The Cautionary Ontological Approach To Technology of Gabriel Marcel
Bernard A. GendreauXavier UniversityBAG522@aol.com
ABSTRACT: I present the arguments of Gabriel Marcel which are intended to overcome the potentially negative impact of technology on the human. Marcel is concerned with forgetting or rejecting human nature. His perspective is metaphysical. He is concerned with the attitude of the "mere technician" who is so immersed in technology that the values which promote him as an authentic person with human dignity are discredited, omitted, denied, minimized, overshadowed, or displaced. He reviews the various losses in ontological values which curtail the full realization of the human person in his dignity. The impact of technology leads too often to a loss of the sense of the mystery of being and self, authenticity and integrity, the concrete and the existential, truth and dialogue, freedom and lover, humanity and community, fidelity and creativity, the natural and the transcendent, commitment and virtue, respect of the self and responsiveness to others, and especially of the spiritual and the sacred. Thus, the task of the philosopher is to be a watchman, un veilleur, on the alert for a hopeful resolution of the human predicament..
Technology as the ever-present dynamic factor affecting our daily lives and transforming our contemporary civilization could be described as the rationally created artificial world of learnable operational rules, methods, recipes, and skills furnishing a complex of universally available standardized means used automatically to attain predetermined goals in any variety of endeavors with more mastery, more efficiency, more productivity, more predictability, more durability, and more practicality. (1) Technology, under all its forms, dominates every aspect of our lives by making it possible for us to manipulate any physical or mental activity dealing with domestic, social, political, economic, medical and aesthetic concerns, facilitating means of transportation and communication, enhancing conditions of work and play, and helping in harnessing the forces of nature and in transforming raw material. (2)
The advent and progress of technology as it becomes a global all-encompassing phenomenon appears to be both a blessing in the way it improves the human condition in its efforts at coping with life and the world and as a tragedy in its destructive outcome as it is affecting the physical universe and impacting on the future of humanity. (3) It lessens the hardship, the suffering, and the despair in the face of overwhelming odds in mastering the universe and achieving chosen goals and enhances self-mastery, higher achievements and hope in performing essential tasks and chores demanded or chosen for survival or human flourishing. Techniques employed in propaganda and war appear to be objectionable, techniques used in business maneuvering and in the industrial workplace show themselves to be questionable, techniques appealed to in society and by individuals lead to detrimental results, and even more importantly techniques taking over the whole of the human being's endeavors lead to a displacing of the properly human aspirations. (4) The possible detrimental effects of technology on the future of humankind has been and still is a serious concern for many. (5) In any case, technology is here to stay and is bound to extend its role in an exponential way. The interplay of the benefits and the shortfalls of technology demand a serious analysis of the advantages it brings about and the inconveniences it produces for the person in its quest for a truly authentic integrated fully realized human life. Gabriel Marcel in line with Henri Bergson, Emmanuel Mounier and Nicolas Berdyaev, as well as with Martin Buber and Martin Heidegger, among others, did undertake such an analysis. (6)
Gabriel Marcel's main concern and analysis does not deal primarily, as it is the case with many others, with the positive and negative effects of the incessant and inevitable progress of technology in our society on the ecological integrity of our planet, on the management of the industrial complex, on the development of the economic practices, on the conditions of the workers in the workplace affecting their individual and family life, on the pattern of organization and planification in the social, political, and religious institutions and in the national and international arena. Gabriel Marcel understands his intellectual task as a philosopher to be in a different perspective with a different emphasis. (7)
The concern Gabriel Marcel had with regard to technique or technology is how the condition created by the spirit of technology could become detrimental to the flowering of humanity and work adversely against the aspiration of the person toward its fulfillment in being. What is at stake for Gabriel Marcel is the natural vocation of the human person open to a spiritual life and with an orientation toward transcendence. The issue is a metaphysical one requiring a commitment to the whole of the person as an embodied spirit functioning in and through its material external condition and its internal spiritual exigency. (8) The need is to establish a balance sheet recognizing our achievements in creating a better worldly life through the progress of technology and our prospects for an enrichment of our being with a fuller personal life.
