is this

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more obvious than in the modern world of scientific advancement and bureaucratic control, where the subject is constantly being reduced to a functionary role, one of Marcel's main worries in his critique of the rise of mass society. 4. Marcel and “Moral Philosophy” I would like to conclude this discussion of the implications of Marcel's thought for the areas of ethics and the transcendent by briefly considering how his approach contrasts with the approach to ethics found in twentieth century analytic philosophy. It will be quite helpful to contrast Marcel's approach with that of the analytic approach as a way of further clarifying his view. Marcel nowhere systematically discusses this topic, but nevertheless it is possible to be reasonably sure of the line he would take, given all we have shown above. The first point of contrast between Marcel's view and the analytic approach is that the latter has no room for the realm of mystery in its analyses, and is not sympathetic (to put it mildly) to the role that phenomenological descriptions of human experience can play in our understanding of ethical behavior. Analytic philosophy has struggled greatly with the whole area of moral philosophy, specifically with the attempt to justify ethics given the enlightenment assumptions of most analytic philosophers. These assumptions include the fact that it is not possible to derive an “ought” from an “is,” that the universe has no larger purpose or plan behind it, that there is nothing necessary about human nature (and therefore about human values), as well as an obsession with epistemological and moral relativism, and a hostility toward religion and religious morality. These are the trends which influence modern moral philosophy, and while there is a whole industry in the area of moral philosophy, especially in North America, there is little by way of progress being made on moral questions. As a result, moral philosophy—within the movement of analytic philosophy—is often marginalized by those in other disciplines, who think that they can do just as good a job in ethics as those trained in philosophy. Certainly few people would think of consulting a moral philosopher today if they were faced with a moral dilemma! Analytic philosophers generally hold that all ethical reflection must be purely conceptual, and is all the better for not appealing to our ordinary experience (except perhaps to confirm our intuitions concerning various examples used in the analyses). But no personal appeal is appropriate for analytic philosophers, like, for example, Marcel's appeal to the personal experience of the philosopher in his phenomenological analysis of the transcendental nature of value. Analytic philosophers might object to Marcel's notion of mystery by saying that if it is not possible to objectify the realm of ordinary experience (or of non-conceptual knowledge), then how can we know it? More generally, what this objection is really saying is that if we cannot fully objectify an area of human experience, then we cannot really know anything about it at all. This is one of the

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main difficulties an analytic philosopher would raise about Marcel's position. I believe Marcel would reply to this line of reasoning in the following way. In order to describe experiences, which—being experiences—are fundamentally non-conceptual, we require conceptual knowledge. To put it more accurately, we can employ conceptual knowledge to inadequately describe or incompletely conceptualize certain experiences which must ultimately be experienced to be fully known, “known,” that is, at a level which is beyond the distinction between the self and the concept it grasps. Marcel is attempting such a description of non-conceptual knowledge in his philosophical work. Therefore, he does not believe that this is a totally private realm, to which no objective, collective access is possible. Marcel also illustrates in his plays that it is in dramatic work that we best see the “mysteries of being” manifested, that is, manifested at a level beyond mere thinking. In this way, art complements philosophy in attempting to understand and communicate some insight into the nature of the knowledge which is non-conceptual. From the point of view of logic, Marcel is pointing out that it is fallacious to claim that the realm of mystery must be fully private if it cannot be made fully objective, and, even more important, that it can have no philosophical or epistemological significance unless it can be made fully objective. Marcel would be critical of the abstract analysis of ethical situations and concepts that is typical of analytic philosophy. Such analyses would be problematic on two fronts. In the first place, they are in the realm of problems, the realm of primary reflection, and so would be cut off from the “situated involvement” of the individual subject who is doing the analyzing. Such analyses could have, at very best, a limited role in ethical reflection. In the second place, Marcel has been arguing for the view that it is the type of person one is which will determine how one behaves in ethical situations, not an abstract analysis which one has performed independently of one's situation (though he would not deny, I think, that an abstract analysis could have some value). As we saw above in the case of fidelity, the type of person one is—whether one operates on the I-Thou level when this is appropriate, or whether one's life is primarily dominated by the I-It attitude—will determine how one reacts in various cases which call forth fidelity, such as making promises to a friend, marital vows, etc. Further, the essential experience which provides the motivation for, and which ultimately gives meaning to, the behavior, is inexpressible in conceptual terms. This position ties in, of course, with Marcel's belief in human nature, which supports an objective account of behavior appropriate to human relationships. It also ties in with an Aristotelian/Thomistic view of ethics, although Marcel does not discuss this link. But his appeal to the fact that it is the type of person one is that will be decisive in ethical situations, not how one analyzes the situation, is clearly evocative of the notion of character formation by means of habitual virtuous activity that is at the heart of traditional ethics. The analytic philosopher might respond to this general line of argument by

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insisting that an abstract analysis can have great value because it can help us better understand particular ethical problems, can show whether we are inconsistent in our various ethical beliefs, can clear up ethical confusions, and surely this would help us make better moral decisions? In addition, this kind of understanding would contribute to our overall development as a person, in that it would lead to a more mature worldview, which would also affect our ethical behavior for the better. Marcel is too dismissive, the analytic philosopher might suggest, of the value of this type of analysis. Nevertheless, we can see how Marcel's view could accommodate to some extent this feature of analytic ethics, yet his view also moves beyond it in allowing a role for mystery, which the analytic approach denies. By dismissing the realm of mystery, and insisting that the category of primary reflection is the only way to knowledge, analytic philosophers are losing something essential to human existence. In addition, it is very important to consider, as Marcel suggests, whether and to what extent the abstract analysis of ethical concepts and situations can really help us either in improving our moral behavior, or even in furthering our understanding of ethics in general. Analytic philosophy has not been very successful in these tasks, as Alasdair MacIntyre has pointed out. 39 This leads to our concluding point. Marcel would reject the view of the self that is at the background of much of contemporary analytic philosophy—the view that regards the self as essentially an autonomous center of rationality, which then chooses via the social contract to enter into intersubjective, community relations. Such a view for Marcel is misguided. It is based on a desire for mastery and on a lack of openness which is the mark of primary reflection and the I-It realm. Of course, Marcel disagrees with most of the other existentialists too about the nature of the self. He believes, as we've seen, that Sartre's view is too nihilistic, and makes intersubjectivity impossible in favor of pure subjectivity. Marcel offers a richer alternative to both the analytic approach and the atheistic existentialist approach, and provides a very solid foundation for an objective approach to ethics and the realm of the transcendent from within the continental tradition in philosophy.

Five RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE, AND THE AFFIRMATION OF GOD We saw in earlier chapters how Marcel's identification of those human experiences that are beyond the range of primary reflection, such as the experience of fidelity, lead him in the general direction of the transcendent. Indeed, Marcel's unique development of the relationship between reflection and experience opens up the whole realm of the transcendent for him in a way that escapes most other philosophers working in the same tradition. His approach leads him to present what I regard as a quite unique approach to the question of the existence of God. It is an existentialist approach, to be sure, yet it is not simply based on a faith commitment to God, as we find for example in Kierkegaard, whose view emphasizes the affective and volitional nature of our relationship with God at the expense, many would argue, of any rational approach to the question. There is a clear rational structure to Marcel's approach to the topic of God and religious experience, and it will be our aim to bring out this structure in this chapter. Although often neglected, at least within the discipline of philosophy of religion, there are a number of good reasons for paying careful attention to Marcel's ideas on the matter of God's existence. First, his philosophy is studied by many thinkers precisely because of its profound implications for a philosophical approach to religious belief. 1 In fact, some regard Marcel's philosophical writings on religious belief as perhaps his most profound contribution to philosophy. According to Seymour Cain (1914–), “From the beginning of his philosophical career, Marcel's main interest has been the interpretation of religious experience, that is, of the relation between man and ultimate reality.” 2 Second, it seems that Marcel's account of the human subject does have significant implications for traditional philosophy of religion, and when we say “traditional” we are referring, in particular, to the traditional arguments for the existence of God, and, more generally, to the issue of the nature of an affirmation of God. Third, Marcel's position has some affinity with recent work in Anglo-American philosophy of religion, especially work on the argument from religious experience in the Reformed tradition of philosophy of religion. In recent times, Alvin Plantinga (1932–), Nicholas Wolterstorff (1932–), William Alston (1921–), and John Hick (1922–) have all offered modern versions of the argument for the existence of God based on religious experience. I will suggest later that the general position of these philosophers can be advanced by appeal to the work of

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Marcel. This in itself would be an important conclusion, given the respect for and influence of the Reformed approach in current philosophy of religion. In what follows, I will focus on: (1) Marcel's understanding of what a rational argument would entail, and whether he believes that the existence of God could be defended by means of rational arguments; (2) Marcel's account of how the individual subject can arrive at an affirmation of God; (3) whether or not his own approach could be regarded as a rational argument; and (4) how his position offers an advance upon the position of the Reformed epistemologists. 1. Reflection, Experience and God Philosophers of religion have always been interested in “proofs” for the existence of God, and many of the arguments in the history of the discipline, such as the cosmological and design arguments, have often been presented by various thinkers as “proofs.” More recently, philosophers have been more modest in what they claim for arguments for the existence of God. Today, a philosopher of religion is more likely to say that the arguments for the existence of God show that it is reasonable to believe in God (but may fall short of a “proof”), and perhaps also that they show that belief in God is more reasonable than the alternatives. Indeed, the atheist (or today the secularist or the naturalist) is likely also to make this more modest claim for his or her arguments. It seems that when we are dealing with the subject matter of worldviews (concerning the natures of the universe, human beings and morality, and with what really exists or really is the case), we must settle some of the time for rationality rather than proof. So although the word “proof” is still widely used in discussions of the arguments for God's existence, it is usually with the implication that something less than a scientific-type proof is being offered. It is clear from our earlier exposition of Marcel's distinction between primary and secondary reflection that he would normally regard a rational argument (say for the existence of God), a proof even, as appropriate only in the area of primary reflection. This is because a rational argument attempts to provide a decisive solution to problems of various sorts, and the domain of primary reflection is the domain of problems. Recall that, for Marcel, a “problem” occurs when our pre-reflective lived experience, or being-in-asituation, throws up a concrete situation which requires our attention (or our “reflection”), and (primary) reflection is then employed by us in an attempt to solve the problem. We noted that a crucial feature of the domain of problems is that any proposed solution to any particular problem must issue from a detached, disinterested inquiry. If some of the premises of a proof, for example, relied for their truth upon my personal involvement in existence, this would obviously constitute a valid objection to the proof (according to the

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domain of primary reflection) by another person who was appraising the proof. Therefore, the proof must rely only on concepts and on relationships between concepts, which, by definition, are universal, shareable, public and disinterested. Only in this way, if at all, can what is required—a universally demonstrable solution (either deductive or inductive) to our problem—be attained. Marcel sometimes refers to the experience of evil in human life to illustrate what he has in mind here. He points out that there is a difference between thinking of the abstract problem of evil in the world presenting difficulties for the possible existence of an all-good, all-knowing God (a frequent topic within the discipline of philosophy of religion), and of actually dealing with the experience of evil in one's own life. His view is that the analysis of the abstract problem can never fully come to terms with the fact of evil because the experience of the questioner is excluded by definition. This does not mean that the abstract analysis is not useful or valuable, but it does mean that it is inevitably incomplete, and also that it must be handled with care as a contribution to our overall understanding of evil. 3 This example reminds us of something we saw in earlier chapters: there is a range of human experiences that is not totally accessible in the realm of primary reflection. This is because something essential to the nature of the experiences is lost in the transition from the level of being-in-a-situation to the level of primary reflection. These experiences include our experience of our own ordinary, everyday involvement in existence (which gives rise to what I described in chapter 3 as our particular ideas), our experience of our embodiment, the relationship of the body to the mind, and the “concrete approaches” to being: faith, fidelity, hope and love. These latter experiences occur at the intersubjective level of human experience, and are even further removed from conceptual knowledge than the basic level of being-in-asituation. The reason such experiences cannot be fully objectified, according to Marcel, is that they are experiences which involve the questioner. It will be helpful to elaborate briefly on what it means to say that an experience essentially involves the questioner. For it seems that any inquiry must in some sense involve the questioner, in so far as an individual carries it out. However, in a rational argument, or discussion of a problem, the solution does not necessarily involve the personal and unique experiences of any particular human subject. This is because the solution is formulated and presented at the level of abstraction, a level that does not consider or require the particular “situated involvement” of any particular inquirer. It would be possible to substitute any other inquirer and still solve the same problem in the same way. For example, if the sound on my computer was not working, I might discover that this was because a certain software file was missing. Yet solving this problem does not require the involvement of my own personal being-in-a-situation. Anyone could be substituted for me in this example (a computer technician, for instance), and yet still confront and solve exactly the

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same problem in exactly the same way. However, such a substitution is not possible when the issue concerns the question of the existence of God. 4 According to Marcel, this is one of those questions in human life that intimately involves the questioner. He gives many examples illustrating why this is so, and how an individual might come to affirm the existence of God in their experience. We briefly mentioned the experience of fidelity in the last chapter, and I would like to return to it here in more detail in order to bring out more clearly Marcel's approach to the nature of an affirmation of God. 2. The Experience of Fidelity One of the experiences Marcel turns to often as an example of an experience beyond conceptual knowledge is the experience of fidelity. In various places, he describes different experiences of fidelity, such as marital fidelity, making promises, and a mother's fidelity to her children. 5 The key to understanding fidelity, according to Marcel, is to recognize that it involves an unconditional commitment. We can get a glimpse of what this means at the intellectual level of primary reflection, but we must really experience it to grasp its full meaning (a meaning that cannot be fully captured in conceptual knowledge). Describing various experiences of fidelity, which may evoke similar experiences in our own lives, is another way to help us appreciate the nature of this experience. Indeed, this is Marcel's method for dealing with many of the concerns in his work. His aim is to evoke a confirming echo in our own lives of the various experiences and relationships he is describing. Of course, if we refuse to go with him on this journey, or if we are unable to recognize a confirming echo, his arguments may seem elusive to us. Marcel explicitly says at the end of his first set of Gifford lectures that “it should now be very clear that a philosophy of this sort is essentially of the nature of a kind of appeal to the listener or the reader, of a kind of call upon his inner resources. In other words, such a philosophy could never be completely embodied into a kind of dogmatic exposition of which the listener or reader would merely have to grasp the content.” 6 In his phenomenological analysis of promise making, Marcel refers to the example of promising to make a return visit to a sick friend who is lonely in the hospital (an action that Kant would classify as a moral obligation). Marcel holds that it seems futile to try to specify a set of conditions, or criteria, that a particular action would need to fulfill in order for the commitment entered into in the promise to be kept. Yet, despite this, we still look upon the promise as binding. Marcel explains that: At the basis of this committal, there may be present (a) my desire at the moment to give him pleasure; (b) the fact that nothing else is attracting me at the moment. But it is quite possible that tomorrow,

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that is, at the time when I fulfill my commitment, I shall no longer have the desire, and shall instead be attracted by this interest or that, which I never dreamed of when I committed myself. I can by no means commit myself to the continued experience of the desire…For [the promise] would then become conditional . . . One sees at once where the commitment is partly unconditional: “whatever my state of mind, whatever my temper . . . I will come and see you tomorrow.” 7 This leads him to suggest that the commitment involved is an unconditional commitment. One way perhaps to show this is to try to imagine making a promise that was based on conditions. While some (rather impersonal) promises could perhaps still make sense if regarded this way (for example, legal contracts), promises based on real human relationships could not. It becomes clear very quickly that these would not really be promises at all if they were based on conditions. So it becomes necessary to look further at the meaning of this notion of unconditionality. I cannot be faithful, according to Marcel, except to my own commitment (that is, to myself), so it seems that “the problem of commitment logically comes before that of fidelity.” 8 But to whom do I make the commitment? Do I make it to myself, or to the other person? It seems that it cannot be to myself because this would not capture the experience of giving that seems essential to making a promise. 9 In some cases, we can say that the commitment is made to the other person. Here, that person would appear to have a claim upon me. Yet when we push the description further, even this explanation is not adequate. For there may be cases in which the other person does not know they have a claim on me. This would be the case, for instance, where I have made a promise to a person without even telling them that I have made it. I can also make a promise to a person, Marcel suggests, who tries to release me from it; or perhaps to a person who later dies, and whose death would appear to release me from the commitment I have made. Yet in all of these cases, Marcel holds, the person who has made the promise still experiences that the pledge is a commitment, that they are still under an obligation to fulfill the promise. So in the light of our description of these various cases, we are nearer but not quite there in answering our initial question: to whom is the commitment in a promise made? Marcel believes that his phenomenological analysis has been pointing in a religious direction. He concludes that the commitment underlying various types of promises is best explained if they are understood as being pledged to an absolute, transcendent reality. According to him, “Unconditionality is the true sign of God's presence.” 10 This argument can also be extended to the case of marital fidelity. In this case, the love between a man and a woman is unconditional, and as unconditional is ultimately grounded in an “Absolute Thou” (Marcel uses this phrase throughout his work to convey the uncond-

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itionality of the commitment). We might also say that the absolute Thou has unconditional or unqualified or unlimited value, and so is the foundation of all value. Detailed analysis of these examples of what he sometimes calls “IThou” relations (including our relationship with God) illustrates, according to Marcel, not only how a person might arrive at an affirmation of God, but why it would be rational for that person to believe in God on the basis of these experiences. As he observes in Creative Fidelity: “It seems to me . . . reasonable to think that this world is itself rooted in being, hence that it transcends in every way those localized problems with their similarly localized solutions which permit the insertion of the technical into things.” 11 Marcel presents the human experience of making and keeping promises as a way in which a person might come to believe in God. But it is important to point out that when the believer is affirming the reality of God he is making an inference on the basis of his own personal experiences. This point has been expressed well by Clyde Pax: “He is . . . appealing to an ultimate strength which from within enables him to make the pledge which he knows he could not make from himself alone.” 12 Given that life is full of temptations, doubts and challenges, the recognition of an absolute Thou helps the individual to keep his or her commitments, but it has to be more than this. Given that the relationship with God is an intersubjective relation, the individual also believes that God will help us keep our commitments. In this way, the person who has such experiences is involved in the question, is involved in the affirmation of God, and only in so far as he is involved is there an affirmation. The “objective” existence of God cannot be detached from the believer's experience and presented as an object of demonstration for everyone. This comes out in Marcel's phenomenological description of promise keeping. Therefore, his position is that the affirmation of God can only be attained by an individual at the level of a being-in-a-situation, or secondary reflection. At the level of primary reflection, the existence of God cannot be demonstrated, because (as in our example above of making a promise) the individual must be genuinely involved in the affirmation, but such genuine involvement is precluded at the level of abstraction. I don't think Marcel is saying that this particular experience in isolation would lead one to an affirmation of God (although this possibility could not be ruled out in exceptional cases). His view is that many experiences of this kind—and the realization that these experiences are an essential aspect of much in life that we value above all else—can lead us to the affirmation of God. Of course, not everyone who has such experiences necessarily arrives at an affirmation of God. However, Marcel might suggest that, nevertheless, in these cases God is still the ultimate ground of such experiences. That is to say, people who engage in such commitments are implicitly committed to a view of the world that is grounded in an ultimate reality. His point is that human

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beings have a capacity within their experience that requires appeal to a reality outside the realm of experience in order to be fully explained. Let us illustrate some of these points further by turning to a second example, to a brief discussion of Graham Greene's (1904–1991) challenging novel, The End of the Affair, a novel that illustrates very well Marcel's account of fidelity. As readers will recall, The End of the Affair is the story of Sarah Miles, who begins an affair with the writer Maurice Bendrix, during the time of the blitz in wartime London. But Sarah begins to question the morality of the affair, and of her betrayal of her husband, Henry. One night during a clandestine meeting with Bendrix, a bomb hits the house, and Bendrix is caught in the rubble. Sarah fears that he has been killed; she falls to her knees and prays to God, and makes Him a sincere promise that if Bendrix survives, she will break off the affair. Miraculously, Bendrix does survive. Although she finds it difficult, Sarah does keep the promise, and over the next few months, she gradually becomes more and more open to the transcendent and the possibility that God exists. However, tragedy strikes when she dies soon after of poor health. The rest of the novel is an exploration of the possibility of religious belief in a secular environment, and explores questions of love, belief, doubt and rebellion, as we will see. I believe this particular novel of Greene's is quite Marcelian because it exemplifies many of Marcel's concerns in the narrative, which is told primarily from Bendrix's point of view, but occasionally from Sarah's. There are five Marcelian themes present in this novel in one form or another: (1) the theme of fidelity, particularly the attempt to understand the meaning of the experience of fidelity; (2) the relation of fidelity to the existence of God; (3) what it means for an individual to have fidelity to God; (4) the mystery of faith, and the search for the transcendent in human life; and (5) what Marcel calls “the ontological need for being,” which is the search for structure and coherence in a troubling world, a theme of existentialist philosophy in general. We have space in this chapter to discuss only a few of these themes. The first point we might draw attention to is that after Sarah begins the affair, she is troubled by doubt and guilt. She wonders if her affair with Bendrix is morally wrong. In particular, she wonders if it is not a betrayal of her husband, Henry, who loves her, and with whom she has entered into a binding marriage vow. (A subsidiary theme in the novel, and one also well worth our attention, is Henry's willingness to forgive Sarah because of his love for her, and later to forgive Bendrix after he finds out about the affair.) Despite Sarah's attempt to rationalize the affair, she cannot rid herself of her doubts. What is interesting about her moral worries is that they are inspired by a religious sensibility. That is to say they are inspired by a genuine experience of the transcendent based on a real exploration of questions relating to the transcendent in human life, rather than inspired by a culturally created guilt complex, or a desire to conform (which is perhaps the way many contem-

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porary novelists would portray her doubts). Sarah does not experience guilt in the sense that she is disturbed by the knowledge that organized religion, and perhaps society, would frown upon her actions, but in the sense that she knows she is breaking a serious promise, and that breaking that promise hurts not just her husband, but herself as well. Initially, she tells herself that she need not worry because God doesn't exist, but soon comes to admit to herself that this answer does not work. In the light of Marcel's ideas on the transcendent, we can see two issues in play here. First, Sarah is trying to understand what her marriage promise involves, what it means, and why it is a bad thing to break this promise. Second, her experiences with this question prompt her toward the existence of God. Whether Greene intended to introduce this point or not (and he has acknowledged that the novel is partly autobiographical), this confirms in a dramatic way Marcel's suggestion that when we are trying to make sense of the notion of fidelity, we can be led to the question of God's existence. That is to say, a scenario can begin to open up in which God is a key player. Writing in her diary about her marriage vow, Sarah says, “Nobody will know that I have broken a vow, except for me and Him, but He doesn't exist, does he?” 13 She begins to get angry with God for complicating things, perhaps a first step along a road that might lead to religious affirmation. It would be much simpler if God didn't exist, wouldn't it? The question of the transcendent forces itself upon the characters despite their best attempts to resist it. This echoes again what is one of Marcel's better known remarks that “the crisis which Western man is undergoing today is a metaphysical one; [our] sense of disquiet . . . rises from the very depths of man's being.” 14 This crisis awakens an “ontological need” in human beings. This happens to Sarah Miles, and later it will also happen to the committed secularist Bendrix, and also to another figure in the novel, the rationalist who preaches against religion in Hyde Park, Richard Smythe, a kind of A.J. Ayer figure. It is around this time that Sarah makes her promise to God. This promise places both her and Bendrix in a very paradoxical situation. It was her love for Bendrix that partly caused her to make the promise, but the promise itself means she must renounce him and stay faithful to her husband. And all the while her dependence on, and belief in, God becomes stronger. Sarah says: “I said 'Let him be alive', not believing in You, and my disbelief made no difference to You. You took it into your love, and accepted it like an offering…and it was for the first time as though I nearly loved You.” 15 From Bendrix's point of view, he is being thwarted by religion, but because he respects Sarah he cannot simply dismiss her judgment on these matters. And as the novel progresses both Bendrix, and Henry her husband, who is also a secularist (both of them might even be nihilists in the sense that they seem to believe in nothing; they are not portrayed as having any positive beliefs), begin to weaken, and their atheist outlook, especially in Bendrix's case, is

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seriously tested. In this dramatic situation the Marcelian theme of the mystery of faith and of openness to the transcendent is exemplified. Later in the novel, the focus is particularly on Bendrix, since a person cannot go through such experiences without them having a profound effect on his worldview. And the effect on Bendrix is fascinating. The issue is made all the more significant by the fact that after Sarah's death a number of unusual events occur that could be interpreted either as coincidences or as miracles; if we interpret them as miracles, this suggests that Sarah may have been a type of saintly figure, and perhaps also suggests further evidence of the existence of God. One of these miracles is that a skin blemish on the rationalist Smythe's face clears up. Soon after, he is on the verge of converting to religious belief, accepting that he had long been in denial about religion. His new attitude shakes Bendrix, as it would do anyone in a similar situation. These experiences and events illustrate Marcel's theme of the possibility of religious faith in a hostile world, and his point that the individual must really be open to this possibility. Marcel's point I think is that God wants us to be open to Him, and He will do the rest. Some interpret this part of Greene's story to be a denial of free will in the sense that God knows what is going to happen, and has foreordained the conclusion (and Bendrix does say at one point that this story has only one real Narrator). 16 However, it is better to read Greene's point as not that we have no choice, but that, as Marcel has argued, the possibility of God is there, and it is up to us to respond to it. But we are free to reject this possibility if we wish. Perhaps because of this, Greene's tactic of using the coincidences/miracles at the end of the story is overdone, as he himself has acknowledged. It would have been better to illustrate the power of religious belief in more human ways. As Greene himself later said, rather than presenting the coincidences all at once, they “should have continued over the years battering the mind of Bendrix, forcing on him a reluctant doubt of his own atheism.” 17 The novel ends ambiguously in that we do not know what becomes of Bendrix's wrestling with his doubts over God. But his initial response is the response of Camus' rebel—he is angry with God, rebels against him, does not want to believe in him. As Bendrix says, “I hate You God, I hate You as though You existed.” 18 But of course none of these reactions make much sense unless God exists, a point Bendrix might come to see in the end, if indeed he hasn't seen it already. But this wrestling reflects Marcel's analysis of human experience and modern culture—where the former often moves us toward the transcendent, but the latter often moves us away from it.

