Gabriel Marcel
French philosopher, playwright, music critic and leading Christian existentialist (1889-1973) · France · Academics · Died at 83
Gabriel Marcel is read about 243 times a day, in 46 languages.
Counted to 17 September 2026, not since.
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Something wrong?A philosopher who refused the existentialist label even as he pioneered it in France, writing plays and criticism alongside arguments that modern technology was grinding down what it means to be human.
A life in dates
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Photos 8
Gabriel Marcel en 1969
V.l.n.r. mevr. Von Weizsäcker, Carl von Weizsäcker, prins Bernhard, Gabriël Ma, Bestanddeelnr 922-9098
Vlnr. Carl von Weizsäcker, prins Bernhard, Gabriël Marcel, koningin Juliana, Bestanddeelnr 922-9100
Vlnr. Mevr. von Weizsäcker, Carl von Weizsäcker, prins Bernhard, Gabriël Marcel…, Bestanddeelnr 922-9101
Vlnr. Mevr. von Weizsäcker, Carl von Weizsäcker, prins Bernhard, Gabriël Marcel…, Bestanddeelnr 922-9102_(cropped).jpg?width=1200)
Gabriel Marcel (1969) (cropped).jpg?width=1200)
Gabriel Marcel (1969).jpg?width=1200)
Gabriël Marcel (cropped)In their own words 10
, The dynamic element in my philosophy, taken as a whole, can be seen as an obstinate and untiring battle against the spirit of abstraction.
No two beings, and no two situations, are really commensurable with each other. To become aware of this fact is to undergo a sort of crisis.
The past, when it is merely known historically (that is, as a subject for abstract study), somehow piles itself up outside our real lives. ...
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Father: Henry MarcelAbout this person
Gabriel Honoré Marcel was born 7 December 1889 and spent a life split between the stage and the seminar room, authoring over a dozen books and at least thirty plays. He built what he called a philosophy of existence - or neo-Socrateanism - centered on the individual's struggle inside a technologically dehumanizing world. Though often tagged as the first French existentialist, he kept his distance from Sartre and that crowd, insisting the term didn't fit. His two-volume work The Mystery of Being carried the weight of that argument. He died 8 October 1973, a Christian thinker who'd carved his own path through the century's biggest questions.
In common with Gabriel
Academics from France 5
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