But keeping in mind the devastating results of the techniques of degradation at work in Nazi concentration camps and in the waging of wars in our century, one should be wary of the progress of technology because of its possible dehumanizing and depersonalizing effects on the private and public life of human beings. (9) The approach of Gabriel Marcel is a cautionary one warning about the dangers involved in allowing technology to take over the culture and to thus reduce the human person to the status of being a "mere technical man." (10) His negative criticisms are not intended to reject technology and to seek to destroy it. He continuously reminds his readers of the positive contributions of technology. In itself, technology serves an invaluable purpose in making life more pleasant, more humane, and safer. (11) The danger comes from the fallouts connected with technology which place the integrity of the human being at risk. (12)
To appreciate Gabriel Marcel's concern it is necessary to understand the paradigm under which he was developing his philosophy. His life-long philosophical reflection was dedicated to the task of developing a comprehensive existentialist, humanist, personalist, and Christian view of the human person in its integrity and its dignity as living in the world and as open in its being to a higher level of transcendence both within itself as open to the spiritual and beyond itself as open to other persons and to God. (13)
Gabriel Marcel stressed that technology cannot promote peace since the faith about and the understanding of the higher human values are "foreign to the spirit of the man of mere technique," (14) and that technology is conducive to war by fomenting means of degradation and refining instrument of destruction. (15) There is a parallel between the features of technology which explain its detrimental effects and its impoverishing of the human potential and the conditions which are conducive to war and render peace problematic. In analyzing the conditions which promote peace and which occasion war Gabriel Marcel used an analysis which brought out his concerns for the fate of humankind with regard to a meaningful creative life for the human person. The danger consisted in accepting a way of life which would allow for a primacy given to the abstract, to opinion, and to equality instead of promoting a primacy given to the concrete, the truth, and fraternity. Gabriel Marcel brought out, both in his philosophical works and in his dramatic stage plays, how a concrete and existential approach to life situations produces a respect for the human person contributing to peace while the spirit of abstraction and generalization is a factor in causing war, (16) how truth and authenticity brings about a society in which communication and invocation lead to peace while opinion and self-deception create an atmosphere leading to war, (17) and how fraternity and communion promote a community of persons seeking peace while equality and competition encourage war. (18) Technology while facilitating material living conditions, enhancing production of goods, and controlling nature operates in the abstract, on the level of opinion, and on the supposition of equality leaving out of consideration the concrete, the truth, and fraternity. There results a lack of integrity with regard to the whole self of the human person, a lack of authenticity in the revealing of the true self as a person, and a lack of fidelity in participating in a community of persons. The human person is frustrated in its aspiration for an integration of its being with existential transcendence, for a revelation of its being in communicating with others and for a creation of its being in communion with others. Technology leaves the self with a sense of loss of uniqueness, of a solid foundation, and togetherness. Faced with a sense of frustration, of despair, and of alienation caused by the inadequacies of technology in dealing with the whole human person, Gabriel Marcel sought to discover the flaws inherent to technology and to try to find some way out of the quagmire. (19)
Gabriel Marcel's analysis of the spirit of technology in our times furnishes us with a variety of convincing arguments which show the limitation and insufficiency of technology in dealing with the human person. (20) Gabriel Marcel, in developing these arguments, pursued his task of being "un veilleur," a watchman on the alert to promote the human person toward its full realization and to detect whatever proves deleterious to achieving this goal. (21) He sees the need to overcome the despair resulting from finding oneself trapped within a situation which leaves out of the picture any hope to open up to a proper human fulfillment. There is a feeling that the human being is being impeded in the process of creating the self in the full range called for by its being in its inner core by supervening adventitious forces which impose a lower standard for the human being, albeit very useful and effective. Faced with the overwhelming and all-encompassing presence of technology Gabriel Marcel emphasized the sense of loss as to opportunity, availability, incentive, direction, vision, concern, and interest for the pursuit of the human being's true goals which are higher than what is intended or can be expected in and through technology. It becomes important to determine the place of technology in the scheme of things and to establish the higher levels called for by the human being and the way to achieve these. (22) The question becomes how to overcome the desacralizing, the dehumanizing, the depersonalizing, and the degrading of the human person to an empty shell weighted down by the parasite of technology and unable to pursue fulfillment through its own inner being. (23) The overcoming of the pitfalls and excesses of technology requires that we develop a second level reflection on the fullness of being to reach out to our inner core as it is revealed through lived concrete existential experience. (24)
Technology tends to deprive the human person of what counts most in making the being human as meaningful and operational and, therefore, tends to make the human being depraved, in a fundamental way, as stymied and demeaned. It is not surprising that a chapter in Man Against Mass Society entitled: "Technical Progress and Sin" follows upon a chapter entitled: "Techniques of Degradation." (25) Gabriel Marcel's various arguments about the negative situation created by technology concentrated on the loss incurred of what, in his philosophy, is most essential in the human being considered on various levels with the hope of reinstituting an awareness and a commitment with regard to the true values proper to the human being.
