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thereof. And an ethical aspect: that relationship is also, especially in its failures, theoriginal interpretation of the truth. Moreover, such an ethical aspect of second degreereflection is linked with a constant attention to a theme which Marcel, in the Journal,labeled “the question of totality” and which, later, can be identified with the pursuit of atheoretic space where it can be possible to conceive an universal clearly personal but notexclusively subjective. In this sense, the privilege of universality is peculiar also tophilosophy, and springs from an element which precedes every experience and which isat the origin of it: that “new immediate” which, for Marcel, is existence. This is whyMarcel introduces second degree reflection: whereas first degree reflection tends to“freeze” the universal beyond every concreteness deriving from existence, the concreteuniversal, which constitutes the aim of Marcel, restores the connection between existenceand concept, returning concreteness to concept. Precisely for this reason, this universal canbecome visible only in these intersubjective, historical and concrete experiences whichactualize it. 67 This is a clearly personal universal, as it roots in “my” concrete and particularexistence, in “my” unique and unrepeatable look at the world; at the same time,this universal is not exclusively subjective, as it has not an unique “center” -- we can say, instead,that there are as many centers as “existent looks.” Therefore, only intersubjectivity --a term which, without doubt, Marcel assumes from Husserl or, in any case, from thephenomenological movement -- guarantees that “convergence of looks” which constitutesthe concrete universality. 68In his paper Gabriel Marcel and Phenomenology, Ricoeur writes:Thus for Husserl the concept of subjectivity is divided between a de jure universality,which fulfills its epistemological function of final justification, and a de facto singularityresulting from its thoroughly temporal constitution. It is the paradox that gave rise tothe question of intersubjectivity. If the subject must be the final foundation and if thesubject must be singular, there remains only one possibility: a kind of collegial or ecumenicalfoundation in which the virtually unlimited community of subjects carries theweight of universality.Less concerned with founding the sciences than with justifying human existence,Marcellian thinking attempts to escape from the choice between the universal and theparticular by adopting an “intermediary level,” which is illustrated by aesthetic experience.69Clearly, the aesthetic experience is not limited to what is usually considered a “workof art.” In some way, the experience of second degree reflection is an aesthetic experience,precisely because it is, essentially, an interpretative act. There is, in Marcel, an attemptof neither renouncing the concept -- though, as we said, this concept is an “overturned”concept, to the point that it loses every abstractness and reconquers the concreteness lostin the abstraction -- nor the possibility of the universality connected with the concept.Through a keeping distance from the immediate, where time plays a fundamental role,second degree reflection succeeds in grasping, or at least in having a look at what eludesfirst degree reflection: second degree reflection reaches its aim precisely when it showsus the failure of reason.67For a general introduction of this topic, see Pagano, La dimensione dell’universalità e l’esperienzaermeneutica, 67-68.68See the Conclusion of Marcel, The Mystery of Being, particularly 171-172.69Ricoeur, “Gabriel Marcel and Phenomenology,” 480-481.67