French philosopher Gabriel Marcel (1889-1973) described man's place in the world in terms of such fundamental human experiences as relationships, love, fidelity, hope, and faith. His brand of existentialism was said to be largely unknown in the...

. 1889–1973. French philosopher and dramatist born in Paris. He is usually classed as an EXISTENTIALIST, though of a theistic kind as opposed to SARTRE, HEIDEGGER or JASPERS (he joined the Catholic church in 1929), but the aptness of this...

Marcel, Gabriel(1889–1973) Gabriel Marcel, the French philosopher, dramatist, and critic, was born in Paris. His father, a highly cultured man, held important administrative posts in the Bibliothèque Nationale and the Musées...

Gabriel Honoré Marcel (December 7, 1889 Paris – October 8, 1973 Paris) was a French philosopher, a leading Christian existentialist, and the author of about 30 plays. Marcel obtained the agregation in philosophy in 1910, at the unusually early age of...

Estimate of Marcel's drama can satisfy several related curiosities: the function in a distinguished philosophical career of these numerous dramatic compositions; the kind of play that will satisfy a thinker's need to yoke a basically religious speculation and dramatic composition; and the light that Marcel's theatre casts on a more general attempt to explore religious themes in the modern theatre. These are interrelated questions, and the best way to take them up is to recognize that Ma...

[Striking] similarities between the two ultimately very different existentialist theatres [of Gabriel Marcel and Jean-Paul Sartre] do exist. (p. 98) Sartre has developed a popular theatre, treating his audiences partly as clients whom he must satisfy in order to use the dramatic form as a vehicle for his philosophy, sometimes watering down his philosophy to the detriment of his reputation as a philosopher. He has, even so, created a theatre which will stand even if one refuses his philosophy. Marcel, on the...

Like many existentialists Marcel eschews systematic thought or interlocking philosophic abstractions. He presents his "various data" in a manner that is always reflective, exploratory, occasionally contradictory—proceeding from flashes of insight or acute psychological dissections of particular, concrete situations, rather than from consistently elaborated premises. His style is properly matched to his favorite journal form—periodic entries which return to, as well as abandon, a ...