PHILOSOPHICAL EXPERIMENT AND SCIENTIFIC EXPERIMENT IN GABRIEL MARCEL

Abstract

To talk about the philosophical experience and the philosophical experiment in Marcel, it is necessary to remember very suggestive themes that help to understand the man of the twenty-first century. The first of them is a problem and mystery that in the midst of the technicist, consumerist and utilitarian vision that we live today, it seems to be complicated to understand something as being a mystery. Therefore, Marcel divides this issue well. For him, the problem is part of the first reflection, while the mystery is part of the second reflection. This reduction of mystery to problem is, in fact, a very characteristic of today's world, in which there is objectification of everything, including man himself, thus being immersed in the society of the disposable. Therefore, the human being is a piece, a number. Looking at social networks is realizing that it doesn't matter who is behind the screens, but the number of followers of the profile. Man cannot be just that. The problem carries with it the need for a solution. Therefore, being, in this perspective, is something that can only accomplish what technique accomplishes. This is governed by immanence, but it cannot be forgotten that it is also a mystery. There is an existential perspective from the incarnated being and, thus, the dimension of transcendence also prevails. Being is not an object and, therefore, needs an approximation of conduct faithful to being. This reflection leads to the next topic, which is the difference and the relationship between being and having, which is a theme that is still widely commented on today, even though it is so little understood and much less reflected on with the seriousness that is due to it, as did the French philosopher who is the basis of this article. Always when one thinks of this paradox of being and having, one thinks of what one has and what one is. It cannot be denied that having has generated a very large emptiness in people, with appearance prevailing over reality. The fact is that society has reduced man to being to having. It is not strange nor is it a new thought when it is said that having is in the realm of technique, of objectivity and the more one has, the more one wants to have: a situation that has led man to despair and anguish, for not having everything that consumerism produces. In Marcel, to philosophize is to insistently seek being. If, in the first reflection, he presents the degradation of the being, in the second reflection he reveals and restores his degraded, because for him what matters most is to relate the being to the existence, the being always being the potency, the power of existence. He is always the one who has traveled, the one who is traveling and the one who still wants to achieve. Closing with two themes that are interconnected to what was written: spirit of curiosity and spirit of restlessness. As already mentioned, Marcel insists on the dimension of reflection of the human being, which is a striking characteristic of so many philosophers of the past. Finally, he does not fail to insist that the true philosophy is the one that the Greeks lived in antiquity, which is the fruit of astonishment and not just of mere curiosity, which is a characteristic of philosophy today. Thus, in philosophical experience and scientific experiment, Marcel makes it clear that human restlessness reinforces and sustains the higher life of the spirit, while human curiosity paralyzes it.