NAME: Domingo,Jonalyn V

GRADE & SECTION: 11- Mandela

BOOK REPORT FOR A NONFICTION INFORMATIONAL BOOK

BOOK TITLE: Being and Having

AUTHOR: Gabriel Marcel

NUMBER OF PAGES: 240

PUBLISHER: First published in 1949, Printed by Robert MacLebose and Company Lim

TOPIC: Marcel developed his position by introducing a number of important philosophical

distinctions for which he became well known. Among them is that between being and having,
which was central to his thought. The distinction applies to a number of areas in life, including
the experience of human embodiment, the nature of intersubjective relations, and the nature
of the human person. Marcel argued that people’s relationships to their own bodies is not one
of typical “ownership,” and so the fact of human embodiment presents a difficulty for any
philosophy, such as Cartesianism, that wishes to place the fact of embodiment in doubt. It is
thus incorrect to understand embodiment in terms of ownership, or to say that people
“possess” their bodies as instruments; it is more accurate to say instead that “I am my body,”
by which Marcel meant that one cannot look upon one’s body as an object or as a problem to
be solved, because the logical detachment that is required to do so cannot be achieved. Indeed,
as soon as I consider my body as an object, it ceases to be “my body,” because the nature of
conceptual thought requires detachment from the object under analysis. Nor, however, can I
regard my bodily experiences as the sum total of my life.

This analysis then opens up the realms of being and having. “Having” involves taking possession
of objects, requires detachment from the self, and is the realm in which one seeks conceptual
mastery and universal solutions. Marcel acknowledged that, although it is possible to adopt this
attitude toward human beings, it is a distortion of the nature of the self. The realm of being, on
the other hand, is one in which experience is unified before conceptual analysis, in which the
individual participates in reality and has access to experiences that are later distorted at the
level of abstract thinking.
I chose this book,because this book marcel introduced another of his famous distinctions ,that
between mystery and problem, to further elaborate the notions of being and having. He tended
to divide reality into the world of mystery and the world of problems (the world of being and
the world of having). These realms further correspond to a distinction between two types of
reflection, secondary and primary. In The Mystery of Being, Marcel defined a problem as a task
that requires a solution that is available for everybody. What is distinctive about a problem is
that it requires an abstraction at the conceptual level from the lived experience of the person
who is dealing with the problem. Marcel illustrated this point with an example from his school
days, when he was unable to figure out how the wires in an electrical circuit joined together to
produce a current. Problems of this sort are objective and universal and can be solved in
principle by anyone; they require what Marcel called primary reflection. This is ordinary,
everyday reflection; it involves functional, abstract logical analysis and is also the realm of
academic disciplines, including theology, science, and philosophy itself. Primary reflection is an
essential part of human engagement with reality, a fact Marcel did not wish to deny, but he did
wish to challenge the view that it is the only type of reflection or that every human question or
concern should be approached by means of primary reflection. He believed that modern
philosophy has lost its way because it mistakenly judges that any issue that cannot be analyzed
in this abstract, scientific way is not a real area of knowledge.

According to Gabriel Marcel, humans have two kinds of relationship with the existence: “being”
and “having”; that make fundamental differences in understanding the world. “Having” is used
for referring to, e.g., “having an idea” and even ones’ own ideas, describing them in a concrete
manner. In “having”, we are dealing with “primary thought” and an “I” and a “he” relation,
which Marcel puts it against “I” and “thou” relation. In the latter, we are dealing with “being”.
Meeting someone who is known as “he” means that we have relationship with him in such a
way that he, as an object, is separate from us; the case is different when we meet someone as
“thou”. In this relationship, we deal with “secondary thought” and it can be understood
through participation and our living experience. Love, hope, fidelity and availability are
categorized under “being” which is manifested in the existence of human. At the same time,
these two kinds of existence are connected to each other: “being” and “having” are two levels
of existence; "being" shows itself in different methods and “having” is the manifestation of
“being”. In the modern age, the realm of “having” has been expanded and Marcel proposed
two kinds of existence to return the expansion of the realm of “being”, i.e. human authentic
experience. In this article the important question is: what is the relation between “having” and
“being”? To answer this question, at first we should describe “having” and “being”.
Biographical Sketch

