The Ultimate Perspectives of the Human Being in the Conception of Gabriel Marcel

Abstract

The problems of death and immortality in the philosophy of G. Marcel are linked with the analysis of a concrete existence, particularly of the spiritual acts of man, i.e., faith, hope, love and creative faithfulness. In Marcel's view man is the embodied self which incessantly transcends its own materiality. In the ontic structures of the human being there is an "ontological requirement" to be opened to a categorial "you", and, ultimately, to the transcendent "You", which makes the being complete. God is the source of man's spiritual acts which man performs while living on earth. He is also an "ontological counterbalance to death", as it were, a warrant of the presence which lasts until death. At the moment of death the most perfect act of man finds its fulfillment, that is love. Only such conception of the ultimate perspective of man is, according to Marcel, a warrant of the sense of life and values to which man serves.