Abstract
The dramatic change in the focus and overall project of French philosophy since World War I has become increasingly apparent, with one of the resultant developments being, as Geroulanos (An atheism that is not humanist emerges in French thought, 2010) has identified, the emergence of “an atheism that is not humanist.” This article discusses parallels between the philosophical methodology of Gabriel Marcel (1889–1973) and this new form of atheism. In so doing, it explores connections between Marcel and French philosophy’s more recent “(re)turn to religion,” and uses these to demonstrate how Marcel’s notion of disponibilité or “availability” operates with respect to Marcel’s conception of philosophy itself.
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Notes
To reference Friedrich Nietzsche’s famous declaration, “God is dead,” from The Gay Science (1882). This challenged the assumption that the Christian God was the source of absolute moral principles, and, whilst not entailing atheism per se, drew attention to humanity’s inherent freedom and was thereby hugely influential in reducing religion’s influence on society.
To cite Thomas Flynn chapter’s title from Philosophy of Religion for a New Century (Hackett and Wallulis 2004).
Often discussed in terms of the “dialectic” (dialectique) of human experience, which Marcel pitches against any conception of direct human “intuition” (e.g., Marcel 1968b, pp. 13, 78).
Unless otherwise specified, all translations of Marcel are my own.
In L’Existence et la liberté humaine chez Jean-Paul Sartre (1981), for example, Marcel argues: “si je m’interroge sincèrement … je m’apparais non pas du tout comme choisissant mes valeurs, mais comme les reconnaissant” (“if I examine my self-experience sincerely … I appear to myself not as choosing my own values, but as recognizing them”) (Marcel 1981, p. 86).
Here, we can understand “scholasticism” as broadly referring to an overly humanist philosophical approach, with its emphasis on intellectual autonomy and pretension to expound the “whole of attainable truth” (Pieper 2014).
In a 1947 article, for example, Marcel writes: “je suis convaincu qu’on serait à peu près dans la vérité en disant que l’existentialisme est en soi d’essence chrétienne, et qu’il ne peut devenir athée que par accident et en se méprenant sur sa propre nature” (“I am convinced that it would be largely true to say that existentialism is essentially Christian, and could only become atheistic accidentally, by mistaking its true nature”) (Marcel 1947, p. 158).
One might draw a parallel here between Marcel and William James (1842–1910). For both thinkers, religion is not so much to do with the recognition of a particular being of which theologians speak, but rather the cultivation of a certain attitude that is concerned with others and the world. Both therefore wish to make sense of religion without rehearsing traditional dogma, which intellectualize religion; and as a consequence they both emphasize the fruitfulness of a first-personal approach that centers on the individual’s experience of belief. An existential thread can equally be drawn back to Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855), for whom subjectivity, rather than imposed, objectively stated dogma, was also the core of religion.
As Marcel remarks in a 1950 Gifford Lecture at the University of Aberdeen: “Pour autant que je reste sous l’emprise d’une préoccupation égo-centrique, cette préoccupation fait fonction d’obturateur entre moi et autrui … . … du même coup c’est aussi mon expérience à moi que je recouvre en quelque façon … . En d’autres termes, l’égo-centrisme est en soi toujours aveuglant” (“As long as I continue to be dominated by ego-centric concerns, these concerns will shut me off from other people … . … at the same time, my experience of my self will also be shrouded … . In other words, ego-centrism is always inherently blinding”) (Marcel 1951b, p. 11).
As Buber’s first sentence in I and Thou reads: “To man the world is twofold, in accordanoe with his twofold attitude” (Buber 1937, p. 3).
Buber’s philosophical focus also shifts post-World War I, as Michael Zank and Zachary Braiterman remark: “Whereas before World War I Buber had promoted an aesthetic of unity and unification, his later writings embrace a rougher and more elemental dualism … [, c]omplicating the undifferentiated shape of mystical experience” (Zank and Braiterman 2014).
