Religious belief of Gabriel Marcel

Marcel’s thought has a clear religious dimension, and he recognized early on that it was leading him in a religious direction even though he then had no strong religious beliefs and no formal religious upbringing. His thinking led to his conversion to Roman Catholicism in 1929, and he is now often referred to as a theistic or Christian existentialist. Marcel’s approach to religious belief was notably existentialist, and it is no surprise that he distanced himself from traditional philosophy of religion. Indeed, he remained suspicious of attempts to prove the existence of God or to offer arguments in support of religious belief. Such attempts are an exercise in primary reflection, and, while not without value, they necessarily preclude an experience of God. The essence of religious belief involves an experiential aspect, so the intellectual discussion is necessarily limited.

Marcel’s experiential approach to religious belief was rooted in the phenomenological method. He believed that the profound experiences he described in his work—fidelity, hope, disponibilité, and intersubjective relations, all of which involve commitments and relations that elude conceptual description—are best explained if they are understood as being pledged to a transcendent reality, what he often called an “Absolute Thou.” Again drawing upon the example of fidelity, Marcel held that fidelity involves a certain way of being with another person; it is “creative” because it calls upon the individual to remain open to the other. As the American philosopher Thomas C. Anderson noted:

The other person is not seen as a person with a certain set of desirable characteristics, or as identified with a function, or even as a rational, autonomous subject; rather he or she is experienced as a “thou,” a person with whom I identify and am one with on the path of life.

Such experiences have a religious dimension because, as Clyde Pax, another Marcel scholar, put it, the individual often appeals to an ultimate strength, which enables him to make the pledge that he knows he cannot make from himself alone. The pledge to the “Absolute Thou” makes the unconditional commitment that is typical of these types of relationships both possible and intelligible.

With regard to the ultimate hope in the meaning of human existence, Marcel observed (in Homo Viator):

The only possible source from which this absolute hope springs must once more be stressed. It appears as a response of the creature to the infinite Being to whom it is conscious of owing everything that it has and upon whom it cannot impose any condition whatsoever.

It is in that context that Marcel argued that it is no surprise that many human beings experience their lives as a gift. Of course, a gift requires a gift-giver, an example of an indirect argument for the existence of a Supreme Being, one of several to be found in Marcel’s work.

Marcel’s thought continues to attract attention in the 21st century because of the enduring relevance of his key themes and the widespread influence of some of the difficulties he identified. These include the phenomenon of the broken world, the hegemony of science and technology, and the stultifying of the life of the spirit in contemporary life and culture, all amid the necessity of responding to the human call for transcendence.