The impact of contemporary technological civilization is to produce a loss of authenticity through a loss of interiority rendering the human person estranged from itself because it is lacking the ability of ingatheredness or recollection and awareness of itself. (26) As a result it is unable to reach within itself to the inner life and inner core of its being and thus suffers from a nescience about its true self. It cannot achieve the deepening insight into the mystery of being within itself which involves an openness to the spiritual and is oriented toward the transcendent. There results a loss of a feel for love and fidelity and a loss of readiness for responsiveness and availability towards others. Technology takes over and becomes the center of attention as furnishing all that seems to be needed for human comfort and well-being. One should concentrate on these benefits and seek nothing further. One becomes willingly a slave to the power of technology and identifies the self with this lower minimal level of objects instead of seeking further higher values as subject which distinguish the human being from the world of things and animals. (27)
The overwhelming impact and attraction of the knowledge brought about by technology through the primary reflection dealing with the world of objects understood through ideas or concepts need to be overcome in favor of the secondary reflection dealing with the inner-world of being revealing itself in its plenitude in the human subject. (28) This would bring out the mystery of being which dwells within the human person and is the font from which its true meaningfulness as a living creative agent and thinker is made manifest and realized concretely in its existential condition. Through a deeper reflection the abstract objectivity used to identify and describe the self is complemented and enriched by the concrete subjectivity which reveals the fullness of being in the self. Without an insight into the very core of what constitutes the authentic self in its foundation in being there would result a loss of an awareness of the universality inherent in the human being. The loss of the sense of this existent universality which implies the recognition that beings are mutually different while existing together in their differences leads to a loss of the concrete basis for reciprocity, responsiveness, disponibility, invocation, communion and creative fidelity. (29) The technological mentality leaves out of consideration, excludes or ignores what the human situation calls for in its lived experience. There is therefore a need for a reversal in attitude to get away from the habit of considering the attractive features of efficiency, productivity, and sufficiency technology offers in satisfying the external material objective needs in our worldly life and to turn toward a dwelling in contemplation on the mystery of being within our integral authentic self to reach to the plenitude of being in itself and in all its ramifications. (30)
In spite of its own creativity technology tends to lead to a loss of the fullness of creativity appropriate to the human person. This unfortunately devalues and denigrates what the human being is all about as a rational reflective being. Reduced to a mechanistic and manipulated way of life the human person is limited to being a "mere technical man" and is denatured and mutilated as deprived of its full deployment as a knower reaching to the plenitude of his being. (31) The human person is made to be less than it is and could be and is left to operate at a more restricted level than it could and should. The tragedy is that being enclosed within the workings of technology the human person is not aware of its restricting situation or is even encouraged to not acknowledge it. (32)
It is true that the creativity of technology has enhanced the success of the human person in solving overwhelming problems throughout its pilgrimage in the agricultural age, in the industrial age and now in the information age. (33) Technology appears to Gabriel Marcel as a high level of achievement appropriate to the human person as a rational being. The level of performance is often awesome and to be admired. Gabriel Marcel praises the achievements of technology as a manifestation of the power of human rationality and ingenuity, of commitment and adaptability, and of commitment and persistence guided by a sense of patience and wonder on the part of the scientists, the engineers, the inventors and the planners who created techniques to make the world a better place to live in. (34) But the pilgrimage which gives meaning and purpose to the human person should not be limited, curtailed, and diverted because of the overbearing influence of technology. (35) The power of the rational methods used and the technical skills developed in technology is used to manipulate and dominate all the activities of the human person. This external impact on the human person limits its freedom, its creativity, and diminishes its dignity as a reflective thinker, as a spiritual being and as an autonomous moral agent. It distorts the role the human person as the bearer of wisdom is to play in the overall destiny of humanity. The wisdom each person carries within itself to cope with the lived world of experience is side-stepped by the technician as superfluous or irrelevant. The sense of mystery and uniqueness which is central to the human person is not given due consideration in facing the issues of birth, life, death, in dealing with truth, goodness and beauty, in sharing responsive communion and creative fidelity, in identifying the meaningful and the admirable in human endeavors, in experiencing a sense of awe and wonder in the presence of the world and other persons and in recognizing within the self an aspiration towards the transcendent. The questions involved in these human experiences are beyond the reaches of technology and should be allowed a free play in human inquiry. Technology tends to claim that whatever does not fall within its purview given its methods and skills is beyond the field of human rational inquiry and does not deserve consideration. As a result the mind is left confused and unsatisfied and this leads to despair in the absence of a solution or at least of an ongoing analysis. The limitation imposed by technology on intellectual creativity should be overridden. (36)
Technology brings about a shift in what the human person is understood to be and in what its quality of life should be. The techniques used to manipulate human beings and things are seen as indispensable and self-sufficient means to perform any task or project desired in the acquisition of things or in the management of activities of both human beings and things. Technology is elevated to the level of being the highest object of admiration and the center of all our attention. As a result of technology's high achievements and brilliant success what else could be needed and what other endeavor could count as having any value. All our basic desires are for objects that technology offers for our possession and all our fears are at the thought of losing these beneficent products. The ideal then becomes to partake in technology either to be the creator of new techniques or to be a user of these concocted devices. The whole life becomes consumed by the need to find a place within the regime of technology and to put oneself in a position to fit in effectively and comfortably. Our daily life at work, in education, at play, for information, and in relationship revolves around our role within the technological world. Our basic daily human needs are all met through the use of technology. Our activities become fully involved within the realm of technology. Soon our very being becomes identified with the condition of the "technical man" engrossed in creating or using technology. (37) This leads to a forgetting about being present within the self and available for self-creativity. The complete absorption of the person within the sphere of technology leaves no time or place for leisure devoted to recollection toward reflection on the mystery of being and for communion with others towards creative fidelity. Leisure, the basis of culture, is rendered irrelevant and impossible. (38) Leisure becomes time off for play and relaxation to recoup for the next day of technological involvement. The change in what man is called to as a result of technology changes the calling of man and defuses and deflects his ability for being fully creative.