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We must try to draw out the implications of this analysis in order to appreciate Marcel's approach to traditional philosophy of religion. Philosophers of religion have always been very much concerned with the arguments for the existence of God, among other topics. It is well known that Marcel is not especially sympathetic to these arguments, not especially fond of the various attempts to prove the existence of God. This is because, according to him, for an argument to produce a genuine affirmation of God, it would have to involve the personal experience of the subject in some fairly profound and unique way, but in a rational argument, this appears to be ruled out by definition, at least according to his account of primary reflection. There is the suspicion that to attempt to prove the existence of God, as Professor Hanratty has put it, “is to reduce the mystery of God and of man’s relationship to Him to the level of problematic thought.” 19 Yet I don't think Marcel is here committing to the view that the traditional arguments for the existence of God have no value. He can surely agree with those who hold that the traditional arguments provide some evidence for the existence of God, and can prepare a person intellectually (that is, at the level of primary reflection) for such a belief. We should not forget that Marcel must allow for the possibility that a person could be presented with various rational arguments for the existence of God, find them very persuasive, and, as a result, come to believe that God exists. It is true that such a person would not yet have entered into an experience of the transcendent, which may include an affirmation of God, but this would surely follow. So in this scenario, although the arguments did not themselves lead directly to an affirmation of God, nevertheless we would have to agree that they were of great value in bringing that person to an eventual affirmation. Marcel holds that a person can only make a genuine affirmation providing that he or she has certain experiences such as the kind that he has outlined. A person could also justifiably affirm the existence of God on the basis of the experiences without any appeal to the traditional arguments, yet we can see from the particular case mentioned that the arguments for the existence of God can be very valuable. It is an extreme position, I think, to argue that the existence of God question is outside the realm of rational discussion altogether, and Marcel is not suggesting this. Indeed, he does acknowledge in The Mystery of Being (Vol. II), that “reflection must confirm the legitimacy of a faith, which it grasps at first in its most abstract essence.” 20 So, there is a way, I think, in which Marcel's own position could, taken broadly, constitute a type of argument for the existence of God. We might even call it a moral argument (indeed it might be a version of Kant's moral argument for the existence of God). Although I think he would resist the

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suggestion that he is offering us an argument for the existence of God, nevertheless, if one believes in God, as Marcel does, there has to be some way to help the unbeliever to an affirmation of God. More importantly, from the philosophical point of view, there has to be a way of illustrating the rationality of a belief in God. I think we can develop his view to present the following possible three-part argument for the existence of God: (1) various experiences open up the possibility of God, such as unconditional marital love, making promises, fidelity, etc; (2) the traditional arguments (especially the cosmological and design arguments) can show that there is some “objective” evidence for the existence of the Being affirmed in (1), and perhaps also that an atheistic worldview is problematic; and (3) a consideration of the consequences for humanity if we reject God constitutes yet another reason to accept him (a significant theme in Marcel’s thought). Accepting God here means that we seek out those experiences in which God is revealed, and which are generally lost when God is rejected (as in the experiences of Sarah Miles, and also of Bendrix). This three-part “argument” would have to be filled out in more detail, and it would not demonstrate the existence of God (in the sense of being a knock-down proof), but it can, I think, at least illustrate the rationality of belief in God, and this is consistent with Marce1's task. No doubt atheistic objections will be raised against Marcel's view. One of the most typical will be of the form: “but he does not really prove the existence of God, nor does he show that belief in God is reasonable.” Marcel's reply to this type of objection is clear. The existence of God cannot be proved objectively, but if one opens oneself up to the possibility of, and enters into, the kinds of experiences described above then an affirmation of God becomes possible, and is shown to be rational. If one is unwilling to enter into these experiences then one can continue secure in the belief that the existence of God can never be proved. Marcel, of course, does not overlook this point. The atheist is secure because he knows he can reject any proof, or even a rational argument that stops short of claiming to be a proof. But if other experiential ways to an affirmation of God are offered, he cannot reject these philosophically until he has genuinely tried them out. There are two other challenges to Marcel's view that we need to consider briefly: (1) we might reject his claim that the experience of an unconditional commitment can only be ultimately explained by the existence of God; and (2) we might hold that experiences of the type he describes are not really possible in human life, and those who would claim to have them are engaging in self-delusion. Perhaps the atheist will claim that we “create” these experiences ourselves, but they have no objective basis. I think we can quickly dismiss the second objection in the light of the overwhelming evidence that human beings do have such experiences, and that they are genuine experiences, which transcend our own psychology. We should add that Marcel

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further argues that the rejection of God on a large scale in modern culture will inevitably lead to an inability to see the possibility of such experiences. Also, conversely, an inability to have such experiences, which is becoming more and more characteristic of the modern age, will lead people to reject belief in God. The reply to the first objection is that the existence of God is, first, a reasonably good explanation of these experiences, and, second, perhaps the only reasonable explanation available. This is not to deny that people can have these experiences without making the affirmation of God, as I have noted, but it may well be that the existence of God is nevertheless their ultimate ground. 4. The Argument from Religious Experience in “Reformed Epistemology” It will prove very instructive to compare Marcel's position with work in recent Anglo-American philosophy of religion. Various philosophers, influenced by the Reformed theological tradition of John Calvin (1509–1564), have proposed and developed a new argument for the existence of God in recent times based upon religious experience. Alvin Plantinga, William Alston, John Hick, and Nicholas Wolsterstorff have developed this argument, among others. 21 I will briefly overview a few different versions of this argument here in order to bring out the comparison and contrast with Marcel's view. Before we look directly at the views of these Reformed thinkers, it is important to distinguish the approach of the Reformed thinkers to the topic of religious experience from the traditional approach to this topic. Proponents of the traditional argument held that we can infer from the fact that people had religious experiences that God exists, or can infer that God was the best explanation for the experiences. What is distinctive about this argument, from the point of view of our discussion, is the inference from a religious experience of some kind to the existence of God. Critics would typically attack the argument at the point of the inference, suggesting that, for various reasons, the inference may not be justified, is not rational, is hasty, or is based on an interpretation of an experience which is not in itself religious. The contemporary argument, developed by Alvin Plantinga and other Reformed thinkers, suggests that there is in fact no inference involved in most types of religious experience, that we can move directly from a religious experience, as it were, to the existence of God. We are somehow directly made aware of God in the experience, or the presence of God is directly evident in the experience, and the person who has the experience knows this in some indubitable way (which, if true, would mean that God exists, and so it would be rational for believers who have had such experiences to believe in God on the basis of them). We can see immediately that Plantinga's approach, which we will look at here primarily, has clear affinities with the approach of Marcel.

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Plantinga is critical of the traditional epistemological theory known as “classical foundationalism.” 22 Classical foundationalism, held by many philosophers in the past, including Descartes and Locke, is based on the view that there are two types of beliefs, namely, basic beliefs and inferred beliefs. Basic beliefs are ordinary, everyday beliefs, and are justified beliefs in virtue of being basic. Examples of these beliefs would include beliefs such as “I am sitting at my desk now reading a book,” “I drove to work this morning,” “2 + 2 = 4,” “I went to the library yesterday,” and so on; in short, beliefs that are, as Plantinga puts it, “self-evident, evident to the senses, or incorrigible.” 23 These beliefs are basic because they are not inferred from any other beliefs. The second type of beliefs—inferred beliefs—are inferred on the basis of other beliefs, namely, the basic ones. For example, my belief that it will rain this afternoon is an inferred belief; my belief that Eisenhower was a good president is an inferred belief. All of our inferred beliefs are eventually traceable back to dependence upon some set of basic beliefs. Basic beliefs include beliefs that would fall under the general categories of ordinary perceptual and observational beliefs, memory beliefs, beliefs arrived at by introspection, etc. Plantinga goes on to argue that belief in God may not be an inferred belief for a wide range of people, but may, in fact, be a basic belief. This would be true for those who believe in God based upon some kind of religious experience, an experience that they personally have had. For people who have had a certain type of experience belief in God would be a basic belief, just like beliefs based on perception, observations, memories, etc. In a sense, Plantinga can be read as not attacking classical foundationalism as such; rather, he is arguing that there is a tacit criterion underlying classical foundationalism, a criterion for deciding what would count as a basic belief. He wants to broaden the criterion to allow belief in God based on religious experiences to be among the foundational, or basic, beliefs. Plantinga claims that there is a contradiction at the heart of classical foundationalism. This is that classical foundationalism is based on the criterion that “whatever is self-evident, or evident to the senses, or incorrigible” is a basic belief, but he holds that there is no good argument to support this foundationalist criterion for “properly basic beliefs.” According to Plantinga, the criterion is self-referentially incoherent because it itself is not self-evident, or evident to the senses, or incorrigible! The criterion undermines itself because it says, on the one hand, that we should begin with beliefs that are self-evident, evident to the senses, and incorrigible, but then we go on to accept the criterion itself which is none of these things. William Alston adopts a quite similar strategy to that of Plantinga. He argues that religious experience can provide direct justification for religious beliefs. He does this by arguing that Christian epistemic practice enjoys basically the same epistemic status as ordinary perceptual practice, and,

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therefore, in the absence of significant potential defeaters of direct experiential justification of religious belief, belief in God on the basis of religious experience is rational. The kind of religious experiences that Alston has in mind, however, are not those typically associated with the traditional argument from religious experience. Alston gives an example of what he has in mind by “religious experience”: When someone believes that her new way of relating herself to the world after her conversion is to be explained by the Holy Spirit imparting supernatural graces to her, she supposes her belief that the Holy Spirit imparts graces to her to be directly justified by her experience. What she directly learns from experience is that she sees and reacts to things differently; this is then taken as a reason for supposing that the Holy Spirit is imparting graces to her. When, on the other hand, someone takes himself to be experiencing the presence of God, he thinks that his experience justifies him in supposing that God is what he is experiencing. Thus he supposes himself to be directly justified in his experience in believing God to be present to him. 24 In the absence of any detailed phenomenological description of an actual case, it is not clear from these examples what Alston means by religious experience. He seems to have in mind some kind of total picture, or total view, or even interpretation, of the total panorama of our experience, in which the existence of God is somehow directly made manifest. I say “directly” because Alston makes it clear that there is no inference made to the existence of God. Rather, the existence of God is somehow directly presented in one's total experience. John Hick holds a similar view. He makes it clear that he shall not be: Asking directly whether A's “experience of existing in the presence of God” is genuine (for that would require us to know first, independently of this and all other such experiences, and as a matter of established public knowledge, whether God does indeed exist and was present to A), but rather whether it is rational for A to trust his or her experience as veridical and to behave on the basis of it; and also, as an important secondary question, whether it is rational for others to believe in the reality of God on the basis of A's report. 25 Hick also seems to hold that belief in the existence of God is carried directly in the experience. By “religious experience,” Hick says that he has in mind what people mean when they “report their being conscious of existing in God's presence and of living in a personal relationship of mutual awareness with God.” 26 This is obviously very similar to Alston's view. However, in the

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absence of a detailed phenomenological description of a particular case of a religious experience, the position of both Hick and Alston remains quite vague. This makes the kind of detailed discussion that this very complex issue requires very difficult. However, it seems, to put it as specifically as their exposition will allow, that what both are saying is that one can understand the whole panorama of one's experience in a religious way, an experience in which one becomes aware (directly or non-inferentially) of the presence of God, and that such an experience makes it rational to believe in God. There are several problems facing this version of the argument from religious experience. Considering a few of these will also be helpful when we come back to Marcel's view. First, some critics have argued that Plantinga, in particular, is implicitly suggesting that belief in God is actually groundless, that we do not need any evidence or reasons to believe in God. 27 We can believe in God on the basis of several of our own experiences, and, if challenged about our belief, we can simply reply that it is a basic belief. A second criticism is that Plantinga's view appears to sanction just about any kind of belief, no matter how ridiculous, or poorly supported, or even dangerous (the problem of relativism). For example, what is to prevent a person who worships the Abominable Snowman from arguing that the belief is a properly basic belief? The person may claim that he or she has a private experience of the Abominable Snowman, that it is reliable, and therefore good reason to believe in, and indeed to worship, the Abominable Snowman. And since it is a basic belief, it is therefore rational and does not require any further justification. Plantinga is aware of this potential problem for his view, but he thinks it is obvious that some beliefs are not justified; he gives examples of beliefs about the Great Pumpkin (from the Peanuts comic strip), or about Voodoo, or astrology. Beliefs relating to these topics are often groundless, because they are not based on genuine experiences. Plantinga argues that the proper way to work out whether a belief is a justified properly basic belief is through induction. What we must do, he says, is to “assemble examples of beliefs and the conditions in which those properly basic beliefs are called forth such that the former are obviously properly basic in the latter.” 28 He often compares religious beliefs based on our experiences to perceptual beliefs based on our experiences. For perceptual beliefs, an example might be “I see a tree before me”; we know the conditions under which this belief would be justified even though it is a basic belief. If, for example, you were taking a particularly strong medicine that caused you to have occasional hallucinations of different types of trees, then you might not trust this perceptual belief, but otherwise you would. It is the same with religious beliefs. Plantinga argues that we know the appropriate kinds of conditions in religious communities that call forth basic religious beliefs. For example, in a Christian community people typically have religious beliefs of the sort that “God is near” or “God created

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this flower,” and so forth. These are properly basic, and therefore justified, beliefs. Plantinga holds that many people have some kind of direct experience of God (which he does not describe fully), an experience which makes their belief in God basic, rational and justified. And so the experience of the Abominable Snowman referred to in the above example, he would claim, is illusory in some key sense, because it is not based on real events, is not shared by anyone, is not basic, and so not reliable. A third problem in general with this modern view is that these thinkers do not give a sufficient description of religious experiences. This is a problem because many people do not have religious experiences of the sort mentioned, whereas everybody has ordinary perceptual experiences. This is surely a large part of the reason why the latter are not controversial, but the former are, and so the analogy with perceptual experiences is quite strained. This is why a description of religious experiences is an essential part of the debate. In particular, without a detailed description, it is difficult for us to see whether or not there is an inference involved in the move to the affirmation of God. One way round this difficulty might be if religious experiences of the non-inferred sort that Plantinga, Alston and Hick are talking about were very common in our lives. If many people could recognize the experiences these thinkers are referring to, then perhaps we could confirm their argument through our own experiences. But such experiences do not seem all that common. Turning our attention back to Marcel, it seems to me that his argument for the existence of God on the basis of human experiences has advantages over Plantinga's approach, and it does not come with the problems that face the Reformed epistemologists. Within the context of the argument for the existence of God from religious experience, Marcel is arguing that the existence of God is inferred on the basis of our experience of unconditional commitments; it is also the best explanation for these commitments. But let us remember that he is not just saying that this is what the philosopher might argue, he is saying that the “absolute Thou” is what a person who is involved in an unconditional commitment experiences as part of that commitment. Marcel is suggesting that a person moves from the experience of unconditional commitment to the experience of God as the ground of such experiences. The philosopher notes the move to the existence of God in later reflecting on the phenomenological analysis of the experience. Yet although the philosopher is drawing attention to the inference in a sequential, discursive manner, the move to the existence of God is founded upon an actual experience that people undergo, and is not something that is known only from a conceptual point of view. Many people experience unconditional commitments in this way themselves, even if some do not, or if some deny that such commitments are possible. This approach enables Marcel to avoid some of the difficulties facing the approach of the Reformed epistemologists. Marcel can escape the problem

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of relativism that is often leveled at the Reformed epistemologists because the experiences he calls attention to and describes are ordinary experiences of human life, easily recognizable to many people because they are part of their own lives in various ways. He is not talking about rare experiences, of an esoteric or even a mystical sort, but experiences that are a part of the human condition. This is why his argument resonates with so many; indeed it is what gives his argument a certain power—it has a confirming echo in our own experiences. A crucial strength of Marcel's position is that he provides detailed examples and descriptions of experiences that on their face do not seem to be religious in character at the beginning, but that lead to a religious way of looking at things because they call for the absolute trust of the people involved. Marcel, therefore, may be said to have a stronger overall argument for the existence of God. In comparison with the Reformed epistemologists, Marcel can point out that he appeals to universal experiences with which all human beings can identify in any argument for the rationality of belief in God based on religious experience, whereas Plantinga and Alston appeal to experiences that are more controversial and debatable to begin with. Even though Plantinga may point out that the experiences he is talking about are more common than critics of religious belief might be prepared to grant, nobody can really deny the experiences that are the basis of Marcel's argument. Marcel raises the debate concerning religious experience out of the realm of private experience, and raises it to a level where it can become at least partly an issue of public (philosophical) discussion. As we have noted in our earlier chapters, this approach is reflective of his philosophical method in general. Hick and Alston may be forced to conclude, on their view of the nature of religious experience, that it is up to God to reveal himself to the individual if the individual is to have a religious experience that would make belief in God rational. Marcel, however, because he appeals to universal experiences, can suggest that there is something each individual can do personally to bring about an affirmation of God, namely, actively seek out those experiences and their ultimate explanation. Finally, as to whether Marcel would agree with Hick that a person can be justified in believing in God if he only knows of somebody who has had a religious experience (in Marcel's sense), he would undoubtedly agree with this. For this is just what Marcel means by the living witness, or creative testimony, which he sought to express throughout his work, and, by all biographical accounts, throughout his life too.

Six A MARCELIAN CRITIQUE OF THE PROBLEM OF SKEPTICISM 1. The Problem of Skepticism Rejecting the approach to knowledge characteristic of medieval philosophy, with its blend of philosophy and theology, and its reliance on what he regarded as abstract metaphysics, René Descartes was concerned to put knowledge on a sound footing, especially scientific knowledge, since in his time there was a newfound commitment to the potential of scientific knowledge for understanding reality. Yet, in adopting this general approach to questions about knowledge, Descartes unwittingly started philosophy down a road which he did not foresee, and which he would have utterly rejected. Subsequent philosophers rejected his solution to the problem of knowledge, pointing out that the ontological argument did not succeed, and identifying the problem which later became known as the Cartesian circle. Nevertheless, philosophers were impressed with Descartes's skeptical arguments, and also with his objective of trying to establish scientific knowledge on a sound footing by means of philosophical argument. The upshot of the debate initiated by Descartes was that modern philosophy became obsessed with epistemology, especially with the issue of skepticism, either in defending skepticism as a philosophical position, or in developing epistemological theories that showed how the problem could be overcome. However, soon arguments for skepticism came to dominate and even eclipse the search for knowledge, and slowly began to breed a certain cynicism about the quest for objective knowledge. It might seem that the problem of skepticism should not be taken seriously. Yet, since Descartes, philosophers have continued to take the problem of skepticism very seriously. They have, in fact, become so obsessed with the problem that they have devoted vast amounts of time and energy generating countless books, articles and discussions in an attempt to solve the problem. However, these attempts have been mostly futile. No universally agreed upon solution has emerged from over three hundred years of intense discussion; in fact, I suppose it is true to say that these efforts have not even succeeded in producing a solution (or even a hint of a solution) that has come to be accepted by even a few philosophers. What we can say for certain is that the current state of play on what Kant called “the scandal of philosophy” is as follows: many excellent and serious-minded philosophers still take the problem of skepticism

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just as seriously as Descartes and Kant appeared to take it; no solution to the problem has yet emerged; and many philosophers are genuinely worried by the perceived consequences of this failure. This latter point should not be taken lightly. Another approach, exemplified by Barry Stroud (1935–) for example, 1 is to suggest that the truth of the main principle at issue in the problem of skepticism—the principle that there is some essential connection between our beliefs and the way the world really is—should be given up unless we can prove that skepticism is not a logical possibility. Stroud obviously takes the problem of skepticism seriously enough to suggest that we should be prepared to suspend the reliability of our everyday beliefs if no solution is forthcoming. Yet it is true to say that most philosophers, however, regard the problem of skepticism as a wasteful academic exercise and dismiss it out of hand. Some are even embarrassed to teach the problem in their philosophy courses to fresh, unsuspecting, and philosophically innocent minds. Outside of the discipline of philosophy, perhaps no problem has done more to give philosophy a bad name than the problem of skepticism. In our reflections in this chapter, I want to elaborate an argument that is present, but not developed in any detail, in Marcel's thought (it is also present to a certain extent in Heidegger)—that the problem of skepticism is not a real problem. It is, therefore, not one that we should take seriously, expend much time and energy trying to solve, and worry about the consequences if we fail to solve it. It is, in short, a pseudo-problem. I have previously argued 2 that the problem of skepticism is a pseudo-problem by analyzing the problem on its own terms (from within, as it were), and trying to reveal significant difficulties with the way the problem is formulated. In our discussion here, I will try to illustrate a different way of showing that the problem of skepticism is a pseudo-problem, by appealing to the alternative approach to epistemological issues to be found in Marcel, and other existentialist thinkers. We shall draw upon Marcel's critique of Cartesianism, and of his alternative view of the subject (discussed in previous chapters), especially the implications of his approach for what we have called his “new epistemology,” and also for the issue of the objectivity of knowledge. Robert Lechner has reminded us of W. E. Hocking's (1873–1976) observation that Marcel's approach “may well be in its completion the major achievement in epistemology of the present century.” 3 So it will be interesting to explore how Marcel’s approach can function as an effective response to the traditional problem of skepticism. The traditional problem of skepticism was inspired by Descartes, who adopted three arguments to motivate his program of methodic doubt: (1) the argument from illusion; (2) the dream argument; and (3) the evil genius argument. 4 The third step in his program of methodic doubt, the evil genius argument, is necessary because the first two steps do not provide sufficient warrant for him to doubt all his beliefs. It will be recalled that the truths of arithmetic and geometry,

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and the basics of corporeal nature (extension, shape, size, number, etc.), escape the first two stages of Cartesian doubt. So in order to doubt all of his beliefs, it is necessary for Descartes to introduce an evil genius who might be deceiving him in all his beliefs. As he puts it in the Meditations, “I shall then suppose, not that God who is supremely good and the fountain of truth, but some evil genius not less powerful than deceitful, has employed his whole energies in deceiving me.” 5 The evil genius is introduced by Descartes as a logical possibility. That is to say, such a being could exist, and might be deceiving him in all his beliefs. However implausible this may be, there is no contradiction involved in asserting the existence of such a being. Of course, Descartes does not for a moment think that there really is an evil genius. Rather, the evil genius is for Descartes a convenient device to enable him to generate universal doubt before he moves on to offer his solution to the problem of skepticism. With this universal skepticism in place, Descartes's task then is to illustrate that the evil genius is not in fact a logical possibility at all. Of course, it is the move from step two to step three that has made many people suspicious of the problem of skepticism. It is particularly this move in the argument for skepticism that many find hardest to take seriously (and not just non-philosophers and students, but even most philosophers). Suspicions are raised because there seems to be no good reason to adopt step three at all; it looks as if Descartes is creating a problem where one does not exist. It is true that steps one and two give us pause to think twice about the truth or falsity of some of our beliefs (at least in certain circumstances), and they do seem to lend some support (however slight) to the claim that there may be reasons to doubt the principle upon which all our knowledge is based, that is, the principle that there is an essential connection between our beliefs and the way the world really is. But it is precisely in the move to the third step that the plausibility of the overall argument seems to break down. This common sense response is behind Marcel's general approach to the problem. Marcel's approach is to suggest that if we take a careful look at the origin of the problem of skepticism, and the root of the conceptual difficulty involved in solving the problem as stated, it is reasonable to conclude that the problem is not a real problem, but one of our own making, and so we should look elsewhere for the foundations of knowledge. He develops a general line of argument, which can serve as a solution, and it is a solution that other continental philosophers, most notably Heidegger, would accept as well, as least in broad outline. 2. Marcel's Rejection of the Problem of Skepticism Marcel's analysis of sensation, and of the notion of human embodiment, along with his identification of the realm of situated involvement (all discussed in earlier chapters), illustrates that it is not possible to detach myself completely from reality, so that I can actually doubt its existence. The motivation for the

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doubt of traditional epistemology is, therefore, arbitrary and misguided. The knowing subject is not essentially a detached universal ego, but an individual being who experiences the world immediately. Therefore, the problems generated by the universal, detached ego of traditional epistemology are pseudo-problems. They result from a mis-characterization of the self as an ego detached from the world, faced with the problem of recovering the world in order to secure the validity of knowledge. We must now elaborate this criticism of the traditional problem of skepticism, but before we do so let us briefly mention one other consideration that has motivated Marcel, at least implicitly, in his critique of traditional philosophy after Descartes. It is not just Marcel's identification of the assumptions at work in the Cartesian approach to epistemology that convinces him that traditional philosophy is misguided. It is also the total failure of the traditional project to establish the validity of knowledge, according to its own conception of this task. Of course, this failure was one of the inspirations for the development of the whole movement of existentialism. The existentialists were motivated in part by the belief that the failure of the traditional project is an indication that there is something radically wrong with the understanding of the nature of the human self, and of the nature of philosophy, out of which the traditional project springs. This fact alone, according to them, should tempt us to re-examine this alleged starting point for epistemology. Even according to the canons of the scientific method, the traditional project should have been abandoned long ago. For is it not the case in science that if a proposed theory has not been confirmed after a very long period of time, that it should be conceded that the principles or intuitions upon which the theory is based are very probably inadequate, and that it is time to start looking around for fresh proposals? However, this has not been the attitude toward this particular theory in recent philosophy. Barry Stroud, for example, in his influential book on the problem of skepticism, contends, as we have seen, that one of the conclusions concomitant upon our failure to refute skepticism, is that we must consider abandoning our cherished belief that there is some vital connection between our knowledge and the way the world really is in itself. 6 However, Marcel suggests that it would be more preferable and far more reasonable (at least it is consistent with the role of knowledge in human life) to question the approach to knowledge, and the view of the self motivating it, which initially calls this cherished belief into question, than to think about giving up the belief. He expresses it this way: Total skepticism would consist in saying: “I am not sure either that something exists or what sort of a something it would be that could exist.” But to assert, in this way, that perhaps nothing exists implies the previous taking up of two positions; firstly, I lay down a criterion, no doubt a vague, inexplicit criterion, failing to satisfy which nothing can be said to exist; secondly, I ask myself whether anything I am directly

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acquainted with satisfies that criterion, and come to the conclusion that I am not quite sure. I will risk saying that a question framed in such hazily defined terms lacks even metaphysical significance; but at the phenomenological level, at least, it is quite obviously meaningless. 7 The problems with the vague formulation of the skeptical question, and the lack of evidence to motivate the question, should make us realize that the question is meaningless. Does not the fact that hardly any philosopher has been convinced that we should give up this cherished belief suggest that there is something seriously wrong with the project which both proposed, and then failed, to answer the problem of skepticism? The fact that hardly any philosopher is willing to really give up this belief at any level of conceptual work is confirmed by observation of how philosophers actually work with knowledge claims in their own personal lives. This should lead us, Marcel believes, to attempt to uncover and examine critically the assumptions which motivate the approach of Cartesian philosophy to the problem of knowledge. Unfortunately, in recent philosophy, we have had to endure a whole host of new attempts to solve Descartes's basic problems about knowledge, all of which have met with the same fate as his attempt. 8 In fact, so unsuccessful have recent attempts been to vindicate true knowledge, that there is now an overwhelming trend in contemporary philosophy toward either skepticism, or some form of relativism, concerning the nature of knowledge and meaning. Yet, as the existentialists are fond of pointing out, this is only a trend in the academic discipline of philosophy, it is not a trend in the actual experience of human beings, including the experience of academic philosophers themselves. One of the reasons the traditional problem of skepticism has not been solved, and will not be solved, according to Marcel, is because it is not a genuine epistemological problem. What traditional skepticism seems to be asking about— the human mind—is not what it is really asking about. What it is really asking about—the epistemological subject—is a philosophical fiction. Marcel's phenomenological analyses illustrates that the traditional epistemologist is not justified in divorcing the knowing subject from the world of external objects in order to generate the problem of skepticism. Such a split is necessary, of course, and part of the normal operation of reflective thought, when we wish to solve problems, and to discover scientific and mathematical knowledge, for this is what the process of abstraction requires. In this process, the role of the detached observer is crucial, and a result that is available for everybody is required. It is a crucial point to recognize, however, that when we are engaged in primary reflection, the problems of the existence of external objects (which correspond to the subjects of our concepts), of the existence of the body, and of the relationship of these objects to the mind, do not arise. But when we use the same approach (that is, primary reflection) to generate problems of this latter sort, we are arbitrarily creating problems that are not genuine philosophical problems. It is little

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wonder, therefore, that we are unable to solve them, as James Collins (1917– 1985) has pointed out when he says, “It is only in virtue of an arbitrary decree that Descartes divorces existence and the existent and then reserves from doubt one instance of an existent, the thinking self. But once this divorce is made, it is impossible to justify any particular case of existent being.” 9 If we regard the world simply and primarily as an object for the intellect, this can only be because we have ignored the manner in which human beings actually interact in their experience with the “objects” of their experience. Marcel has defended this claim by means of his analysis of sensation (discussed in chapter 2) which reveals that sensation allows us access to the world of being (as Marcel calls it), a world which is not first apprehended by a thinking or knowing mind. Rather, as he has put it, “knowledge is environed by being” 10 ; that is, we come to know things at all only because we are already in a contextual situation in our world. Marcel's analysis of our relationship to our own bodies (also discussed in chapter 2) is further support for this view. I start out as a being-in-asituation, not just interacting in a world of “objects,” but also in a world with other people, and this basic situation becomes the condition of all knowledge whatsoever. This is what he means by the “existential indubitable,”—the assurance or “exclamatory awareness” of my own existence as an incarnate being. 11 He also expresses the same point in another way: “To think the metaproblematical is to affirm it as indubitably real, as something I cannot doubt without contradiction. We are in a zone where it is impossible to disassociate the idea itself from the degree of certitude it carries.” 12 This realm cannot be reduced to and made subservient to the realm of primary reflection, though it can be partially analyzed and partially understood in primary reflection. But from the vantage point of primary reflection, it is not possible to motivate any kind of global skepticism. To first split the self off from the world, and then insist that the question of the existence of the self, and of the world, must be squarely and honestly faced without reference to the realm of “situated involvement” from which the epistemological subject has been derived, is obviously absurd. Marcel makes the point this way: “If therefore the 'I exist' can be taken as an indubitable touchstone of existence, it is on condition that it is treated as an indissoluble unity: the 'I' cannot be considered apart from the 'exist.'” 13 The Cartesian can deny of course that the epistemological subject is parasitical upon the realm of “situated involvement” but then he needs to provide a counter argument to Marcel's. In such an argument he will be at a disadvantage since the Cartesian tradition has never provided an accurate description of the mind and its “ideas,” as we saw in chapter 1. Rather, the Cartesian position simply assumes that every idea can be understood without reference to our bodies and to our world. If the Cartesian accepts Marcel's conclusion about the nature of “situated involvement,” but still insists on the legitimacy of the traditional problem of skepticism, then he is in effect holding that we must divorce ourselves from our ordinary involvement

