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ConclusionA reference to religion appears only at the end of Marcel’s typical way of thinking.Second degree reflection, we have seen, is basically a kind of reasoning; nevertheless, itdeals with transcendence. Using second degree reflection, it is possible to look at whatcannot be conceptualized. It happens when first degree reflection reaches its limits; thussecond degree reflection arises from the failure of first degree reflection. Marcel writes:“it may be that reflection, interrogating itself about its own essential nature, will be ledto acknowledge that it inevitably bases itself on something that is not itself, somethingfrom which it has to draw its strength.” 70According to Marcel, transcendence is not something different from, or separate fromexperiences; on the contrary, we can approach the transcendent through experiences.Moreover, Marcel thinks that there are experiences which are purer than others -- love,friendships, hope -- and that this kind of experience opens us to transcendence. Marceluses another metaphor here: “One might say, for example, that experience has varyingdegrees of purity, that in certain cases, for example, it is distilled, and it is now of waterthat I am thinking. What I ask myself, at this point, is whether the urgent inner need fortranscendence might not, in its most fundamental nature, coincide with an aspiration towardsa purer and purer mode of experience.” 71As a conclusion, it is worth examining Ricoeur’s shrewd criticism of Marcel’s oppositionbetween mystery and problem. According to Ricoeur, this opposition “could not be establishedwithout immediately destroying the philosophical enterprise as such, threatened witha shift to a philosophico-religious fidéisme.” 72 But, as we have seen, Marcel’s thought doesnot require an “act of faith;” rather, it requires a wager. Using second degree reflectionmeans precisely to accept this wager. Marcel explains: “Thus one may see fairly clearlyhow secondary reflection while not yet being itself faith, succeeds at least in preparing orfostering what I am ready to call the spiritual setting of faith.” 73 A wager is not a shiftto some fidéisme; or better, it is not an act of faith more than the opposite choice. In otherwords, at the roots of every philosophy (or, better, at the roots of every human existence)there is always a wager: we can wager for the sense or for the absence of sense, that is,the nothingness. Of course, Ricoeur is right when he argues, “If the ontological affirmationwere in no way an intellectual act, then it could not be elevated to philosophical discourse.”74 In fact, if Being is the “uncharacterizable,” “the unqualified par excellence,”it risks becoming also “the pure indeterminate.” It is true that Marcel, in his “Reply toPaul Ricoeur,” admits his own imprecision in the use of these terms, and explains that“Instead of ‘uncharacterizable’ one should say ‘non-characterizing’” 75 ; but this explanation,if it reduces the problem, does not solve it. And the problem was already emphasized byMarcel in Being and Having and sounds in this way: how can something which cannotbe reduced to a problem actually be thought?The question profoundly implies the essence of an existential philosophy which, asRicoeur stresses, “cannot . . . limit itself to a critique of objectivity, of characterization, andof the problematic; it must be supported by the determinations of thought and by conceptualwork whose resources are exhausted neither by science nor by technology.” 7670717273747576Marcel, The Mystery of Being, 1: 38.Ibid., 1: 55.Ricoeur, “Gabriel Marcel and Phenomenology,” 489.Marcel, The Mystery of Being, 2: 66.Ricoeur, “Gabriel Marcel and Phenomenology,” 489.Marcel, “Reply to Paul Ricoeur,” 495.Ricoeur, “Gabriel Marcel and Phenomenology,” 491.68