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published in Being and Having. 12 This work is cited by Ricoeur as evidence for the factthat “The refusal of system . . . is . . . what places Husserl and Marcel in the same philosophicallight. I find no other explanation for Marcel’s use of the word.” 13 In other words,there is an undeniable similarity between “Marcel’s refusal of system and his avowal ofdiscursivity” and the famous “‘zu den Sachen selbst’ of Husserl.” 14The refusal of the system led Marcel to become an unsystematic thinker. But even anunsystematic philosopher needs a method -- maybe he needs a method more than a systematicthinker. Thus, the problem of a proper method became “more and more urgent forMarcel.” 15Marcel’s philosophical approach deals with the attention to the concrete experiencerather than abstractions. In order to ground the philosophical ideas he is investigating,Marcel makes constant use of examples. He writes:I would like to make the point that for a philosophical approach like ours, which isessentially a concrete rather than an abstract approach, the use of examples is notmerely an auxiliary process but, on the contrary, an essential part of our method ofprogressing. An example, for us, is not merely an illustration of an idea which wasfully in being even before it was illustrated. 16The definition of his own thought as a “Christian socratism” is in fact linked with theattention to concrete experience and to the proceeding through examples. The use ofexamples is considered by Ricoeur as a point of contact between the Marcellian and thephenomenological method: “Again like Husserl, Marcel strives to decipher meanings onthe basis of well-chosen examples and significant cases, and this implies that the essenceexamplerelationship is irreducible to any inductive generalization and consists in a directreading of meaning in a singular fact.” 17 This approach explains the skeptical attitudewhich Ricoeur always assumes when he examines the attempts of the abstract reason toexpress itself about the concreteness of existence: the objective constitutes for me (witha meaningful overturning) what is only apparent, thus unreal, and which constitutes forMarcel the sphere of the problematic. 18 From this point of view, “His stake in phenomenology. . . represented a stage in his search for a concrete philosophy and for concreteapproaches to it and to the ‘ontological mystery.’” 19Nevertheless, in order to analyze deeply the relationship between Marcel andphenomenology and, above all, in order to understand whether his thought can reallyrepresent a fruitful contribution to contemporary hermeneutic philosophy and to the questionof universality, it is necessary to focus our attention on the notion of body and thenon the notion of existence.12Gabriel Marcel, “Esquisse d’une phénoménologie de l’avoir,” in idem, Être et avoir (Paris: Aubier,1935), 223-55; idem, “Sketch of a Phenomenology of Having,” in idem, Being and Having (Westminster:Dacre Press, 1949).13Ricoeur, “Gabriel Marcel and Phenomenology,” 472.14Ibid.15Spiegelberg, The Phenomenological Movement, 457.16Gabriel Marcel, Le mystère de l’être (Aubier: éd. Montaigne, 1951); idem, Mystery of Being, trans.Georg S. Fraser (London: The Harvill Press, 1950), I, 116.17Ricoeur, “Gabriel Marcel and Phenomenology,” 472-473.18See Pietro Prini, Gabriel Marcel e la filosofia del concreto, introduction to Gabriel Marcel, Dalrifiuto all’invocazione. Saggio di filosofia concreta (Roma: Città Nuova Editrice, 1976).19Spiegelberg, The Phenomenological Movement, 460.57