Gabriel Marcel. Awakenings. [Gabriel Marcel’s Autobiography]
Translated by Peter S. Rogers. Introduction by Patrick Bourgeois.
Marquette University Press, Studies in Philosophy 30. ISBN 0-87462-653-6.
©2002. Paperbound. Index. 262 pp. $30
Gabriel Marcel: Music and Philosophy
Translated with an Introduction by Stephen Maddux and Robert E. Wood
Marquette
University Press, Studies in Philosophy #42, ISBN 0-87462-665-,Paper.
147 pp. $17
Ghostly Mysteries: Existential Drama. Two Plays: "A Mystery
of Love" & "The Posthumous Joke "
by Gabriel Marcel. Translated with an introduction and a reflection
by K. R. Hanley
Marquette
University Press , Studies in Philosophy #39,
ISBN 0-87462-662-5. Paper 179 pages. $20.00
Brendan Sweetman, "Gabriel
Marcel: Ethics within a Christian Existentialism"
in John Drummond and Lester Embree (eds.), Phenomenological Approaches
to
Moral Philosophy (Kluwer, 2002), pp.269-288; and "Martin Buber's
Epistemology", International Philosophical Quarterly, Vol.XXXIX,
(March 1999), pp.5-18, which compares Buber's approach with Marcel and
Heidegger. Also, articles on Gabriel Marcel, Martin Buber and Jacques
Maritain in the Dictionary of Historical Theology (Eerdmans, 2000).
Gabriel Marcel, The Mystery
of Being.
Vol. 1 Reflection
and Mystery, 238 pp., $19.00 ISBN 1-890318-85-X
Vol. 2 Faith and Reality, 198 pp., $19.00, ISBN 1-890318-86-8
Address orders to: St. Augustine's Press, Chicago Distribution Center,
1030 South Langley Avenue, Chicago, IL 60628. Telephone
within Illinois 773-568-1550,
outside Illinois 800-621-8471. PUBNET@
202-5280.
The Quest for Meaning: A Journey in Philosophy, the Arts, and Creative
Genius,William
Cooney, Lanham: MD, University Press of America, November 1999,
288 pp. ISBN 0-7618-1526-0. William Cooney is Professor of Philosophy
at Briar Cliff College in Sioux City, Iowa.
Gabriel
Marcel's Perspectives on The Broken World, Milwaukee:WI,
Marquette University Press, 1998.ISBN 0-87462-617-X, paperbound 242
pp. $25. Includes: The Broken World a four act play,
followed by "Concrete Approaches to Investigating the Ontological Mystery"
by Gabriel Marcel. Six original illustrations by Stephen Healy.
Commentaries by Henri Gouhier and Marcel Belay. Eight Appendices. Introduction
by Ralph McInerny. Bibliographies. Indexes. ISBN 0-87462-617-X. ©1998.
Paperbound. Index. 242 pp.. http://www.marquette.edu/mupress
to order online or phone Book Masters at 1-800-247-6553
Thomas C. Anderson. A Commentary on Gabriel Marcel’s The
Mystery of Being. Marquette
University Press, Studies in Philosophy #46. ISBN-13:
978-087462-669-8 & ISBN-10: 0-87462-669-2. ©2006. 202 pages.
Paperbound. Bibliography. Index. $25
Over the past decade there has been renewed interest in the thought
of the Christian existentialist Gabriel Marcel. An English translation
of his autobiographical final work Awakenings as well as a collection
of his essays on music have recently been published by Marquette University
Press. Major philosophical works of his have been reprinted, the foremost
among them being the two volume The Mystery of Being, a work in which
Marcel discusses almost all of the major components of his thought and
which he said contained an “approximate synthesis” of his
ideas. Marcel was among the first to enunciate the distinction between
intersubjective (I-thou) relations and subject to object (I-him/her)
relations; the important difference between having and being and between
problems and mysteries; the phenomena of the lived body and sensation;
the concretely situated and dependent character of human existence as
well as its supratemporal, transcendent dimension; the centrality of
faith, hope, and love in human life, and our obscure and frequently
unrecognized but, nevertheless, real experiences of an Absolute Thou
and of our dead loved ones. However, Marcel’s philosophical writings,
including The Mystery of Being, although innovative and insightful,
are often not easily understood by even his most sympathetic readers—frequently
because his discussions of issues are unsystematic and sketchy and his
reasons in support of the conclusions he arrives at are so briefly presented.
This commentary offers a fuller explanation than Marcel himself does
of many of the ideas and arguments he sets forth in The Mystery of Being.
This is because it includes in its analysis of each chapter, his discussions
of the same topics in other works he published. This chapter by chapter
commentary is meant to be used along with Marcel’s own words in
The Mystery of Being. It is written for those who, though attracted
to his work, find it difficult to grasp. That is, the intended audience
is not just scholars who have studied Marcel in depth but educated people
who are interested in entering into the philosophical reflections of
one of the major Catholic thinkers of the twentieth century.
Thomas Anderson is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Marquette University,
Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He is the author of two books and editor of one
on Jean-Paul Sartre in addition to numerous articles on Sartre, Søren
Kierkegaard, and Gabriel Marcel. He was the founder and first president
of the Gabriel Marcel Society in North America.