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with the everyday objects of our experience, and face the question of whether or not they really exist, and even the question of whether or not I myself really exist. On any reasonable reading, this seems to be an inconsistent position. Marcel's reply in summary is, first, that we cannot perform this divorce to generate genuine problems, and, that, second, all “knowledge” of the conceptual variety occurs within being, or is environed by being. This means, as he notes in his essay “Existence and Objectivity,” that if we set aside our epistemological assumptions we recognize that we are living in a real world of experiences and meanings; we can deliberately set all of this aside, of course, but this is a setting aside, and so does not generate a real problem, no matter how useful it might be as an academic exercise in epistemology. Marcel is not even convinced of the epistemological usefulness of the problem of skepticism, for, he continues, “But how then are we to avoid being tempted to conclude that this idea is a pseudoidea, that it has no hallmark to guarantee it and that it must be thrown on to the scrap heap as a useless tool . . . . ?” 14 It will be helpful to elaborate Marcel's reasons for rejecting the traditional problem of skepticism a little further. In particular, I wish to respond to two objections that raise interesting issues, and a discussion of them will help to further clarify Marcel's position. These objections are: (1) What is Marcel's reply to the question of how I can know that this chair which I seem to perceive in front of me really exists?; and (2) Does Marcel's position commit him to the view that we can never know things as they are in themselves? The response to the first objection is straightforward. If skepticism about the existence of the external world is insisted upon, it would be necessary, Marcel would respond, to make explicit the reasons why we take this global doubt seriously. The formulation of this problem will of course follow along traditional epistemological lines: I have a concept of a chair which I can fully understand without reference to the world, and I therefore must face the possibility that the chair itself might not really exist. I must ask the question as to whether there is any really existing chair, out there in the world, which corresponds to our concept. Marcel, however, has tried to illustrate that concepts of chairs are arrived at, or better, derived, only after a process of abstraction from the “situated involvement” wherein “objects” have meaning for the individual subject. When our concept of “chair” is analyzed in this way, it is seen to be parasitical upon this ontologically prior level. The subject's particular ideas cannot be analyzed and described without reference to a body and a world, because it is the subject's unique situation in existence that gives his ideas their particular character. The concepts we have are only abstractions from these particular ideas. If this is true, then the traditional skeptical question is seen to generate a pseudo-problem. The question might be pressed as to how it is possible to distinguish between illusion and reality, even granted the derived nature of conceptual knowledge. The issue here is: couldn't I be “involved” with something that actually did not exist? For example, I might believe that my boss was prejudiced

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against me. I think that Marcel's epistemological approach can handle this type of objection, in the same way that Husserl, for example, would handle it. He can reply that if an individual subject was “involved” with an “object” which actually did not exist (that is, if he was under an illusion of some kind), his experience would eventually throw problems in his path because of this illusion. For example, there might be situations where my boss treated me well over a period of time. Such problems would be tackled at the level of primary reflection, and at this level we can easily discover by examination of the particular case in question, that the problems occur because the “object” of the individual's experience does not exist. Marcel does not wish to deny the possibility of illusions of this kind. He recognizes that there is a legitimate question here, but it is a question for which there is a legitimate answer. One is in a world by virtue of being a person. Within that world there is a perfectly legitimate way of distinguishing illusions from reality. But this is not his point. His point is that we cannot use arguments like this one to motivate the global doubt of Cartesian skepticism. To motivate this doubt, as we have seen, we would have to show that one's involvement with all of the “objects” of one's experience was “problematic.” In short, we would have to show that we could understand all of our ideas without reference to the world, and, as Marcel has illustrated, this cannot be done. Here is a quote from Heidegger which makes a similar point: “The question of whether there is a world at all and whether its being can be proved, makes no sense if it is raised by Dasein as being-in-the-world; and who else would raise it?” 15 The second objection gets right to the heart of the implications of Marcel's position for traditional epistemology. If Marcel is correct, I suggest that the meaning of the phrase “things as they are in themselves” now becomes quite blurred. This is because the answer to the question about “things as they are in themselves” will be relative to the point of view we take, either that of primary reflection, or that of “situated involvement.” For if a question about things as they are in themselves is asked from the point of view of primary reflection (from the “theoretical attitude”), then a description of our abstract concept of the thing will be sufficient for an understanding of the nature of the thing. That is to say, if one believes, as Descartes did, that the “theoretical attitude” is the primary way to knowledge, and that this involves selecting those features of things in the external world which are naturally presented in conceptual knowledge, then a description of our abstract concepts is what is required when we ask a question about things as they are in themselves. If, however, we accept Marcel's view of the primacy of the existential subject, and ask “what are things like in themselves?” we will require a phenomenological description of the meaning of the thing in the external world as it is defined in relation to a particular subject. There is no guarantee, as we saw in chapter 2, that this meaning will be the same for all, although it will be similar for many, though never identical. Now of these two answers, the second one is nearest the truth for Marcel, because the first is

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derived from it, and it is derived from no other “point of view” of the objects of our experience. We saw this illustrated in chapter 3 in the case of the peasant who experiences the land from a conceptual point of view (the “objective” point of view), and from a more personal, subjective point of view. As Marcel puts it in The Mystery of Being: “consciousness is above all consciousness of something which is other than itself, what we call self-consciousness being on the contrary a derivative act . . . . ” 16 John Richardson, in his study of Heidegger's attempt to undermine the Cartesian project, argues that, for Heidegger, we cannot know what things are like in themselves. This is because our theories, for Heidegger, never have a transparent access to things in themselves. As Richardson puts it, “our theorizing is inevitably rooted in a concernful understanding whose goal-directedness and temporal diffuseness precludes the explicitly and focused grasp of things independent of context, at which theory aims.” 17 Later in his study, Richardson agrees that skepticism is true for Heidegger in the sense that we cannot know what things are like in themselves, but points out that this is a derivative truth, and is not the most basic truth about our human condition. According to Richardson, “It itself depends on the truth that we are temporally stretched along, so as to be rooted in an unchosen past, and reaching out toward a limited future.” 18 It is clear even from this brief discussion by Richardson that he takes the question of what things are like in themselves to be a perfectly normal and meaningful question, and one which Heidegger (whose views here can be seen to be very similar to Marcel's) cannot answer. I wish to suggest, however, that Marcel's reply to this problem—and indeed Heidegger's too—is that this question has no meaning in the sense that it is impossible to give an answer to it. Suppose the second objection we have been considering above is pressed further. The objection now runs: I wish to know what things are like in themselves, not from the “primary reflection” standpoint, nor from the “situated involvement” standpoint, but independently of any standpoint. Marcel's reply would be, I think, that “things” only have meaning within a human context, and that it is impossible, therefore, to describe what things would be like in no context at all. For what kind of answer would be required to the above-stated question? What is required to answer this question is a description of what things would be like when no human beings are involved with them, that is, a description of what things would be like if no human beings existed at all. If no human beings existed at all, Marcel would claim that there would be no “things,” or, in other words, no meanings. “Chairs” and “tables,” and all objects of experience, would have no meaning if no human beings existed because their meanings emerge in history and culture, and most importantly, depend upon their place in the situated involvement of particular human subjects. “Something” would exist, of course, if no human beings existed, but these “things” would not be “like” anything because they would have no meaning at all. Things being “like” something in the sense that what they are “like” could be described to a human being

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necessarily involves a human perspective. Meanings depend upon there being human beings to generate meanings. But the traditional epistemological question of what things are like in themselves requires a description of the meaning of an object independently of any human being. Therefore, the question of what things are like in themselves is inherently problematic. It requires us to say what the meaning of objects would be if there were no human beings around to give them meaning. (In chapter 3 above, I indicated how Marcel's view avoids falling into relativism at this point.) It might be further objected that if Marcel's view is right, then there must be some relation between his theory and the world, and how can we know that this relation really holds? Marcel's reply to this interesting point, and indeed the reply adopted by many existentialists, is to say that he is not proposing a theory. That is, he does not hold a system of concepts that exhibit logical relationships which we can then wonder about really obtaining in the world. Rather, Marcel wants to uncover, or reveal, that fundamental level of “situated involvement,” not which we know to exist (it is not a conceptual representation corresponding to some object in the world), but which we are. As he puts it: “to take up such a position . . . throws into relief the essentially anti-cartesian character of the metaphysic . . . . It is not enough to say that it is a metaphysic of being: it is a metaphysic of we are as opposed to I think.” 19 In adopting this approach Marcel sees himself as doing ontology. Instead of supposing that the self is initially and basically a self looking out upon a world, and then concerning himself with epistemological problems concerning the knower and the known, he wants to concern himself with ontological questions concerning the kind of beings we are, and how we come to know anything at all. 20 Marcel is engaged primarily in a task of phenomenological ontology, not epistemology. His phenomenological method seeks to show that our everyday involvement as embodied beings in situations cannot be made intelligible in terms of disinterested concepts, but rather can actually account for the possibility and place of primary reflection (and, therefore, for the place of any theory or system). Further, as Marcel suggests, the task of presenting a theory that proves the validity of knowledge to, and for, everyone is absurd. In traditional epistemology, we are always left with the problem of explaining how our theory, which is supposed to be explaining the conditions for the possibility for knowledge, is itself known. A theory of this kind leaves knowledge available for no one, as has in fact happened in traditional epistemology. This approach has failed in traditional epistemology because there are always knowledge claims involved in the foundations of the theory that are not explained by the theory. Thus Hume, for example, begins his epistemological project with the claim that all the perceptions of the human mind resolve themselves into two distinct kinds, which he calls impressions and ideas. Yet this statement itself is neither an impression nor an idea. The same problem is often thought to face Kant's work because he appears to be making realist metaphysical claims as the foundation of an anti-

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realist metaphysics (for example, he thinks that space and time are categories of the mind, and anyone who thinks they are external realities is wrong!). Derrida, and other postmodern thinkers, fall into the same problem. Epistemological theories that follow this pattern of investigation would seem doomed according to their own canons for success. 21 It is imperative to understand that Marcel has not tried to avoid the problems of traditional epistemology by simply saying in a covert way that we know the external world exists, and that's all there is to it. Rather, he has tried to show that the understanding of the self on which the traditional project relied was incorrect, and that this distorted both the perception of the problems of epistemology and the methods adopted to solve them. Marcel's account of the self has shown that thought is not initially cut off from being. We are unable to produce the divorce or separation of the ego from the body, and the world, except arbitrarily, in order to generate traditional epistemological problems. This separation is something that occurs by an act of attentive discrimination only after the assurance of existence has been given in our experience as subjects in the world, and the separation is appropriate as long as we do not attempt to generate the traditional epistemological problems by means of this divorce from experience. He puts it thus: “From this point of view, as opposed to what epistemology strives vainly to establish, there really is a mystery of knowledge; knowledge derives from a mode of participation that no theory of knowledge can account for because the theory itself presupposes this participation.” 22 3. Marcel and Contemporary Epistemology It is interesting to consider how far Marcel's critique of the Cartesian project in epistemology extends to modern epistemology. It will be instructive to briefly assess W.V.O. Quine's (1908–2000) views in the light of the Marcelian critique. From our discussion so far it seems to me that we need to keep three issues in mind when considering any contemporary epistemological theory: (1) Is there a serious concern to refute skepticism? (2) Is there an assumption about the nature of the self, similar to the Cartesian assumption, underlying the theory? and (3) Is there a prominence given to the scientific view of knowledge in the theory (that is, is the scientific view of knowledge regarded as the paradigm of knowledge by the theory)? Any theory which exhibits any one of these three features should be concerned about Marcel's critique, for he claims that (1) skeptical questions are pseudo-questions, that (2) the Cartesian view of the self is mistaken, and that (3) the scientific view is not the paradigm of knowledge, that theory cannot explain human existence, but that human existence can account for the possibility and place of theory. A lot of current work in epistemology such as that by Alvin Goldman (1938–), Robert Nozick (1938–2002), Laurence BonJour (1943–), Stroud, etc., takes skeptical questions very seriously, and is designed to either answer them, or

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sketch a way in which the skeptical questions might be undermined. It is also true to say that these theories assume some version of Descartes's view of ideas and how they relate to the world. At the very least, and most importantly for my point here, proponents of these theories regard the epistemological subject as the true account of the nature of the self, and hold that our concepts and beliefs can be divorced from the existence of everything else, including our own bodies. Our task then as epistemologists is to attempt to develop an adequate philosophical theory that successfully restores the link between our concepts and beliefs, and the external world. Contemporary epistemologists accept Descartes's basic understanding of the mind and its relation to the world—that the mind is essentially shut off from the world, and that our job is to connect them back up again. So epistemological theories of this kind are clearly included in the Marcelian critique of epistemology. (This criticism also applies to the “brain-in-a-vat” argument discussed by Hilary Putnam {1926–}. Marcel's point is that it would not be possible to have a “vat” idea which would be the same as an idea from everyday experience.) What is particularly interesting about Marcel's position is that, in contemporary epistemological theories (such as those proposed by the philosophers mentioned earlier), and indeed in general in contemporary philosophy, a holistic view of concepts is now generally conceded. Cartesianism, understood as a particular (that is, realist) account of how the mind matches up with reality is now rejected by many contemporary epistemologists. That is to say, many philosophers now hold that our concepts are internally related to the theories (or language forms) in which they occur. Quine has famously asserted that “the totality of our so-called knowledge or beliefs, from the most casual matters of geography and history to the profoundest laws of atomic physics or even of pure mathematics and logic, is a man-made fabric which impinges on experience only along the edges,” and he accepts Pierre Duhem's (1861–1916) thesis “that theoretical sentences have their evidence not as single sentences but only as larger blocks of theory, [and so] the indeterminacy of translation of theoretical sentences is the natural conclusion.” 23 This view has influenced a generation of analytic epistemologists. A remarkably similar conclusion has shaped recent European thought as well, influenced by Derrida's and Jean-François Lyotard's (1924–1998) claims that there are no identities beyond culture and language, that the mind is imprisoned in language, and that we need to continually express our “incredulity toward metanarratives.” 24 While it is sometimes not clear how the relationship between concepts and theories—and reality—is supposed to be understood in the work of any of these philosophers, it is true that, in the contemporary context, a holistic view of concepts is now much more accepted than Marcel would ever have dreamed of. Yet, Marcel's criticism also applies to the “theories” of contemporary philosophers, theories to which our concepts are supposed to be internally related. The problem these theories face is that they offer an account of knowledge that is

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based on the assumption that we can understand what it is to know something distinct from the embodied context of the knower. This assumption is behind almost all contemporary epistemological theories. According to Marcel's view, these theories will themselves have to be formulated at the level of primary reflection, and will involve abstraction from the level of “situated involvement.” Therefore, the level of theory is not ontologically basic, and a full understanding of our theories will not adequately explain our human activities and human practices. Rather, all of our theories will have to be understood ultimately by appeal to the ontologically prior level of “situated involvement.” So Marcel's view turns out to ask very probing questions of the whole enterprise of recent epistemology, with its holistic view of concepts. It is particularly interesting to consider in this respect the views of Quine. It is clear that Quine is a critic of the Cartesian view of the self, and the approach to epistemology motivated by it, describing it derogatorily as “the myth of the museum.” 25 Yet there is a sense, however, in which Quine's theory of “naturalized epistemology” is an attempt to refute skepticism of the traditional variety. But giving him the benefit of a favorable interpretation, we might say that he is engaged in a project which shares a similar aim to a project like Marcel's—to undermine the skeptical challenge by providing a detailed description of what knowledge is and how it arises, and how it fits into our life and practices. However, he appears to avoid the Cartesian trap essentially by eliminating any substantive notion of the self in the acquisition of knowledge, and replacing it by a mere body which simply occupies a place in a causal system (which is arbitrarily taken as the starting point): Epistemology . . . studies a natural phenomenon, namely, a physical human subject. This human subject is accorded a certain experimentally controlled input—certain patterns of irradiation in assorted frequencies, for instance—and in the fullness of time the subject delivers as output a description of the three-dimensional external world and its history. 26 That is to say, Quine seems to adopt as a basic, and unargued for, assumption of his view that the self is a completely material entity (and expresses his view in scientific terminology as a substitute for actual empirical data), and knowledge acquisition is to be understood by regarding the self from some independent (third party) standpoint, that is, by approaching the self as just one object among other objects in a causal system. This whole system would then be an object of scientific study. The self is then taken as the starting point of the investigation in a way that he is at a loss to justify without reintroducing concepts that have continued to dog a naturalistic approach to epistemology, such as mental states of a non-physical nature, qualia, and, of course, free will (a topic, and problem, most contemporary naturalists pass over in silence.) Yet, looking at Quine's theory in terms of our first two considerations then,

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I think that he could make a case for saying that his epistemology is not based on the assumptions that the existentialists are trying to expose as erroneous. Yet, in terms of our third consideration—whether science is regarded as the paradigm of knowledge—I think there is a clear preference in Quine's epistemological theory for the scientific approach to knowledge. Certainly he appears to accept psychologism, and the scientific project motivating it, as a matter of principle. The existentialists claim that any option to regard the scientific view of knowledge as the paradigm of knowledge must be arbitrary, and that this option seriously distorts the whole approach to epistemological questions. Descartes's view of the self, we recall, and his preference for the scientific view of knowledge, complimented each other very well in his development of the project of epistemology. Now, can we say that something similar is going on in Quine's theory, that his preference for the scientific view has misled him in his approach to epistemological questions? Quine does not explicitly spell out the place of science in his theory, yet it is clear that he has a preference for science (though, on his theory, it is far from clear why he should). On the one hand, he begins his approach to epistemology by saying that “epistemology is concerned with the foundations of science,” 27 but then goes on, after surveying the current woes and failed attempts of recent epistemology, to offer his own view which is that “epistemology . . . simply falls into place as a chapter of psychology and hence of natural science.” 28 A cursory reading of the former remark might suggest that Quine is engaged in a similar task to that of the existentialists in that he wants to show how knowledge (including scientific knowledge) arises within our everyday human experiences and cultural institutions. But, if this is true, then his preference for the scientific method, expressed in the latter remark, is indeed curious, and seems arbitrary. It is also a reason why he is forced to eliminate any substantive notion of the self and its role in the process of knowledge. A consequence of his arbitrary preference for science is that he loses the self as the subject experiences it and lives it (if we might put it like that). In my view, this criticism of Quine becomes very forceful in the light of Marcel's analysis of the human subject. We can see where this approach of Quine's is going to end up. It is one of the supreme ironies of mainstream modern and contemporary approaches to epistemology that scientific knowledge itself must finally succumb to the antirealism and relativism characteristic of the post-Cartesian approach. And it is interesting to observe Quine's attempt to exempt scientific knowledge from his unpalatable relativistic presuppositions, and also to observe the postmodernist move to do the exact opposite. If all knowledge is relative, Lyotard argues, then so is scientific knowledge. Lyotard holds that science too must legitimate itself in modern society, and that—despite its pretensions to objectivity—it does this by appealing to a narrative of its own. But narratives are to be understood as language games. To defend this controversial view, Lyotard then proceeds to offer an essentially Wittgensteinian language-game theory of meaning and truth. He

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makes the following three points, without elaboration or illustration by means of examples, about language games: (1) rules do not carry within themselves their own legitimation, but are the object of a contract; (2) if there are no rules, there is no game, and (3) every utterance should be thought of as a “move” in a game. Later, he adds that “language games are the minimum relation required for society to exist.” 29 The important point for the purposes of our discussion here, though, is not the problems facing such a view, but the fact that, unlike Quine, Lyotard does not attempt to exempt science from his general relativistic approach to knowledge. 30 Yet if this relativistic approach to science is correct, then the whole worldview of naturalism and empiricism is completely undermined, and it is no wonder that Quine wants to finally shrink from this particular conclusion, since the defense of the naturalistic worldview is one of his objectives. However, he cannot have it both ways: either there is objective knowledge, and so scientific knowledge can be objective, or there is no objective knowledge, and so scientific knowledge is not objective. At least we can say that the postmodernists are being somewhat more consistent on this point, than are the analytic philosophers. (I say “somewhat” since, despite their relativistic inclinations, the work of the postmodernists is also full of objective epistemological and moral claims, as illustrated in chapter 3). Quine holds that we do not have a good reason to reject science. He has been criticized for this claim because, critics charge, it is hard to see how he could support such a claim on his theory, since his view is that epistemology involves an explanation of what people believe and how, vaguely, they come to believe it in an empirical sense, yet makes no appeal to truth, so that we do not actually know whether any of our beliefs are right or wrong, or even whether Quine's beliefs about his own theory are right or wrong. Barry Stroud has made this point forcefully: On Quine's view we could not see ourselves as having knowledge or true beliefs as opposed to merely believing or “projecting” something about a physical world. We could at most hope to explain why we believe or “project” what we do, but since that is never enough in itself to explain how knowledge or true belief is possible we could never get the kind of understanding of our own position that we seek. 31 Now perhaps Quine might reply that such a demand is yet another example of the old epistemology rearing its head, the very epistemology that his new view is trying to supplant. Whether he could consistently make such a reply is not an issue I can pursue here, but until he clarifies his arbitrary preference for the scientific view of knowledge, his theory must be seriously undermined by Marcel's conclusion that scientific knowledge is parasitical upon the ontologically prior level of situated involvement.

Seven MARCEL AND TRADITIONAL PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEMS In this chapter, I wish to examine some of the implications of Marcel's view of the human subject as a being-in-a-situation for some other well known philosophical problems. The problems I will consider were important in traditional metaphysics, but it is with the rise of analytic philosophy that they have become especially prominent. This exploration seems to me to be a very fruitful line of inquiry, not only because very little work of this kind has been done up to now, but because I believe that Marcel's view has profound implications for our understanding of the problems I will discuss. If Marcel's ideas can make a contribution to our understanding of these problems it would be of great philosophical interest, especially since these problems continue to generate so much attention. More generally, it is also fruitful, I think, to attempt to discover whether the philosophical results of one tradition in philosophy might throw new light upon some of the problems which have engaged philosophers in other traditions. In this respect, it is disappointing that the implications of the existentialist approach in philosophy for some of the main problems of traditional metaphysics, and now of contemporary analytic philosophy, have not been adequately explored. Indeed, there has been a notable, and I would say regrettable, absence of dialogue between continental philosophy and analytic philosophy in the twentieth century. Since I believe that the existentialist approach can throw new light on some of the philosophical problems which concern contemporary analytic philosophy, it is imperative in my view that dialogue between the two traditions be established. This chapter is intended to be a small gesture in that direction. I will attempt to elucidate the implications of Marcel's position for three central problems of traditional philosophy: the problem of internal and external relations; the problem of necessary connections; and the problem of identity. These three problems have been around in one form or another since the early Greeks. The problem of identity has a long history and important discussions of it are to be found in the work of both Plato (427–347 BC) and Aristotle. Aristotle also touches upon the issue of internal and external relations in his analysis of the notion of substance. In modern philosophy, G.W. Leibniz (1646–1716) and the British Empiricists were concerned with the problem of identity, and the problem of necessary connections was first formulated by Hume. But it was not until the rise of analytic philosophy that

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the three problems under discussion became especially prominent. This was due, I think, first, to the fact that philosophers liked working on these problems because they were problems which readily lent themselves to the techniques of logical analysis, and, second, to the fact that it was believed that the philosophy of logical analysis could make some real progress toward their resolution. This latter hope has not been fulfilled. Although Marcel does not specifically address any of these problems, I believe that it will be fairly easy to indicate how, in the light of his general philosophical position, he would respond to them. Indeed, given Marcel's general philosophical approach, these are natural problems to consider from a Marcelian point of view. The foundation of the Marcelian response will be that discussions of these traditional problems typically presuppose some version of the Cartesian view of the self as an epistemological subject “looking out” upon the external world. Once we recognize, however, that this conception of the subject is not ontologically basic then we are free to reexamine these traditional philosophical problems in the light of that view of the self which is basic, namely “situated involvement.” My contention in this chapter, on behalf of Marcel, is that when this reexamination is carried out, it will become necessary to reassess our approach to, and understanding of, these same problems. We will begin our discussion by turning to the problem of internal and external relations. This will be followed by a consideration of the problem of necessary connections, and here we will be concerned primarily with the version of this problem raised by Hume. In the last section we will look briefly at the problem of identity, a problem which is very closely related to the other two problems. 1. The Problem of Internal and External Relations Let us begin our consideration of the problem of internal and external relations by: first, distinguishing between internal and external relations; then, second, I will canvass the various views on the topic, considering the way it has been traditionally approached, and examining some proposed solutions to the problem; then, third, I will focus on how Marcel's thought, especially his identification of the realm of “situated involvement,” is profoundly significant for our understanding of internal and external relations. One of the main issues for philosophers who are concerned with discovering knowledge of the nature of objects involves the attempt to establish which relations should be regarded as internal and which as external to the nature of a thing. Usually they have sought to discover some criterion which would allow us to make the appropriate distinction in all, or nearly all, cases. Philosophers who have been concerned with this matter have often focused on consideration of particular cases in an attempt to arrive at such a criterion.