What is more, while the original maker of the technology was creative and enjoyed all the incentiveness and virtues necessary to achieve a properly human act of creativity most people involved in the technological society today seem reduced to being users without any contribution made to the invention or the making of the objects used, the thinking through of the process and the skills needed. (39) The technical culture individual becomes an automaton requiring minimal involvement and participation. Little properly human effort is needed to run and manage things. One becomes a cog in the wheel whether we are dealing with machinery or institutions. The lack of creativity, commitment, involvement and participation leads to boredom and alienation in a world empty of values above the minimum condition for survival and a comfortable life in an anonymous and monotonous society. Technology leads to loneliness for the individual who possesses the ability to master and manage by himself the use of these instruments and be an independent operator often at home and at a distance without any need of being in contact with other persons. There is a loss of the sense of virtue as a condition for the good life since there is a loss of commitment and of the need to improve oneself once the needed skills are acquired. There follows a sameness in repetition. There is a loss of the sense of inquiry to discover the truth and the good in a world where all is preset and prefabricated. There is a loss of a sense of presence as to work done and as to involvement with others in view of the vast size of most enterprises and the centralized control and automatized activities within large work groups physically together in large areas. There is a loss of a sense of autonomy involving a moral agent with the responsibility of setting the rules or norms which would become a moral imperative to create a moral community of moral agents. (40) One is lead to lose a sense of moral responsibility in making decisions in a world where all activities are determined beforehand as a result of overall planification and organization. There is a loss of the sense of cooperation, relating, and community leading to a loss of a foundation to promote reciprocity in communion and creative fidelity. There is a need to rehabilitate the human person by promoting beyond the depersonalizing and automatonizing involvement in technology an active participation in the creativity needed for self-mastery in the challenging activities of thinking, doing, making, relating and hoping undertaken by the person on its own in the pursuit of a meaningful life assuring full personal dignity.
