Problematic Man

by Gabriel Marcel, Brian Thompson (Translator)

Modernity has expanded upon the Psalmist’s admonition to put one’s trust not in princes. Power can assume, to borrow Gabriel Marcel’s phrase, an “infinity of masks”; yet these masks only obscure the vacuity of ideology and its inability to save man from himself. Problematic Man pursues both diagnosis and prognosis of the existential condition of modern man. Between the “death of God” which Nietzsche proclaimed and the atmosphere of anxiety, insecurity, and meaninglessness in which man now draws his daily breath stands an indisputable connection. To parse this connection, and thus bring forth something approaching a solution to “problematic man,” Marcel brings into conversation an array of philosophers and philosophies, ranging from Aristotle to Augustine, from Pascal and Kierkegaard to Heidegger and Sartre. Elegant in style and subtle in judgment, Marcel contrasts modernity’s inheritance of unprecedented scientific and technological progress with its spoils of unhappiness and unease and concludes emphatically that a re-integration of the Gospel is the fundamental solution to Problematic Man .

Genres: Philosophy

144 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1955

About the author

Gabriel Marcel (1889–1973) was a philosopher, drama critic, playwright and musician. He converted to Catholicism in 1929 and his philosophy was later described as “Christian Existentialism” (most famously in Jean-Paul Sartre's “Existentialism is a Humanism”) a term he initially endorsed but later repudiated. In addition to his numerous philosophical publications, he was the author of some thirty dramatic works. Marcel gave the Gifford Lectures in Aberdeen in 1949–1950, which appeared in print as the two-volume The Mystery of Being, and the William James Lectures at Harvard in 1961–1962, which were collected and published as The Existential Background of Human Dignity.

Reviews

[Mohammad Ali Shamekhi · Rating 4 out of 5]

کتاب دو بخش دارد

1

بخش نخست کنکاشی است در مسأله شدن انسان برای خود و ریشه یابی آن. در پایان نیز تلاشی است برای یک راه حل. مارسل در این بخش از مثال انسان آلونک نشین برای مطرح کردن سؤال خود بهره می برد. این فرد کسی است که پیش از این سر و سودا و سفره ای رنگین داشته است اما اینک جز آهی در بساط ندارد. او از خود می پرسد: چرا چنین چیزی به سر من آمد؟ و مهم تر اینکه زندگی من چه ارزش و معنایی دارد؟ این وضع آشفته ی فعلی نظر او را به گذشته نیز دگرگون می کند؛ خوشی های گذشته مبدل به فریبی دردناک می شوند و همه چیز معنای دهشتناکی پیدا می کند.

اما این همه صرف وصف حالات روانیِ یک انسانِ بخت برگشته نیست؛ حتی توصیفی از رنج های طبقه ای خاص از اجتماع هم نیست. این وصف وصف آدمی است در عصر ما. اما چرا؟ چرا حتی وصف مایی است که همچون او چنین گشت دهشتناکی را تجربه نکرده ایم؟ مشارکت ما در این گسست و خلاء در مقام تأمل و پرسشگری است. ما به عنوان متفکر خود را در موقعیت انسان آلونک نشین تخیل می کنیم و ناگهان در می یابیم که از هر سو با همان پرسش معنای هستی مواجه می شویم! ما را چه شده است که هستی این چنین در برابرمان نحیف و شکننده شده است؟ رخدادهای ناگوار و تغییر احوال ما را آشفته کرده است. مسئول این آشفتگی کیست؟ هر چه می نگریم مسئولی وجود ندارد! حس می کنیم کسی به ما خیانت کرده است! اعتمادمان را به بازی گرفته و ما را اینک در این خاویه تنها و بیکس رها کرده است! اینجا است که مارسل می گوید آنجا که نمی توان مسئولی مشخص یافت، معضل معضلی است هستی شناسانه . او کیست؟ آیا آن هستی است که اهالی مابعدالطبیعه از آن سخن می گویند؟ وجود بما هو وجود؟ نه! آن هستی که ما را در چنبره ی فریب خود گرفتار ساخته است، خودی ترین هستی های انضمامی یعنی اگزیستانس ما ( وجود متفرد هر کس ) است. ما دیگر به هستی فردیمان اعتماد ندارد. این است آغاز گسست ها! این است آغاز واژگونی ارزش ها! زیرا مگر نه آن است که ارزش طرحی است افکنده شده از وجود نهادینه یمان برای زیستن زندگانی؟ مگر اختیار - که ویژگی این هستی انسانی است - ذاتا همان ارزش گذاری نیست؟ پس اگر ما دیگر اعتمادی به هستیمان نداشته باشیم، ارزش ها همه واژگون خواهند شد.

