Gabriel Marcel
Gabriel Marcel
Gabriel Honoré Marcelwas a French philosopher, playwright, music critic and leading Christian existentialist. The author of over a dozen books and at least thirty plays, Marcel's work focused on the modern individual's struggle in a technologically dehumanizing society. Though often regarded as the first French existentialist, he dissociated himself from figures such as Jean-Paul Sartre, preferring the term 'Philosophy of Existence' to define his own thought. The Mystery of Being is a well-known two-volume work authored by Marcel...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth7 December 1889
CountryFrance
Gabriel Marcel quotes about
But however measurable, there is much more life in music than mathematics or logic ever dreamed of.
Music at times is more like perfume than mathematics.
It is right that we be concerned with the scientific probity of metaphysics.
But a science is exact to the extent that its method measures up to and is adequate to its object.
On a grassroots level we say that man can touch more than he can grasp.
Metaphysics is a science.
Contemplation and wisdom are highest achievements and man is not totally at home with them.
Hope consists in asserting that there is at the heart of being, beyond all data, beyond all inventories and all calculations, a mysterious principle which is in connivance with me
This detachment (poverty, chastity, etc.) must not be mere amputation; everything which is shaken off must be simultaneously found again at a higher level.
The wise man knows how to run his life so that contemplation is possible.
I not only have a body; I am this body.
An individual is not distinct from his place. He is his place.
... freedom is a conquest, always partial, always precarious, always challenged. ... the freest person is the one with the most hope.
The striking thing about the Precious Blood is the bond it establishes between love and suffering in our experience, a bond that has become so close that we have come to think of suffering accepted with joy as the most authentic sign of love with any depth at all.