The abstract and artificial features of technology imply the loss of a sense of the natural as a given in the physical bodily reality found in the world as it is and in the living existential experience in the human person. (41) Technology through its skills and rules creates a world at a level removed from nature as it is functioning on its own in physical things and in human beings. That is its contribution and the reason for its success in harnessing the forces of nature and in managing human affairs. There follows an identification of the human person as the fabricated man of the "homo faber" deprived of the organic dynamism of the living being the person is in its reality and in its activity. (42) The rational discourse of technology tends to replace the course of nature in things and in persons. In the process the human is reduced to the level of a thing and of an object and is dealt with as on a par with them for the setting of a pattern for rational management. To assure competent functioning and proficient planning technology promotes efficiency and quality control by creating uniformity, regularity, regimentation, mechanization, centralization, classification, departmentalization, automation and bureaucracy. There results a loss of diversity and uniqueness, individualism and community, mystery and wonder, the existential and the concrete. (43) There is a loss of the spark of life involving vitality, spontaneity, creativity, randomness, organic development and the ebb and flow of the rhythm and cycles inherent in nature. This creates a humdrum type of life which leads to a state of boredom, disillusionment and despair which brings about and condones, according to Gabriel Marcel, waywardness in the moral life and social behavior of the masses as well as the elite wallowing in drugs, sexual indulgence and perversity, laziness and vulgarity as well as dishonesty and fanaticism and which encourages the breakup of the family and the breakdown of society. There follows an eclipse of the refinement and sensitivity needed to promote value and love in society. (44)
Faced with the prospect of living one half a life seeking perfection in performance and organization to be in control of the situation at hand and of living the other half of life left in the dark as to what is the full reality of the human person and what is to be done according to standards of morality Gabriel Marcel committed himself to the breaking down of the barriers which solidify this dualism to assure the integrity towards fullness of life called for by the human person. (45) He is not suggesting that the factories should be closed, that the industrial complex be dismantled, that the research laboratories be eliminated in favor of a return to an underdeveloped, untamed, untouched and primitive world of nature. He rejects the Gandhi approach or the return to the land movement. (46) We should not deprive ourselves of the benefits of technology. But we should pay attention and meditate on the fact that technology does not meet the most basic and most fundamental human person's needs and aspirations and leaves the human person in a discomforting and hopeless position where essential questions remain unanswered, situations unresolved, meaningfulness undetermined and the orientation of life obscured. The programmed world and society of technology goes against the grain of nature and therefore must be reassessed and supplemented with the enlightenment which comes through a philosophy of reflection and an ontology of being. (47)
Gabriel Marcel deplores the loss of a sense of the sacral as a result of the dominance of technology in our society. (48) Technology being in a position to solve all the problems we encounter in life it would seem that the management or handling of the world and people is sufficiently taken care of within the universe through learned scientists and skilled technicians. The concern should be to put to proper use for the greatest efficiency and self-sufficiency possible all the tools made available through technology. There is no need for a higher explanation or causality for what needs to be done. The human being is self-sufficient and master of the situation. No one should go beyond the self and the world or aspire to an encounter with the transcendent in the self or above the self. The realm of the sacral must be reduced to an illusion which presents itself as the enemy of progress for the welfare of humanity. The anthropocentric replaces the theocentric worldview. The desacralization of the human being and human life is the ultimate offense technology is guilty of. (49) The sacrilegious attitude which ignores or rejects the sacral must be vigorously fought against to discredit it and debilitate it in order to preserve the integrity of human dignity.
Gabriel Marcel understood that technology cannot entertain such considerations involving a metaphysical level of reflection. (50) He holds, however, that the human mind and the human lived experience lead to an awareness of more in life which is proper to the human person. For him creative fidelity requires and brings out the sense of transcendence within the self and above the self. The aspiration of the self from within the self orients the human being to the more in being. A whole range of ramifications come out of the basic insights in secondary reflection which offer opportunity for a more meaningful life for the self and within the community. (51) One issue which Gabriel Marcel struggles with is the religious experience of the transcendent and religious participation within a religion. (52) While he leaves no doubt that certain religions, especially Christianity, are more conducive to success in the search for the transcendent he emphasizes that the personal experience of the rational and reflective person is central so that anyone with proper recollection and reflection can reach inward and gather himself together to open up to the plenitude of being. One's availability and disponibility in being responsive to the other can bring about on the natural human level a creative fidelity leading to an openness to the transcendent. In any case reaching to the transcendent is what the human person is for. Technology is not conducive and is even an impediment to this openness to the transcendent.
Instead of having a life centered on our technical achievements which leads to autolatry fostered by an idolatry of the human as the only necessary center of our life, one would be better off to be attentive to our lived experience and bring out the thrust within the personal center toward the transcendent as source of the meaningfulness of the person in the world and the orientation of a properly human activity in its full deployment and flowering. (53) Without the sacral at least on the natural level and especially on the supernatural level life is left truncated and the person unsatisfied and unfulfilled. Gabriel Marcel starting from the world and from lived experience always ends up with making us aware of the role of the sacral if life is to be worthwhile. This explains the strong antagonism to technology which tends to close the door to this further step taken by the human person.