اما چه چیزی در تاریخ رخ داده است که ما را چنین به هستی خود بدبین کرده است؟ جدی ترین علت این هیچ گرایی مطلق شدن من است. من با مطلق شدن و بریدن از همه چیز، ناگهان از هم می پاشد و فرو می ریزد .

برای خروج از هیچ گرایی چه باید کرد؟ چاره قطعا بازگشت نیست زیرا همانطور که پس زدن تکنیک به دلیل هراس هایمان از نتایج اش بی معنا است - زیرا پس زدن آن دست رد زدن است به سینه ی خود آدمی - ، بازگشت به دوران پیش از تشویش - آن هنگام که آدمی برای خود مسأله نبود - نیز ممکن نیست.

مرگ خدای نیچه برای مارسل مرگ یک نگاه به خدا است: نگاه علی-محرک اول نگر ؛ مرگ خدای ارسطویی-توماسی. او از این منظرِ دیندارانه در پی افقی است که انسان را به دیگری پیوند زند تا هم اختیار معنا پیدا کند و هم ارزش گذاری. او راه خود را از کانت آغاز می کند. کانت به ما تذکر داد که علیت امری است از جانب ما و نه امری تحمیل شده بر ما. مارسل با کنار گذاشتن جنبه های فرمالیستی تفکر کانتی، با ادامه ای این راه می گوید علیت وصف جهان ابزاری آدمی است و به همین دلیل نمی توان آن را به موقعیت های دیگر تسری داد ؛ نمی توان از علت خود آدمی پرسید زیرا انسان خود ابزار و ساخته ی فن نیست. محل اتکای دیگر مارسل ایده آلیسم است. ایده آلیست ها به ما تذکر دادند که من - یا امر مطلق - چیزی از جنس اشیاء دیگر و در ردیف آنها نیست؛ نمی توان با مقولات مربوط به اشیاء آدمی را سنجید . اما مارسل در همین نقطه می ایستد و از ادامه ی همراهی با ایده آلیسم امتناع می ورزد. او معتقد است، دیگرگون بودن هستی انسانی امری است مهم و بنیادین اما اشتباه ایده آلیسم مطلق ساختن این هستی دیگرگون است. آدمی گرچه از سنخ اشیاء نیست، اما در عین حال مطلق نیز نیست .

چه چیزی فراسوی ما ما را از اطلاق به در می آورد؟ خدایی متعالی. اما نه خدایی که علت یا صانع است؛ بلکه خدایی که ویژگی بارزش حضور است . آنچه ما را از توهم اطلاق خود به در می آورد چیست؟ مواجهه ی با ساحت معنوی . این مواجهه در کجا رخ می دهد؟ در آن اشارات و حالات بین الاذهانی، میان من و دیگران، که ناگهان در من حسی را بر می انگیزند که با امری از ساحتی دیگر - ساحتی معنوی - روبرو شده ام. ایده ی محوری در اینجا فیض الهی است. البته نباید این فیض الهی را طبیعی ساخت همچون علتی. فیض الهی یک مواجهه است، یک مواجهه ی هستی شناسانه. این مواجهه مقوم اختیار بشری است. زیرا اختیار همچون فیض الهی با مقوله ی علیت سنخیتی ندارد و با آن توضیح داده نمی شود. اختیار آری گویی یا نه گویی به فیض الهی است. فیض الهی است که اختیار را ممکن می سازد .

2

بخش دوم تحلیلی است از نظرات فلاسفه و متألهین در باب دلهره و تشویش و سیر تغییر و تحول برداشت ها. در این بخش به آراء رواقیان، انجیل، آگوستین، پاسکال، کییرکگارد، نیچه و هایدگر، سارتر، گوته و ژید پرداخته می شود.

به نظرم این بخش دوم - خصوصا فصل های نخستینش - مکمل خوبی است برای کتاب روح فلسفه ی قرون وسطی ژیلسون ؛ از این نظر که بیانگر یک تغییر در تلقی فلاسفه قبل و بعد از مسیحیت در قبال دلهره و تشویش است: از رویکردی منفی به رویکردی رهایی بخش.