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But, as we will see shortly, the general failure of their attempts to solve the problem satisfactorily illustrates just how difficult it seems to be to develop a general criterion for distinguishing between internal and external relations. Yet I will suggest that Marcel's philosophy offers us a possible criterion, a criterion that will not only help us to distinguish between internal and external relations, but that will also enable us to recognize that the traditional approach to the problem is misguided, and will have to be reassessed. A relation is said to be internal to a thing when we can say that without that particular relation (to some other thing), it would not be the thing that it is. A relation is said to be external to a thing when we can say that it would be the thing that it is, whether or not it has the relation in question (to some other thing). So, for example, New York (let us say) would not be the city it is, if it were not on the East Coast of the U.S. In this case, the particular relations the city of New York has to other things (for example, being east of Washington, D.C., close to Europe, etc.), contribute to the kind of thing that it is. These are internal relations of the city of New York. On the other hand, the Empire State Building is not necessarily a part of New York—New York would still be New York even if the Empire State Building had never existed—so, in this case, New York is said to be externally related to the Empire State Building. So clearly the problem of internal and external relations is a problem about what exactly it is that constitutes the nature and identity of an object. Common sense seems to support some distinction between internal and external relations, as just drawn. For it seems intuitively correct to say that at least some of an object's relations are internal to it, that it would not be the object it is without having those particular relations. But it also seems intuitively correct to say that this is not the case for all of the object's relations. This intuitive claim also applies to the properties of an object. We normally think that while some of an object's properties are essential to it, not all of them are. Some appear to be merely accidental to it. There is a close relationship between internal and external relations, and between essential and accidental properties. For the purposes of this discussion we will sometimes call a relation (either internal or external) a “property.” This should not cause any confusion for an internal relation can be regarded as a necessary property, and an external relation, as an accidental property, of an object. A relation, however, is a special type of property. So while a relation can, therefore, be called a property, obviously not every property of an object is a relation. So in our New York example, being east of Washington, D.C., is an internal relation, or necessary property, of New York, and the Empire State Building is an external relation, or accidental property, of New York. One other point needs to be made to avoid unnecessary confusion. Necessary properties must not be confused with physical properties. This is because common sense seems to support the claim that some necessary properties of an object (if they are relations) are not physical

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properties, and also that some physical properties are not necessary properties of an object. The relation of New York to the east coast of the U.S. is a necessary, but not a physical property, of the city of New York. Yet the Empire State Building is a physical, but not a necessary property, of the city of New York. G.E. Moore (1873–1958) sometimes speaks of relational properties to specify that property or quality an object has in virtue of having a certain relation which it would not have if it did not have the relation. 1 Fatherhood, for example, would be a relational property of a person who is a father. This relational property is not identical with the relation of fatherhood itself, because the relation of fatherhood is a relation which holds between two terms, whereas the relational property is the change (or modification, to use Moore's terminology) made in a particular object (in this case, a person) by virtue of having or being in the relationship of fatherhood. Now Moore's view, and that of many other philosophers, is that while there are undoubtedly some relations of a thing which are internal to that thing, this is not the case for all relations of a thing. Some relations, according to this group of philosophers, which includes Bertrand Russell (1872–1970), A.J. Ayer and Gilbert Ryle (1900–1976), are external to a thing. This view is in opposition to the view of philosophers like Josiah Royce (1855–1916), F.H. Bradley (1846–1924) and Brand Blanshard (1892–1987), who have held that all relations are internal to a thing, that it would fail to be the thing that it is if it lacked even one of the relations it has. This latter view is sometimes called the doctrine of internal relations, a doctrine which was popular with both idealists and monists. 2 In his famous paper on internal and external relations, G.E. Moore has clearly stated the position of those who hold that all relations are internal, and what he believes are the problems with this view. 3 According to Moore, the doctrine of internal relations holds that (1) A has P entails that (x does not have P materially implies that x is other than A), and from this, according to Moore, proponents of the doctrine fallaciously derive that (2) A has P materially implies that (x does not have P entails that x is other than A). This move is fallacious, according to Moore, because (1) only asserts that if A has P then any term which has not must be other than A, whereas (2) asserts that if A has P, then any term which has not, would necessarily be other than A. (P here is, of course, a relational property.) Those who subscribed to the doctrine of internal relations confused (1), which says that A cannot both have and not have the property P, with (2), which says that A could not be A unless it had P. Moore claimed that (2) blurred the common sense contrast between essential and accidental properties. The fallacy arises, Moore holds, because of a confusion of the physically necessary, but logically contingent, fact that A has P with a statement about what is logically necessary for something to be A. Moore's argument was taken to be a forceful critique of the doctrine of

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internal relations, and in subsequent discussions of the topic the proponents of this doctrine were expected to produce arguments which undermined our common sense distinction between internal and external relations. However, there is a sense in which Moore is presupposing his conclusion. For surely we must have in mind a view of what the nature of an object consists in, before we can make the claim that A having P is a logically contingent, although physically necessary, fact about A? In short, we can rule out the truth of the claim that “if A has P, then any term which has not, would necessarily be other than A” only if we have already settled the question of the nature of objects. But it is this very question which is under discussion in the debate about internal and external relations. This problem appears to be a difficulty which will face any attempt to solve the problem of which relations are internal, and which are external, to a thing. It seems that in order to settle the issue, we would have to decide in advance what the nature of an object consisted in. Then, of course, the problem can be easily, but (according to many philosophers) illegitimately, settled. This has led some philosophers, such as Ayer, to argue that questions about the internal relations of a particular thing are really only questions about which propositions about the thing are analytic, and this is only a matter of linguistic usage. 4 All we would have to do in order to discover the internal relations of a thing is consult the linguistic usage of the day. But Gilbert Ryle has opposed this view by suggesting that there are really no analytic propositions which ascribe properties to particulars. 5 Ryle gives the example of “Socrates was a Greek philosopher,” and holds that it is misleading to describe this proposition as analytic. This proposition expresses, according to Ryle, either the fact that certain features of Socrates, such as being Greek, were contingently related to other features, such as being married to Xanthippe, or the fact, also contingent, that the word “Socrates” is used to refer to a person who had certain features. This argument was part of Ryle's attempt to explain the nature of objects in terms of bare particulars. Timothy Sprigge (1932–2007) has modified Ryle's view in a way which takes us very close to Marcel's view. Sprigge argues that we do not have to worry about resorting to bare particulars, because, according to him, every particular we talk about will have to be identified by some description or other. 6 This means that we will never actually be confronted by a bare particular. Sprigge's basic point is that when we name an object we could not identify the object named unless we had a particular description of it in mind. A consequence of Sprigge's view is to relativize which properties are internal to an object, and which are not. This is because those properties which are regarded as internal will vary from person to person, for these properties will be relative to the description each particular person has for identifying the object. This is true, according to Sprigge, because, as he points out, not everyone will describe the same object

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in the same way. He therefore proposes the following definition for internal and external relations: Let F be any property of a thing a. Then F is an external property of a if something interesting and true may be said of the form “if such and such then not-Fa.” Otherwise F is an internal property. 7 Sprigge adds that since from different points of view different things are interesting, so from different points of view different properties will be regarded as internal and external. This notion of a “point of view” bears some relation to Marcel's main insights, and the relevance of these insights for our understanding of the distinction between internal and external relations. We have seen that one of Marcel's major aims is to reveal, by phenomenological descriptions of our concrete experiences as embodied subjects in concrete situations in existence, a more fundamental involvement of human beings in the world of experience than traditional philosophy had allowed for. His essential point, as we have seen in earlier chapters, is that my embodied context or situation is essential to how I experience the objects of my experience, and consequently to what objects mean for me, at the level of existential contact. This is just to say that my fundamental embodied situation in existence defines the “nature” of the object for me at the level of experience, or the level of “being-in-a-situation.” The scientific sense of “object” arises only by standing back from, or abstracting from, my fundamental involvement in existence, and considering those aspects of the object which can be captured and presented in sharable, public, and universal concepts. A consequence of this view is that the traditional distinction between internal and external relations does not apply or arise at the ontologically basic level of “situated involvement.” This is because at this level all relations which contribute to the object's meaning for me (that is, which would be revealed in a phenomenological description) are internal to the nature of that object. That is to say, the object would not be the object it is for me if it did not have all of the relations that would be revealed in a correct phenomenological description of its meaning for me. Marcel seems to have this in mind when he refers to the example of the artist's experience of the landscape, and says, For in fact we are now at a stage where we have to transcend the primary, and fundamentally spatial, opposition between external and internal, between outside and inside. In so far as I really contemplate the landscape a certain togetherness grows up between the landscape and me . . . . Is this state of ingatheredness not, in fact, the very means by which I am able to transcend the opposition of my inner

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and outer worlds? 8 This is just to say that, at the level of “situated involvement,” the subject/ object distinction has been transcended (or, perhaps more appropriately, has not yet occurred). And since the relations the object has for me by virtue of my particular context or situation in existence are definitive of its “nature” for me at this level, this can serve as a criterion for identifying internal relations, at the basic level of “situated involvement.” Since only those relations which contribute to the meaning of the object for a particular subject will be counted, this means that all of the relations the object has at this level are internal. Let us illustrate Marcel's position by briefly revisiting the example of the peasant and his relationship to his field (discussed in chapter 3). Most important for Marcel in this example is that the field is internally related to the embodied context of the peasant himself, since it is his embodied context which defines the meaning of the field for him at the basic level of “situated involvement.” For this reason, the field is also internally related to how it was obtained, to the crops grown in it, to the type of work done in it, etc. These are the type of relations that are significant for the peasant in our example, and in any correct phenomenological description of its meaning for the peasant, only these internal relations would be described. As Marcel puts it, “We have thus progressed . . . toward a concept of real participation which can no longer be translated into the language of outer objects.” 9 At the level of “situated involvement,” “external relations” are not significant for the meaning of the object for the individual. Of course, in different situations, the same object could have different internal relations for a particular subject (for example, for the artist or the tourist). It should be clear that Marcel's view will have very significant implications for the traditional problem of internal and external relations. For one thing, the question of which relations are external should not now arise at the level of “situated involvement.” For at this level, we are concerned only with internal relations. To be concerned with external relations at this level is to make the error of assuming that the level of primary reflection is ontologically basic, that is, that our concepts do capture the real and full meaning of objects for the individual human subject. The question of which relations are external to the objects of my experience now only properly arises in the realm of primary reflection (or of conceptual knowledge). However, if this is true, the problem of internal and external relations is transformed. The problem now loses all of the philosophical significance it traditionally had, and is quite easily solved. For at the level of primary reflection, we are not concerned with the nature of objects at all. Yet it was this very issue which gave the traditional problem its philosophical significance. It was thought that a solution to the problem of internal and external relations would decide the important question of what exactly the nature of an object

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consisted in. But at the level of primary reflection we are dealing not with the nature of objects, but with our concepts of objects. What a question about external relations (at the level of primary reflection) is really asking is which relations are necessary for our concept of an object to be a concept of that object, and which are not necessary. At this level, the answer to the question may very well turn out to be that those relations we regard as internal, and those as external, to the nature of a concept is partly a matter of convention. The fact that our concepts are at least partly a matter of convention, in a broad sense, is supported by the fact that different cultures sometimes have slightly different concepts of the same object. The crucial point, however, is that the philosophical problem disappears for solving it simply involves settling on a list of properties that make each one of our concepts the concept it is. We need to settle on which properties are internal, and which are external, to our concepts. Of course, there will be some limit on what can count as internal and external relations at the level of conceptual knowledge. For as we noted in chapter 1, Marcel does not hold a holistic view of concepts. He believes that there are necessary representational similarities between a concept and the object to which it corresponds. This is because concepts are formed essentially by the mind conforming to the object, and by the object dictating to the mind the manner in which it shall be known (at the level of conceptual knowledge). Therefore, at this level there would be a quite specific list of properties which our concept of “chair,” for example, would have to have in order to be a concept of a chair. And the identification of these properties would be dictated by the chair itself. In this way, objects at the level of primary reflection have a fairly constant identity over history, though I have suggested that some of the properties we regard as internal to our concepts might be a result of convention. Marcel has no wish to deny this basic Husserlian phenomenological analysis of the relationship between a concept and its object. According to Marcel, “Thus the taste of raspberries may be linked in my case with walks in the Vosges woodlands . . . and for somebody else with a house and garden in the Paris suburbs . . . . Yet in principle the distinction between the kernel and its shell remains valid, and the notion of the kernel of sensation retains its theoretic validity.” 10 His crucial point is that at the level of “situated involvement,” the “identity” or “nature” of an object is not mediated through concepts at all (that is, abstractions) but will depend upon the embodied contextual situation of each human subject. It is important to emphasize that Marcel's position does not commit him to the traditional doctrine of internal relations, espoused by idealists and monists. That is to say, he does not hold that every relation an object has, from the point of view of primary reflection (or conceptual knowledge), is an internal relation. His view is that all of those relations which would be revealed in a phenomenological description, at the level of “situated involvement,”

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would be internal relations. These would be only the crucial ones which contribute to the meaning of the object for a particular subject. And these relations are all that would be included, or, more accurately, revealed, in the description. Only essential (or internal) relations would be described in answer to the question: “What does object X mean for me?” No external relations (that is, external relations from the point of view of primary reflection) should be included, for they do not contribute to the meaning of the object for the individual. To return to our peasant example, the field might be externally related to other fields in the area, to the lake a mile away, etc. But these relations would not contribute to the meaning of this particular field for the peasant, and so would not be revealed in a phenomenological description of its meaning for him. They would be included only in a phenomenological description of the concept, from the point of view of primary reflection. The traditional discussions of the problem of internal and external relations, some of which were referred to above, are carried out under the very presupposition which Marcel's thought is attempting to dislodge—that concepts or theories can fully capture the nature of objects, and that all we need to decide is which relations are necessary for a particular concept or theory to be the concept or the theory it is. The mistake of those philosophers mentioned above is to ignore the context of both the subject and the “object” in their various attempts to analyze the nature of objects. Consequently, they are led to a misguided account of internal and external relations, although, as we saw, Sprigge was moving in the right direction when he claimed that one's “point of view” was important for determining which relations are regarded as internal, and which as external, to the nature of a thing. This criticism of the traditional discussions of internal and external relations is also true of recent influential discussions which approach the issue about the nature of objects through considerations of meaning, language and rationality, such as in Saul Kripke's (1940–) Naming and Necessity. 11 In this work, Kripke discusses Sprigge's example of which properties the Queen of England would have to have in order to be the Queen of England. Kripke believes that Sprigge's view is interesting but that it needs modification because it does not quite penetrate to the heart of what the nature or identity of an object consists in. However, the interesting point about Kripke's discussion is that it is carried out from the point of view of what Marcel would call “primary reflection.” What Kripke is really concerned with is an attempt to find out what precisely our concept of Queen is—that is, which properties we would regard as essential (that is, as internal) to our concept “Queen” which an object corresponding to it would have to have in order to be regarded by us as a Queen. For example, Kripke asks, would we still regard her as a Queen if we found out that she did not have royal blood? But this is just to ask if royal blood is a necessary property of our concept “Queen.” Perhaps we have not

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fully settled on the answer to this question, and discussions like Kripke's do little more than press us to do so. And as I suggested earlier, doing so may be partly a matter of convention. Kripke's discussion it seems to me is clearly about what set of properties we regard as essential to the concept “Queen,” a set of properties which any object we held to be a Queen would have to have in order to really be a Queen. Marcel's view would be that those relations which would be essential to the meaning of the object “Queen” (not the concept) would be defined for each individual by their own particular contextual relationship to the Queen. These relations will not be the same for each person. For example, somebody who had been an advisor to the Queen for twenty years might still regard her as the Queen even if it was discovered that she did not come from the right lineage. Another, who is a stickler for royal succession, might not regard her as the Queen if it was discovered that she had no royal blood. The point is that the embodied contextual situation of the individual will define the meaning of the object “Queen” for each individual in their experience. The concept then of “Queen” is just a convenient abstraction which we all make use of to talk about objects we treat as the same. It is likely that the majority of people who do not know the Queen personally, would not be “involved” with her at all in any real sense, and would know her only by means of conceptual knowledge. That is to say, they would know her mainly through a concept, or at the level of primary reflection. (Though even here there is still a meaning present and operating at the level of existential contact.) Kripke speculates on what would happen if we found out that the Queen of England was not a human being at all, but a cleverly constructed computer. Would we then say that she was not really a Queen at all? That we only thought she was the Queen because we had been misled? Marcel's response to this scenario would be that what has happened in this case is that we had the wrong concept (that is, a concept which did not correspond to the object). When we bring the concept over against the object, we find that they do not match up. So at the level of primary reflection we were operating with the wrong concept in the sense that if we (or most of us) agreed that a Queen had to be human, have royal blood, etc., then a sophisticated computer would not correspond to our concept. But at the level of “situated involvement,” it is easy to imagine that even if the Queen was a sophisticated computer (and we did not know this) she could still have a certain specific meaning for one of her advisors, for example, in which all relations would be internal. If it became necessary, finding out whether or not she was really a human being at all would be a matter for primary reflection. It might be claimed that Marcel could allow that some relations, but not all, are internal to an object at the level of “situated involvement.” That is to say, some relations could be external relations, even at the level of situated involvement. But I do not think he could make this claim and be consistent.

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For to allow that an object could have external relations at the ontologically prior level of “situated involvement” would be to allow that there are some relations at this level which are not necessary to the being of the object, and to say this is just to say that the object at this basic level has an identity which does not depend on the context. But the thrust of Marcel's thought is that the context is ontologically definitive of the being of objects at this basic level of “being-in-a-situation.” However, as already pointed out, the “context” does not include all of what would be regarded as an object's relations (both internal and external) from the primary reflection point of view, but only those that define its meaning for me, and all of these would be internal relations. It would be possible, on Marcel's view, for an “object” at the level of “situated involvement” to have a meaning which involved hardly any of those properties which would be regarded as essential from the primary reflection point of view. This would be true in cases of metaphor and symbolism. Thus, for example, a national flag might have such a profound meaning for an individual that, when he is involved with the flag in his embodied context, he does not experience the properties of the flag as a physical object at all, but only experiences the meaning symbolized by these properties. 2. The Problem of Necessary Connections The problem of necessary connections, famously developed by Hume, is a very closely related topic. 12 This problem revolves around the question of whether or not, if we believe that there is a necessary connection between two objects, A and B, it is possible to demonstrate that there is a necessary connection between them. Hume expresses the problem in this way: What is our idea of necessity, when we say that two objects are necessarily connected together? Upon this head I repeat what I have often had occasion to observe, that as we have no idea, that is not deriv'd from an impression, we must find some impression, that gives rise to this idea of necessity, if we assert we really have such an idea. 13 Any attempt at such a demonstration will be problematic, according to Hume, because he can find no impression corresponding to the idea of necessary connection. 14 If this is the case, then how can we be sure that there is a necessary connection between A and B just because we seem to observe A and B together? If it is not possible to demonstrate the necessary connection we believe to hold between A and B, then why believe there is such a connection? While this is primarily a question about the nature of necessity between things in the world, obviously the issue about which relations are internal, and which are external, to the nature of an object is in part a question

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about which relations are necessarily connected or related to an object, and which are only contingently connected or related. Therefore, the issues of internal and external relations, and of necessary connections, are part of the same set of problems about the nature of objects. Marcel never discusses the issue of necessary connections as such, but I think we can reasonably speculate on what his answer to this kind of question would look like. The first point he would make is that Hume has a clear presupposition about the nature of the self which influences his view of the nature of physical objects. Hume assumes that the separable mind gazes out upon the foreign world, and he is consequently led to the conclusion that physical objects are no more than collections of their observable and separable properties. (But, of course, the “unity” present in these collections still remains no more than a fiction for him. 15 ) In opposition to this, Marcel would claim that Hume's question about the relation of necessity which is supposed to hold between A and B is a question the formulation of which necessarily involves (disinterested, universal) concepts which correspond to A and B. For what this question really amounts to is that since all I really have in my mind is a concept “A” and a concept “B” (and no impression or idea of any necessary connection between them), how can I know that any necessary connection holds between them in the world? Marcel will reply, however, that this presupposes the truth of the very view of the self he wishes to deny. The Humean problem about causal necessity is based on the view of the self which regards the self as apprehending the external world by means of concepts, and then wondering if the world is really as it appears to be in our concepts. But the level of “situated involvement” which Marcel is trying to reveal is ontologically prior to the conceptual level. Therefore, Hume's problem of necessity cannot apply at this prior level. Rather, Marcel would say that Hume's problem about necessity is solved, for when we describe the “nature” of an object, we are not attempting to discover how it is involved in some previously unsuspected causal and logical relationships with the objects around it. Rather, as we have seen in the examples in chapter 2, it is through phenomenological descriptions that we discover how objects necessarily go together in our experience, that is, how objects and aspects of our experiences are internally related. In addition, we discover that the level of conceptual knowledge is derived from this involvement by a process of abstraction. It is only against a Humean background that necessary relations are judged problematic, but this is because the view of the self Hume adopts effectively rules out such relations from the beginning. Also, of course, we must point out that Hume's claim that “we have no idea, that is not deriv'd from an impression” 16 looks for all the world like a synthetic a priori proposition, and one which exhibits the very necessity between things that he is attempting to discredit.

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Therefore, at the level of primary reflection, or scientific-type knowedge, where questions of causation are usually discussed, the question of necessary connections in general cannot arise, and one of the major mistakes of modern philosophy is to think that it might. This is because considering an object from the scientific point of view is not ontologically basic, that is, is not that view from which all other ways of considering objects derive. The scientific point of view must be understood in terms of that account of the self which is basic, namely, “situated involvement.” However, if this is the case, then asking, at the level of primary reflection, if we can be sure that A is necessarily related to B is a mistake because this question presupposes what Marcel has already shown to be false—that the abstractions from our experiences as beings-in-situations represented by our concepts “A” and “B” do actually reflect the real natures of A and B. But this is not the case because, as Marcel has suggested, at the ontologically prior level of “situated involvement,” A and B are internally related to the embodied context which situates the human subject who has the experiences of A and B. Therefore, a question about whether causal necessity really obtains in the world is a question which presupposes that objects are really externally related to each other. But this is just to reassert the ontological priority of primary reflection (the scientific point of view) once again. This is true as much for scientific theories as it is for ordinary everyday living. Let us recall our discussion in chapter 3 that theories consist of organized bodies of concepts, between which there will usually be complicated logical relationships; yet these concepts are still abstracted from experience. We argued there that for Marcel scientific theories will be objectively true if they adequately represent reality. And that the concepts that make up the theory will be understood in the same way by all who contemplate them. Therefore, scientific laws would be based on abstractions from the specific experiences of individual scientists who are working with the objects of their experience. (And if scientists initially approach reality though primary reflection, the realm of science, then the problem of necessary connections will not arise because they are starting out with the reflective standpoint.) The relationships present in reality that become the content of various scientific laws would be expressed in primary reflection by forcing discreteness on our experiences (for the purposes of doing science, in this case). But we can approach this matter in the way that we argued Marcel would approach the problem of skepticism. The problem of necessary connections is generated by revealing necessary connections at the level of situated involvement, then forcing discreteness on these experiences, and then asking if these connections really do hold in the world (since, as Hume noted, we don't have any conceptual access to the connections, because conceptual knowledge seems to only operate by forcing discreteness on experience). In this way, the denial of necessary connections in reality can be seen as a version of the

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problem of skepticism, and like that problem, it is a meaningless problem. Of course, it is also significant that the problem of necessary connections is not raised by scientists, but by philosophers. This response is also true for necessary connections that might not always be the concern of science. For example, a phenomenological description of the peasant in his field illustrates how the field is internally related to the peasant. The description illustrates those features which make the field what it is for this particular peasant. These are necessarily related or connected to the meaning of the field for the peasant. But to abstract from this situation in our concepts of “field” and “man,” for example, and then to wonder if there is a necessary connection between the two objects in the world which we take to correspond to our two abstractions, is to make the mistake of thinking that these concepts do reflect the real natures of these objects. Hume's point is that, if the concepts do reflect the real natures of the objects, we should then be able to discover the necessary connection between them, if there is one. Marcel's point is that we cannot talk about the real natures of objects in isolation from a particular subject, and when we pursue this line of inquiry in the way Marcel does, Hume's problem, I submit, dissolves in the way I have suggested. 3. The Problem of Identity The philosophical discussion of identity is as widespread now as it has ever been in the history of philosophy. There have been several works in recent analytic philosophy which attempt a fresh look at the notion, particularly in the light of the techniques of modern logic. 17 However, as a recent commentator has pointed out, the introduction of logical symbols in recent discussions is usually for the purposes of decorative abbreviation, rather than because the symbols provide a substantive contribution to the traditional discussion. 18 Recent discussions are very much concerned with the analysis of identity statements in language. Yet there has been little discussion of the implications of the ideas of existentialist philosophers such as Marcel and Heidegger for the problem of identity. In this section, I wish to briefly examine the implications of Marcel's views for the philosophical issue of identity. Obviously, the issue of identity is very closely related to the issue of internal and external relations, and, as with the latter problem, I believe that Marcel's ideas throw new light on the former problem. The philosophical issue of identity seems to me to raise the following central issues: (1) What is meant when we say that A is identical with B, in the case where A and B are different objects? (2) When are two objects really identical? (3) What constitutes the identity of an object over time? (4) How can identity be defined? I will base my discussion around the attempt to provide satisfactory solutions to these problems concerning identity.

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The attempt to provide solutions to these questions is usually approached in the following way. Questions (1) and (2) can be approached by appeal to the principle of the identity of indiscernibles (a phrase first used by Leibniz). 19 This principle is: If X has every property that Y has, and Y has every property that X has, then X and Y are identical. This should be understood to mean that it is impossible for two things to differ only numerically. Or in other words, if two things differ numerically, this is not the only way in which they differ. At this point in the discussion of identity it is helpful to appeal to a distinction between relational properties, and physical properties (or qualities) of the object. For example, if we say that two numerically distinct objects are identical, in our common sense understanding of identity, we mean that they have similar, or the same, or identical, physical properties, but different relational properties. They also differ with regard to some of the special properties frequently mentioned in the discussions on identity: the property of “being identical with itself,” and “being different from another,” and perhaps even the very special property of existence itself. These are properties peculiar to each individual object; for example, object A has the property of being identical with itself, and the property of being different from B, and B has neither of these properties. The answer to question (1), therefore, is that when we say A is identical with B (where A and B are two different objects), we mean that the two objects have many (but not all) properties in common (these properties will be a combination of relational properties and physical properties depending on the object). If we say that two different apples on a table are identical, we mean that they have many properties in common (the same shade of red, same size, same shape, etc). But we do not mean that they have all properties in common. Let us say that A is nearer to the end of the table than B. This would mean that the two objects differ with regard to their relational properties, and somebody who held that the apples were identical would readily admit that this was indeed true if pressed on the point. The outcome of this discussion of question (1) also gives us our answer to question (2). The answer to question (2) is that two objects are really identical only if they are the same object. This is borne out when we examine carefully what we mean when we say that two distinct objects are identical. When pressed on what we mean here by “identical,” we readily admit that we do not mean the two things are identical in every respect, so that it would be impossible to distinguish between them. So our everyday common sense understanding of identity does not challenge the principle of the identity of indiscernibles, but serves to confirm it. For our everyday understanding of identity presupposes that if two objects are really identical, they are the same object, and if they are not really identical, they are distinct objects. But this is exactly what the principle of the identity of indiscernibles says. Therefore, appeal to the principle is appropriate when addressing questions (1) and (2).

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However, it is with regard to question (3) that Marcel's work has significant implications. In addition, only when question (3) has been settled should we then turn our attention to the other three questions, and the solution to them will follow readily enough. Marcel treats the question of identity as a question primarily concerned with the issue of the identity of an object over time. This question is very similar to the question: what is the true nature of a person or thing-like object? What sort of thing is it? What kind of thing is it? Our discussion of the Marcelian response to the problem of internal and external relations has already laid the ground work to enable us to establish Marcel's response to question (3) above: what constitutes the identity of an object over time? For Marcel the identity of an object over time will be constituted by its relationship to a particular human subject. What an object means for a particular individual will depend on his embodied context, as we have already seen, and there is no guarantee that this meaning will be the same for all. So, for Marcel, “meaning” and “identity,” at the level of “situated involvement” are interchangeable notions. So in order to answer question (3) above, we will first of all have to formulate the question more precisely. The question will now become: what is the identity (that is, meaning) of this particular object for this particular person over time? This is simply to ask: what is the meaning of this object for this particular person? The answer will then involve a phenomenological description of what the object means for that person, and this will involve, as we have seen, appeal to the embodied context of the individual in question. The first two of our questions above will arise only after we have abstracted ourselves from our “situated involvement” in existence. So when we ask, for example, if two apples are identical, we mean to ask if those features of apple A which correspond to my concept of apple A are identical with those features of apple B which correspond to my concept of apple B. The main point here is that questions (1) and (2) are questions which are raised only at the level of primary reflection. They arise only after question (3) has been settled in the way I have proposed. Marcel's thought seems to have been moving in this direction when he wrote in his early work Being and Having that “the principle of identity ceases to apply only at the point where thought [primary reflection] itself can no longer work.” 20 Marcel's answer to question (4) would be, I think, that identity cannot be defined in any general sense. He would reject the view that the principle of the identity of indiscernibles can serve as a definition of identity (a view which is defended by Baruch Brody, but disputed by Max Black {1909– 1988} and G.E. Moore). 21 This is because the principle seems to presuppose identity, for in order to state it we must first of all understand identity. This fact emerges when we consider any two objects which we believe are identical. We believe that they have the same properties in common and conclude that they are identical. But if we did not know what identity meant,

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how could we know the objects had the same properties in common? In order to recognize sameness, we must already know identity. Therefore, sameness cannot serve to define identity. It seems, therefore, that identity cannot be defined because any definition will appeal to sameness of properties, but this appears to presuppose identity. In conclusion, it seems to me that Marcel's view has very deep implications in the ways I have outlined for the problems considered in this chapter. In addition, I think that the general approach of the phenomenological ontologists has a lasting contribution to make to our understanding of problems which are often seen as the sole concern of analytic metaphysics and epistemology. Phenomenological ontologists themselves such as Sartre, Marcel, Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty have not given enough attention to these topics. Indeed, it is a great pity that so little dialogue goes on between the two camps because it is surely the case that the best ideas from either side can help to throw further light on the problems under discussion. Unfortunately, the suspicion, sometimes even hostility, that often marks the relationship between analytic and continental philosophy has stifled such dialogue. In this chapter, I have tried to suggest a way in which we might look at some of these perennial problems anew from the point of view of phenomenological ontology.