In conclusion, what are we to think about the intensive intellectual campaign waged throughout his life by Gabriel Marcel against abstraction and against technology. If we were to evaluate the critical judgment made by Gabriel Marcel about the place of technology in the life of the individual and in society by looking at the words used to assess the situation we would recognize that he had a passionate negative attitude toward technology. When speaking in various places of the impact of technology on the human person and on human institutions he uses words like mutilate, denigrate, denature, enucleate, deracinate, uproot, degrade, devalue, belittle, desacralize, depersonalize, dehumanize, betray, atrophy, regiment, and manipulate. We find, nevertheless, that he often and clearly gave a positive recognition to the contribution of technology to our lives and expressed respect for the creators of technology. He does not, however, elaborate through a detailed and systematic critical analysis on the many benefits resulting from technology. Yet, technology and technique along with applied sciences are blamed and badgered in the worst terms for the loss of what is most meaningful in what the human person is all about in the eyes of Gabriel Marcel and, he claims, in the perspective of perennial philosophy. He identifies in his many arguments the losses as a loss of a sense for authenticity, community, concrete existence, integrity, contemplation, creativity, peace, responsiveness, creative fidelity, nature, virtue, contemplation, secondary reflection, ontological inquiry, leisure, freedom, personhood, interiority, transcendence, and the mystery of being. All these factors which make a difference, if not the difference, when the human person is involved are what is at the center of his philosophical reflection. He recognizes that technology cannot deal with any of these ontological values. But he demands that technology not be the Achilles' heel that makes impossible the reintegrating of these in our intellectual discourse and in our lived experience. He conceives the task of the philosopher in contemporary society to be a watchman continuously on the alert for whatever demeans and stymies the human person in its inner-reality and its ongoing aspiration for the plenitude of being and for communion with the transcendent. To recoup the possibility for the human person to find its bearings and to pursue aggressively and successfully the natural creative impulse toward the fullness of being was the overarching aim of Gabriel Marcel. This paradigm guided his arguments and his language. This was the prize sought after and the intellectual battle ought to be proportionate to the dangers encountered in the struggle. The harshness of the criticism directed toward technology is compensated by the nobility of the intention to save the meaning and the dignity of the human person. Gabriel Marcel's attitude and approach should be judged in this perspective.
Notes
(1) Gabriel Marcel, Man Against Mass Society, trans. G. Fraser (Lanham: University of America, 1985), 82 [hereafter cited as MAMS]. Idem, "The Limits of Industrial Civilization," in The Decline of Wisdom, trans. Manya Harari (London: Harvill Press, 1954), 1-20 [hereafter cited as DW]. Idem, "The Sacral in the Era of Technology," in Searchings (New York: Newman Press, 1967), 41-53 [hereafter cited as SE]. Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society, trans. John Wilkinson (New York: Vintage Books, 1964), xxv. William Barrett, The Illusion of Technique: A Search for Meaning in a Technological Civilization, (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1979), 22. Thomas Anderson, "Technics and Atheism," Bulletin de la Societé Américaine de Philosophie de Langue Française, VII, 1-2 (1995), 59-60.
(2) Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society, trans. John Wilkinson (New York: Vintage Books, 1964). Jean Fourastié, Le Grand Espoir du XXe Siècle: Progrès Technique, Progrès Economique, Progrès Social (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1949). Walter J. Ong, "Technology and the New Humanist Frontiers," in Frontiers in American Catholicism (New York: Macmillan, 1957), 86-103.
(3) Gabriel Marcel, Tragic Wisdom and Beyond, trans. Stephen Jolin and Peter McCormick (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1973), 154, 202-205 [hereafter cited as TWB]. Idem, MAMS, 61. Idem, DW, 1-20. Bernard Gendron, Technology and the Human Condition (New York: St. Martin Press, 1977), 1-7. George F. McLean, ed., Philosophy in a Technological Culture (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1964). David H. Hopper, Technology, Theology, and the Idea of Progress (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1977), 3-35.
(4) Emmanuel G. Mesthene, "The Role of Technology in Society," Technology and Man's Future, ed. Albert H. Teich (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1977), 163. Idem, Technological Changes: Its Impact on Man and Society (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970). Daniel J. Boostin, Image, or What Happened to the American Dream (New York: Athenaeum, 1971). Idem, The Republic of Technology: Reflections on our Future Community (New York: Harper & Row, 1978). Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man (Boston: Beacon Press, 1964). B. F. Skinner, Beyond Freedom and Dignity (New York: Bantam/Vintage Press, 1971). Sherry Turkle, The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984). Langdon Winner, Autonomous Technology: Technics-out-of-control as a Theme in Political Thought (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1977).
(5) Thorstein Veblen, The Engineers and the Price System (New York: Kelley, 1921). Idem, The Theory of the Leisure (New York: The Modern Library, 1934). Lewis Munford, Technics and Civilization (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1934). Idem, The Myth of the Machine: Technics and Human Development (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1966). Siegfried Giediou, Mechanization Takes Over (New York: Oxford University Press, 1948). Georges Gurvitch, ed., Industrialization et Technocratie (Paris: A. Colin, 1949). Theodore Roszak, The Making of a Counter-Culture (Garden City: Doubleday, 1969). Idem, The Cult of Information (New York: Pantheon Books, 1986), 47-86. Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1984). Daniel Bell, The Coming of the Post-Industrial Society (New York: Basic Books, 1973). Alvin Toffler, Future Shock (New York: Random House, 1970). Alvin and Heidi Tofler, Creating a New Civilization: The Politics of the Third Wave (Atlanta, GA: Turner Publishing Inc., 1994). Frederick Ferre, Hellfire and Lightning Rods: Liberating Science, Technology, and Religion (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1993). Dominique Janicaud, Powers of the Rational: Science, Technology, and the Future of Thought (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994). Technology, Pessimism, and Postmodernism, ed. Yaron Ezrahi, Everett Mendelsohn, and Howard P. Segal (Amherst, MA: 1994).
