SPRING 2014 President s Message Greetings to all Friends of Gabriel Marcel! There have been some very good developments in recent times. The two most important are the launch of the new Gabriel Marcel Society website, and of our new journal, Marcel Studies. The website has moved from Le Moyne College, where it was maintained for many years by K.R. Hanley, to Rockhurst, where it has been redesigned and updated. The Marcel Society has now entered the digital age! This and future Newsletters will be emailed as pdf files to all Society members, as will all other correspondence and information regarding the Society and its activities. I hope that you have had the opportunity to look around our new website. There you will find plenty of information about our Society, our scholarly meetings, the Officers of the Society, as well as further resources to help those who wish to study or pursue research on Marcel s thought. The Society would like to thank Rockhurst University for agreeing to host and finance the new website, and especially Dr John Morris of the Rockhurst Philosophy Department, and Mr Jeremiah Barber, of Rockhurst Public Relations and Marketing, for their great work in creating, designing and maintained the website. An archive of over 1,000 documents in pdf format of Marcel s papers will soon be added to the website to assist scholars in their research. The second development is the planned launch in Spring 2015 of our new journal, Marcel Studies. We are very grateful to Neumann University, and particularly to our Executive Committee member, Dr Geoffrey Karabin, for taking the initiative on this matter. We are also grateful to Lisa Roberts, Gerry O Sullivan, and David Rodick for their hard work and support on 1
this project. Full details can be found at the journal website at Neumann University at http://www.neumann.edu/marcelstudies/ (or by searching for Marcel Studies ). Marcel Studies is an on-line peer-reviewed, international journal dedicated to furthering understanding and appreciation of the work of Marcel. As an interdisciplinary journal, Marcel Studies welcomes submissions from a variety of backgrounds and perspectives on topics and themes that pertain to any aspect of Marcel s thought. The journal seeks submissions of the highest academic quality, and particularly welcomes submissions for consideration from younger scholars. The plan is to publish Marcel Studies twice yearly, with the first issue slated for Spring 2015. Please note that the deadline for submissions for the first issue is September 30 th, 2014 (to brendan.sweetman@rockhurst.edu). With these two initiatives, the Marcel Society is hoping that we will see some renewed interest in Marcel s work, and we thank you all for your support in this regard. Dr Brendan Sweetman, Professor of Philosophy, Rockhurst University, President, Gabriel Marcel Society. Membership in the Marcel Society and Dues We are actively recruiting new members, and warmly welcome submission of dues! The annual dues rate is a very modest $10, which can be sent in the form of cash or (preferably) check. Consider sending the Society a small donation to support our work. In addition to your name and address, be sure to include your email address, which will immediately be placed on our email distribution list, which will be used for future Society correspondence and mailings. I have updated the old mailing list as much as I was able to. If you wish to be placed on our email mailing list, just send me your email address. Send cash or (preferably) checks (payable to Gabriel Marcel Society) for Society membership to: Dr Brendan Sweetman, Department of Philosophy, Rockhurst University, Kansas City, M0 64110. Email: Brendan.Sweetman@ Rockhurst.edu. Phone: 816 501 4681. Dues are used to help defray the expenses of the Society with regard to conferences, research support, mailings, website maintenance, etc. PAYPAL: It is also possible to pay dues, or to make a contribution, by means of paypal. Just send your donation to my email address: brendan.sweetman@rockhurst.edu, and add a note that it is for the Marcel Society. I will send receipts by email. 2