Eight NON-CONCEPTUAL KNOWLEDGE: MARCEL AND MARITAIN The distinction between experience and conceptual knowledge is obviously at the heart of Marcel's new approach to epistemology. We have noted that he develops his epistemological views so as to allow a significant role for nonconceptual knowledge in human experience, and also in such as way as to enable the philosopher to recognize the nature of this non-conceptual knowledge and its value. Marcel has argued that there is a type of knowledge which is non-conceptual, but which is nevertheless real, and, in addition, the realm of non-conceptual knowledge is where the self encounters many of its most profound experiences, experiences that are an essential part of the human essence. It might be thought that Marcel could have very little in common with philosophers who champion a purely conceptual approach to philosophy, and philosophical problems, and we noted that from a practical point of view it can be quite difficult to engage his ideas in a dialogue with contemporary analytic philosophers. It takes a deal of goodwill on both sides in order to bring such disparate approaches into dialogue, as well as a willingness to look at problems from a quite different viewpoint than one usually adopts. We attempted to sketch out how this dialogue might go for some philosophical problems in the last chapter. In this chapter, I wish to continue this dialogue with other philosophers, but to take it in a different direction. For there is another tradition in philosophy—the Thomist tradition—where we might suspect that real dialogue with Marcel might also be difficult, perhaps impossible. Like the analytic tradition, the Thomist tradition has sometimes been criticized for being too conceptual, for getting lost in an analytic approach to philosophical questions and so for not being able to see the wood for the trees. And, if we are to be honest, we must acknowledge that Marcel did occasionally make this very criticism of the Thomist tradition. In his “Autobiographical Essay” Marcel notes that, “. . . Charles Du Bos and I had weekly meetings with Jacques Maritain, who took great pains to help us understand Thomist thought better and to appreciate it more. All three of us showed good will, but the result was meager indeed.” 1 Yet it would be a great pity if Marcel could not engage in fruitful dialogue with the Thomist tradition for the simple reason that he shares with Thomistic philosophers so many points of philosophical agreement. The possible points of dialogue between the Thomistic tradition and the work of Marcel will be the focus of this

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chapter, as we continue our attempt to compare and contrast Marcel's ideas with those of other thinkers who work on similar problems. We shall take the work of Jacques Maritain (1882–1973) as representative of the Thomist tradition for the purposes of our dialogue here because Marcel and Maritain were contemporaries who often met and discussed philosophical matters. Thomistic philosophy covers a vast terrain, so we shall confine ourselves to one area in particular—that of non-conceptual knowledge—because it is a large theme in the work of both thinkers, so it is an obvious point of departure from which to begin a discussion. It is accurate to say that Maritain and Marcel are two of the most significant Catholic philosophers of the twentieth century. They are also both converts to the Catholic faith, each finding it more intellectually and religiously congenial to their respective outlooks on life than alternative systems of meaning. Yet all too often these French philosophers are usually not seen as intellectually sympathetic to each other, are not generally regarded as like-minded, and are seldom studied side by side, even by Catholic philosophers. The fact that Maritain is a Thomist philosopher, and Marcel is a Christian existentialist philosopher, is undoubtedly one of the main reasons for the lack of dialogue between the work of these two thinkers. The existentialist and the Thomist often did not see eye to eye, and perhaps at certain times had a healthy suspicion of each other's work. As Ralph McInerny has put it: “You might imagine a line on which Jacques Maritain occupies a point to the right, Paul Claudel one on the left, and in the middle, smiling like a somewhat enigmatic Cheshire cat, sits Gabriel Marcel!” 2 Maritain does occasionally call himself an existentialist, even sometimes describes his metaphysics as “existentialist,” and yet he does not use the term in the same way Marcel would use it. Maritain employs the word “existentialist” to focus on the notion of existence in all its manifestations, and, through this, on being, which is the proper and central subject of metaphysics. 3 For Marcel, on the other hand, the term “existentialist, “ as we noted in chapter 1, refers to the view that philosophical inquiry must properly begin with the concrete lived experience of the individual subject in his or her concrete situation in existence. This starting point will turn out to have important implications for human knowledge and meaning. 4 (Of course, the existentialists differed among themselves over the meaning of the term, and, at one time or another, most disavowed the label as a description of their own work, mainly because the term might lead to the perception that they held what others held who were also described as existentialists!) Indeed, I think it is fair to say that it is this issue of the significance of human subjectivity for philosophical inquiry that has been largely responsible for the discrete distance the two philosophers maintained from each other throughout their own lifetimes. Maritain believed that the emphasis placed on human subjectivity, characteristic of Marcel's thought, and of existentialist

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philosophy in general, led inevitably to an irresponsible neglect of the proper subject matter of metaphysics, being as such. Marcel, on the other hand, and existentialist philosophers in general, were motivated, at least in part, by the belief that traditional metaphysics had led to the predominance of abstract systems of philosophy, systems which were in danger of losing touch with, and rendering even more inaccessible, the philosophical issues they were supposed to illuminate. (Although this was a criticism the existentialists aimed primarily at Cartesianism, more than at other philosophical systems). During the heyday of existentialism, especially in Paris, there was a general distrust of existentialism by Thomists and a corresponding distrust of traditional philosophy by existentialists. The existentialists saw themselves as breaking away from traditional methods of philosophizing, and the Thomists often saw the existentialists as a foil for their own work. This mutual distrust prevented these philosophers from focusing in their own lifetimes on what they had in common rather than on what separated them, although Ɯtienne Gilson (1884–1978), who was frequently in dialogue with Maritain, was very much aware of Marcel’s thought, and even described Marcel as not only “the most authentic and most profound philosopher of our time, but a true heir of the metaphysic of Being.” 5 It is clear that Maritain and Thomism share several key philosophical meeting points with Marcel, and now, in retrospect, I believe these meeting points are just as significant as the topics over which they differed. One obvious difference between Marcel and Maritain—obvious to anybody who takes even a passing glance at their respective works—is their style of philosophizing. Seldom have two styles been more opposed. Where Marcel is unsystematic, cursory, and often cryptic, Maritain is systematic, focused, exhaustive in detail, and generally quite clear. Whereas Maritain has a clear project in mind and does all in his power to realize that project, Marcel is suspicious of system-building in philosophy and prefers instead to offer fragmentary, and often scattered, points aimed not very clearly at a more distant philosophical endpoint. Marcel, of course, wishes to make a philosophical point by adopting his particular style of philosophizing; and, in a sense, we might say that this is true of Maritain also. Nevertheless, I draw attention to their differences in style simply to emphasize that we should not let such differences become a barrier to our recognition of the many similar themes and concerns to be found in their respective works. We can identify the following common themes in the work of Maritain and Marcel: (1) a dissatisfaction with the philosophies of Cartesianism, idealism and empiricism, and a determination to offer a realist alternative to them; (2) the key role each allows for non-conceptual knowledge in their work; (3) their recognition of the importance of art and other creative works for illuminating philosophical truths; and (4) their similar concern with the structure and development of modern society—culturally, socially, and pol-

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itically. The most crucial difference between them, which kept them apart in their own lifetimes, was the respective roles they each assigned to conceptual knowledge in their thought. Our focus in the rest of this chapter will be on the second issue mentioned above, the nature and importance of non-conceptual knowledge in the respective philosophies of Maritain and Marcel. This, it seems to me, is the most significant point of agreement between the two philosophers. And the fact that each philosopher attached great significance to pre-conceptual knowledge is a further indication of a deeper affinity between them, an affinity that neither of them was quite prepared to acknowledge in his own lifetime. In the next two sections we will provide a brief exposition of the nature of non-conceptual knowledge in the work of each philosopher, and also briefly discuss the role non-conceptual knowledge plays in the overall philosophical position of each. In the third section, we will briefly compare and contrast the main points of agreement and disagreement which have emerged from our analysis of the work of both thinkers. 1. Connatural Knowledge in Maritain Maritain's aim as always in his work is the development of an adequate metaphysics, which would serve as both an alternative to, and as a critique of, Cartesianism and empiricism. His major work in epistemology is The Degrees of Knowledge, and, as the title indicates, his aim is to identify and describe the different types of knowledge in human experience. In the book as a whole, he distinguishes between two realms of knowledge, natural and supernatural (suprarational) knowledge. Natural knowledge pertains to the things of the natural world, which are known in a variety of ways, whereas supernatural knowledge pertains to the realm of the supernatural. Within the realm of natural knowledge, Maritain further distinguishes three main kinds of knowing—the scientific, the philosophical, and the connatural—of which the third will be our main concern here. The key datum for Maritain in all three types of knowledge is the chief insight of his whole metaphysics, the realization that the human mind in all genuine knowledge conforms to the object. Truth emerges for Maritain in natural knowledge when the mind lies in “conformity to what is outside of it and independent of it.” 6 The object dictates the way in which it shall be known; the object, according to Maritain, is master, and the intellect is at once passive in the face of it (it does not modify the object), yet active too in coming to receive or have knowledge of the object. Yet scientific and philosophical knowledge differ fundamentally from connatural knowledge. This is because the former types of knowledge occur by means of and require the employment of concepts, whereas connatural knowledge is pre-conceptual. In scientific and philosophical knowledge, the concept is a formal sign, acc-

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ording to Maritain, which means that the concept itself is not what is grasped by the mind in knowledge; rather the object is grasped or made known by means of the concept. Concepts, therefore, are not the objects of thought, but that by which we come to know the objects of thought. Knowledge in either of these forms issues in explicit and basically accurate judgments, judgments that can then form the basis of further reasoning and argumentation. Furthermore, scientific and philosophical knowledge arise mainly through observation, empirical evidence, experience, etc., and by means of deductive and inductive reasoning from the evidence. In contrast to these two types of natural knowledge, Maritain places knowledge by connaturality, which is discussed briefly in The Degrees of Knowledge, and in a little more detail in The Range of Reason. 7 According to Maritain, connaturality is “a kind of knowledge which is produced in the intellect but not by virtue of conceptual connections and by way of demonstration.” 8 This negative definition is about as close as Maritain comes to providing a philosophical description of the nature of knowledge by connaturality. This is not surprising, however, given that such knowledge is non-conceptual. It may be possible to give some account of connatural knowledge by means of concepts (that is, it may be possible to approach a theoretical analysis of that which is essentially non-theoretical). This is what Maritain, the philosopher, is attempting in his philosophical work. However, since this kind of knowledge is essentially non-conceptual we should not expect a precise conceptual account of its nature. Maritain, of course, is not the first philosopher to draw attention to the presence of this kind of knowledge in human experience. He himself believes that this kind of knowledge has a long history in human thought, and suggests that Aristotle makes appeal to it in the Ethics in his discussion of the virtuous man. The virtuous man is “co-natured” with virtue, and therefore behaves virtuously. Something very similar to connaturality, although obviously expressed in different terminology, can also be found in St. Thomas Aquinas (1224–1274), in some Indian philosophers, and in the work of more recent thinkers such as William James (1842–1910), Henri Bergson, Martin Buber and, of course, Marcel, to name only a few. 9 By the phrase “connatural knowledge,” Maritain refers to knowledge, which occurs when the individual subject becomes “co-natured” with the object of knowledge. In such knowledge the intellect does not operate alone or primarily by means of concepts, but operates also with “the affective inclinations and the dispositions of the will, and is guided and directed by them.” 10 So strictly speaking, connatural knowledge is not rational knowledge, that is, it is not knowledge arrived at by means of concepts alone. Nevertheless, it is a real and genuine knowledge, even if a little obscure; certainly it resists the attempt to make it fully accessible in conceptual terms. Despite the difficulty in bringing precision to our philosophical under-

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standing of the nature of connatural knowledge, such knowledge, according to Maritain, plays an important, and indeed indispensable, role in human experience. It is to be found in particular in “that knowing of the singular [the concrete] which comes about in everyday life and in our relationship person to person.” 11 Knowledge through connaturality is particularly important in the areas of morality, art, and mystical experience. To illustrate the notion further, Maritain focuses on an example taken from moral experience. Moral experience offers the most widespread instance of knowledge through connaturality. This is due to the central significance of morality in human experience. Moral knowledge, according to Maritain, is gained in an experiential way for most people, and such experiential knowledge is nearly always adequate for the regulation of our moral behavior. In short, moral knowledge is usually knowledge by connaturality. The individual usually has a non-conceptual insight, or realization, of how a particular virtue, for example, is to be understood and applied in human experience. Yet the individual may not be able to, and usually cannot, articulate this knowledge, or provide a conceptual account of it. An example Maritain discusses is the virtue, fortitude: On the one hand, we can possess in our mind moral science, the conceptual and rational knowledge of virtues, which produces in us a merely intellectual conformity with the truths involved . . . a moral philosopher may possibly not be a virtuous man, and yet know everything about virtues. On the other hand, we can possess the virtue in question in our own powers of will and desire, have it embodied in ourselves, and thus be in accordance with it, or co-natured with it, in our very being . . . a virtuous man may possibly be utterly ignorant in moral philosophy, and know . . . everything about virtues, through connaturality. 12 We may possess in our minds conceptual knowledge of the virtue of fortitude: knowing how to explain and describe it, how it is to be applied in experience, which experiences display it, require it, lack it, etc. In this case, our intellect would be in conformity with various truths that pertain to the virtue. We would be in a position to answer any question about fortitude by simply identifying the appropriate truth involved. In this way, a moral philosopher could know a great deal about virtue, but still not be virtuous. Conversely, we may know none of these truths conceptually, yet we may be “co-natured with it, in our very being.” In this second case the individual possesses the virtue, and when asked a question about it, will answer it through inclination, or through the will, by consulting his or her own being, by consulting what he or she is. A virtuous person may therefore be totally ignorant of moral philosophy. This example illustrates clearly the distinction between know-

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ledge of fortitude by connaturality and knowledge of the same virtue through concepts. In the former case we experience, possess in our being, what the virtue is, whereas in the latter case we do not possess experiential knowledge of fortitude, but we do have an abstract, theoretical understanding of the virtue. The analysis of moral knowledge as connatural knowledge is also used by Maritain to discuss and elaborate on the nature of natural moral law. The natural law is known by everyone in a type of pre-conceptual, non-rational, non-cognitive, non-propositional way. Natural law is not natural simply because it expresses the normality of functioning of human nature, but also because it is naturally known. 13 Natural law is then made explicit, according to Maritain, in conceptual judgments, but these judgments proceed, not from prior conceptual knowledge, but from “that connaturality or congeniality through which what is consonant with the essential inclinations of human nature is grasped by the intellect as good; what is dissonant, as bad.” 14 It is important to realize that the word “inclinations” does not merely refer to animal-like inclinations (although these are also possessed by humans), that is, to biological impulses of one sort or another. Rather, the word is intended to convey what is essentially human. These inclinations are, according to Maritain, reason-permeated inclinations: inclinations refracted through the crystal of reason in its unconscious or pre-conscious life. 15 Maritain's point is that human beings have a pre-conscious, but reason-permeated, connatural knowledge of moral experience, which is known to all, and which is progressively revealed in the conceptual development of the natural law. Maritain makes a further relevant and important point about the natural law. Since the fundamental principles of morality are known by inclination, or by connaturality, they are known in an undemonstrable manner. This is why human beings are unable to fully justify in conceptual terms their most fundamental and cherished moral beliefs. This fact is a further indication of their essential naturality. In this sense moral philosophy is truly a reflective knowledge. It does not create or discover the natural law; all it does is critically analyze and rationally elucidate moral standards and rules of conduct whose validity was previously discovered in a non-conceptual and non-rational way Analogous to Maritain's explanation of our “connatural knowledge” of morality, is his account of connatural knowledge of art, and of connatural knowledge of God in mystical experience. 16 The artist and the poet each have their own special way of knowing the world, which is clearly neither philosophical nor scientific, that is, it is non-conceptual. Art does not generally communicate on the level of the conceptual, and this is true even of literature or poetry. Art is rather a type of experience not only for the artist but also for the audience. Poetical experience also, according to Maritain, is born in the pre-conscious life of the intellect, and is essentially an obscure revelation both

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of the subjectivity of the poet and of some flash of reality coming together out of sleep in one single awakening. 17 Art also very often communicates to the spectator in a non-conceptual way. Mystical experience, however, is the highest form of knowledge by connaturality because its object is God, and also because, unlike art, which gives us only indirect knowledge of God, mystical experience can issue in direct knowledge of God. It is important to consider briefly the relationship between connatural knowledge and conceptual knowledge in Maritain's thought. One question to consider is whether or not connatural knowledge is a kind of foreknowledge of the principles that later emerge in abstract metaphysics? In other words, is the intuition of being, which is central to Maritain's metaphysical system, a type of connatural knowledge? This is a crucial question and reflection on it will help us clarify further the notion of connaturality in Maritain's thought. Maritain emphatically rejects the idea that the principles of metaphysics might be principles which are initially known in connatural knowledge, and which then become explicit in the intellectual knowledge typical of abstract metaphysics. 18 The first point Maritain makes is that the critique of knowledge—that is, the philosophical investigation of the origin, nature and types of knowledge— is part of metaphysics. This is also true of the investigation of knowledge by connaturality; its recognition and analysis belong to metaphysics. However, he further holds that knowledge by means of connaturality has nothing to do with metaphysics itself. This is because metaphysics proceeds purely by way of conceptual and rational knowledge, while connaturality proceeds in an essentially non-conceptual, non-rational way. So Maritain's position is that while the actual knowledge we gain by connaturality (for example, of fortitude) has nothing to do with metaphysics (because it is non-conceptual), the identification and analysis of the nature of connaturality itself as a type of knowing does belong to metaphysics. It belongs to metaphysics at least to the extent that we can give a partial, though always inadequate, philosophical account of this type of knowledge. Maritain further points out that metaphysics requires the intuition of being, and that the intuition of being is not a kind of connatural knowledge. Rather, the intuition of being is an intellectual intuition; insofar as it is an intellectual intuition it is, Maritain argues, objective—which means that it can be known and expressed conceptually. The intuition of being is not, therefore, a “co-naturing” with any object, a co-naturing that could only be hinted at, but not fully captured, in conceptual knowledge. Maritain further adds that it is very important not to confuse the two types of knowledge, for any attempt to make connatural knowledge a type of philosophical knowledge (that is, a type of conceptual knowledge), and similarly any attempt to express those principles proper to philosophical knowledge in terms of connaturality will have the effect of spoiling both types of knowledge and their objects. So

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Maritain is careful to keep the two types of knowledge—philosophical and connatural—clearly distinct, while at the same time maintaining that the task of the identification and elucidation of connaturality as a way of knowing belongs to philosophy. 2. Marcel on Non-Conceptual Knowledge Marcel is obviously very concerned in his work with the distinction between conceptual and non-conceptual knowledge, or to use Marcel's special terms, with the distinction between primary reflection and secondary reflection, and with the corresponding realms of problem and mystery. In fact, the distinction between conceptual and non-conceptual knowledge forms the basis for Marcel's Christian existentialist account of the human person. One of Marcel's primary aims is to explore the role and limits of conceptual or abstract knowledge in human life. He is concerned with this matter because he holds that conceptual knowledge is unable to give an adequate account of the “being-in-a-situation” of each individual in his or her world. We have explained Marcel's account of the human subject in detail in earlier chapters, and so, for the purposes of comparison and contrast with Maritain, I will provide only a brief overview here of the salient points. Marcel has argued that the subject is always located in a specific context by virtue of its particular embodied situation in the world. In addition, this realm is ontologically basic, in the sense that this is how we initially and primarily experience the world (our world), and theoretical reflection on this world, though essential, only comes later, and usually prompted by experiences that have arisen at the more existential level. Marcel has tried to show that the basic level is hard to grasp in conceptual knowledge, and can best be revealed by phenomenological descriptions. The danger in modern and contemporary philosophical approaches is that they ignore the ontologically basic realm of experience, and its significance for our understanding of the nature of knowledge in general, including our understanding of, and approach to, philosophy itself. Marcel's discussion of primary and secondary reflection, discussed in chapter 3, is an attempt to explain both of these realms of experience, and the relationship between them. One of his most significant claims, however, is that conceptual knowledge cannot do justice to the fullness of human experience in ordinary everyday life. Indeed, the process of abstraction operates precisely by ignoring the contextual situation of the subject. This is what makes theoretical thinking theoretical, and if we did not set aside our contextual situation, we would be unable to perform the task of theoretical thinking at all. But theoretical thinking carries a risk—that we will end up treating the human subject as just another object. This also leads directly, as we have noted, to the generation of the problem of skepticism by Descartes

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and the subsequent Cartesian tradition. The tendency to treat human beings as objects is not just evident in the modern approach to conceptual knowledge, especially in modern scientific thought, but it is also evident in the increased bureaucratization of society, and so it becomes prominent in much of modern life. In this way, the tendency to regard primary reflection as the paradigm of knowledge is not just a tendency that can affect philosophy and its approach to philosophical problems, but it can also have an effect on modern culture more generally, especially on our views of the nature of the human person. Insofar as this tendency can become institutionalized, it can have a direct (and negative) effect on human beings in their day to day lives (for example, by encouraging us to identify people with their functions). This leads Marcel to the realm of mystery, which is a realm where the distinction between subject and object breaks down. As he famously puts it in The Mystery of Being, “A mystery is something in which I am myself involved, and it can therefore only be thought of as a sphere where the distinction between subject and object, between what is in me and what is before me, loses its meaning and its initial validity.” 19 As we saw in chapter 5 on Marcel's approach to the existence of God, many human experiences are mysterious because they intimately involve the questioner in such a way that the meaning of the experience cannot be fully conveyed by means of abstract conceptual thinking, that is, by cutting the individual subject off from their experiences. Secondary reflection is that type of reflection that allows us access to the realm of mystery because it is (1) a critical reflection directed at the nature of thought itself, and (2) it ends in a realization, or discovery, of the realm of mystery, and motivates human actions appropriate to this realm. Marcel sometimes describes this new dimension to which secondary reflection allows us access to as the realm of Being, or the unity of experience, a realm that he argues is not actually deduced from any analysis of theoretical thinking but which is actually the guide (the “intuition”) of reflective thought. 20 So, like Maritain, Marcel agrees that conceptual knowledge is a vital aspect of experience, but as philosophers we must identify its place and its limits. We must also be aware of the possibility of non-conceptual knowledge, and he agrees with Maritain that the identification and elucidation of this realm belongs to philosophy. Without mentioning Maritain by name, Marcel has raised one or two critical points that would apply to Maritain's notion of the intuition of being. Marcel believes that the intuition of being is too vague a notion to help us with our approach to the understanding of how knowledge takes place in human experience. 21 His worry is that the intuition of being, as described by Maritain above, is difficult to capture from the side of experience, as it were, because, as an intuition, it is not quite at the level of experience yet. But it is also difficult to capture or explain from an intellectual point of view, because, again since it is an intuition, it is not quite at the level of conceptual thinking

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either. The difficulty can arise, Marcel feels, when we attempt to recall the intuition, or to describe it. The intuition cannot be “possessed” by the mind, because then it would no longer be an intuition—”[it] cannot be brought out into the light of day, for the simple reason that we do not possess it” 22 ; in addition, it is not clear than we can solve the difficulty by saying that it is mostly an experience. Marcel himself employs the notion of secondary reflection in an attempt to get around this problem. It can do this because it is both a critical reflection on ordinary reflection, but also then culminates in an assurance of the realm of mystery, beyond primary or ordinary reflection, as we have noted. But are Maritain and Marcel really all that far apart on this matter, especially given that Marcel himself agrees that there is an intuition behind reflective thought which acts as its guide? We will come back to this point again in the next section. 3. Maritain and Marcel: Points of Agreement and Disagreement It is obvious that the realm of non-conceptual knowledge not only plays a very important role in the respective philosophies of Maritain and Marcel, but also that their respective explications converge at many points. For Maritain, non-conceptual knowledge, or connaturality, is one of the main routes by which we gain knowledge of morality, art, and the deepest human relationships. It is also a way in which we can express our relationship with God. Marcel too believes that some of the deepest human experiences, such as human relationships, including their moral dimension (as manifested in the concrete approaches of fidelity, hope and love), as well as our relationship with God, are all essentially non-conceptual. He even suggests, as we saw in chapter 5, that the absolute and unconditional commitment which is the defining feature of the most profound human relationships must be ultimately grounded in the Absolute Thou, that is, in the existence of God. 23 Maritain allows for more conceptual labor in moral philosophy than Marcel would be happy with; however, both philosophers accept some version of the theory of natural law, although Marcel does not use the term. But Marcel clearly accepts that there are important and profound human experiences which are objective to all, and which, to use Maritain's phrase, are naturally known. They may also be said to be reason permeated (to use another phrase of Maritain's) in the sense that they are rational and can be made philosophically explicit, at least to some degree. Like Maritain, Marcel also recognizes that artistic expression, especially in drama and music, helps us to convey some features of those crucial human experiences which are not fully accessible to conceptual knowledge. Indeed, Marcel frequently quotes from his plays to illustrate his philosophical points. So both philosophers agree that any adequate epistemology must take account of non-conceptual knowledge because such knowledge plays a crucial role in human experience.

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The strongest disagreement between the two thinkers arises, I believe, over the notions of existence and being. 24 In fact, more generally, disagreement over the understanding of these two notions defines to a large extent the fundamental difference between Thomism and existentialism. For Thomists, the concept of existence is always applied to whatever exists, and Thomistic philosophers focus on what exists precisely in so far as it exists, or is actual. But for the existentialists, the concept of existence refers primarily to human existence (although the existentialists differed individually over the correct account of human existence). Moreover, the term “being”, for Maritain, refers to the object of knowledge which is initially known in an intellectual intuition, and which is later made explicit in metaphysical reflection. For Marcel, on the other hand, “being” in its most important sense refers to all of those areas of experience which are inaccessible to conceptual knowledge and which must be approached non-conceptually, by means of secondary reflection, and which can be lost if they become the exclusive focus of conceptual knowledge. He describes being as “what resists—or would be what would withstand—an exhaustive analysis of the data of experience that would try to reduce them progressively to elements that are increasingly devoid of any intrinsic value or significance.” 25 It is important to emphasize that the term “being” has this different meaning, or different application, in the thought of each philosopher, for once we realize that Maritain and Marcel are not talking about the same issue, then we begin to suspect that their disagreement is not perhaps as great as it might initially appear. Maritain also believed that Marcel's criticisms of the notion of the intuition of being were misguided because Marcel failed to realize that the intuition of being is, for Maritain, not just another experience, as it were, but a “more fundamental and more immediate [experience] than all the rest and relates to a primary reality already present in our entire intellectual life.” 26 But nevertheless, Maritain contends, it is an intuition, which is the root of the search for intellectual knowledge. Maritain believes that Marcel fails to see this because he does not quite trust the intellect enough to satisfy our search for knowledge. 27 The main differences between Maritain and Marcel have their roots in the issue over which both philosophers disagreed most sharply, and which ultimately divided them in their own lifetimes. This is the issue of the right approach to, and the correct subject matter of, philosophy. Marcel, the existentialist, regarded abstract metaphysics with suspicion because in his view it was too speculative, was divorced from experience, and relied too heavily on conceptual knowledge. Maritain, the Thomist, looked on existentialism with suspicion, and saw it as relativizing the key notions of being and existence to human experience, and of irresponsibly downplaying or ignoring reason and conceptual knowledge in favor of individual subjectivity and freedom. Yet even on this issue, I suggest that neither philosopher is

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committed to the view that the other position is untenable. 28 There is room for some accommodation by each philosopher, at least for the concerns of the other. Maritain and others were suspicious of what they regarded as idealists tendencies in Marcel's thought. There is no question that these tendencies are present in the work of other existentialist thinkers (for example, Merleau– Ponty, Sartre and Heidegger), but, as James Collins has observed, idealistic tendencies in Marcel's thought “are difficult to find.” 29 Collins points out that Marcel agrees with Maritain that the judgment of existence is the most properly metaphysical judgment. But Marcel asks a larger question: whether the intellect, and its operations and general approach (that is, primary reflection), should not in turn be studied as a mode of being. As Collins notes, this is an existentialist way of overcoming the primacy of epistemology (and we have looked at this existentialist approach to epistemology in detail in this book). It is not that Marcel is critical of Maritain's metaphysical approach, but more that he would situate it within a study of being, rather than seeing it as the study of being. Whereas Maritain would say the intellect is adequate to understand the nature of being, and that a Marcelian approach runs a risk both of idealism and of relativism. Yet, while Maritain believes that conceptual knowledge is essential to attain knowledge of being, and therefore of all reality, still, like Marcel, he emphasizes the role of experience in philosophy, and even in metaphysics. He often reminds us that reality overflows concepts, and that metaphysics itself initially requires an experience of being, or of the fact that the world is there. 30 It is not stretching the matter too much to suggest that, like Marcel, he would also agree that there is an irreducible quality about this experience, and that it is only open to minds disposed to receive it. Marcel, on the other hand, clearly does not wish to deny the objectivity of knowledge, or to denigrate the importance of conceptual knowledge in human experience. He explicitly agrees with Maritain that thought is made for being as the eye is made for light; as he puts it in Being and Having: “I do really assert that thought is made for being as the eye is made for light (a Thomist formula). But this is a dangerous way of talking, as it forces us to ask whether thought itself is. Here an act of thought reflecting on itself may help us. I think, therefore, being is, since my thought demands being; it does not contain it analytically but refers to it. It is very difficult to get past this stage . . . ” 31 But while the objectivity of knowledge is maintained precisely in the move to abstraction, Marcel is keen to define both the role and the limits of conceptual knowledge in human experience. Maritain, on the other hand, holds that an adequate conceptual analysis of what it means to exist in general is essential in metaphysics and epistemology, and he consequently provides a much richer account of intentionality, and of the objectivity of knowledge, than Marcel, who provides little or no account of these crucial matters. Maritain also emphasizes more than

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Marcel is prepared to the importance of philosophy (conceptual thinking) for the recognition and analysis of non-conceptual knowledge. Marcel is not comfortable with the project of conceptual system-building in philosophy to the extent that Maritain is, and Maritain is not prepared to emphasize experience to the extent that Marcel is, and herein lies their fundamental disagreement. Moreover, if Marcel had provided a detailed account of intentionality, and of the realm of conceptual knowledge, we can also be sure that it would differ significantly from Maritain's analysis of these matters. However, from our vantage point I am surely right in suggesting that the differences between the two philosophers are not as significant as they themselves seemed to regard them. For we have seen in this chapter that Maritain and Marcel have many substantive points in common, and both thinkers are on the same side in their philosophy of the human person, in their epistemologies, and, of course, in their overall worldviews.