اشکال بخش دوم این است که نخستین فصل آن - که به توضیح تشویش و دلهره و اضطراب می پردازد - اصلا مفهوم نیست. معلوم نیست در نهایت از نظر مارسل تفاوت این سه حال به چیست و شباهتشان به چه. تا آخر کتاب هر بار بر این تفاوت انگشت بگذارد - که خدا رو شکر تعداشان زیاد نیست - مطلب گنگ می ماند.

[James Magrini · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Gabriel Marcel’s Problematic Man (Part II “Human Uneasiness”) he offers a detailed and unique view of what might be termed “existential moods” or modes of attunement (uneasiness/inquiétude, anguish/angoisse, anxiety/anxiété) in relation to an overarching Christian view of metaphysics and religious faith, and I have yet to encounter a scholarly analysis of Marcel that focused on this specific topic. Two of these moods, which are indistinguishable, comprise a single mode of grounding (Grundstimmung) metaphysical attunement, uneasiness/ anguish are directly linked to the potential for self-transcendence in the daunting and overwhelming presence of a higher power, ultimate mystery, Godhead, or transcendent reality. Marcel’s writing on things of a religious nature proceeds in a manner that supersedes the bounds or limiting strictures of organized, systematic, and doctrinal Christian Theological interpretation. In pointing out the disparity between what might be called “religious existentialism” and the form of existentialism related to Sartre’s philosophy, Marcel (2022) identifies the difference between the intimate experience of a religious convert and those who “approach it from the outside” and attempt to rationally account for it, “but do not participate in it…substitute it for something else,” misunderstanding and dismissing it, as they are “fatally inclined to deform or even reject it;” the religious experience remains unintelligible (pp. 93-94).

This precise disparity “constitutes one of the points of departure of the philosophy of existence such as it has developed among the moderns,” which has been “called by a barbarous name which I for my part reject: existentialism (p. 94). Marcel traces the origins of authentic existential thought to the writings of both Pascal and St. Augustine, for the questions the latter asks, inspired by metaphysical or religious “uneasiness/anguish,” are related in a most intimate way to the life, care, and development of the soul in terms of conversion. Since Pascal demonstrated the insight to recognize that “uneasiness” and “anguish” were indistinguishable, Marcel (2022) states that he also represents a genuine precursor of existentialism, to the extent that Pascal identified this phenomenon with “a privileged metaphysical category of humanity,” specifically in relation to God and the human’s search to overcome the condition of estrangement (p. 105).

Despite Marcel’s conversion to Roman Catholicism, his writing on spiritual matters and Christian metaphysics, does not embrace a formalist, literalist, or traditional interpretation of God, for Marcel (1973) contends that the experience of the sacred, “whose nature remains to be determined, can exist for individuals who refuse all ritualism and belong to no church” (p. 109). Marcel (2022) much prefers the term “neo-Socratism” to existentialism, when referring ot his interrogative thought, which is “opposed in the last analysis to everything which presents itself as assertion” (p. 54). In certain ways, Marcel’s religious interpretations are akin to both Tillich and Caputo, for as Marcel (2022) stresses, the philosopher concerned with religious issues must limit herself to intimations, gestures, offering directions, while avoiding the formulation of “dogmatic statements which would run a great risk of deforming the subtle realities [she] intends to treat” (p. 64). The most misleading and disingenuous “misinterpretation of faith,” according to Tillich (2001), “is to consider it an act of knowledge that has a low degree of evidence” (p. 36). The understanding, which amounts to a communion with “religious reality” can never possess the “certitude of complete evidence” (p. 40). This unique type of interpretive approach is an instance where theology becomes theopoetics, and as Caputo (2023) observes, “Talking about God ultimately comes down to other discursive resources – images and figures, metaphors and metonyms, symbols and allegories, parables and paradoxes,” theopoetics is always imagining and reimagining the unconditional for it is an exercise of creative imagination, “envisioning things otherwise, attempting to forge ahead down unbeaten paths, to produce something new”; theopoetics is “the first, last, and only recourse when thinking has run up against the unthinkable” (pp.31-32).

