[Andrzej_Wiercinski_(ed ... - WordPress.com

limits, it paradoxically reaches also its landing place, i.e., authentic reality. This is thecritical moment in which reason stops and is overturned; while forced to acknowledge itsfailure in front of the mystery of existence, it nevertheless approaches a deeper and richerreality. Therefore, blind intuition is also the beginning, the incipit of another reason,different from the rationality which has preceded it exactly because this “new” reason hasits roots in the existential experience.Through second degree reflection, Marcel tries to set out the boundary markers of anew philosophical proceeding, a new language -- and here, in our opinion, Marcel is notvery far from a certain part of contemporary hermeneutics. 85 The “surveillance” and therigor of reason cannot consequently be detached from existence and concreteness, andthese cannot be detached from that flickering of sense which we can find in the fundamentalhuman feelings -- those which Marcel calls “concrete approaches” -- like love orfriendship.The very essence of Marcel’s thought, which is very topical from this point of view,is his absolute determination in the pursuit of sense. When Marcel uses the expression “Iflife has a point” in The Mystery of Being, he adds to the French expression the Englishsentence “if there is a plot.” 86 This expression is more than a metaphor: it represents theaim of his whole thought. Questioning if life has a point, not renouncing it to pursue thesense of existence, means properly to believe that there is a plot and that, though it cansometimes appear absurd, we can always choose or, better, wager on sense or on nothingness.But it also means that, if we wager on sense, this demands an effort -- existentialand philosophical at the same time -- in order to attempt to understand existence, startingfrom that “concrete approach” which, alone, can indicate the directions.In the current context, dominated on the one hand by the crisis in traditional metaphysicsand, on the other hand, by the constant risk of an acceptance of the absence ofsense (which is, in the last analysis, always a choice for non-sense), the perspectiveopened by Marcel’s thought can be fruitful for a philosophy which intends to re-appropriateits own speculative vocation, helping to delineate suitable limits for a space of possiblesharing (within universality), while at the same time remaining faithful to the concretenessof existence.85See Paul Ricoeur, Gabriel Marcel et Karl Jaspers. Philosophie du mystère et philosophie duparadoxe (Paris: Editions du Temps Présent, 1948); Marco Ravera, Introduzione alla filosofia dellareligione (Torino: UTET, 1995), 149f.86The French expression is “si la vie a un sens” (Marcel, Le mystère de l’être, 1: 189). It is interestingto note that the English expression has been maintained in the French edition, whereas in the English editionwe find an ellipse which inevitably damps the strength of the expression: “If life has a point – or aswe would say here, not to break the metaphor, a plot or a theme.” Marcel, The Mystery of Being, 1: 173.70