Nine FROM AN EPISTEMOLOGICAL POINT OF VIEW: BUBER AND MARCEL Martin Buber's philosophy of “I-Thou” and “I-It” relationships is regarded by many as a genuinely far-reaching breakthrough in modern thought. It is also a very similar epistemology to that of Marcel's, which we have laid out in detail in previous chapters. For this reason, it will prove instructive as we bring our study to a close to provide a detailed analysis of this epistemology, and to offer some points of comparison and contrast between Buber and Marcel (and occasionally Heidegger as well). Many have recognized the significance of this epistemology. Charles Hartshorne (1897–2000) has written of Buber that we would be “immensely poorer without” his fundamental insights, and pays him the significant tribute of recording that “we are forever in his debt.” 1 Emmanuel Lévinas (1906– 1905) pays tribute to Buber's penetrating analysis of relation, and the act of distancing. 2 In fact, Buber's identification and development of the I-Thou and the I-It realms of knowledge is regarded as so significant that Karl Heim (1874– 1958) has been moved to describe it as a “Copernican Revolution” in philosophy. 3 We see the same revolution in Marcel's thought, a revolution that contains the seeds of a profound critique of the general direction of Continental philosophy after Heidegger. William Ernest Hocking has suggested that Marcel's ideas may be “the major achievement in epistemology of the present century,” while Jeanne Delhomme observes that Marcel is the only philosopher she knows who has tried to say what epistemology would look like within a serious personalist philosophy. 4 Yet Lévinas and several others have drawn attention to what they regard as important criticisms of what may be broadly described as the epistemology of the position developed by Buber and Marcel. While accepting the profundity inherent in the general existentialist analysis of I-Thou relationships, and the farreaching significance of the idea of the ontological superiority of the I-Thou realm of human knowledge over the I-It realm of human knowledge, many commentators have doubts about the epistemological status of these insights. In particular, there is the suggestion in Buber's philosophy that the I-Thou relation is fundamentally an experienced relation, which, by its very nature, can lay no claim to universal validity. We have seen the same criticism leveled at Marcel, with some suggesting that the level of secondary reflection is really not accessible to reflective thought, despite Marcel's claims to the contrary. Maurice Friedman has suggested of Buber's theory of knowledge, for instance, that it is

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characterized by its insistence on the insight that truth involves participation in Being, and not conformity between particular propositions and that to which the propositions refer. 5 Truth, conceived in this manner, Friedman believes, cannot claim universal validity, but it can be exemplified and symbolized in actual life. This in essence, according to Friedman, is what Buber's philosophical work attempts to explain and illustrate. The problem with this approach to truth is that there is a difficulty in making it “objective” in the manner required by philosophers so that it can be laid down as a body of certain knowledge available to all for examination. An obvious criticism of Buber's view, according to Malcolm L. Diamond (1924– 1998), is that human beings can attain certain knowledge only in those matters which do not concern the fundamental problems of human nature and human destiny, for these fundamental problems are immersed in the waywardness of ephemeral encounters. 6 According to Diamond, “loyalty, love, commitment to God, man and country, are incapable of empirical verification.” 7 Diamond contends that the I-Thou relation identified by Buber is one about which questions concerning its validity continually arise because of its ephemeral, non-empirical nature. Hartshorne has attempted to state another problem with Buber's epistemology in a more formal way. He asks: “What . . . is the logical structure of the contrast between I-Thou and I-It? [I-Thou] is a mutual or reciprocal relation, affecting both terms. If this is made a formal requirement, then the only possible relation with anything in the past is I-It.” 8 Lévinas raises a quite different problem when he says that Buber's “pure spiritualism of friendship does not correspond to the facts,” 9 and that he fails to take human individuality seriously enough in his analysis of the I-Thou relation. Lévinas also suggests that Buber's phenomenological descriptions are not supported by appeal to abstract principles. These criticisms taken together may seem to count against Buber's philosophy making any lasting contribution to the theory of knowledge. These are fair and reasonable critical points to raise about the broad epistemological position developed by both Buber and Marcel, yet I think that in the end they mostly fall wide of the target. I believe these critical points actually have their origin in deeper epistemological questions we must ask of these philosophers. This will become clear after we have identified these deeper questions. In this chapter, I want to identify and analyze these questions primarily in relation to Buber's thought, but we will also compare how Marcel would respond to them, and the close similarity between their respective positions. This will help us to bring our study to a close by further analyzing the epistemological approach of Buber and Marcel; it will also help us to appreciate how this approach differs from that of other European philosophers, such as Heidegger. I want to suggest that the main questions we should ask about existentialist epistemology are questions that get to the heart of what is distinctive about this epistemology. These questions are: (1) if all knowledge is derived from the realm

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of mystery (the I-Thou realm of human experience), what is the status of theoretical knowledge, such as philosophical, scientific, theological and mathematical knowledge?; (2) Do Buber and Marcel and others who share their epistemological approach hold that human knowledge represents the world as it really is in itself?; (3) How are we to characterize our knowledge of the I-Thou relation itself?; and (4) Do these philosophers even believe in “knowledge,” if the term is understood to include a correspondence between beliefs or propositions in our minds, and their objects in the external world? As we shall see, Diamond's criticisms involve (1) and (4), Hartshorne's point is primarily related to (3), and Lévinas's objections are related to (4), especially the nature of the I-Thou relation, and also to (3). Similar questions and criticisms have been asked of Marcel, especially concerning question (3). I will try to illustrate in what follows that these questions are legitimate questions, and that a quite satisfactory response to most of them can be developed from within Buber's and Marcel's epistemological approach. In my view, neither philosopher addresses these questions adequately in their work, or makes their answers to them clear, and this has in small part contributed to misunderstandings. It is the case also that these particular questions have been much neglected in Buber and Marcel scholarship, and it is hard to find any detailed discussion of them. 10 Yet I think it is fair to say that they are among the most crucial questions we need to ask about Buber and Marcel's thought from an epistemological point of view, and, since their epistemology can generally handle them, we will see that it does represent a genuine contribution to philosophy. Before going any further, I wish to say a word about the term “epistemology.” I suspect that both Buber and Marcel would be uneasy with this term, and would be inclined to reject it. Yet I believe that it is an appropriate term to use when discussing that aspect of their work which is our present focus. I mean by “epistemology,” a philosophical examination into the nature of human knowledge and justification, and despite Buber's restricted use of the term “philosophical” to refer to a branch of the I-It realm of knowledge (as we shall see), it will still be appropriate to describe his position as an epistemology, and to ask of it the epistemological questions I have identified above. Of course, I also need to emphasize that the term is not designed to trap either of these thinkers into accepting categories they reject. (This will become clear in our discussion.) Since we are familiar with Marcel's epistemological position, let us first provide a brief overview of some of Buber's central ideas, before we go on to look at how both philosophers would respond to the questions raised above. 1. Martin Buber's Epistemology It is crucial at the outset of any consideration of Buber's general epistemological position to realize that he begins his mature thought by drawing attention to the basic ontological structure of human experience: “The world is twofold for man

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in accordance with his twofold attitude.” 11 The twofold attitude is comprised of the dialogical I-Thou relationship, and the monological I-It relationship. To put the issue more clearly, these are the two ways of knowing in human experience, and it is part of the great legacy of Buber's thought that in his analysis of human knowing he has undertaken a realistic, accurate and philosophically valuable account of the ways in which we arrive at our knowledge, ways which are intimately bound up with how we experience the world. Buber's move beyond the traditional division of the knowledge of reality into an exclusively subject-object epistemology is developed and explained through his phenomenological description and analysis of the I-Thou relation in human experience. Because of space limitations, I will not spend a great deal of time providing an exposition of Buber's account of the I-Thou relation; this part of his thought is well known, and need not occupy us too much. Further, there are many excellent studies of this relationship. 12 The crucial issue for my view is the epistemological implications of his I-Thou analysis. Buber's basic claim is that the I-Thou relation is a relation which can only be spoken with one's whole Being, that is, it can be known only through the experience of genuine relation with the Other. (It is important to note that Buber himself tries to restrict the word “experience” to the I-It realm; he prefers the word “participation” when talking about I-Thou relations. 13 ) Buber characterizes the I-Thou relation as one in which the basic feature of the ontological structure of human existence is revealed to the human subject. It is not, however, revealed in conceptual knowledge, for such knowledge limits and confines, by its very nature. What this means is that when we talk about the I-Thou relationship in conceptual terms, something is inevitably lost in the descriptions. This is because the actual experience of the I-Thou relation is beyond conceptual knowledge; it is fundamentally an experienced relation. As he puts it, “Nothing conceptual intervenes between I and Thou . . . .” 14 In the case of the I-Thou relation, any attempt to fully express it conceptually would be futile and would serve only to distort an experience which is inexpressible. Yet it is one of Buber's central insights that, although inexpressible, the I-Thou relation, which, according to him, is possible between life with others, life with nature, and life with God, can be fully revealed and therefore “known,” in the actual experience of the relation by the human subject. It is obvious that the realm of I-Thou relations is very similar to what Marcel has described as the realm of mystery. The I-Thou relation, though the primary aspect of the ontological structure of our Being, is often eclipsed by the second, and secondary, aspect of that ontological structure, an aspect which is characterized by I-It relations. The I-It relation can be known fully through conceptual knowledge for it deals with objects which have instrumental use in that they can be possessed, manipulated, exploited, etc. Complete mastery of the relation is possible at this level, because all reciprocity, mystery and the inexpressible otherness of the “object” is abstracted in an act of conceptual domination. In addition, for Buber, the I-It

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world, or the world of objective knowledge and therefore of philosophy, theoogy, mathematics and science, is derived from the I-Thou world. 15 Since the fundamental aspect of our ontological structure is revealed in the I-Thou relation, it is no surprise that it is this relation that we first experience as a child. Indeed, we long for it: “The innateness of the longing for relation is apparent even in the earliest and dimmest stage.” 16 This meeting of the I and the Thou in the child's experience even precedes the child's awareness of himself, according to Buber. It is only later that the split comes in the relation, first, when I affirm my own existence, and, second, when the second aspect of our being, the conceptual dimension, makes itself manifest. Buber expresses it thus: . . . the longing for relation is primary, the cupped hand into which the being that confronts us nestles; and the relation to that, which is a wordless anticipation of saying Thou, comes second. But the genesis of the thing is a late product that develops out of the split of the primal encounters, out of the separation of the associated partners—as does the genesis of the I. In the beginning is the relation—as the category of being, as readiness, as a form that reaches out to be filled, as a model of the soul; the a priori of relation, the innate Thou. 17 This is the gradual process of the child's movement from an I-Thou world to an IIt world, and the child gradually establishes for himself or herself the world of “objective” reality. Nevertheless, this objective world, according to Buber, while playing its own central role in the acquisition of knowledge and in human experience generally, is dependent upon and derived from the prior meeting with the Thou. The danger is that in the move from I-Thou to I-It the original structure of Being is likely to be forgotten and the I-It world established as the realm of truth. Buber's thought on this point is not that far removed from Heidegger's quest to retrieve the meaning of Being from our state of forgetfulness, a state which is motivated by our obsession for conceptual mastery of experience. Of this, we shall have more to say later. It is helpful at this point to distinguish between two senses of the word “knowledge,” and to point out how they are significant for understanding Buber's epistemological position. Buber does not make this distinction himself explicitly, yet it will serve to help us answer our question about whether Buber believes in knowledge. We can distinguish between knowledge at the I-It level, and knowledge at the I-Thou level. At the I-It level, the term “knowledge” describes the relationship between the beliefs in our mind and the objects in the external world. So, for example, at this level I can say I know that I have just graded a stack of exams. My belief that I graded the exams corresponds to what actually happened in the external world. I have knowledge of this fact. This is the way the term “knowledge” is usually understood in modern epistemology. Yet, at the level of the I-Thou experience, I think Buber would allow that we have

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“knowledge” of the I-Thou experience too. However, it is not a propositional knowledge, or a knowledge that involves agreement between our beliefs and the objects in the world. It is not an agreement between my belief that the I-Thou experience is real and profound, and the fact that it is real and profound, for example. It is a deeper kind of knowledge than this—where I know that the IThou experience is real and profound because I actually experience it, not because I am matching up a propositional belief with an experience. In this sense, this second type of knowledge is non-conceptual, but nevertheless real and an essential part of human existence. This is perhaps Buber's main argument in the whole of his thought. Yet a second observation is also crucial. This is the point that I-It knowledge is derived from I-Thou knowledge. 18 So Buber concludes that I-It knowledge is not the only type of knowledge, and it is not even the main type of knowledge. We might put this differently by saying that the realm of I-Thou is ontologically primary for Buber, in the sense that all other types of knowledge must be understood in terms of it, and it is not understood in terms of any other realm of knowledge. However, the actual nature of the derivation of I-It knowledge from I-Thou knowledge is a key (and controversial) claim, and must be elaborated further. How is the I-It world in general derived from the I-Thou world? Buber's answer to this question is very similar to that of many other existentialist philosophers, including Marcel, who held that human subjectivity was not only important, but that it had profound epistemological significance. While the existentialists differed among themselves over how to develop this view, Buber holds that we first participate in reality, and then conceptual knowledge involves a stepping back from or an abstraction from this more fundamental level of human existence. According to Buber, the subject lives at the level of I-Thou, the level of Being, and at this level is not primarily a thinking subject. This realm is ontologically basic; it is the realm where the subject's experiences take place at what we earlier called a level of existential contact, and not at the level of abstract analysis. The (conceptual) meanings of our experiences at the basic level of I-Thou can later, and then only partially, and often with a lot of difficulty (depending on the subject matter), be abstracted by the intellect and presented as “objects” of knowledge, which could then be understood as part of an objective analysis or demonstration. In short, the basic level of I-Thou is not fully accessible to conceptual or theoretical thinking. This is important because there is a strong tendency in modern thought to reduce everything to the level of I-It. At the level of I-It, we operate with conceptual generalizations and the use of abstract thinking. This is the kind of reflection which seeks causal connections and which is operative in the sciences, and “theoretical thinking” of any kind. It involves a “standing back” from our involvement with experience, with nature, with others and with God (hence Buber's critique of traditional theology, which he believed too often turns God into an It; he says that we should be concerned

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not with the idea of God but with the experience of God 19 ), and engages in an inquiry which proceeds by means of abstract concepts, which have “objective” content. One of Buber's main epistemological claims is that the level of I-It cannot give an accurate or full description of the level of I-Thou; the I-Thou level is therefore superior to I-It. The experience of the I-Thou relation for Buber also indicates that it is in intersubjective relations, that is, in the meeting between I and Thou, that the I truly finds self-”knowledge,” or self-affirmation. As I become I, I say Thou. This again affirms the absolute primacy of the I-Thou relation as the basic feature of the ontological structure of human existence. Without the I-Thou experience, there is no knowledge, the I does not fully know itself, and conceptual knowledge is deficient because it is unaware of its origin from and dependence upon the I-Thou relation. In this case a person who possesses conceptual mastery of the objective world in isolation from the I-Thou experience, or who sets up the IIt world as the primary ontological realm, has cut themselves off from Being, and, therefore, from truth. 2. Buber and Marcel on the Epistemological Questions Given this brief characterization of the fundamentals of Buber's “dialogical” philosophy, we are in a position from which to focus on the specific epistemological issues raised by his analysis. My aim here is to consider—assuming that this general analysis is broadly correct—how this type of epistemology would deal with our three remaining questions. What about our question, as to what is the status of theoretical knowledge, such as philosophical or scientific knowledge, if it is derived from the I-Thou realm? This question gets its import from two concerns: first, what does it mean to say that such knowledge is derived, and second, does the fact that such knowledge is derived compromise in any way its claim to objectivity? While Buber does not directly address these concerns, I believe his position on the first point is broadly similar to Marcel's and Heidegger's. According to Marcel’s view, the subject is fundamentally an embodied being-in-a-situation, and is not essentially (in the metaphysical sense) a thinking or knowing subject. 20 This is because the subject is always located in a specific context by virtue of its particular embodied situation in the world. Therefore, the objects which are the subjects of conceptual analyses in any kind of abstract thinking are first of all experienced in the actual world. Then they are abstracted and presented in a series of concepts as objects for all to consider. For example, take this desk that I am now writing on. I experience (that is, know) this desk primarily at the level of existential contact, and not at the level of theoretical thinking. In this sense, the desk has a particular meaning for me that it does not have for anybody else. In this way, my context as an experiencing subject defines to an extent how I experience objects in the world.

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Marcel elaborates this view in his distinctions between primary and secondary reflection, and between problem and mystery, as we have seen. 21 We noted that he argues that the realm of conceptual knowledge (or primary reflection) typically deals with problems of various kinds. Problems require conceptual generalizations, abstractions, and an appeal to what is universal and verifiable in human experience. However, the realm of the problematic cannot give an adequate account of the being-in-a-situation of the human person, the person's fundamental involvement in the world at the level of personal experience. This involvement takes place, according to Marcel, in the realm of mystery, a realm where the distinction between subject and object breaks down. Many of our most valued and profound experiences occur at this level, for example, of hope, love, fidelity, and faith. These experiences are all mysterious because they intimately involve the questioner in such a way that the meaning of the experience cannot be fully conveyed by means of an abstract conceptual analysis. From the philosophical point of view, such experiences can be recovered by means of secondary reflection, a general term which refers to both the act of critical reflection on primary reflection, and the realization or existential assurance of the realm of mystery, beyond primary reflection. Heidegger holds that dasein's (human being's) fundamental ontological state is that of a being-in-the-world. 22 This way of experiencing the world is ontologically basic, and the “theoretical attitude” involves a standing back from, or abstraction from, this basic level, and is derived from it. Heidegger illustrates this point further by appeal to the distinction between the realms of ready-tohand, and present-at-hand. At the level of being-in-the-world, we deal with the objects of our experience in practical, everyday ways, as “equipment” or as “tools” for our projects. They are said to be “ready-to-hand.” In my office, for example, my desk becomes part of a totality; it tends to disappear as an “object”; I am usually not even “aware” of the characteristics of the desk as I become “absorbed” in my various projects (for example, grading exams). As with Marcel, it is crucial to note that I do not simply regard the desk as being in a context; it is in a context by virtue of its function in the totality of my office surroundings. Nor am I regarding the desk from the theoretical or conceptual attitude when I am engaged in a particular project. Yet the ordinary course of human experience will prompt me from time to time to regard the desk from the theoretical point of view; it might become “conspicuous” by breaking, for example. In this case, I will abstract from my context of grading, and look upon the desk as “present-athand,” as isolated from the context in which it had a more fundamental meaning. Heidegger goes on to argue that once we understand in detail the nature of these two realms of ready-to-hand and present-at-hand, and their relationship, our approach to epistemology, among other things, will be radically changed. Now Buber, I think, would broadly agree with the thrust of both these accounts by Marcel and Heidegger. So, applying this general approach to Buber, what happens at the level of

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abstraction is that I set aside all that is personal and contextual in my experience of the desk, and I look at the desk solely as an abstract object. I have a concept of the desk that captures essential features of the desk—its shape, color, texture, what it is made of, etc. This is the abstract meaning of “this desk” captured in conceptual knowledge, and, of course, concepts have universal, public content. This is why everybody has essentially the same abstract concept of the desk. We could move to a further level of abstraction to the concept of “desk in general,” and so forth. (This is the level of I-It for Buber, the level of primary reflection for Marcel, and the level of present-at-hand for Heidegger). So my abstract understanding of the desk is then derived from the more fundamental way I experience it, and represents a particular way of looking. We might say that for Buber (as for Heidegger and Marcel) we understand the world from the top down (that is, first from the experience of the desk at the top, all the way down to the conceptual abstraction of the desk), rather than from the bottom up (from the conceptual abstraction of the desk as basic up to our experience of the desk). This brings us to the second concern, which gets to the heart of the question about the actual status of conceptual knowledge. We must ask of these philosophers whether they believe that theoretical knowledge is objectively true? Or does it merely represent a perspective on reality, perhaps one of a variety of different perspectives, all of which might have a certain legitimacy? This question is absolutely crucial, especially since many continental philosophers give the latter answer to this question. Do Buber and Marcel believe that scientific theories, and by extension, philosophy, theology, etc., all simply represent different ways of looking at the world, whose content could vary depending on who is doing the looking and what they are looking at? In short, are they committing to a position which says that scientific theories (for example) are relative to the context, or even conceptual framework, of the individual, and so have no claim to objective validity (as Lyotard suggests in The Postmodern Condition)? I think this is one of those areas in which Buber's thought in particular is vague, and he does run the risk of coming too close to a kind of relativism. He certainly appears at times to relativize all truth claims to the human perceiver who is making the claims, such as in his description of the linden tree, where he suggests that the experience of the subject defines the description. And in Between Man and Man we find the following remark: “[The philosopher] can know the wholeness of the person and through it the wholeness of man only when he does not leave his subjectivity out and does not remain an untouched observer.” 23 These kind of observations in Buber's work are ambiguous and hard to interpret, and to some suggest a relativistic interpretation. However, let us not forget that he is perhaps led into this by his attempt to emphasize that conceptual knowledge is neither the only, nor the main, category of knowledge. But not only does he run the risk of relativism (an impossible position to defend), but he also runs the risk of committing what I call “the sin of relativism”—contradicting himself by making objectively true (context-

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independent) claims, and then claiming that it is illegitimate to make such claims. Even one of Buber's best known commentators seems to think Buber comes close to relativism. 24 While Buber is guilty of not facing up to this problem in his work, and also of doing much to encourage the interpretation that he is a relativist, I believe he did not see himself as a relativist on this issue, and that he can establish a fairly adequate defense against the charge of relativism. 25 One of the main reasons he escapes the charge of relativism, and can be given the benefit of the doubt is because of his commitment to key distinctions and insights in his work. For there can be no doubt that he is claiming that the I-Thou relation is objectively real, that it is distinct from the I-It relation, and also that the I-It relation is not the main way to knowledge. These are all objectively true, context-independent, claims; he clearly does not believe that we can reject them from some other epistemological standpoint. We might call them essence distinctions, as are all the substantive (metaphysical) claims he makes in his description of the I-Thou relation, and of the I-It realm, and so on. He is not trying to hide the fact that he is making these claims, or attempting to obfuscate the issues by using an excessively obscure writing style (like the deconstructionists). Yet we might still wonder if he ends up in relativism about theoretical knowledge. I think that Buber's position can be defended against the charge that it leads to relativism about scientific, philosophical, and theological knowledge in the same way that Marcel defends his view. Marcel's position, as we illustrated in chapter 3, preserves the objectivity of knowledge. Buber can adopt a similar type of approach to that of Marcel. For Buber can argue that the level of I-It is the level of objective knowledge. This is because the concepts employed at the theoretical level are objective in two crucial senses. First, they represent essential features of the objects of experience (at an abstract level) as they really are in the objects, and second, these essential features are also objective in the crucial sense that everyone understands them in the same way. So, to continue with our example of the desk, my (and indeed everybody's) conceptual analysis of the desk will involve concepts which adequately represent essential features of the object in question as they really are, for example, the shape of the desk, its measurements, texture, what it is made of, its features, etc. Also, my wife (and indeed anybody) will understand conceptually these features in the same way as I understand them. Hence, this knowledge is objective because, first, it adequately represents essential features of the objects of experience just as they are in themselves, and, secondly, it represents these features in the same way for all, regardless of each person's particular experiences at the I-Thou level. In The Eclipse of God, Buber writes that “a skeptical verdict about the ability of philosophy to lead to and contain truth is in no way here implied.” 26 Buber can also defend the objectivity of theories in the same way. Theories consist of organized bodies of concepts, between which there will usually be complicated logical relationships; but these concepts are still abstracted from

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experience. So theories too will be objectively true (if they adequately represent reality) in the sense just described. A scientific theory, for example, would be objectively true if the parts of reality represented by the concepts utilized in the theory are represented just as they really are. Of course, theories in which the concepts did not match up with reality would be false, would misrepresent reality. Furthermore, everyone's conceptual understanding will usually not be at the same level; clearly a Heisenberg would understand the atom at the conceptual level in a much deeper way than most. But the main point is that the concepts in our thinking—at whatever level of abstraction—do, if our thinking is correct and true, adequately and objectively represent the objects of which they are the concepts. This is just a sketch of a way in which Buber can argue against the charge of relativism, but I believe it is a fruitful one, and one consistent with his thought. This discussion naturally moves us on to our question of whether human knowledge represents the way the world really is, for Buber and for Marcel? This question can be quite tricky for philosophers coming from this existentialist epistemological standpoint because an important distinction must be made before they can properly address it. (Otherwise, we will be guilty of implicitly assuming that the I-It level is in fact the main level of knowledge.) If this general epistemology is correct, I suggest that the meaning of the phrase “things as they are in themselves” will now have to be rethought in the way I suggested in chapter 6. This is because the answer to the question about “things as they are in themselves” will become relative to the point of view we take, either that of I-It knowledge, or that of the I-Thou knowledge. For if a question about things as they are in themselves is asked from the point of view of conceptual knowledge (the “theoretical attitude”), then a description of our abstract concept of the thing will be sufficient for an understanding of the nature of the thing. In this way, Buber is similarly critical of the Cartesian approach. He observes that: “The I in the Cartesian ego cogito is not the living, body soul-person whose corporeality has just been disregarded by Descartes as being a matter of doubt. It is the subject of consciousness, supposedly the only function which belongs entirely to our nature. In lived concreteness, in which consciousness is the first violin but not the conductor, this ego is not present at all.” 27 That is to say, if we believe, as Descartes did, that the “theoretical attitude” is the primary way to knowledge, and that this involves selecting those features of things in the external world which are naturally presented in conceptual knowledge, then a description of our abstract concepts is what is required when we ask a question about things as they are in themselves. If, however, we ask what are things like in themselves from the point of view of the I-Thou relation, we are asking for a phenomenological description of the meaning of the thing in the external world as it is defined in relation to a particular subject. There is no guarantee that this meaning will be the same for all, although it will be similar, though not identical. This is because (1) many people have similar situations and experiences, though never identical

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situations and experiences, and (2) the abstract analysis of the object will be the same for all, as I pointed out above. Of these two perspectives, I-Thou and I-It, the first one is nearest the truth for Buber and Marcel, because the second is derived from it, and the first is derived from no other “point of view” of the objects of our experience. This brings us to our final question about this new approach to episemology: how are we to characterize our knowledge of the I-Thou realm itself (and also of the I-It realm)? In short, what kind of knowledge is Marcel trying to communicate to us in his philosophical works? What kind of knowledge is Buber trying to communicate to us in his philosophical works? Is it I-Thou knowledge, or I-It (propositional) knowledge? The answer is obviously the latter, since the important point is that the I-Thou relation can only be fully known in experience, and that we can have only an inadequate conceptual grasp of it at the level of I-It. This means then that philosophy is not unnecessary or irrelevant to a consideration of the I-Thou realm. This point is of great importance in any adequate treatment of Buber's epistemology, in particular. Buber is obviously a philosopher, and has communicated his insights in a philosophical way. So Diamond's odd claim (noted at the beginning of the chapter) that in human life the truth about human nature cannot be made “objective” already appears problematic. In fact, Diamond seems unduly worried that because Buber's I-Thou relation is not empirically verifiable, it will be rejected as not being philosophically defendable. But why should empirical verification be the criterion of truth? Hasn't Buber shown that there is in fact a deeper and more fundamental feature of the ontological structure of human knowing which cannot be objectified in a manner that would make it obviously verifiable independent of the experience? However, this is not to say that we cannot reason objectively about the I-Thou relation, nor that every claim to inexpressible experience (including fanatical claims) must be tolerated. After all, isn't Buber in his philosophical works reasoning objectively about the I-Thou relation? There is also a confusion in Lévinas's reading of Buber concerning this issue. Lévinas asserts that Buber's descriptions are all based on the concrete reality of perception and do not require an appeal to abstract principles for their justification. 28 But this seems an incorrect rendering of Buber's view, for what else is Buber's account of the I-Thou relation but an abstract principle, or attempt to convey something of this relation, on a philosophical level? Indeed, in his concern for the structure of the I-Thou experience, Lévinas seems to forget that the I-It experience also has a structure (“the double structure of human existence,” as Buber puts it 29 ), and that the relationship between I-Thou and I-It has a structure, and this oversight tends to distract him from an appreciation of the fundamental philosophical position that Buber is advancing. It is true that Buber cannot describe fully what the I-Thou relation involves because this realm must ultimately be experienced to be truly known. Nevertheless, he can to some extent describe the structure of human experience