Marcel traces the concept and idea of “anxiety,” “uneasiness,” and “anguish” through a survey of philosophers, writers, and theologians ancient and modern, focusing on such figures as Epicurus, St. Augustine, Pascal, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre, Goethe, and Gide. Most readers will primarily understand philosophical or existential anxiety in the writings of both Kierkegaard and the notion of anxiety or dread and Heidegger and the concept or attuning mood (Stimmung/Befindlichkeit) “anxiety” or Angst, and Marcel is critical of both thinkers and their respective presentations of the phenomenon. Kierkegard (1980) describes anxiety (dread) as the “dizziness” in the face of the individual’s freedom associated with the leap of faith required and demanded for devotion to the highest form of life, the religious life.

It is noted that whereas Kierkegaard is fiercely dedicated to the analysis of the “individual,” Marcel’s focus when writing on “uneasiness” and “anguish” is grounded in a cosmological perspective or an overarching metaphysical condition of humanity. In Heidegger (1962), “anxiety” (Angst) individuates Dasein (solus ipse) for its freedom towards its own unique possibilities in relation to its death (Being-towards-death), when Dasein breaks the hold of the “They-self” (the masses) and readies itself to assume the responsibility for the choices it makes regarding the approaching possibilities opened up by Angst’s attunement. Here, Heidegger is emphasizing finitude and what might be identified as a “secular” existence, which is quite unlike Marcel, who is concerned with the religious life. Although Marcel is careful to observe that “anxiety” manifests in various forms, he concludes that anxiety is a phenomenon that is expressed through both the psychical mode and the physiological mode, exerting an influence on the mind and body simultaneously, and as such has little if any philosophical-spiritual value in terms of inspiring self-transcendence. Anxiety, Marcel (2020) contends, is highlighted by violent reactions, “trouble and agitation with feeling of discomfort and oppression” (pp. 61-62). For it is the case that the “anxious person, more combative, struggles against the misfortune or the danger,” and here, it is possible to note that there is a direct object, much like the state of fear, which serves as the concern for the anxious person’s obsessive focus (pp. 62-63).

For this reason, Marcel (2022) turns his attention to the analysis of both “uneasiness” and “anguish,” and he contends that anguish “is in no way inseparable from uneasiness,” and this is how these moods are interpreted and linked in Pascal (p. 63). “No one,” observes Marcel, and this includes Kierkegaard, “has better known how to elucidate the roots of uneasiness considered as an essential or primary modality of human experience” (p. 102). Much like anxiety, uneasiness/anguish grips both mind and body, but in this state the mind becomes even more immobile than it is when a person is anxious, “one lives anguish more than one thinks it,” and it is so all-encompassing that there can be little to no illusion that it is possible to completely dominate it, neither can we hope to transcend it in a manner where uneasiness/anguish might be entirely outstripped (p. 63).

What is unique about uneasiness/anguish, according to Marcel, is that it harbors a duplicitous nature, and one might go so far as to say that for Marcel, there exists an authentic and inauthentic manifestation of this mode of attunement, in terms that unabashedly smack of valuation (axiology). Marcel distinguishes in this mood “diverse directions or orientations,” at times it can be “paralyzing or sterilizing,” and at other times, as related to faith, it can be “fecund and even somehow creative,” and this is so because of the unique metaphysical situation within which the human being finds itself, as related to the conditions of doubt and incertitude and the manner in which these conditions are approached (pp. 64-65). In an inauthentic manner, certain theologians seek to exercise uneasiness/anguish, fearing it because they interpret it “as the mark of the Luciferian spirit,” missing the crucial point that “uneasiness [is] the condition of all progress, nay of all, genuine creation” (p. 65). Marcel also brings attention to the ancient Stoics, and particularly Epicurus, who dedicated his “exercise (askēsis) of philosophy” towards the attainment of the state or mindset of “ataraxia,” which is a Greek term designating “precisely the absence of trouble, or inner agitation” (p. 75).

Such activity is related to escapism and represents a quest for diversion, and this “consists in interposing a screen between us and the unbearable spectacle of our condition,” and yet one who approaches uneasiness/anguish in an authentic manner, recognizes that the need for diversion is itself the result of uneasiness (p. 107). However, the mood must be carefully mediated in such a manner to avoid the “danger of it degenerating into a destructive principle” (p. 65). Considering spirituality, “the relation between the believing soul and God,” will offer reason “to ask oneself what room should be made for uneasiness” (p 66). Marcel identifies the “positive value” of uneasiness/anguish is found within its uncanny capacity to inspire the type of hard questioning that challenges, and indeed opposes, the “unshakable confidence of a fearless and secure relation to God,” which cannot, in relation to authentic faith, exist for Marcel (p. 66). Indeed, uneasiness/anguish is revealed “as the calling into question by itself of the Being that I am,” our own Being becomes an issue in the face of God, within the transcendent operation of Grace (p. 121).

