Marcel and Heidegger on the Proper Matter and Manner of Thinking

Abstract

Heidegger came France for the first time in 1955, and was welcomed into the Chateau Cerisy-la-Salle where a certain number of philosophers and students had gathered in order benefit from his presence. -Gabriel Marcel Our talk does not set itself the task of winding up a fixed program. But it would like prepare all who are participating for a gathering in which what we call the Sein des Seienden appeals us. -Martin Heidegger the 1955 gathering In everyday usage, often signifies that which is not known even if it is in principle knowable: I don't know-it is a me. The to me indicates that it is in principle knowable even though as a matter of fact (purely accidentally) it is not known. We also speak of novels or detective novels where the puzzle is be solved. The inviolable nature of this genre is that the novel ends one page after the has unraveled and thereby dissolved. What we speak of as mysterious is usually superficial, being based on a lack of genuine acquaintance: He has such a mysterious character. Implied is that he is hiding something (a secret life, an affair, a career as a super hero) which revealed would do away with the even if he would still remain complex. In this, the to me is still implicitly attached; he is mysterious me, though he is not in principle mysterious. Here, is but the name for the unresolved problem. We can mention, in this regard, the television program Unsolved Mysteries, which highlights crimes and phenomena that are in need of explanation and thus dissolution as mysteries: a solved mystery would be a poor indeed. Our survey of this network of usage has yet bring us an enduring mystery, a that is in principle mysterious and not accidentally so.1 Such a cannot be approached apart from a consideration of the manner of thought appropriate it, for the matter of calls forth a very particular manner of thinking and this manner of thinking is what first enables the matter show itself for what it truly is: mysterious. (Manifesting as does not dissolve into transparent lucidity.)2 In the last century, both Gabriel Marcel and Martin Heidegger labored carve out the proper matter and manner of thinking.3 The proper matter insofar as they struggled free for thinking the of being, that which is most worthy of thought. The proper manner insofar as they struggled articulate the specific character of a thinking that would be adequate this mystery.4 To this end, both engaged in an ongoing polemic with modern technology and its dominant mode of thought: problem-solving (Marcel) or calculative reasoning (Heidegger). Both thinkers sought free thinking from a representational mode of thinking and a technical mode of problem solving by turning the positive of being, its in principle inexhaustible wondrousness-even if their understanding of that differed greatly. Marcel, thinker of the person and the concrete, understands the domain of as opened in interpersonal agape; Heidegger, thinker of Dasein and then Ereignis and Lichtung, understands the domain of as opened by the free (though non-personal) appropriation of being. Marcel's is mysterious because of its over-fullness and consequent impossibility of being given; Heidegger's is mysterious because of its withdrawing negativity and consequent impossibility of being given. We then ask: Is this a lovers' quarrel over being in which both belong the Same5 or is there rather an essential difference between them? Marcel on Reflection and Mystery Mystery as the Matter of Thought Marcel first names the of being in contradistinction the problem of being in a journal entry from 22 October 1932.6 The mysterious, enlightened emergence of this fundamental distinction frees from the domain of the problematical, liberating it for thought. …