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philosophically to reveal that I-Thou relations are possible, valuable and ontologically superior to the I-It relations. It is then up to us to recover, or retrieve, this experience for ourselves. In short, the answer to the question of how we can know the I-Thou realm since we cannot think it, is that it must, after the philosopher has identified the I-Thou relation in his or her experience, be “thought,” “inadequately conceptualized”, “approached” in the I-It realm, where, of course, the intellect, and philosophy, operate. It is possible, that is, to describe or conceptualize certain experiences (albeit inadequately) which must ultimately be experienced to be fully known. It is possible to form at least an inadequate concept of the I-Thou experience to the extent that it can be discussed at a philosophical level. This is exactly what Buber is attempting in his philosophy. This is a point that is missed by Diamond, as Buber himself points out: I-It finds its highest concentration and clarification in philosophical knowledge, but that in no way means that this knowledge contains nothing other than I-It, is nothing other than I-It. . . . That which discloses itself to me from time to time in the I-Thou relationship can only become such knowledge through transmission into the I-It sphere . . . 30 This is an excellent statement by Buber of the general position outlined above, and illustrates that Diamond has failed to appreciate the epistemological depth of Buber's view. Buber's identification of the features of the ontological structure of human experience, which is the foundation of his general epistemological position, makes clear the inappropriateness of Hartshorne's request for the logical structure of the contrast between I-Thou and I-It. Hartshorne, in approaching Buber's ontology in terms of its “logical structure,” is in danger of making the world of IIt, of “objective” knowledge (that is, of logic, the natural and social sciences, and philosophy) the primary ontological realm of knowledge. 31 Whereas, for Buber, the I-It realm is a necessary, but secondary, area of experience dependent upon and subservient to the I-Thou dialogical relationship (in the way described above). For the fact is that I-Thou cannot be judged on the basis of any system of I-It, because, as Friedman has put it: [I-It systems] . . . observe [the] phenomena after they have already taken their place in the categories of human knowing . . . It excludes the really direct and present knowing of I-Thou. This knowing . . . is itself the ultimate criterion for the reality of the I-Thou relation. 32 Conceptual knowledge, which belongs to the I-It realm, represents a secondary level of knowing precisely because it is the I-Thou relation that represents the primary mode of our ontological structure. It is in this mode that we come to know the world, and it is only then that we can come to describe the experiences

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in conceptual knowledge. I-It knowledge is, in fact, the “objectification” of the real meeting that takes place in relation to human beings and their world in the realms of nature, social relations, art and religion. 33 If this is the case, it is obvious that something of the experience will inevitably be lost in the transition to conceptual knowledge. The similarity here to Bergsonianism is obvious. But more of that later. It is clear, however, that it is only in the I-It realm of conceptual knowledge that the I-Thou would become an I-It. This means that we have an inadequate conceptual grasp of the experience, not that we have made the experience into an It. The experience is independent of the concept insofar as it is an experience, and there is no reason, pace Hartshorne, that the experience could not be continuously sustained over a period of time. It is important to emphasize that Buber is not saying that we have an experience and then we abstract from it, and something is lost in the abstraction. This is a trivial truth. He is saying that our fundamental involvement is at the level of I-Thou, and all conceptual knowledge is an abstraction from this level. This has implications for the nature of abstract knowledge in general, specifically that it is not the most basic form of knowledge. 3. The Question of Ontological Priority The other central question about both Buber and Marcel is whether they are right in their claims about the I-Thou realm of knowledge and its superiority over the I-It realm, about the level of mystery and its superiority over the level of problems. Their defense of this position is rendered problematic to some extent since they must appeal partly to an experience to convey the point, and not to a conceptual argument. How can these thinkers show that this emphasis on mystery and the I-Thou realm in philosophy is, in fact, the correct account of the ontological structure of human beings? The answer it seems to me is that we cannot “prove” it, but that the I-Thou relation must be experienced for oneself, and then one will have all the assurance one needs. But this is likely to be of little value as a response to the skeptical philosopher. And we have the related problem of finding a way to rule out other experiences being claimed as I-Thou experiences. One area Diamond is particularly worried about with regard to Buber's position is fanatical nationalism: “Uncurbed by the cold light of detached I-It knowledge, it runs rampant, wreaking havoc throughout the world.” 34 What is needed here is a more detailed description of what is involved in the I-Thou relation so that it can be more easily recognized in its manifestations in our experiences, and also a description of those experiences that are not I-Thou experiences. Buber especially has not been as forthcoming on these matters as we would wish. This is partly because of the fact that he nowhere gives a sustained, full description of the I-Thou relation. Marcel, however, has been more forthcoming, and it is interesting to explore the manner in which he attempts to circumvent this problem in his

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similar epistemology. Marcel, in his division of human knowing into secondary reflection (I-Thou) and primary reflection (I-It), attempts to describe the former, superior realm in terms of some concrete examples of recurrent central human experiences, love, fidelity, hope, and faith. He does this throughout his work, but most profoundly in his plays, where his artistic ability is obviously appropriate to the attempt to express the inexpressible. 35 Indeed, Marcel makes a penetrating remark in a discussion of Buber's work: . . . the fundamental intuition of Buber remains to my mind absolutely correct. But the whole question is to know how it can be translated into discourse without being denatured. It is this transposition which raises the most serious difficulties, and therein probably lies the fundamental reason why the discovery of Feuerbach recalled by Buber remained so long without fruit . . . In my Journal Métaphysique I attempted to show by a concrete example how this authentic meeting manifests itself phenomenologically. 36 Marcel's attempt at a phenomenological description of the I-Thou relation and of a phenomenological and philosophical account of the I-It realm, and its relation to the I-Thou realm, seems to be a fruitful way to proceed in an elaboration of Buber's insights. In this manner, the correct I-Thou relations can be specified and the pseudo-relations recognized and the philosophical account of the ontological structure of human knowing can be made manifest. Buber has recognized (as the following remark illustrates), as did Marcel, that his own (inadequate) account of the relation between I-It and I-Thou and of the nature of the I-Thou relation will lead to difficulties of the kind mentioned by Diamond: No system was suitable for what I had to say . . . I witnessed for experience and appealed to experience. The experience for which I witnessed is, naturally, a limited one. But it is not to be understood as a “subjective” one. I have tested it through my appeal and test it ever anew. I say to him who listens to me: “It is your experience. Recollect it, and what you cannot recollect, dare to attain it as experience.” But he who seriously declines to do it, I take him seriously. His declining is my problem . . . I have no teaching. I point to reality. 37 Perhaps some will find this answer in the end not quite satisfactory, and it is evident that neither philosopher has fully clarified the implications of this epistemology. Yet I want to suggest that the genesis of a new approach is obvious. Diamond's general misreading of this new epistemology in Buber is now clear. Diamond argues that when the presentness of the I-Thou relation has faded and the self is again in the I-It realm questions regarding the validity of the IThou encounter emerge again. 38 This is a criticism we can also level at Marcel,

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of course, that the realm of mystery is too fleeting to provide an epistemological foundation for human knowledge. Indeed Diamond seems to regard the I-Thou relation as an esoteric experience, the realm of mystery as a fleeting realm. He suggests that the I-Thou experience is a fleeting, almost momentary state which cannot be present over long intervals, and also that it is possible to reach a stage when we are no longer experiencing, but recalling (conceptually) the experience, in such a way that we actually doubt the validity of the experience. But is this the kind of experience Buber has in mind? Who would say that Diamond's account is an accurate characterization of human love, for example? Do we immediately forget the experience and assurance of love when the experience is over? When is the experience over? Is love fleeting and momentary? It seems that love, for example, is just the type of experience that is sustained over a long period, that is inexpressible, and that is its own assurance. Similarly, is Diamond's account an accurate description of human fidelity (which we discussed above in chapter 5)? Although fidelity may not be forever (but of course it could be), it can hardly be described as fleeting, or as something we are unsure of when we come to reflect on it in the conceptual realm. Like love, we are sure of the experience, it has a certain permanence to it, and it does seem to carry its own assurance. This is the nature of experiences apposite to our primary ontological mode. It is interesting to speculate on why Buber's and Marcel's insights did not have more influence on European philosophy if they really do contribute to our understanding of the ontological structure of human beings. Why hasn't this approach to philosophy had a wider influence? My view is that Buber's and Marcel's philosophical position would have become the dominant philosophical movement in European thought had not Heidegger developed a remarkably similar view (as we have seen), except for Heidegger's emphasis on the interpretative nature of human understanding, which led him toward epistemological relativism, a position which I have argued both Buber and Marcel avoid. Heidegger's view was to have great influence, and it is not uncommon to read statements like this one made by Josef Bleicher: Heidegger's monumental re-direction of philosophy rests on counterposing . . . propositional truth with another kind: aletheia (disclosure). Heidegger hereby opened up a dimension of experience more fundamental than that of the methodical acquisition of beings. 39 At first sight this reads very like a description of Buber's position, and of course it is, since it was Buber who first opened up this new area, not Heidegger, I and Thou being published five years before Being and Time. Yet Buber fails to consider the whole question of the objectivity of knowledge, including the crucial matter of how we might defend this position against a hermeneutical view like Heidegger's. I hope this discussion of the existentialist approach to knowledge as repre-

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sented by Buber and Marcel has served to illustrate the key epistemological questions raised by their position, how they might respond to them, and that criticisms of their view are often superficial and do not do justice to the profundity of their insights. This later failure is in part due to the fact that neither Marcel nor Buber pay sufficient attention to the full articulation of their epistemological insights, and especially to how their approach differs from work in other epistemological traditions. This book has been an attempt to further develop their epistemological insights and to make a contribution to the larger discussion. As I see it, the task of European philosophy in the coming century must be to rediscover the profound insights for human knowledge contained in the work of Buber and Marcel and explicate them in a phenomenological epistemology and ontology.

NOTES Chapter One 1. See H. Spiegelberg, The Phenomenological Movement: An Historical Introduction (The Hague, Holland: Martinus Nijhoff, 1960), Vol. II, p. 443. 2. See Gabriel Marcel, MBI, Ch. 1, especially pp. 1–4; also CF, pp. 3–6. For an interesting analysis of Marcel's writing style, see Teresa Reed, “Aspects of Marcel's Essays,” Renascence, Vol. LV, No. 3 (Spring 2003), pp. 211–227. 3. MBI, p. 46. 4. See Fr Gerald Hanratty, “The Theistic Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel,” in his Studies in Gnosticism and in the Philosophy of Religion (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1997), p. 160. 5. K.R. Hanley, “A Journey to Consciousness: Gabriel Marcel's Relevance for the Twenty-First-Century Classroom,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 80:3 (2006), p. 461. 6. See the remark by Jean Hering quoted in Spiegelberg, The Phenomenological Movement, p. 421. 7. See, for example, MBI, p. 94; also CF, p. 46, p. 62. 8. See BH, p. 151. 9. CF, p. 65. 10. See MBI, pp. 20ff. 11. Ibid. p. 20. 12. See MBI, p. 21. 13. See MMS, p. 1. 14. The critical approach to Cartesianism can be found in a number of works in continental philosophy. See M. Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. J. MacQuarrie & E. Robinson (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), especially Part III, Section B; M. Merleau-Ponty, The Structure of Behavior, trans. A.L. Fisher (Boston: Beacon Press, 1963), especially Ch.IV; also his Primacy of Perception, trans. J.M. Edie (St. Louis, MO: Washington U.P., 1964); see Karl Jaspers, Leonardo, Descartes, Max Weber (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1964); and J.P. Sartre, Being and Nothingness (New York: Washington Square Press, 1997 ed.), and The Transcendence of the Ego: An Existentialist Theory of Consciousness (New York: Hill & Wang, 1991 ed.). 15. For an overview of some of the motivations which helped to shape modern epistemology, see Charles Taylor, “Overcoming Epistemology” in K. Baynes, J. Bohman and T. McCarthy (eds.), After Philosophy: End or Transformation? (Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press, 1987), pp. 465–489. 16. H. Dreyfus, Being-in-the-World: A Commentary on Heidegger's Being and Time, Division 1 (Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press, 1991), p. 60. 17. MBI, p. 18. 18. See Rene Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy in E.S. Haldane and G.R.T. Ross (eds.), The Philosophical Works of Descartes (London: Cambridge U.P., 1975 ed.), Vol. 1, pp. 131–199, especially Meditation I. 19. See ibid., pp. 148–149.

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20. For further discussion of this point, see S.V. Keeling, Descartes (London: Oxford U.P., 1968), pp. 124ff. 21. Dreyfus, Being-in-the-World, p. 45. 22. BH, p. 170 (my emphasis). 23. Keeling, Descartes, p. 174. 24. Haldane and Ross, The Philosophical Works of Descartes, Vol. 1, p. 237. 25. See Keeling, Descartes, p. 174. 26. See A. Kenny, Descartes: A Study of His Philosophy (New York: Random House, 1968), Chapter V. 27. See Keeling, Descartes, pp. 174ff. 28. See Haldane and Ross, The Philosophical Works of Descartes, Vol.1, pp. 154ff. For a slightly different interpretation, see M. Wilson, Descartes (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978), pp. 78ff. 29. See Keeling, Descartes, pp. 125ff for a fine exposition of this example. 30. BH, p. 170. 31. Haldane and Ross, The Philosophical Works of Descartes, Vol.1., p. 144. 32. Ibid., p. 145. 33. Ibid., p. 153. 34. See CF, p. 9; also EO, pp. 68–70; also MBI, p. 90. 35. On this point, see Dallas Willard, Logic and the Objectivity of Knowledge: A Study in Husserl's Early Philosophy (Athens, Ohio: Ohio U.P., 1984), p. 232. 36. MJ, p. 325 (second emphasis added). 37. See Gabriel Marcel, MBII, p. 24. 38. Dreyfus, Being-in-the-World, p. 69. 39. Ibid., p. 249. 40. Ibid., p. 41. 41. MJ, p. 40. 42. See MBI, pp. 90ff. 43. CF, p. 65. 44. Dreyfus, Being-in-the-World, p. 5.

Chapter Two 1. H. Dreyfus, Being-in-the-World: A Commentary on Heidegger's Being and Time, Division 1 (Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press, 1991), p. 61. 2. MBI, p. 50. 3. See R. Zaner, The Problem of Embodiment (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1971 ed.), pp. 22ff for an excellent, but different, organization of the main issues in Marcel's phenomenological analysis of the body. See also E.W. Straus and M.A. Machado, “Gabriel Marcel's Notion of Incarnate Being” in P.A. Schilpp and L.E. Hahn (eds.), The Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel (LaSalle: Open Court, 1989), pp. 123–158. 4. MBI, p. 94. 5. See ibid pp. 86ff; also CF, pp. 18ff. 6. See MBI, pp. 99ff. 7. See EO, pp. 65ff.

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8. See EO, p. 65. For further discussion of Elizabeth’s criticism of Descartes, see P.A. Bertocci, “Descartes and Marcel on the Person and His Body: A Critique,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Vol.LXVIII (1967–68), p. 216. 9. See MBI, pp. 95ff. 10. See EO, p. 69. 11. See MBI, pp. 97ff. 12. Ibid., p. 100; also EO, pp. 65ff. 13. EO, p. 65. 14. John B. O’Malley, The Fellowship of Being: An Essay on the Concept of the Person in the Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966), p. 25. 15. EO, p. 67. 16. CF, p. 20. 17. Ibid., p. 23; also EO, p. 71. 18. MBI, p. 101. 19. Ibid., p. 92. 20. See ibid., pp. 90ff, especially p. 93. 21. Ibid., p. 93. 22. Descartes in D.J. Bronstein (ed.), The Essential Works of Descartes, (New York: Bantam Books, 1961), p. 220 (my emphasis). 23. P. Bertocci, “Descartes and Marcel on the Person and His Body: A Critique,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, p. 217. 24. CF, p. 15. 25. See EO, pp. 60ff; also CF, pp. 24ff. 26. K. Gallagher, The Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel (New York: Fordham University Press, 1975), p. 20. 27. MBI, pp. 194ff. 28. Ibid., p. 104 (emphasis in last sentence added). 29. Ibid., pp. 114ff. 30. Ibid., p. 101. 31. EO, p. 72. 32. Ibid., p. 68. 33. Ibid. 34. See ibid, p. 68. 35. Ibid, p. 69. 36. See BH, pp. 104ff. 37. Ibid., p. 96. 38. S. Kruks, Situation and Human Existence: Freedom, Subjectivity and Society (London: Unwin, 1990), p. 12. 39. CF, p. 22. 40. Two works which gesture in this direction, but which do not provide detailed discussions of particular cases, are: E.W. Straus and M.A. Machado, “Gabriel Marcel's Notion of Incarnate Being,” in P.A. Schilpp and L.E. Hahn (eds.), The Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel, pp. 123–158; and D. Applebaum, Contact and Attention: The Anatomy of Gabriel Marcel's Metaphysical Method (Lanham: University Press of America, 1986). 41. BH, p. 10.

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42. See John Richardson, Existential Epistemology: A Heideggerian Critique of the Cartesian Project (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), p. 14. 43. EO, p. 52. 44. See Merleau-Ponty, The Primacy of Perception, and Ricoeur's remarks in Gabriel Marcel, TWB, p. 222. 45. See CF, p. 27 for a discussion of the notion of “feeling at home” in a particular place. See MBI, p. 61, for a discussion of the raspberries example. See also D. Cooper, Existentialism: A Reconstruction (London: Blackwell, 1990, p. 80. 46. CF, p. 21 (my emphasis). 47. MBI, p. 134. 48. CF, p. 83. 49. HV, p. 11. 50. MBI, p. 134. 51. Ibid., p. 46. 52. CF, p. 56; also MBI, pp. 205ff. 53. MBII, p. 24. 54. CF, p. 29. 55. CF, p. 65. 56. See M. Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. J. MacQuarrie & E. Robinson (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), p. 414; also J. Richardson, Existential Epistemology, pp. 49ff. 57. K. Gallagher, The Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel, p. 13.

Chapter Three 1. See M. Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. by J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson (New York: Harper and Row, 1962), pp. 414ff.. 2. John Richardson, Existential Epistemology, Existential Epistemology: A Heideggerian Critique of the Cartesian Project (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), p. 49. 3. See Roland Barthes, Mythologies, trans. A. Lavers (New York: Hill and Wang, 1972). 4. See Jacques Derrida Of Grammatology, trans. by G. Spivak (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1976); Writing and Difference, trans. by A. Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978); Dissemination, trans. by B. Johnson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981); and Margins of Philosophy, trans. by A. Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982). 5. Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, p. 7; Roland Barthes, Image-Music-Text, trans. by S. Heath (New York: Hill and Wang, 1977), p. 147. 6. Derrida, Margins of Philosophy, p. 95. 7. Derrida, Of Grammatology, p. 75. 8. Derrida in an interview with Richard Kearney in Kearney's Dialogues with Contemporary Continental Thinkers (Manchester: Manchester U.P., 1984), p. 117. 9. For a more detailed critique of postmodernism, see my articles, “Lyotard, Postmodernism and Religion,” Philosophia Christi, Vol.7, No. 1 (Spring 2005), pp. 141–153; and “Postmodernism, Derrida and Différance: A Critique,” International Philosophical Quarterly Vol.XXXIX, No.1, (March 1999), pp. 5–18.

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10. BH, p. 28. 11. EBHD, p. 47. 12. See BH, pp. 10-11; also MBI, pp. 125ff. 13. BH, p. 11; also MBI, p. 104. 14. See Sonia Kruks, Situation and Human Existence, p. 12. 15. CF, p. 83. 16. See MBI, p. 116. 17. See Henri Bergson, An Introduction to Metaphysics, trans. by T.E. Hulme (New York: Macmillan, 1955 ed.), pp. 44–45. 18. MBI, p. 116. 19. Ibid., p. 134. 20. See ibid., pp. 92ff. 21. See K.R. Hanley, Dramatic Approaches to Creative Fidelity: A Study in the Theater and Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel (Lanham: U.P. of America, 1987); also her “Marcel: the Playwright Philosopher,” Renascence, Vol. LV, No. 3 (Spring 2003), pp. 241–258. 22. MBI., p. 83. 23. Ibid., p. 82 24. Ibid., p. 21 25. See ibid., pp. 4ff. 26. See ibid., Chapter 2. 27. See ibid. 28. See CF, p. 23; also EO, pp. 71–72; and BH, p. 117. 29. See MBI, pp. 100–101. For a discussion of the levels of Being in Marcel's thought, see E.L. Straus and M. Machado, “Gabriel Marcel's Notion of Incarnate Being,” in P.A. Schilpp and L.E. Hahn (eds.), The Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel (LaSalle: Open Court, 1989), p. 129.

Chapter Four 1. PE, pp. 44–45. 2. Gabriel Marcel, “An Autobiographical Essay,” in P.A. Schilpp and L. Hahn (eds.), The Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel, p. 29. See also Awakenings (Milwaukee: Marquette U.P., 2002), pp. 123–124. 3. Ibid. 4. Ibid. 5. J.P.Sartre, Existentialism and Human Emotions, trans. by H. Barnes (New York: Citadel Press, 1990 ed.), p. 13. 6. G. Marcel, “Reply to John D. Glenn, Jr,” in P.A. Schilpp and L.E. Hahn (eds.), The Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel (LaSalle: Open Court, 1989), p. 552. 7. MBI, p. 78. 8. Ibid., p. 83 9. Ibid., p. 4ff. 10. Ibid., p. 83. 11. See McInerny’s introduction to Gabriel Marcel’s Perspectives on The Broken World, trans. and edited by K.R. Hanley (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette U.P., 1998), p. 10.

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12. BH, p. 117. 13. Ibid., p. 118 (emphasis added). 14. See MBI, p. 213. 15. BH, p. 118. 16. See Thomas Michaud, “Secondary Reflection and Marcelian Anthropology,” Philosophy Today, Vol.34 (1990), pp. 222–228; also, Kenneth Gallagher, The Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel (New York: Fordham U.P., 1962), pp. 41ff; David Applebaum, Contact and Attention: The Anatomy of Gabriel Marcel's Metaphysical Method (Washington, D.C.: Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology, 1986); Thomas Busch, Circulating Being: Essays in later Existentialism (New York: Fordham U.P., 1999), pp. 28–42; Clyde Pax, “Philosophical Reflection: Gabriel Marcel,” The New Scholasticism, Vol. XXXVIII (1964), p. 170; and Patrick Bourgeois, “Introduction” in Gabriel Marcel, Awakenings, pp. 11ff. 17. CF, p. 22; also PE, p. 25. 18. See CF, p. 22. 19. See “Conversation 2” between Marcel and Paul Ricoeur in Marcel's TWB, pp. 223–229; also Patrick Bourgeois, “Ricoeur and Marcel: An Alternative to Postmodern Deconstruction,” Bulletin de la Société Américaine de Philosophie de Langue Française, Vol. VII (Spring 1995), pp. 164–175. 20. Marcel, EBHD, p. 68; see also K. Gallagher, The Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel, p. 83. 21. MBI, p. 38. 22. See especially A.J. Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic (London: V.Gollancz, 1946). 23. I owe this point to Kenneth Gallagher. See his The Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel, p. 94; see also pp. 92–95 for an excellent exposition of the notions of being and value in Marcel, which has influenced my exposition here. 24. MBI, p. 199. 25. PE, p. 26. 26. Charles Taliaferro, Contemporary Philosophy of Religion (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1998), p. 370. 27. MMS, p. 163. 28. PE, p. 39; BH, pp. 69ff. 29. Ibid., p. 41. 30. Ibid., pp. 39–40. 31. MBI, p. 205. 32. See Gabriel Marcel, “I and Thou,” in Paul Schilpp and L. Hahn, The Philosophy of Martin Buber, pp. 41–48; see also Marcel's “Martin Buber's Philosophical Anthropology,” Searchings (New York: Newman Press, 1967), pp. 73–92. 33. K.R. Hanley (editor and translator), Ghostly Mysteries: Existential Drama (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette U.P., 2004), p. 174. 34. PE, pp. 87–88. See also Marcel's Problematic Man, trans. by Brian Thompson (New York: Herder, 1967), pp. 41ff. 35. For Marcel's discussion of hope, see “Sketch of a phenomenology and a metaphysic of hope” in HV, pp. 29–67. 36. Marcel in Gabriel Marcel’s Perspectives on The Broken World, trans. and edited by K.R. Hanley, p. 186. 37. MMS, p. 37

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38. William James, A Pluralistic Universe (New York: Longmans, 1916), pp. 290– 92. 39. See Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue:A Study in Moral Theory (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984 second ed.).

Chapter Five 1. See N. Gilman, Gabriel Marcel on Religious Knowledge (Lanham, MD: U.P. America, 1975); and Clyde Pax, An Existentialist Approach to God: A study of Gabriel Marcel (Hague, Netherlands: Nijohff, 1972). 2. Seymour Cain, Gabriel Marcel (South Bend, IN: Regnery, 1963), p. 87. 3. See PE, p. 19. 4. See TWB, pp. 181ff; also P. Prini, “A Methodology of the Unverifiable” in P.A. Schilpp and L.E. Hahn (eds.), The Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel (LaSalle: Open Court, 1989), pp. 207–8. 5. See Pax, An Existentialist Approach to God:A Study of Gabriel Marcel, pp. 53ff. 6. MBI, p. 213. 7. BH, pp. 41–42; also HV, pp. 132ff. 8. BH, p. 42. 9. See Pax, An Existentialist Approach to God, p. 56. 10. G. Marcel, “Theism and Personal Relationships,” Cross Currents, Vol. I, 1 (Fall 1950), p. 40. 11. CF, p. 80. 12. Pax, An Existentialist Approach to God, p. 60; also Joseph Godfrey, S.J., “The Phenomena of Trusting and Relational Ontologies,” Bulletin de la Société Américaine de Philosophie de Langue Française, Vol. VII (Spring 1995), pp. 104–121. 13. Graham Greene, The End of the Affair (New York: Penguin ed., 1979), p. 93. 14. MMS, p. 37. 15. Greene, The End of the Affair, p. 113. 16. See Cates Baldridge, Graham Greene’s Fictions (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2000), pp. 80–82. 17. Greene, Ways of Escape (New York: Viking Press, 1988), p. 191. 18. Greene, The End of the Affair, p. 191. 19. Fr Gerald Hanratty, “The Theistic Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel,’ in his Studies in Gnosticism and in the Philosophy of Religion (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1997), p. 166. 20. MBII, p. 127. 21. See Alvin Plantinga, “Is Belief in God Properly Basic?” in R. Douglas Geivett and Brendan Sweetman (eds.), Contemporary Perspectives on Religious Epistemology (Oxford: Oxford U.P., 1992), pp. 133–141; also A. Plantinga and N. Wolterstorff (eds.), Faith and Rationality: Reason and Belief in God (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983); also William Alston, “Religious Experience and Religious Belief,” in Geivett and Sweetman, Contemporary Perspectives, pp. 295– 300; also his Perceiving God (Ithaca, NY: Cornell U.P., 1993); also John Hick, An Interpretation of Religion (New Haven: Yale U.P., 1989), Chapter 13, “The

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Rationality of Religious Belief” (also reprinted in Geivett and Sweetman, Contemporary Perspectives, pp. 304–319). 22. See Alvin Plantinga, “Is Belief in God Properly Basic?” in Geivett and Sweetman (eds.), Contemporary Perspectives, p. 133. 23. Ibid., p. 135. 24. William Alston, “Religious Experience and Religious Belief,” in Geivett and Sweetman (eds.), Contemporary Perspectives, p. 295. 25. John Hick, “The Rationality of Religious Belief,” in Geivett and Sweetman (eds.), Contemporary Perspectives, pp. 305–306. 26. Ibid., p. 305; see also Thomas Anderson, “Philosophy and the experience of God according to Gabriel Marcel,” Proceedings of the Catholic Philosophical Association, Vol. 55 (1981), pp. 228–238; and his “The Experiential Paths to God in Kierkegaard and Marcel,” Philosophy Today, Vol. XXVI (1982), pp. 22–40. 27. For some critical reflections on Plantinga's views, see Stewart Goetz, “Belief in God is not Properly Basic,” in Geivett and Sweetman, Contemporary Perspectives, pp. 168–177; and Phillip Quinn, “In Search of the Foundations of Theism,” Faith and Philosophy, 2 (1985), pp. 469–86. 28. Plantinga, “Is Belief in God Properly Basic?,” in Geivett and Sweetman (eds.), Contemporary Perspectives, p. 140.

Chapter Six 1. See Barry Stroud, The Significance of Philosophical Skepticism (Oxford, New York, 1984). 2. See my “The Pseudo-Problem of Skepticism,” in Brendan Sweetman (ed.), The Failure of Modernism (Mishawaka, IN: American Maritain Association/Catholic University of America Press, 1999), pp. 228–241. My statement of the problem of skepticism in the opening paragraphs of the present chapter is taken from this article. 3. See Robert Lechner, “Marcel as Radical Empiricist,” in Schilpp & Hahn (eds.) The Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel (LaSalle: Open Court, 1989), p. 462, 4. See Rene Descartes, Meditations in The Philosophical Works of Descartes, trans. by E.S. Haldane and G.R.T. Ross, pp. 144–149. 5. Ibid., p. 148. 6. See Stroud, The Significance of Philosophical Skepticism, chapter 1. 7. MBI, p. 89. 8. See J. Pollock, Contemporary Theories of Empirical Knowledge (New Jersey: Rowman & Littlefield, 1986), for a survey of some contemporary views in epistemology in Anglo-American philosophy; also L. Bonjour, The Structure of Empirical Knowledge (Cambridge, MA: Harvard U.P., 1985); W. V. Quine, “Epistemology Naturalized” in H. Kornblith (ed.), Naturalizing Epistemology (Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press, 1987); R. Nozick, Philosophical Explanations (Cambridge, MA: Harvard U.P., 1981). For an extensive bibliography of recent work in Anglo-American epistemology, see Kornblith (ed.), Naturalizing Epistemology. 9. See J. Collins, The Existentialists: A Critical Study (Chicago: Regnery, 1958), p. 143. 10. PE, p. 18.

