Gabriel Marcel and the Recovery of Philosophy in Our Time

In this paper, I take for granted that, today, something is radically wrong metaphysically with Western culture. I maintain that this problem arises, as Marcel says, from the very depths of our being. This paper's purpose is to consider some aspects of Marcel's metaphysical teaching, especially about our need to start philosophizing in the concrete, not the abstract, situation, to battle against the spirit of abstraction, and use these reflections for the practical purpose of considering what sorts of steps we need to take at the present moment to recover philosophical practice in the postmodern age. Within the context of this paper, I argue that Marcel is a realist humanist in the tradition of Plato and Aquinas whose battle against the spirit of abstraction is fundamentally a fight against nominalism and sophistry.