The human’s relation to God is dynamic and ever-deepening, but always in danger of degenerating into a “passive abandon in which the soul, far from being able to develop or actualize its most precious virtualities, is in danger of growing numb” (p. 66). Indeed, according to Marcel, humans have an unconditional imperative to honor the “obligation of seeing [oneself] as the mysterious articulation of freedom and grace,” and if uneasiness/anguish is not present, there would be no faith or the subsequent required leap, and one would sink or settle down “in a certain self-complacency which excluded all genuine [authentic] spiritual progress” (p. 84). The type of soul-searching questioning Marcel describes, frees the human from a secure place in the established (religious) order, shattering the self-confidence and self-satisfaction often associated with such roles, and “this is how [uneasiness/anguish] can be fruitful, how it can become the active principle of a spiritual dynamism oriented towards transcendence” (p. 87).

Uneasiness/anguish is the “ferment, or if you wish, a Leven, without which the soul could not…be converted, since this Leven is also the work of God, which Grace performs in the depths of the creature” (p. 97). Marcel is clear that it is only out of the context, the metaphysical situation, that uneasiness/anguish might serve as the human’s grounding attunement (Grundstimmung) for its spiritual or religious development. However, the soul’s transformation requires great strength and is obliged “to lend [release] himself to the transcendent action of Grace, with the free possibility of refusing it” (p. 84). Here, the notion of self-hood must be reenvisioned, the notion of self-hood was pursued in ancient Greek thought, “but appears in an entirely new light for the Christian, for whom it is a question of understanding himself in the presence and before the face of God” (p. 109). Marcel recognizes that the Christian’s soul is driven ceaselessly from object to object in situation after situation, but if there is no faith, when there is no “peaceful communion with ultimate truth…the unique Good, God…there is no peace for thought, there is no beatitude” (p. 95).

In a Christian perspective, it is indispensable to seek and find “internal justification for uneasiness,” which inspires and drives the “movement by which the human soul, denouncing all complacency in itself and in the sensible world,” and must shake itself free “from itself and comes forward somehow to meet Grace” (p. 91). Uneasiness/anguish relates to the “impatience of the believing soul which, because it still lives in the obscurity of faith, suffers from still being deprived of the vision” (p. 100). It is through the type and depth of “despair” experienced by the faithful, questioning Christian, that salvation becomes as a possibility, seeking to unite itself with the transcendent God (p. 99). Despair does not lead to death, and as the “most mysterious paradox,” instead is the way to self-salvation, where the soul “attains the eternal and indestructible…despair is a mortal leap in the presence of God into the abyss of faith” (p. 113-114). Marcel notes that the necessary leap of faith will to the uninitiated, “always appear risky or illegitimate,” but from the Christian perspective, a person situated in the “other side of the gulf, it is obligatory” (p. 115).

In Problematic Man (Part II: “Human Uneasiness”), Marcel (2022) offers three short analyses of a saying by Jesus (Luke 12:22-31) and two parables from the Gospels: The Pharisee and Tax Collector Praying (Luke 18:10-14) and The Prodigal Son Returns (Luke 15:27-32). In Jesus’s saying/teaching, he urges his disciples to not be “anxious about your life, what you shall eat, nor about your body…Instead, seek His kingdom, and these things shall be yours.” Marcel brings attention to the fact that this teaching is warning against, and in the extreme forbidding, anxious worry, or anxiety as discussed above, but it does not in any way discourage “uneasiness” as the potential harbinger to a fecund relationship with God (p. 88). Marcel’s reading also delves into the influence of Metaphysics/Religious Uneasiness/Anguish at work in the parables selected, which will potentially have a transformative, pedagogical effect on the listener. Such parables work to incite the listener, gripped in a mode of attunement, to “free himself from any sense of self-satisfaction,” and this “lack of self-satisfaction is nothing other than uneasiness” (p. 87). The parables of Jesus, according to Marcel, as related directly to the attunement of uneasiness/anguish, are used to “undermine in us a rationalism whose inevitable result would be to reinforce in us a tendency to be complacent with ourselves in the consideration of our merits” (p. 86).

