Quotation : Hope consists in asserting that there is at the heart of being, beyond all data, beyond all inventories and all calculations, a mysterious principle which is in connivance with me, which cannot but will that which I will, if what I will deserves to be willed and is, in fact, willed by the whole of my being. Gabriel Marcel.
Web link : Gabriel Marcel on Existentialism and Life
Web link : The Wisdom of Winnie the Pooh
I am in a state of profound depression.
Everyone that likes me has tried to snap me out of it, but so far no arguments they could offer have convinced me that life is worth living. I am on the verge of suicide, and am only writing to give life one last chance to stop me. I have no religious beliefs, only science guides me. If you can persuade me, my friends will be yours forever.
Signed,
Soon-to-be Lifeless of Villars
Gabriel Marcel belonged to the loosely defined school of philosophy we now call existentialism. He diagnosed some of the problems that lead us to depression and hopelessness. Above all, he believed that the tendency to morbid abstraction, to brooding speculation on the universe, on nothingness, to loss of the sense of self and personhood, all contributed to loss of a concrete foothold in life and hope.
It is our brain's tendency to seek abstract meaning (usually without finding it) that leads us away from the simple truths of existence. Thus, I use as my second philosopher for this seminar the Bear of Very Little Brain, Winnie the Pooh, as a paradigm of Marcel's life of concrete charity.
A person who looks after his neighbour with simple kindness is less likely to suffer the torments of nothingness and meaninglessness than the introverted speculator who drowns in the incomprehensible universe.
The text below, about Winnie the Pooh and Gabriel Marcel, is is a short extract from the book, Pooh and the Philosophers, by John Tyerman Williams. Full copyright remains with the author.
'And we must all bring provisions'
'Bring what ?'
'Things to eat.'
'Oh !' said Pooh happily. 'I thought you said Provisions.'
This is just one of the passages that must have inspired Gabriel Marcel to write,
'The dynamic element in my philosophy, taken as a whole, can be seen as an obstinate and untiring battle against the spirit of abstraction.'
How powerfully Pooh exemplifies the struggle against abstraction that Marcel proclaims ! Note Pooh's insistence that Christopher Robin translate the general, abstract term 'provisions' into the concrete 'things to eat'. Note also that while Marcel himself uses somewhat abstract language to describe his struggle against abstraction, Pooh is practising what he preaches.
This is not an isolated instance. We easily recall how often and how vividly Pooh Bear illustrates the fight against abstraction. He does not talk abstractly about sweetness and light, or Truth, or the Absolute, but concretely about honey and condensed milk and marmalade. Nor does Pooh confine his preference for concrete particulars to inanimate objects. Consider the following examples of practical benevolence :
1 Pooh tells Owl :
'Eeyore, who is a friend of mine, has lost his tail. And he's Moping about it. So could you very kindly tell me how to find it for him?'
2 Readers will remember the incident at the end of The House at Pooh Corner, when Eeyore, unwittingly and with the best intentions, presents Owl with Piglet's house :
And then Piglet did a Noble Thing, and he did it in a sort of dream, while he was thinking of all the wonderful words Pooh had hummed about him. 'Yes, it's just the house for Owl,' he said grandly. 'And I hope he'll be very happy in it.' And then he gulped twice, because he had been very happy in it himself.
Then Christopher Robin asks where Piglet himself is going to live -
Before Piglet could think, Pooh answered for him. 'He'd come and live with me,' said Pooh, 'wouldn't you, Piglet ?'. Piglet squeezed his paw. 'Thank you, Pooh,' he said, 'I should love to.'
In these two instances, Pooh is not extolling a generalized benevolence : he is doing particular acts of kindness to particular persons. As for Piglet, in Professor John Macquarrie's words, 'he is both projecting and realizing an image of personhood.' The idea of realizing an image of personhood is underlined in the second of the above examples, when we are told that Piglet's generous gesture was stimulated by his desire to live up to the heroic image in Pooh's hum about him.
I chose these two examples because they had not been examined in previous chapters ; but readers must be well aware that they do not stand alone. Eeyore's birthday, building a house for Eeyore, and rescuing Piglet from the flood - these spring readily to mind as concrete acts of kindness to specific persons. In all of them we see Pooh acting in the spirit of William Blake's dictum, 'He who would do good to another must do it in Minute Particulars.' And Blake has important affinities with Existentialism.
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