News from Marcel Society Annual Meetings LATEST MEETING: The last meeting of the Gabriel Marcel Society was held as part of the Annual Meeting of the American Catholic Philosophical Association, Indianapolis, Oct. 1st 3rd, 2013. The meeting was a low key and informal gathering. Papers were presented by Geoffery Karabin (Neumann University), on the subject of A Marcelian Betrayal?: The Scandal of Death versus an Afterlife of Love, and by David Rodick (Xavier University), on Making a Case for Marcel in the 21st Century. The subsequent discussion focused on the future of Marcel scholarship as well as issues related to Marcel's approach to death. A consensus emerged with regard to the need to provide a forum that would serve as a focal point for Marcel scholarship as well as renew interest in him. It was at this meeting that a commitment to the Marcel Journal was formed. (Report by Geoff Karabin.) PREVIOUS MEETING: The 2012 Meeting was held at the ACPA Meeting, Los Angeles, November 2012. Brian E. Gregor (Fordham University) presented a paper titled: "Availability, Responsibility, and Revelation: Marcel and Bonhoeffer on Interpersonal Relations." Brian s paper explored the connections in Bonhoeffer and Marcel with regard to Marcel s concept of being available (disponibilité) for revelation and ethical action. He showed how Bonhoeffer and Marcel both stress the importance of intersubjective experience and praxis as a means of revealing the presence of divine mystery. A lively discussion followed which included comments about the reflexive relation between caritas and openness as well as about Bonhoeffer s role in framing a vision emphasizing the importance of Christianity in a secularized world. David W. Rodick (Xavier University) presented a paper on "Gabriel Marcel as Christian Philosopher: An Experiential Approach." Using Marcel s work on American philosophers Josiah Royce, William E. Hocking, and Henry Bugbee, David argued that Marcel's thought is Christian in the sense that it exhibits a unity derived from both reason and revelation. Its diversity stems from the objective plurality of what it pursued as well as the subjective plurality of those who pursue it. The discussion focused on Marcel s pluralism, the universal resonance of his writings, and the need to reintegrate Marcel back into current philosophical discussion. (Report by David Rodick.) 3
Recent Scholarship 1. David Rodick has been working on the influence of several American thinkers on Marcel, and has just published a very interesting article discussing the influence of the ideas of Josiah Royce, William Ernest Hocking and Henry Bugbee on Marcel s thought. David notes in the article that: Marcel s relationship to these American philosophers is not coincidental. It is the philosophical expression of his Christian faith, an attempt to realize a profound consistency between philosophy and life. To read more, see David s article Gabriel Marcel and American Philosophy, International Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 52.2 (June 2013), pp.117-130. Other recent studies: 2. Dwayne A. Tunstall, Doing Philosophy Personally: Thinking about Metaphysics, Theism and Antiblack Racism (Fordham, 2013) Overview: Gabriel Marcel's reflective method is animated by his extraphilosophical commitment to battle the ever-present threat of dehumanization in late Western modernity. Unfortunately, Marcel neglected to examine what is perhaps the most prevalent threat of dehumanization in Western modernity: antiblack racism. Without such an account, Marcel's reflective method is weakened because it cannot live up to its extra-philosophical commitment. Tunstall remedies this shortcoming in this eloquent new volume. Jill Graper Hernandez, Gabriel Marcel s Ethics of Hope: Evil, God and Virtue (Continuum, 2013) Overview: The idea of 'hope' has received significant attention in the political sphere recently. But is hope just wishful thinking, or can it be something more than a political catch-phrase? This book argues that hope can be understood existentially, or on the basis of what it means to be human. Under this conception of hope, given to us by Gabriel Marcel, hope is not optimism, but the creation of ways for us to flourish. War, poverty and an absolute reliance on technology are real-life evils that can suffocate hope. Marcel's thought provides a way to overcome these negative experiences. An ethics of hope can function as an alternative to isolation, dread, and anguish offered by most existentialists. This book presents Marcel's existentialism as a convincing, relevant moral theory, founded on the creation of hope, interwoven with the individual's response to the death of God. 4
