On Disponsibilité

Thanks to Robert Cunningham for calling my attention to Martin Marty's Commencement Address at Eastern Mennonite University. Speaking about the French philosopher Gabriel Marcel's idea of disponsibilité, Marty gives one of the best explanations of the term that I've seen in print. Here it is:

A Marcel scholar (Seymour Cain) says that it is easiest to define disponibilité by looking at its opposites: "unavailability," "a holding-back, self-adherence, closed-in-ness," Kierkegaard's Indesluttedhed (in Danish), or "shut-in-ness." The "disposable" person opens freely and gives herself unreservedly in a mutuality of presence, "the indisposable person is self-preoccupied, encumbered, self-enclosed, incapable of giving himself, of opening up, of giving out. If he listens to me, he gives me only his ear, the outward attitude, but he refuses me himself, for he cannot 'make room' for anyone else in himself."

Being available is thus not only a habit of expression but a deep focus on personal philosophy. It is not only a matter of psychology or bodily posture, but of the spiritual life. Marcel sometimes used a kind of economic metaphor, "opening a line of credit" for someone else. "I put myself at the disposal of, or again I make a fundamental engagement which bears not only on what I have, but on what I am." You give credit to another, and you are giving a gift to yourself. Marcel: "To be unavailable is to be in some manner, not only occupied, but encumbered by the self."

A theological or ethical dimension appears: Marcel speaks of "self-presence:" "the portion of creation which is in me, the gift which from all eternity has been given me of participating in the universal drama, of working, for example, to humanize the Earth, or on the contrary to make it more uninhabitable." And "from the very beginning there must be a sense of stewardship: something has been entrusted to us," and we are responsible to the Giver of the trust, the "Other," God. What is the whole drama of God visiting the world in Israel and the prophets and, finally, in the divine Son, in the life and death and resurrection of a Jesus who "condescends" and is a "com-presence," a shaper of community, available to us and through us, in prayer and work.

In three brief paragraphs Marty has provided a very good introduction to a key idea in the thought of a very neglected and overlooked philosopher, Gabriel Marcel. For those interested in learning more, here's a link to the best book from which to understand Marcel's thought, Creative Fidelity.