Marcel was born in 1889. His mother died when he was only four, and Marcel was raised by his
father and aunt, who later married. He excelled in school, but did so without enjoying his
studies prior to his encounter with philosophy. He associated with many of the prominent
philosophers of his day, in part due to his hosting of the famous “Friday evenings.” Paul
Ricoeur, Emmanuel Levinas, Jean Wahl, Simone de Beauvoir, Nicolas Berdyaev and Jean-Paul
Sartre were among the many noted philosophers who attended these gatherings at one time or
another. These informal meetings were an occasion for engaged thinkers from a variety of
perspectives to discuss together various philosophical themes, frequently ones Marcel himself
was working on that week. After passing his agrégation in 1910, he taught philosophy
intermittently in Sens, Paris, and Montpellier; however, his main professional occupations were
that of drama critic (for Europe nouvelle and later for Nouvelles littéraires) and editor (for the
Feux croisés series at Plon).

Marcel's philosophical legacy includes lectures, journal entries and dramatic works in addition
to more orthodox philosophical expression in essays and monographs. Of these various genres,
Marcel was perhaps most pleased with his dramatic works. In fact, reading between the lines of
his autobiographical remarks, one can discern some puzzlement and no small amount of
frustration at the success of his philosophical works and the relative obscurity of his dramatic
works. Complicating the diverse expression of his ideas is the fact that Marcel was a consciously
unsystematic philosopher, something he realized as early as the publication of his Journal
métaphysique (1927).Nevertheless, while the diverse expression of his thought and the related
lack of systematicity cause some difficulty for those interested in Marcel's work, the main
themes of his thought are present in many of his works. Especially noteworthy are: The Mystery
of Being, Creative Fidelity, Homo Viator, Being and Having, Tragic Wisdom and Beyond and the
concise “On the Ontological Mystery.”

Marcel's philosophical methodology was unique, although it bears some resemblance to both
existentialism and phenomenology broadly construed. He insisted that philosophy begin with
concrete experience rather than abstractions. To this end he makes constant use of examples in
order to ground the philosophical ideas he is investigating. The method itself consists in
“working…up from life to thought and then down from thought to life again, so that may try to
throw more light upon life” (Marcel 1951a, p. 41). Thus, this philosophy is a sort of “description
bearing upon the structures which reflection elucidates starting from experience” (Marcel
1962a, p. 180). In addition, Marcel expressed a refreshing preference for philosophizing in
ordinary language. He maintained that “we should employ current forms of ordinary language
which distort our experiences far less than the elaborate expressions in which philosophical
language is crystallized” (Marcel 1965, p. 158)
The Broken World and the Functional Person

In line with his preference for concrete philosophy that speaks in ordinary language, Marcel
begins many of his philosophical essays with an observation about life. One of his central
observations about life and experience, from which he is able to derive many of the
philosophical distinctions that follow, is that we live in a “broken world.” A world in which
“ontological exigence”—if it is acknowledged at all—is silenced by an unconscious relativism or
by a monism that discounts the personal, “ignores the tragic and denies the transcendent”
(Marcel 1995, p. 15). The characterization of the world as broken does not necessarily imply
that there was a time when the world was intact. It would be more correct to emphasize that
the world we live in is essentially broken, broken in essence, in addition to having been further
fractured by events in history. The observation is intended to point out that we find ourselves
hic et nunc in a world that is broken. This situation is characterized by a refusal (or inability) to
reflect, a refusal to imagine and a denial of the transcendent (Marcel 1951a, pp. 36–37).
Although many things contribute to the “brokenness” of the world, the hallmark of its modern
manifestation is “the misplacement of the idea of function” (Marcel 1995, p. 11).