Jill Hernandez argues that today's reader of Marcel can resonate with his belief that the experience of pain can be transcended through a philosophy of hope and an escape from materialism. Brendan Sweetman (ed.), A Gabriel Marcel Reader (St. Augustine s Press, 2011) Overview: This book brings together key selections from Marcel s writings on a variety of topics, with an introduction to each topic provided by the editor. All of Marcel s important ideas are introduced here, ranging from his unique conception of philosophy; to his original approach to epistemology and the nature of knowledge; to his view on the nature of the human person, including the idea of being-in- a-situation and the importance of the context that the subject lives in for the subject s ideas and experiences; to his approach to religious themes, including the issues of the rationality of religious belief, the question of God s existence, and our longing for the transcendent; and his concrete approaches of fidelity, hope, love and faith. There are also selections in which he discusses some of his misgivings about the direction of contemporary culture, especially the effects of technology. Where would Marcel be located on the spectrum of Catholic Philosophy? Marcel is a convert to the Catholic faith, finding it more intellectually and religiously congenial to his outlook on life than alternative systems of meaning. Yet how did he regard other Catholic thinkers and movements of his time? Was he more on the right, or on the left, or in between? He was influenced by François Mauriac, discussed philosophical ideas with Jacques Maritain and Charles de Bos, and wrote introductions to the work of Mix Picard, some of whose views he thought were severe. Here is the inimical Ralph McInerny on where Marcel stands: 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! [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.] 5
Marcel Quiz: Win a copy of Marcel s Autobiography! How well do you know your Marcel? Of whom was he speaking when he wrote the following:... the fundamental intuition of????? remains to my mind absolutely correct. But the whole question is to know how it can be translated into discourse without being denatured. It isthis transposition which raises the most serious difficulties, and therein probably lies the fundamental reason why the discovery of Feuerbach.remained so long without fruit In my Journal Metaphysique I attempted to show by a concrete example how this authentic meeting manifests itself phenomenologically. All correct answers (to brendan.sweetman@rockhurst.edu) will be entered into a drawing to win a copy of Marcel s autobiography (in English), Awakenings (Fordham, 2003). Deadline: June 30th, 2014. Helpful Scholarship What does Marcel mean by Being? For an erudite answer see, Thomas Anderson, Gabriel Marcel's notions of Being," Philosophy Today, XIX (1975): 29-49. Marcel s notion of secondary reflection is quite complex. For an insightful analysis, see Thomas Michaud, "Secondary Reflection and Marcelian Anthropology," Philosophy Today, Vol. 34 (1990): 222-228. What Marcel is saying 1. Marcel on epistemology: Conversely, it will be seen that, if the metaproblematical can be asserted at all, it must be conceived as transcending the opposition between the subject who asserts the existence of being, on the one hand, and being as asserted by that subject, on the other, and as underlying it in a given sense. To 6
postulate the meta-problematical is to postulate the primacy of being over knowledge (not of being as asserted, but of being as asserting itself); it is to recognize that knowledge is, as it were, environed by being, that it is interior to it in a certain sense--a sense perhaps analogous to that which Paul Claudel tried to define in his Art Poetique. From this standpoint, contrary to what epistemology seeks vainly to establish, there exists well and truly a mystery of cognition; knowledge is contingent on a participation in being for which no epistemology can account because it continually presupposes it. (From, On the Ontological Mystery reprinted in A Gabriel Marcel Reader, ed. by Brendan Sweetman.) 2. Marcel on the relationship between philosophy and theater: The truth is that the connection between philosophy and drama in my case is the closest, the most intimate possible. Briefly, I would say that my philosophy is existential to the degree that it is simultaneously drama, that is, dramatic creation. What has struck me very much these last years while reflecting on my work is the fact that existence, or, if you will, the existing subject can be adequately thought only where the thinking subject is allowed to speak. If we speak of this existing subject in some other way, we insist in the words on its subjective character, but by the very fact that we are speaking of it we inevitably objectify it and consequently distort it Taken as a whole