Dr. James M. Magrini
Former: College of Dupage/Philosophy

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

THE FRENCH EXISTENTIALIST PHILOSOPHER WONDERS WHETHER “MAN HAS BECOME A QUESTION FOR MAN?”

Gabriel Honoré Marcel (1889-1973) was a French philosopher, playwright, music critic and Christian existentialist.

He begins this 1967 book with the statement, “The problem towards whose solution I would here like to supply several elements is a problem in the second degree, a problem regarding a problem. I will formulate it this way: Under which conditions has man become, in his entirety, a question for man?” (Pg. 17)

He suggests, “In a general way, if we consider the historical and sociological evaluation such as it has taken place for the past two centuries, it seems that man has lost his divine reference: he ceases to confront a God as His creature and image. Might not the death of God, in the exact sense that Nietzsche has given to these words, be at the origin of the fact that man has become for himself a question without an answer?” (Pg. 29) Later, he observes, “It could be… that the God whose death Nietzsche truthfully announced was the god of the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition, god the prime mover. But in this line of thought, what is the significance of the fact that man has become once and for all a question for himself?” (Pg. 54-55)

He adds, “in a perspective not very different from that of Nietzsche… many solutions, many landings at which the mind has paused, particularly in the idealist philosophies, are as it were stages on a road which leads to nihilism.” (Pg. 42)

He asserts, “It is difficult to see how Marxism could in any way identify itself with a philosophy of freedom of the Sartrean type. If there is a common denominator, it is atheism, and one can wonder whether this is not, at least in part, the reason for which Marxism exercises such a force of attraction upon Sartre.” (Pg. 52) At the end of the book, he argues, “the Sartrean theory of anguish dissolved in the final analysis into a morality of unconstraint.” (Pg. 119)

He states, “The critical point appears to me to be the following: a being whose most profound originality consists perhaps not only in questioning the nature of things, but in interrogating himself regarding his own essence, is situated by this very fact beyond all the inevitably partial answers to which this interrogation can lead.” (Pg. 62)

He summarizes, “We have been able to realize that in a Christian perspective it is not only possible, but no doubt indispensable, to find an internal justification for uneasiness considered as the movement by which the human soul, denouncing all complacency in itself and in the sensible world as well, shakes itself free from itself and comes forward somehow to meet grace.” (Pg. 90)

He points out, “Heidegger… wanted to be he whose NO would not bear witness for the YES, and esteemed that the establishing of a thought radically delivered from the idea of God could not be conceived by the negation of this idea, but must be formulated without reference to it. I will observe in passing, moreover, that by the avowal of Heidegger himself---and here I refer to what he told me when I talked to him in Fribourg several years ago---it is not fitting to classify him among the atheists, or to regard his doctrine as atheism. His thought, he said, is in suspense on the problem of the existence of God. It is not certain, of course, that this is his last word.” (Pg. 110)

Later, he adds, “It must be repeated that Heidegger refuses to be classified among the atheists, that in certain respects his thought presents itself more and more as oriented toward a certain resacralization. And this helps to reinforce the feeling of a profound ambiguity which one experiences in reading this difficult philosopher, no doubt the most profound of our time, but the least capable of formulating anything resembling clear directives, of effectively orienting the young people who turn to him as a guide.” (Pg. 115)

This book will be of great interest to anyone studying Marcel, or religious existentialism in general.

[Riccardo · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Ogni azione in quanto scelta è una mutilazione e potremmo persino dire un'ingiura alla realtà. L'umana tragedia consiste, per un verso, nel fatto che ciascuno di noi è condannato a questa mutilazione, giacché diventa se stesso solo mediante essa; ma d'altro canto ciascuno è tenuto a riscattare la colpa, se ve ne è una, con una qualche azione compensatrice, fondamentalmente impegnata a restaurare la realtà che egli ha contribuito a spezzare con la sua scelta."

Un itinerario tematico delle diverse forme assunte da inquietudine e angoscia nei grandi pensatori della storia, da Epicuro a Gide; non sempre lineare ma capace di abbaglianti intuizioni.

[Camila Pinheiro · Rating 4 out of 5]

Muy interesante descripción del hombre post moderno que combina un desarrollo histórico y filosófico