(6) Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution, trans. A. Mitchell (New York: The Modern Library, 1944). Idem, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion, trans. R. A. Audra and C. Brereton (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1935). Emmanuel Mounier, Personalism, trans. P. Marait (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1952). Idem, A Personalist Manifesto, trans. Monks of St. John's Abbey (New York: Longsmans, 1938). Idem, Be Not Afraid, trans. C. Rowland (London: Sheed and Ward, 1962). Nicolas Berdyaev, Solitude and Society, trans. George Reavy (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1947). Idem, The Beginning and the End, trans. R. M. French (New York: Harper, 1952). Martin Buber, I and Thou (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1950). Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, trans. William Lovitt (New York: Harper Torchbook, 1977).
(7) Gabriel Marcel, "What Can Be Expected of Philosophy," in TWB, 12-15. Idem, "On the Ontological Mystery," in The Philosophy of Existentialism, trans. Manya Harari (New York: Citadel Press, 1956), 10-12 [hereafter cited as PE]. Idem, "An Essay in Autobiography," in PE, 104-128. Idem, "An Autobiographical Essay," in The Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel, ed. Paul Arthur Schilpp and Lewis Edwin Hahn (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1984), 1-68. Idem, "The Philosopher and the Contemporary World," in MAMS, 103-152. Idem, "My Fundamental Purpose," in Presence and Immortality, trans. A. Machado and Henry J. Koren (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1967), 13-30 [hereafter cited as PI].
(8) Idem, MAMS, 37.
(9) Ibidem, 41.
(10) Ibidem, 88.
(11) Gabriel Marcel, TWB, 245-246. Idem, MAMS, 56.
(12) Idem, The Existential Background of Human Dignity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963), 162 [hereafter cited as EBHD].
(13) Gabriel Marcel, "On the Ontological Mystery," in PE, 9-46. Idem, En Chemin, Vers Quel Éveil? (Paris: Gallimard, 1971), 198. Idem, TWB, 237-238. Idem, The Philosophy of Existentialism, trans. Manya Harari (New York: Philosophical Library, 1956). Roger Troisfontaines, S.J. De l'Exitence à l'Être: la Philosophie de Gabriel Marcel, 2 vols. (Paris: Vrin, 1953). Kenneth T. Gallagher, The Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel (New York: Fordham, University Press, 1959). Étienne Gilson, ed., Existentialisme Chrétien: Gabriel Marcel (Paris: Plon, 1947). Paul A. Schilpp, ed., The Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1984).
(14) Idem, MAMS, 88 and 78.
(15) Idem, MAMS, 81.
(16) Idem, "The Spirit of Abstraction, as a Factor Making For War," in MAMS, 153-162. Idem, "The Universal Against the Masses, I and II," in MAMS, 1-11 and 257-273. Gabriel Marcel, Le Dard, in Le Secret dans les îles (Paris: Plon, 1967), 25-153. Raphael Célis, "La Philosophie contre l'Esprit d'Abstraction," Revue de Théologie et de Philosophie, 125 (1993), 383-391. James Collins, "Marcel's Concrete Philosophy of Participation," in The Existentialists: A Critical Study (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1952), 115-149. Jean Wahl, Vers le Concret: Êtudes de philosophie Contemporaine (Paris: Vrin, 1932), 223-269 on Gabriel Marcel.
(17) Gabriel Marcel, "Les Menaces de Guerre," in Présence de Gabriel Marcel, cahier 4: Gabriel Marcel et les Injustices de ce Temps. La Responsabilité du Philosophe (Paris: Aubier, 1983), 49-57 [hereafter cited as PGM]. Idem, "Dangerous Situation of Ethical Values," in Homo Viator: Introduction to a Philosophy of Hope, trans. Emma Craufurd (New York: Harper and Row, Torchbooks, 1962, 155-165 [hereafter cited as HV]. Gabriel Marcel, Colombyre ou le Brasier de la Paix, in Gabriel Marcel, Théatre Comique (Paris: Albin Michel, 1947), 7-154. Idem, Colombyre or The Torch of Peace, trans. Joseph Cunneen, in Katharine R. Hanley, Two Plays by Gabriel Marcel: The Lantern and The Torch of Peace (Lanham: University Press of America, 1988), 31-127.
