PHIL 115 Lecture Notes - Gabriel Marcel, Existentialism
Document Summary
Marcel explores a branch of philosophy called existentialism, essentially the study of the human condition and our purpose/existence. Phenomenology is the method of describing what one sees in the most painstaking and detailed manner while bracketing as many of your beliefs and cultural ideas as possible. Phenomenology is the philosophical study of the structures of subjective experience and consciousness. Phenomenologists are supposed to focus solely on clear and distinct ideas and are not to allow personal bias to cloud their judgment this is not possible. The object of awareness anything a person is conscious of is a phenomenon. Abstraction which is always abstraction from an embodied, concrete existence can overcome our concrete existence. We may come to view abstracted elements of existence as if they were independent. Gabriel marcel"s spirit of abstraction refers to his conception that the mind, yielding to a sort of fascination, ceases to be aware of these prior conditions that justify abstraction.
