Reflection: The Mystery of Being

February 16 : Philosophy

I have been reading, The Mystery of Being – Volume 1: Reflection and Mystery by Gabriel Marcel. It is my slow reading pleasure.

In the Introduction, Marcel muses on what the philosophical method should be. He makes the following insightful statement:

I think the philosopher who first discovers certain truths and then sets out to expound them in their dialectical and systematic inter-connectedness always runs the risk of profoundly altering the nature of the truths he has discovered. (2)

A useful insight for both philosophy and theology. Truth is experienced not taught and so it is described and not prescribed by either philosopher or theologian. Yet, one hastens to add, there is always need for a “fence around the paddock” – a defined “out of bounce”.

He goes on to expand, in a way, on this point in an extremely Augustinian fashion. Philosophy is fundamentally an attempt to answer the question, “Who am I?”, and to remain oneself. Marcel acknowledges that this comes with many temptations:

There are always gaps in our personal experience and our personal thought, and there exists a permanent temptation to stop these up with ready-made developments borrowed from some body of pre-existing doctrine. (3)

St Peter says, “Always be prepared to make a defense to any one who calls you to account for the hope that is in you” (1 Peter 3:15) – “in you” and not “in your neighbour”. Maybe the issues with modern day catechesis, and some of the related doctrinal laxity, is that we have come from a culture that has focused on “pre-existing” frameworks that need to be (passively) “obey” rather than (actively) “internalized”?

Anyway, interesting!