Subject, Object and "You"

Hereafter, Ricoeur proceeds to compare Marcel and Husserl according to the position of the object, the position of the subject, and their correlation. The part on the object mainly has to do with the way we see the world. Ricoeur first defines the term "object" as "the ensemble of distinctive characteristics underlying things we can name, and these things in turn give to the logical subject a basis for attribution in perceptual judgements and in scientific knowledge" (GMP 477/58). Hence, object has to do with the characteristics of things in the face of a logical subject which looks at them from the perspective of scientific knowledge. The definition of object provides a kind of background for Ricoeur's introduction of Marcel's critique of the primacy of objectivity in "Existence and Objectivity" published at the end of his Metaphysical Journal. Marcel's movement from objectivity to existence is for Ricoeur the opposite of Husserl's movement from natural belief to the structure of meaning. Marcel's anti-Cartesian arguments in the essay are equally anti-Husserlian. While the term "existence" appears to be quite elusive in Marcel's text, Ricoeur gives it a rather clear definition: "Existence designates the fund of massive, indivisible, undeniable presence attested to by the sensuous presence of the world at the most radical level of feeling" (GMP 477/59). Experience of the world is therefore inextricably bound up with my embodiment. Existence is a global experience of the world in which the embodied subject is indivisibly involved; existence is felt rather than rationally thought, and it is the massive and dense assurance of existence that qualifies its indisputability. Ricoeur describes it in Marcelian terms as the "absolute presence" and the "nonproblematic" (GMP 479/61). More importantly, this sensuous presence of the world to an incarnate person is what first allows an "object" to be present to a spectator. Ricoeur indicates that it is a return to an indubitable foundation, "not in the sense of something resisting doubt or subsisting after doubt, but in the sense of a presence precluding doubt; what is indubitably given to me is the confused and global experience of the world as existing" (GMP 477/59). Existence, as opposed to objectivity, has also a different sort of certainty. This observation is helpful for understanding the distinction between "truth" () and "veracity" () which Ricoeur uses-without much explanation-to criticize both Descartes and the analytic philosophers in Oneself as Another (OA 22/34, 72/91). In the case of Descartes, the first "truth" of the cogito is contrasted with the "veracity" of God. In commenting on the analytic approach, he contrasts the "truth" of description with the "veracity" of attestation. I would suggest that "truth" is understood in terms of validity; it is that which resists doubt or subsists after doubt-doubt that presupposes the distance of a spectator. "Veracity" refers to the evidence that is based on a preceding relation of participation in which the subject has always been involved; it is something to be recognized rather than to be proved.

With regard to the position of the subject, Ricoeur notices that what Marcel defends is the primacy of being over knowledge to the effect that knowledge is enveloped by being and is in some way within being (GMP 480/62). When the modern self-affirming cogito sets itself up as the guarantee of objectivity, the meaning of the subject is greatly impoverished. It is also from this perspective that Husserl falls under Marcel's critique of the cogito (ibid). While Marcel is concerned with justifying human existence, Husserl, like the modern philosophers, strives to found scientific knowledge (GMP 481/63). The "I" resulting from the reduction is a thinking I, situated at the opposite pole of a thinkable object. Unlike Kant, the thinking I born of reduction is an individual and retains all features of singularity in accordance with the temporal flux; on the other hand, the subject also bears the mark of universality since it has the role of providing the final justification of knowledge. Nevertheless, the universal validity of knowledge cannot be guaranteed by the singular cogito alone, therefore, Husserl needs a philosophy of the alter ego in order to complete his philosophy of the ego. A community of subjects that share the same perceived world is what Husserl seeks to establish in order to ground the universality of science. This is what we find in the famous fifth Cartesian Meditation. For Ricoeur, the solipsistic starting point of the whole project presents an intractable difficulty which resembles that of "the squaring of a circle" (GMP 65/483). I shall not go into the details of Ricoeur's analysis of Husserl's arguments but just want to make one point: according to Ricoeur, the problem of solipsism is the summary of all other discordance between Marcel and Husserl and it is a basic difference that arises from the initial gestures of the two philosophers. His point is that "if one does not start from the undeniable presence of the other, one will never overtake this presence" (GMP 65/483).

But what does it mean to recognize the presence of the other? With this question Ricoeur turns to Marcel's theory of intersubjectivity. In the encounter with other people, Marcel speaks of "recognition". It is not a mode of knowledge through object, but what arises in the experiences of love and fidelity which presuppose one's dynamic openness to other people. The one whom I love is a "you" (toi) and not a "him/her" (lui). The third person vocabulary is the means of objectification, the beginning of reducing the other into some sort of information amenable to characterization. Further, Marcel rejects any derivation of the other from the certainty of the cogito. For him, the other is already present in the "first surging forth of existence"; the you is there in the initial situation from which any philosophical reflection begins. Thus, "the first ontological position is neither I existing nor you existing but the co-esse-the being-with-that engenders us simultaneously" (GMP 484/66). That is to say, in the affirmation of my existence, the existence of you is co-affirmed. The you is "not only before me, he is also within me-or, rather, these categories are transcended, they have no longer any meaning" (GMP 484/66; Marcel, "Ontological Mystery", 38). This is precisely what Marcel means by mystery, and that is why the co-esse is "the nonproblematic par excellence" (GMP 485/66).