(18) Idem, "The Philosophy of Peace," trans. Viola Herms Drath in Philosophical Fragment: 1904-1914, ed., Lionel A. Blain (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame, 1965), 7-19 [hereafter cited as PF]. Gabriel Marcel, Un Juste, in Paix sur la Terre (Paris: Aubier, Montaigne, 1965), 61-176. Carlo Schmid, "Laudatio," (on occasion of Peace Prize awarded Gabriel Marcel) in Paix sur la Terre (Paris: Aubier, 1965), 5-39. John B. O'Malley, The Fellowship of Being: An Essay on the Concept of Person in the Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel (Hague: Nijhoff, 1966). Vincent P. Miceli, S.J., Ascent to Being: Gabriel Marcel's Philosophy of Communion (Desclee Company, 1965).
(19) Gabriel Marcel, EBHD, 161-163.
(20) Thomas Anderson, "Technics and Atheism," Bulletin de la Société Américaine de Philosophie de Langue Française, VII, 1-2 (1995), 59-68. Donald F. Traub, Toward a Fraternal Society: A Study of Gabriel's Marcel Approach to Being, Technology, and Intersubjectivity (New York: Peter Lang, 1988). John Joseph Donohue, Jr., Gabriel Marcel on the Meaning of Work and the Cult of Technology (dissertation) (Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms International, 1985).
(21) Jeanne Parain-Vial, Gabriel Marcel: un Veilleur et un Éveilleur (Lausanne: L'Âge d'Homme, 1989).
(22) Gabriel Marcel, MAMS, 88.
(23) Idem, EBHD, 159.
(24) Idem, TWB, 197-198.
(25) Idem, MAMS, 76-101 and 37-75.
(26) Ibidem, 100-101.
(27) Ibidem, 55-56.
(28) Gabriel Marcel, "Primary and Secondary Reflection: The Existential Fulcrum," in Mystery of Being, Vol. I, Reflection and Mystery, trans. G. Fraser (Chicago: Regnery, 1965), 95-126 [hereafter cited as MBI]. Idem, Being and Having: An Existentialist Diary (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1965), 116-121, 140 [hereafter cited as BH]. Idem, MAMS, 173. Vincenti Miceli, Op. Cit., 99-101. Roger Troisfontaines, Op. Cit., 203-207.
(29) Gabriel Marcel, Creative Fidelity, trans. Robert Rosthal (New York: Noonday Press, 1964), 8-9 [hereafter cited as CF].
(30) Idem, MAMS, 100-101. Thomas Anderson, "Gabriel Marcel's Notion of Being," Contributions of Gabriel Marcel to Philosophy, ed. William Cooney (Lewiston: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1989), 47-78.
(31) Gabriel Marcel, MB, II, 50. Idem, PE, 10-15.
(32) Idem, PE, 15.
(33) Ian G. Barbour, Ethics in an Age of Ecology (The Gifford Lectures 1989-91, vol. 2) (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1993).
(34) Idem, MAMS, 82-83.
(35) Idem, HV, 7-12.
(36) Idem, TWB, 245-247.
(37) Idem, EBHD, 160-161.
(38) Joseph Pieper, Leisure, the Basis of Culture (New York: Pantheon, 1964).
(39) Gabriel Marcel, EBHD, 160.
(40) Ibidem, 159.
(41) Gabriel Marcel, HV, 114-115. Idem, MAMS, 93 and 98. Idem, DW, 19.
(42) Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1950). Paul Ramsey, Fabricated Man: The Ethics of General Control (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1970).
(43) Gabriel Marcel, HV, 80. Idem, MAMS, 94.
(44) Gabriel Marcel, EBHD, 163. Idem, HV, 83. Idem, MAMS, 93 and 185.
(45) Idem, "The Threat to Integrity," in EBHD, 164-170.
(46) Idem, MAMS, 82. Idem, TWB, 202.
(47) Idem, TWB, 247.
(48) Idem, "The Sacral in the Era of Technology," in SE, 41-53. Idem, TWB, 247. Idem, MBI, 25-26.
(49) Idem, SE, 43 and 45.
(50) Idem, MAMS, 94.
(51) Idem, MBI, 95-103. Idem, BH, 116-121 and 140.
(52) Idem, EBHD, 167. Idem, MAMS, 129.
(53) Idem, MAMS, 55, 71, and 84.