Marcel for example speaks of the “de-personalization” (dépersonnalisation) of human relations (e.g., Marcel 1951a, p. 144), and describes a “broken world” (un monde cassé) where individuals act like automata, treating themselves (and others) as a simple “bundle of functions” (un faisceau de fonctions) (Marcel 1998, pp. 192–193).
As John Caputo observes: “the doubt thrown by postmodernists on binary pairs, which affects theological oppositions such as God/world, soul/body, or eternity/time, has no less an erosive effect on any clean distinction between theism and atheism or the religious and the secular” (Caputo 2007, p. 269). Indeed, challenging binary pairs (self/other, finitude/infinity, presence/absence), as well as disciplinary divisions of thought (e.g., philosophy/theology) was pivotal to Marcel’s project. Where he does employ binary language (e.g., being/having or problem/mystery), he will subsequently demonstrate how a genuine engagement with lived experience reveals the need for an act of secondary reflection, which transcends any such dualism (the realm of primary reflection). Oppositions like these are symbolic of a much wider interpretative framework, and as Marcel’s philosophy illustrates, once one begins to re-evaluate one such boundary, the horizon of enquiry opens out immediately onto so many more that require equal re-assessment.
All translations of Levinas are my own.
“Ce n’est pas dans la finalité d’une visée intentionnelle que je pense l’infini” (“I cannot think the infinite via the finality of intentional thought”) (Levinas 1990, p. 12). More specifically, Levinas describes the authentic self as “[une c]réature … athée ignorant sans doute son Créateur, car si elle le connaissait elle assumerait encore son commencement” (“an atheistic creature no doubt ignorant of its Creator, for if it knew it, it would again be assuming its own beginning”) (Levinas 1990, pp. 165–166). Paul Ricœur (1913–2005) also writes of a religious significance of atheism, suggesting that “l’athéisme n’épuise pas sa signification dans la négation et la destruction de la religion, mais … libère l’horizon pour quelque chose d’autre, pour une foi susceptible d’être appelée … une foi post-religieuse” (“the significance of atheism is not exhausted in the negation and destruction of religion, but clears the horizon for something else, for a faith that one might call … a ‘post-religious’ faith”) (Ricœur 1969, p. 431; my translation).
In his introduction to Religion: Beyond a Concept, de Vries also argues: “Paradoxically, the more pressure one applies to ‘religion,’ to its concept(s), referent(s), and requisite(s), the more resilient these categories tend to become. Even where it is universally repudiated, ‘religion’ might thus still exert conceptual, but also imaginative, rhetorical, and affective force, behind our backs, as it were … . Yet where it aspires to reign in the open, ‘religion’ may crumble to kitsch, to the mediatised iteration of emptied words … . No one can tell with certainty whether the ‘religious’ utterance is – or performs – what it claims. There are simply no publicly ascertainable criteria to separate the genuine from the false” (de Vries 2008, p. 9).
Marcel analyzes the phenomenological structure of the promise in great depth, e.g., Marcel (1968a, pp. 57–60)—a discussion which follows on from, and continues to be followed by, philosophical reflections on the nature of fidelity and the future.
In keeping with the messianic structure, Marcel, Levinas, Derrida, and others all challenge the past/future binary as well as presence/absence, referencing the past, in addition to the future, when they speak of nostalgia or disquiet (Marcel), trauma or diachrony (Levinas), or mourning, haunting and ghosts (Derrida).
In describing the “strategic rearticulation and redeployment of religion” in recent French thought, for example, de Vries argues: “The invocation of religion, its concept no less than its historical manifestations, better enables one to highlight the most pressing questions of ethics and politics and give these concepts a renewed urgency, while avoiding the pitfalls of moralism, good conscience, or any other supposed correctness” (de Vries 1999, pp. 434, 435).
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Tattam, H. Atheism, religion, and philosophical “availability” in Gabriel Marcel. Int J Philos Relig 79, 19–30 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11153-015-9547-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11153-015-9547-9