my work can be compared, I think, to a country like Greece, which comprises at the same time a continental part and islands. The continental part is my philosophical writing. Here I find myself to some degree in the company of other thinkers of our time like Jaspers, Buber, and Heidegger. The islands are my plays. Why this comparison? Well, just as it is necessary to make a crossing to get to an island, so to get to my dramatic work, dramatic creation, it is necessary to leave the shore behind. The reflecting subject in some way must leave himself behind, forget himself in order to yield completely, in order to be absorbed in the beings he has conceived and whom he must try to bring to life. And it might be added--i don't think this would be superfluous--that the element which unites the continent and the islands in my work is music. Music is truly the deepest level. In a certain way the priority belongs to music. (Conversation between Gabriel Marcel and Paul Ricoeur, taken from A Gabriel Marcel Reader.) Marcel Theater Project and Tribute to K.R. Hanley For many years in the USA, Katharine Rose Hanley has been the foremost scholar, disciple and promoter of the Marcel s work, and she has rightly earned recognition as one of the foremost Marcel scholars in the world. I well remember meeting her for the first time at the Marcel Society meeting at the ACPA in 1992 in San Diego. She was 7 extremely welcoming to me as a younger Marcel scholar, and has been very supportive of my work through the years. I know that K.R. (as she likes to be known) has gone out of her way to help people who are interested in Marcel pursue their research. In her own work, she has a particular interest in Marcel s theater, and
many years ago started the Marcel theater project. K.R. has noted that The Marcel Theatre Project started at Le Moyne in 1974 with a full scale staged production of The Rebellious Heart in Grewen Auditorium. This premiere was followed by stage performances of Dot the I and The Double Expertise, then a video production of The Lantern. Colombyre or The Torch of Peace and A Man of God had popular performances in the form of Readers Theatre. After the 10th anniversary of Marcel s Death, these plays were performed for audiences of various philosophic societies meetings across the U.S. and Canada, including at Princeton University. In Fall 2005, The Lantern was performed with striking success at Johns Hopkins University with John Astin (of The Addams Family TV series) as Director and also playing the role of the Father, while the other roles were portrayed by members of the Master in Liberal Arts Program. Dr. Hanley was on stage following this performance with the Producer, Director, Actors and Dean of the Masters in Liberal Arts Program, to share her insights and comments in response to questions regarding Marcel, this play, and the developing clarification of existential questions in Marcel s own life through dramatic imagination and reflection. The sponsors of this event chose a Marcel drama, not only for its theatrical merits, but also because his plays engage the developmental psychological tasks of the university age student: friendship, commitment, fidelity and creativity. K.R. noted that Marcel is one of the rare dramatist/philosophers who addresses these topics. Over the years, K.R. has published the following on Marcel: Dramatic Approaches to Creative Fidelity: A Study in the Theatre and Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel. Lanham, MD. U.P. of America, 1986. -----"Marcel: the Playwright Philosopher," Renascence, Vol. LV, No. 3 (Spring 2003): 241-258. -----(ed.). Two One Act Plays by Gabriel Marcel. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1986. -----(ed.). Gabriel Marcel's Perspectives on The Broken World. Milwaukee: Marquette U.P., 1998. -----(ed.). Two Plays by Gabriel Marcel. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1988. -----(ed.). Ghostly Mysteries: A Mystery Of Love And The Posthumous Joke. Milwaukee: Marquette U.P., 2004. -----(ed.). Gabriel Marcel, A Path to Peace: Dramatic Explorations by Gabriel Marcel (Five Plays) (Marquette U.P., 2007). Now in her 81 st year, K.R. is retired and is Professor Emeritus at Le Moyne College, Syracuse, NY, where she has been teaching for more than 50 years. She was also the College s first female professor. One of the highlights of her career was Marcel s visit to the Le Moyne campus for a series of lectures, and to receive an honorary degree, in 1965. (Brendan Sweetman, Rockhurst University) [Newsletter designed by Brendan Sweetman Jr] 8