“I should like to start,” Marcel says, “with a sort of global and intuitive characterization of the
man in whom the sense of the ontological—the sense of being, is lacking, or, to speak more
correctly, the man who has lost awareness of this sense” (Marcel 1995, p. 9). This person, the
one who has lost awareness of the sense of the ontological, the one whose capacity to wonder
has atrophied to the extent of becoming a vestigial trait, is an example of the influence of the
misapplication of the idea of function. Marcel uses the example of a subway token distributor.
This person has a job that is mindless, repetitive, and monotonous. The same function can be,
and often is, completed by automated machines. All day this person takes bills from commuters
and returns a token and some change, repeating the same process with the same
denominations of currency, over and over. The other people with whom she interacts engage
her in only the most superficial and distant manner. In most cases, they do not speak to her and
they do not make eye contact. In fact, the only distinction the commuters make between such a
person and the automatic, mechanical token dispenser down the hall is to note which
“machine” has the shorter line. The way in which these commuters interact with this subway
employee is clearly superficial and less than desirable. However, Marcel's point is more subtle.

Ontological Exigence

“What defines man,” claims Marcel, “are his exigencies” (Marcel 1973, p. 34). Nevertheless,
these exigencies can be smothered, perhaps even silenced, by despair. Such is the case in the
example of the “functionalized” person. The broken world can smother transcendent
exigencies, leaving only quotidian, functional needs intact. Ontological exigence, the need for
transcendence, is linked to a certain dissatisfaction—one that is all the more troubling because
one is unable to soothe this dissatisfaction by one's own powers. However, without a feeling
that something is amiss, without the feeling of dissatisfaction, ontological exigence withers.
This is why the functional person, the person who no longer even notices that the world is
broken, is described as having lost the awareness of the ontological and the need for
transcendence. In the face of this potential despair, Marcel claims that:

Being is or should be necessary. It is impossible that everything should be reduced to a play of

successive appearances which are inconsistent with each other… or, in the words of
Shakespeare, to “a tale told by an idiot.” I aspire to participate in this being, in this reality—and
perhaps this aspiration is already a degree of participation, however rudimentary. (Marcel
1995, p. 15)

Thus, ontological exigence is a need and a demand for some level of coherence in the cosmos
and for some understanding of our place and role within this coherence. It is the combination
of wonder and the attendant desire, not to understand the entire cosmos, but to understand
something of one's own place in it.[4] Note that, for Marcel, ontological exigence is not merely
a “wish” for being or coherence, but is an “interior urge” or “appeal.” “Otherwise stated, the
[ontological] exigence is not reducible to some psychological state, mood, or attitude a person
has; it is rather a movement of the human spirit that is inseparable from being human” (Keen
1984, p. 105).

Transcendence

Marcel is very clear that the term “transcendence” has, in his view, become degraded in modern
philosophy. Transcendence cannot mean merely “going beyond” without any further specification. It
must retain the tension of the traditional distinction between the immanent and the transcendent, one
that emphasizes a vertical rather than a horizontal going beyond, a transcendence toward a height, a
trans-ascendence. Although the transcendent is juxtaposed with the immanent, Marcel insists that
“transcendent” cannot mean “transcending experience.” “There must exist a possibility of having an
experience of the transcendent as such, and unless that possibility exists the word can have no
meaning” (Marcel 1951a, p. 46). The tendency to discount the idea of experiencing transcendence is the
result of an objective view of experience. However, experience is not an object and therefore it cannot
be viewed objectively. Speaking metaphorically, the essence of experience is not an “absorbing into
oneself,” as in the case of taste, but “a straining oneself towards something, as when, for instance,
during the night we attempt to get a distinct perception of some far-off noise” (Marcel 1951a, p. 47).
Thus, while Marcel insists on the possibility of experiencing the transcendent, he does not thereby mean
that the transcendent is comprehensible.

There is an order where the subject finds himself in the presence of something entirely beyond his
grasp. I would add that if the word “transcendent” has any meaning it is here—it designates the
absolute, unbridgeable chasm yawning between the subject and being, insofar as being evades every
attempt to pin it down. (Marcel 1973, p. 193)