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We have seen that we do not originally perceive our body as “a body among manyothers.” The analysis of the notion of body seems to demonstrate, according to Marcel,that it is necessary to use two different approaches, two different kinds of reflection. Thefirst one argues that “this body has just some properties, that it is liable to suffer the samedisorders, that it is fated in the end to undergo the same destruction, as any other bodywhatsoever” 34 ; the second “does not set out flatly to give the lie to these propositions;it manifests itself rather by a refusal to treat primary reflection’s separation of this body,considered as just a body, a sample body, some body or other, from the self that I am, asfinal.” 35 According to Marcel, the “fulcrum,” or the “springboard,” of this different kindof reflection is a “massive, indistinct sense of one’s total existence.” And here we can notethe profound difference between Marcel’s and Husserl’s philosophical approaches: “itconcerns the very relation of human beings and the world. For Husserl this relation maybe raised to the rank of spectacle for the disinterested eye of the meditating ego. ForMarcel the questions of suicide and of death impose on the human relation to the worldthe fundamental characteristic of concern. On this point Marcel is incontestably closer toHeidegger than to Husserl.” 36Our existence is incarnation. We cannot “define” it (“for, as the condition which makesthe defining activity possible, it seems to be prior to all definition”); we only try to giveit a name and to locate it “as an existential center.” The name given by Marcel to thiskind of reasoning is “secondary reflection,” or “second degree reflection” (réflexionseconde). But, before we consider this kind of reflection as such, we have to clarify firstwhat exactly Marcel means by “existence.”ExistenceApproaching the notion of existence, we cannot forget the Coenaesthesis and the bondwith my body. It is difficult, because we always have the temptation to keep outside theproblem, but we cannot in any way: this problem, in fact, inevitably invades the wholescenario. In a certain sense, I am part of the problem that I am trying to analyze. 37 It isimportant to resist this temptation, because to forget the bond with my body, whichgrounds my view of the world, means to surrender to the “spirit of abstraction.”In order to answer the question “What is existence?,” therefore, we have to begin fromthat existent the existence of which I cannot deny in any sense. Marcel writes: “This centrallysignificant existence, my denial of which entails the inconceivability of my assertingany other existence, is simply, of course, myself, in so far as I feel sure that I exist.” 38However, one could say that the fact that I exist is not so clear. It is evident that, withthe expression “I exist,” Marcel means something more than the simple presence of abiologically alive body. Thus, one could say that we have firstly to answer the question:“Do I exist? And if I do, in which sense do I use the verb ‘to exist’?” Marcel argues thatthe question is badly put. We read:If, in the question, ‘Do I exist?’ I take the ‘I’ separately and treat it as a sort of mentalobject that can be isolated, a sort of ‘that’, and if I take the question as meaning ‘is’34Marcel, The Mystery of Being, 1: 92.35Ibid.36Ricoeur, “Gabriel Marcel and Phenomenology,” 488.37See Gabriel Marcel, Position et approches concrètes du mystère ontologique (Paris: Jean-MichelPlace, 1977).38Marcel, The Mystery of Being, 1: 88.60