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11. MBI, p. 89. 12. See Gabriel Marcel’s Perspectives on The Broken World, trans. and edited by K.R. Hanley (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette U.P., 1998), p. 181. 13. MBI, p. 90. 14. EO, p. 52. 15. M. Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. J. MacQuarrie & E. Robinson (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), pp. 246–247. 16. See MBI, p. 52 (second emphasis added). 17. J. Richardson, Existential Epistemology: A Heideggerian Critique of the Cartesian Project (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), p. 175. 18. Ibid., p. 175. 19. MBII, p. 9. 20. See H. Dreyfus, Being-in-the-World: A Commentary on Heidegger's Being and Time, Division 1 (Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press, 1991), chapter 6, and J. Richardson, Existential Epistemology, chapter 1. 21. See EO, pp. 49–56. 22. Marcel, Gabriel Marcel’s Perspectives on The Broken World, trans. and edited by K.R. Hanley, p. 178. 23. W.V. Quine, “Two Dogmas of Empiricism,” in his From a Logical Point of View (Cambridge, MA: Harvard U.P., 1980 ed.), p. 42; and his “Epistemology Naturalized,” in H. Kornblith (ed.), Naturalizing Epistemology, p. 22. 24. Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), p. xxiv. 25. W.V.O. Quine, From a Logical Point of View, pp. 3ff. 26. W.V.O. Quine, “Epistemology Naturalized” in H. Kornblith (ed.) Naturalizing Epistemology, p. 24. 27. Ibid., p. 15. 28. Ibid., p. 24. 29. Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition, p. 15. 30. For a critique of Lyotard’s approach, see my “Lyotard, Postmodernism and Religion,” Philosophia Christi, Vol.7, No. 1 (Spring 2005), pp. 141–153. 31. Barry Stroud, “The Significance of Epistemology Naturalized,” in H. Kornblith (ed.), Naturalizing Epistemology, p. 81; see also Stroud, The Significance of Philosophical Skepticism, chapter 4.

Chapter Seven 1. See G.E. Moore, “External and Internal Relations,” in his Philosophical Papers (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1922), pp. 281ff. 2. For an indication of how the discussion of internal and external relations is usually treated, see Edwin B. Allaire, “Bare Particulars” in his Essays in Ontology (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1963), pp. 14–21; A.J. Ayer, “Internal Relations,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supp. Vol. 14 (1935), pp. 173–185 (Reprinted in his Language, Truth and Logic, Ch. 8); A.C. Ewing, Idealism (London: Longman, 1934); Gilbert Ryle, “Internal Relations,” Proceedings of Aristotelian Society, Supp. Vol. 14 (1935), pp. 154–172; G.E. Moore, “External and Internal Relations,”

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Philosophical Papers, pp. 276–309; B. Russell, The Problems of Philosophy (London: Home Library, 1912); and Timothy Sprigge, “Internal and External Properties,” Mind, Vol. 71 (1962), pp. 197–212. See also the article by Richard Rorty in P. Edwards (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Philosophy (New York: Macmillan, 1967), Vol. 7, pp. 125– 133. More recent discussions of internal and external relations, and related issues, can be found in Saul Kripke, Naming and Necessity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard U.P., 1980), and David Wiggins, Sameness and Substance (Cambridge, MA: Harvard U.P., 1980). 3. See Moore, Philosophical Papers, pp. 289–291. My account of Moore's view in this paragraph owes much to Richard Rorty's clear account of Moore's view in his article in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 4. See A.J. Ayer, “Internal Relations,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, pp. 173–185, esp. pp. 175ff. 5. See G. Ryle, “Internal Relations,” Proceedings of Aristotelian Society, pp. 156ff. 6. See T. Sprigge, “Internal and External Properties,” Mind, pp. 197–212. 7. Ibid. p. 210. 8. MBI, p. 128. 9. Ibid, p. 116. 10. See ibid., p. 61. 11. See Kripe, Naming and Necessity, esp. pp. 110ff. 12. See D. Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature (Middlesex, England: Penguin, 1984 ed.), Bk.1, Pt.III, Section XIV, pp. 205–223. 13. Ibid., p. 205. 14. Ibid., section XIV. 15. See ibid., Bk.1, Part IV, Section VI, pp. 299–310. 16. Ibid., p. 205. 17. See C.K. Williams, What is Existence? (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981); also D. Wiggins, Sameness and Substance; and Saul Kripke, Naming and Necessity. 18. See John Passmore, Recent Philosophers (LaSalle: Open Court, 1985), p. 7. 19. See Leibniz’s Fourth paper to Clarke, Section 5, in H. A. Alexander (ed.), The Leibniz–Clarke Correspondence (Manchester: Manchester U.P., 1956). 20. BH, p. 33. 21. See Baruch Brody Identity and Essence (Princeton, NJ: Princeton U.P., 1980), pp. 8ff; Max Black, “The Identity of Indiscernibles, “ in M.J. Loux (ed.), Universals and Particulars: Readings in Ontology (New York: Anchor, 1970), pp. 204–216; and G.E. Moore, “External and Internal Relations,” Philosophical Papers.

Chapter Eight 1. Marcel, “Autobiographical Essay” in P.A. Schilpp and L.E. Hahn (eds.), The Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel (LaSalle: Open Court, 1989), p. 30; see also H. Stuart Hughes, “Marcel, Maritain and the Secular World,” The American Scholar, Autumn 1966, pp. 728–749, especially p. 746. 2. See McInerny’s introduction to Gabriel Marcel’s Perspectives on The Broken World, trans. and edited by K.R. Hanley (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette U.P., 1998), p. 9.

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3. See J. Maritain, Existence and the Existent: An Essay on Christian Existentialism, trans. L. Galantiere and G.B. Phelan (New York: Image, 1956), pp. 11ff. 4. See J.P. Sartre, Existentialism and Human Emotions, trans. by H. Barnes (New York: Citadel Press, 1990 ed.), p. 13, and Marcel's “Reply to John D. Glenn, JR.” in P.A. Schilpp and L.E. Hahn (eds.), The Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel, p. 552. 5. Henri de Lubac, Letters of Ɯtienne Gilson to Henri de Lubac, trans. Mary Hamilton (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988), p. 227. 6. J. Maritain, The Range of Reason (New York: Charles Scribner, 1942), p.12. 7. See J. Maritain, The Degrees of Knowledge, trans. by G.B. Phelan (New York: Charles Scribner, 1959), pp. 280–283; and The Range of Reason, pp. 3–29. 8. See The Range of Reason, p. 22. 9. See ibid., p. 22, and The Degrees of Knowledge, pp. 280–283. 10. The Range of Reason, p. 23. 11. Ibid., p. 23. 12.. Ibid. 13. See ibid., p. 26. 14. Ibid., p. 27. 15. See ibid., p. 27. 16. See ibid., pp. 24–26. 17. See ibid., p. 26. 18. See ibid., p. 29 19. BH, p. 117. 20. See MBI, p. 38. 21. See PE, pp. 23ff for Marcel's discussion of secondary reflection (“recollection”) vs. intuition, and Maritain, A Preface to Metaphysics (New York: Mentor, 1962), pp. 62–63 for Maritain's response to the points raised by Marcel. 22. PE, p. 25. 23. See CF, p. 166. See also Maritain's The Range of Reason, p. 9. 24. Maritain, The Range of Reason, p. 9; also James Collins, The Existentialists (Chicago: Regnery, 1958), pp. 143ff. 25. Marcel, “Concrete Approaches to Investigating the Ontological Mystery,” in Gabriel Marcel’s Perspectives on The Broken World, trans. and edited by K.R. Hanley, p. 175. For further discussion of the term “Being” in Marcel's thought, see Thomas Anderson, “Gabriel Marcel's notions of Being,” Philosophy Today, XIX (1975), pp. 29–49. 26. J. Maritain, A Preface to Metaphysics, p. 62. 27. Ibid., p. 63. 28. See Leo Sweeney, “Existentialism: Authentic and Unauthentic,” The New Scholasticism, Vol. XL, (1956), pp. 36–61. 29. James Collins, The Existentialists, p. 143. 30. See J. Maritain, A Preface to Metaphysics, pp. 9–19. 31. BH, p. 38.

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1. Charles Hartshorne, “Martin Buber's Metaphysics” in The Philosophy of Martin Buber, ed. P.A. Schilpp and M. Friedman (La Salle, IL.: Open Court, 1967), p. 68. 2. See Emmanuel Lévinas, “Martin Buber and the Theory of Knowledge,” in The Philosophy of Martin Buber, p. 149. 3. As quoted in M. Friedman, Martin Buber: The Life of Dialogue (New York: Harper, 1960) p. 164. 4. As noted by Robert Lechner in his “Marcel as Radical Empiricist,” in P.A. Schilpp and L.E. Hahn (eds.), The Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel (LaSalle: Open Court, 1989), p. 462. 5. See ibid., p. 161. 6. See Malcolm L. Diamond, “Dialogue and Theology” in The Philosophy of Martin Buber, pp. 238–239. 7. Ibid., p. 238. 8. Hartshorne, “Martin Buber's Metaphysics,” in The Philosophy of Martin Buber, p. 66. 9. Lévinas, “Martin Buber and the Theory of Knowledge,” in The Philosophy of Martin Buber, p. 148. 10. See especially the essays in Schilpp and Friedman by Lévinas, Hartshorne and Fackenheim. See also M. Friedman, “Buber's Theory of Knowledge,” Chapter Nineteen of his Martin Buber: The Life of Dialogue; also Dan Avron, Martin Buber: The Hidden Dialogue (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998) pp. 128–147; also Steven Kepnes, The Text as Thou (Bloomington, IN: Indiana U.P., 1992). For works on Marcel that touch on these matters, see especially Clyde Pax, “Philosophical reflection: Gabriel Marcel,” The New Scholasticism, Vol. XXXVIII (1964), pp. 159– 177, and F.L. Peccorini, Selfhood as Thinking Thought in the work of Gabriel Marcel: A New Interpretation (New York: Mellon Press, 1987). 11. M. Buber, I and Thou, trans. by Walter Kaufmann (New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1970) p. 53. Although I am using Kaufmann's translation, I will translate Du as “Thou” in all quotations from Kaufmann (rather than Kaufmann's preferred “You”) so as to avoid unnecessary confusion in my argument. 12. See M. Friedman, Martin Buber: The Life of Dialogue; Robert Wood, Martin Buber's Ontology (Evanston, IL: Northwestern U.P., 1969); Donald J. Moore, Martin Buber: Prophet of Religious Secularism (New York: Fordham U.P., 1996), Part II. 13. See I and Thou, p. 56. 14. Ibid., p. 62; see also p. 113; also M. Buber, Eclipse of God (New York: Harper, 1952), p. 35. 15. See Eclipse of God, p. 31. 16. I and Thou, p. 77. 17. Ibid., p. 78. 18. See ibid., pp. 69ff; also pp. 80–81. 19. See Donald J. Moore, Martin Buber: Prophet of Religious Secularism, Part III. 20. See MBI, pp. 154–181. 21. Ibid., pp. 95–126; see also BH, pp. 117ff; also CF, pp. 22ff. 22. See M. Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. J. MacQuarrie & E. Robinson (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), pp. 80ff; also pp. 96ff; also pp. 401–415. See also M.

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Heidegger, The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, trans. A. Hofstadter (Bloomington, IN: Indiana U.P., 1982), pp. 161–172, pp. 291–313. 23. See The Knowledge of Man, trans. by M. Friedman and R. Gregor Smith (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1988 ed.) pp. 147ff.; and Between Man and Man, trans. by R. Gregor Smith (New York: Macmillan, 1965), p. 124. 24. See Friedman’s remark already quoted above (note 3). 25. For further discussion of this matter, see Robert Wood, Martin Buber's Ontology, pp. 118ff; see also Wood's, “Buber's Notion of Philosophy,” Thought 53 (1978), pp. 310–319; also Nathan Rotenstreich, Immediacy and Its Limits: A Study in Martin Buber's Thought (Philadelphia, PA: Harwood, 1991), p. 40; also Laurence J. Silberstein, Martin Buber's Social and Religious Thought (New York: New York University Press, 1989), p. 166. Lévinas also appears to suggest that Buber avoids relativism; see Lévinas, “Martin Buber and the Theory of Knowledge,” in The Philosophy of Martin Buber, p. 142. 26. See Eclipse of God, p. 43; also Between Man and Man, p. 12; also The Knowledge of Man, p. 71. 27. Eclipse of God, p. 39. 28. See Lévinas, “Martin Buber and the Theory of Knowledge,” in The Philosophy of Martin Buber, p. 139; also Robert Wood, Martin Buber's Ontology, p. 27. 29. Eclipse of God, p. 44. 30. Martin Buber in “Replies to My Critics” in The Philosophy of Martin Buber, p. 692; also Eclipse of God, p. 45. 31. I believe Paul Edwards also makes this mistake in his critique of Buber; see Edwards, Buber and Buberism: A Critical Evaluation (Kansas: University of Kansas, 1970), especially pp. 18ff. 32. M. Friedman, Martin Buber: The Life of Dialogue, p. 168. 33. Ibid., pp. 165–167. 34. Diamond, “Dialogue and Theology,” in The Philosophy of Martin Buber, p. 239. 35. See G. Marcel, Three Plays (New York: Hill and Wang, 1958); and G. Marcel, EBHD. 36. G. Marcel, “I and Thou,” in The Philosophy of Martin Buber, pp. 45–6; also G. Marcel, “Martin Buber's Philosophical Anthropology,” Searchings, pp. 73–92. 37. M. Buber, “Replies to my Critics,” in The Philosophy of Martin Buber, p. 693. 38. Diamond, “Dialogue and Theology,” in The Philosophy of Martin Buber, p. 238. 39. J. Bleicher, Contemporary Hermeneutics (London, England: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980), p. 117.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Brendan Sweetman, a native of Dublin, Ireland, is Professor of Philosophy at Rockhurst University, Kansas City, MO, USA. His books include Why Politics Needs Religion: The Place of Religious Arguments in the Public Square (InterVarsity, 2006) and Religion: Key Concepts in Philosophy (Continuum Books, 2007). He has coauthored or coedited several other books, including Truth and Religious Belief (M.E. Sharpe, 1998), and Contemporary Perspectives on Religious Epistemology (Oxford University Press, 1992). Professor Sweetman has published more than fifty articles and reviews in a variety of collections and journals, including International Philosophical Quarterly, American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, Faith and Philosophy, Philosophia Christi, and Review of Metaphysics. He writes regularly in the areas of continental philosophy, philosophy of religion, political philosophy and ethics.

INDEX Absolute Thou, 73, 74, 84, 131. See also God abstraction, xii, xv, 20, 34, 35–36, 47, 56, 64 alienation, 62 Alston, William, 69, 80, 81 Anderson, Thomas, xvii, 160, 163 Anscombe, G.E.M., 60 anti-realism, 20, 96, 100 Applebaum, David, 58 Aristotle, 55, 66, 103, 125 art, 47, 66, 123, 126, 127, 147, 149 assurance of being, 59, 63, 92, 148, 150 atheism, 1, 54–55, 67, 76–77, 79 availability, xii, 62 Ayer, A.J., 60, 76, 106, 107 bare particulars, 107 Barthes, Roland, 40, 41, 50 Beauvoir, Simone de, 54 being, xii, 40, 57, 58, 60–61, 64, 74, 75, 92, 97, 132, 133, 136, 139, 141 being-in-a-situation, 10, 20, 23, 30, 32–38, 47, 50, 70, 71. See also situated involvement being-in-the-world, 18, 39, 142 Berdyaev, Nicolas, 54 Bergson, Henri, 45, 125 Bertocci, Peter A., 28 Black, Max, 118 Blandshard, Brand, 106 Bleicher, Josef, 150 body and mind, 15, 19, 23, 25–26, 28, 50 BonJour, Laurence, 97 Bourgeois, Patrick, xvii, 158 Bradley, F.H., 106 Brody, Baruch, 118 Bryson, Kenneth A., xiii, xvii Buber, Martin, xi, xii, xvi, 63, 125, 135–151 epistemology of M.B., 137–141.

See also I-Thou relation Busch, Thomas, 58 Cain, Seymour, 69 Calvin, John, 80 Camus, Albert, 42, 77 Cartesianism, xi, 7–21, 27, 88, 98, 123, 124 Catholicism, 53, 122 causal system, 32, 33, 43, 99 Classical foundationalism, 81 Christianity, 63, 81, 83, 122 Claudel, Paul, 122 cogito, xv, 15, 17, 19, 37 Collins, James 92, 133 commitment, 63, 69, 73, 84, 136 concepts, 17, 34–36, 48, 57, 71, 64, 66, 71, 93, 98, 110, 124. See also conceptual knowledge conceptual knowledge, xii, 18, 36, 37, 39, 40, 42–43, 45, 50, 55, 57, 66, 110, 128, 138, 147 concrete philosophy, 8, 10, 54 connatural knowledge, 124–129 cosmological argument, 70, 79 creative testimony, 85 critical theory, 40 dasein, xii, 18, 39, 94 deconstruction, 40, 144 Delhomme, Jeanne, 135 Derrida, Jacques, 40-41, 49, 50, 97, 98 Descartes, René, xv, 10-21, 24, 25, 27, 28, 31, 32, 35, 49, 81, 87, 88, 90, 92, 94, 97, 100, 129, 145 D. view of the self, 11–12 D. wax example, 14, 17 design argument, 70, 79 Diamond, Malcolm, L., 136, 137, 146, 147–150 différance, 41 disponibilité, 62–63, 64 doubt, 64, 66, 75–77, 89, 145, 149,

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150 drama, 64, 66, 149 Dreyfus, Hubert, 11, 12, 18, 19, 23 Du Bos, Charles, 54, 121 Duhem, Pierre, 98

69–71, 78. See also Absolute Thou, faith, transcendence Godfrey, Joseph, 159 Goldman, Alvin, 97 Greene, Graham, 75–76

Elizabeth, Princess of Bohemia, 25, 27 embodiment, xv, 23–32, 50, 58, 71 e. as a problem, 31 e. as an instrument, 25–26 empiricism, 101, 103, 123, 124 The End of the Affair (Greene), 75–77 Enlightenment, 65 epistemology, 12, 19, 42, 46, 49, 87– 100, 131, 133, 135–151. See also knowledge ethics, xiii, 42, 53, 54, 56, 55, 60–62, 126 evil, experience of, 71 evolution, 49, 61 existentialism, xi, 3, 11, 49, 46, 54, 90, 91, 99, 122, 132 Christian e., 3, 42, 53, 129 experience, 35, 37, 45, 47–51, 65, 70, 74, 97, 133, 138. See also objects of experience external relations, see internal relations

Hahn, L.E., 154, 155 Hanley, K.R., xvi, xvii, 8, 63, 157, 158, 162 Hanratty, Gerald, 8, 78 Hare, R.M., 60 Hartshorne, Charles, 135, 137, 136, 147 having, realm of, 60 Heidegger, Martin, xii, 7, 18, 19, 21, 33, 37, 39, 50, 54, 55, 88, 89, 94, 95, 116, 119, 133, 135, 139, 136, 141, 142, 143, 150 Heim, Karl, 135 hermeneutics, 40, 150 Hick, John, 69, 80, 81, 85 Hocking, W.E., 88, 135 holism, 17, 36, 98, 110 hope, xi, 50, 149 human person, see human subject human subject, 7, 11, 21, 50, 64, 99 fulfillment of h.s., 63 h.s. as object, 64, 129 h.s. as participant, 63 h.s. as spectator, 16, 63 h.s. in a context, 24, 32–38, 39, 44, 47, 48, 57 nature of h.s., xi, 54, 63, 65, 66, 131 human subjectivity, 21, 32, 39, 43, 49, 50, 51, 55, 122, 132, 140 Hume, David, 60, 96, 103, 104, 113, 114, 115, 116 Husserl, Edmund, 7, 8, 54, 94, 110

fact/value distinction, 60 faith, xi, 50, 54, 59, 75, 149 Feuerbach, Ludwig, 149 fidelity, xi, xii, xiii, 50, 59–60, 63, 64, 66, 72–77, 79, 149, 150 Foucault, Michel, 41, 50 free will, 77, 99 Friedman, Maurice, 135 Gallagher, Kenneth T., 29, 38, 58, 158 Geivett, R. Douglas, 159, 160 gift, 64 Gilson, ӊtienne, 123 God, xi, xiii, 62, 73–85, 127, 131, 136, 138, 140 affirmation of G., 74, 76, 78 arguments for the existence of G.

idealism, 123, 133 ideas, 37 abstract i., 42–47 clear and distinct i., 12, 24, 35, 36, 40 particular i., 36, 42–47, 71 identity of indiscernibles, 117, 118 identity, 40, 41

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Index problem of i., 116, 119 I-It relation, xii, 63, 66, 67, 135–141, 146–148, 149–150. See also IThou relation indisponibilité, 62–63 intentionality, xi, 12, 18–19, 30, 49, 133, 134 internal and external relations, 104– 113 internal relations, 33, 45, 98, 104–113 internal relations, doctrine of, 106, 110 intersubjectivity, 61, 62, 67, 138 intuition, 58, 59, 60, 61, 128, 130–131 is/ought problem, 65 I-Thou relation, 63, 66, 74, 135–141, 146–150. See also I-It relation James, William, 64, 125 Jaspers, Karl, 7 Joyce, James, 33 Kant, Immanuel, 15, 72, 78, 87, 88, 96 Keeling, S.V., 13 Kenny, Anthony, 14 Kierkegaard, Søren, 9, 69, 72 Kilroy, Thomas, 33 knowledge, 21, 36, 87. See also connatural knowledge, epistemology, non-conceptual knowledge, objective knowledge, theories Kripke, Saul, 111, 112 Kruks, Sonia, 32 language-game, 100–101 Lechner, Robert, xvii, 88, 160, 164 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, 103, 117 Lévinas, Emmanuel, 135, 136, 137, 146 literature, 40, 64 Locke, John, 15, 81 logic, 41, 98, 116, 147 logical analysis, 103 logical possibility, 88, 89 love, xii, 36, 50, 75, 136, 149, 150 Lyotard, Jean-François, 98, 100–101,

143 Machado, E.W., 154, 155 MacIntyre, Alasdair, 67 Marcel, Gabriel, M. approach to god vs. reformed epistemology, 84–85 M. argument for the existence of God, 78–80 M. and contemporary epistemology, 97 M. and internal relations, 108–113 M. and necessary connections, 114–116 M. and Thomism, xii, 121–124 M. compared with Buber, 141, 148–150 M. compared with Maritain, 121– 134 M. critique of cartesianism, 11–21 M. general argument against cartesianism, 20–21 M. on embodiment, 23–32 M. on nature of human subject, 32– 38 M. on principle of identity, 118 M. rejection of problem of skepticism, 89–97 M. theistic existentialism, 53–5, 122 philosophical method of M. xi, 7– 11, 72, 123, religious conversion of M., 53–54. See also human subject, knowledge, primary reflection, secondary reflection, situated involvement Maritain, Jacques, xi, xii, xvi, 54, 121–129, 230 M. compared with Marcel, 121– 134 mathematics, 47, 98, 137, 139 Mauriac, François, 53 McInerny, Ralph, 57, 122 meaning, 12, 40–41, 45, 46, 91, 95, 100, 111, 118 Merleau–Ponty, Maurice, 7, 34, 119, 133

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metaphysics, 42, 64, 76, 87, 96, 103, 122, 123, 124, 128, 132, 133 Michaud, Thomas, xvii, 58, 158 mind and body, see body and mind miracles, 77 Moore, G.E., 106, 118 morality, see ethics mystery, realm of, xi, xii, 27, 50, 55– 60, 65, 67, 97, 130, 138, 148, 150 mysticism, 58 natural law, 62, 70, 99, 101, 127, 131 necessary connections, 9, 60, 113–116 nihilism, 42, 61, 64, 67, 76 non-conceptual knowledge, xii, 57, 60, 64, 66, 121–134, 140 Nozick, Robert, 97 O’Malley, John B., 26 objective knowledge, xii, xi, xv, 8, 15, 21, 28, 38, 39–51, 56, 57, 133 objects of experience, 8, 9, 12, 18, 24, 33, 34, 35, 37, 42, 46, 47, 49, 56, 92, 93, 94, 95 ontological argument, 12 ontological need, 76 ontological priority, 10, 11, 20, 36, 93, 99, 114, 115, 139–140, 148– 151 ontology, 96, 119, 151 Ortega y Gasset, José, 55 participation, 109, 138 Pax, Clyde, xvii, 74 phenomenological descriptions, 37, 43, 45, 55, 57, 65, 82, 114, 136, 145, 149 phenomenology, 8–9, 54 philosophy, analytic p., xi, xii, xv, 9, 11, 60, 98, 101, 103 analytic p. and ethics, 65–67 continental p., xi, xii, 39, 103, 150– 151 dialogue in p., 103, 119, 121 modern p., xv, 11, 87 nature of p., 28, 51, 88

Plantinga, Alvin, 69, 80–85 Plato, 103 postmodernism, xv, 41, 100–101 presence, 62 primary and secondary qualities, 14– 15 primary reflection, xi, xii, 18, 28, 38, 47, 48, 50, 56–59, 62, 63, 64, 67, 70, 71, 78, 74, 91, 92, 94, 95, 96, 109, 115, 118, 130, 149. See also reflection, secondary reflection problems, realm of, 31, 38, 47, 56, 66, 148 properties, 105–106 Putnam, Hilary, 98 Quine, W.V.O., 97–101 realism, 18, 42, 93, 145 Reed, Teresa, xvii, 153 reflection, 46, 47–71. See also conceptual knowledge, primary reflection, secondary reflection reformed epistemology, 69, 70, 80–85 relativism, xi, xii, 38, 39, 40–41, 43, 48, 49, 50, 51, 60, 65. 83, 84, 91, 96, 100, 133, 143, 144, 150 religion, 147. See also Christianity, theology religion, philosophy of, xi, 69, 71, 78– 79 religious experience, xiii, 69 argument from r.e., 69, 80 representations, 37, 40, 96, 110 Richardson, John, 33, 39, 95 Ricoeur, Paul, 7, 34, 54 Royce, Josiah, 106 Russell, Bertrand, 106 Ryle, Gilbert, 106, 107 Sartre, Jean–Paul, 21, 42, 54, 55, 63, 67, 119, 133 Schilpp, P.A., 154, 155 science, xi, 15, 31, 47, 49, 65, 100, 115, 137, 139, 143 scientific knowledge, 90, 97, 124, 130 scientism, 62 Searle, John, 18

Index secondary reflection xii, 55, 74, 130, 131, 132, 135, 149. See also reflection, primary reflection secularism, 70 sensation, 28–30, 50, 58 situated involvement, 16–17, 20, 31, 34, 36, 43, 50, 55, 57–60, 61, 92, 94, 95, 112. See also being-in-asituation skepticism, xi, xii, xv, 13, 15, 18, 19, 20, 31, 37, 43, 87–100, 115 Spiegelberg, Herbert, 7 Sprigge, Timothy, 107, 111 Stevenson, C.L., 60 Straus, E.W., 154, 155 Stroud, Barry, 88, 90, 97, 101 structuralism, 40 subjectivity, see human subjectivity Sweeney, Leo, 163 Sweetman, Brendan, 156, 159, 160, 161, 178, 179 Taliaferro, Charles, 61 technique, xi, 64, 74, theology, 87, 137, 139, 140, 143 theories, 49, 57, 95, 96, 97, 98, 111, 115, 137, 144–145 Thomas Aquinas, St., 66, 125 Thomism, xi, 121–122, 132 transcendence, xv, 54, 62–64, 69, 73– 77. See also Absolute Thou, God truth, 10, 100, 101, 136, 141. See also objective knowledge values, xii, 60–61, 74. See also ethics Wahl, Jean, 54 Willard, Dallas, xvii, 154 Wolterstorff, Nicholas, 69, 80 worldview, 70 Zaner, R., 154

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