Marcel on Hope
There are two ideas in Marcel’s philosophy, in addition to those discussed in yesterday’s post, that I would like to discuss briefly–the importance creative fidelity and of hope.
Creative Fidelity – For Marcel to exist existentially, as opposed to just functionally, one must be creative. As he argues: “A really alive person is not merely someone who has a taste for life, but somebody who spreads that taste, showering it, as it were, around him; and a person who is really alive in this way has, quite apart from any tangible achievements of his, something essentially creative about him …”1
To be creative we must give ourselves to others, which we do by sharing love and friendship as well as through the creative and performing arts. Creativity binds us to others, it recognizes their subjectivity while expressing our own. What Marcel calls “creative fidelity” is the tenacious, constant desire to elaborate who we are through creativity–to have a greater sense of being, we need creative fidelity. We succeed in this endeavor when we overcome the gap between ourselves and others, when we make ourselves present to others so as to be truly faithful to them.
Hope – Hope guarantees fidelity by defeating despair–it gives us the strength to continually create. But this is not the same as optimism. Optimism, like fear or desire, imagines a favorable or unfavorable outcome. However to hope is merely to hope, to reject the current situation as final, but it is not to anticipate a result. If I desire to win a lottery, my desire will probably be thwarted; but if I continually hope, no event or its absence need shake my hope. It is the very non-specificity of hoping that gives hope its power.
Yet hope is not passive; it is not resignation or acceptance. Instead “Hope consists in asserting that there is at the heart of being, beyond all data, beyond all inventories and all calculations, a mysterious principle which is in connivance with me.”2. And hope is a willing, a wanting, not only for ourselves but for others. “There can be no hope that does not constitute itself through a we and for a we. I would be tempted to say that all hope is at the bottom choral.”3 For genuine hope we cannot depend completely upon ourselves–it derives from humility not pride.
Thus there is a dialectical relationship between hope and despair. We can respond to despair with hope, and within hope there is always the possibility of despair. To despair is to say there is nothing worthwhile in the world: “Despair is possible in any form, at any moment and to any degree, and this betrayal may seem to be counseled, if not forced upon us, by the very structure of the world we live in.”4 Hope is an affirmative response to despair. Hope affirms that your creative fidelity, your work, your concern, your love, and your life, ultimately matter.
As I have said previously in this blog, our hope is no small thing.
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1. Marcel, Gabriel. The Mystery of Being, Volume I. (Chicago: Charles Regnery Co, 1951) 139.
2. The Philosophy of Existentialism. Translated by Manya Harari. New York: Carol Publishing Group, 1995) 28.
3. Tragic Wisdom and Beyond. Translated by Stephen Jolin and Peter McCormick. Publication of the Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, ed. John Wild. (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1973) 143.
4. The Philosophy of Existentialism. Translated by Manya Harari. New York: Carol Publishing Group, 1995) 26.
