Splendid,drilling and collective approach to the subject of Despair and Anxiety. I found it insightful.
Fear and desire are anticipatory and focused respectively on the object of fear or desire. To desire is “to desire that X” and to fear is “to fear that X.” Optimism exists in the domain of fear and desire because it imagines and anticipates a favorable outcome. However, the essence of hope is not “to hope that X”, but merely “to hope…” The person who hopes does not accept the current situation as final; however, neither does she imagine or anticipate the circumstance that would deliver her from her plight, rather she merely hopes for deliverance. The more hope transcends any anticipation of the form that deliverance would take, the less it is open to the objection that, in many cases, the hoped-for deliverance does not take place. If I desire that my disease be cured by a given surgical procedure, it is very possible that my desire might be thwarted. However, if I simply maintain myself in hope, no specific event (or absence of event) need shake me from this hope."
I found some of Marcel's ideas really exciting :
"However, the “failure” of the other to conform to my hopes is not necessarily the fault of the other. My disappointment or injury is frequently the result of my having assigned some definite, determinate quality to the other person or defined her in terms of characteristics that, it turns out, she does not possess. However, by what right do I assign this characteristic to her, and by what right do I judge her to be wanting? Such a judgment drastically oversteps—or perhaps falls short of—the bounds ofdisponibilité. In doing so, it demonstrates clearly that I, from the outset, was engaged in a relationship to my idea of the other—which has proved to be wrong—rather than with the other herself. That is to say that this encounter was not with the other, but with myself. If I am injured by the failure of the other to conform to an idea that I had of her, this is not indicative of a defect in the other; it is the result of my inappropriate attempt to determine her by insisting that she conform to my idea. When I begin to doubt my commitment to another person, the vulnerability of my “belief in X” to these doubts is directly proportional to the residue of opinion still in it" Marcel 1964
Marcel draws a sharp distinction between opinion and belief. Opinion always concerns that which we do not know, that with which we are not familiar. It exists in a position between impression and affirmation. It is often the case that opinions have a “false” basis, which is most clear in case of stereotypes and prejudices (“everybody knows that…”). Furthermore, opinions are invariably “external” to the things to which they refer. I have an opinion about something only when I disengage myself from it and hold it at “arm's length.” Nevertheless, we hold or maintain these opinions in front of others, and given the elusive foundations on which these opinions are based, it is easy to see how an opinion slides slowly from an impression we have to a claim that we make. This transition invariably takes place as part of an absence of reflection on the given subject and the entrenchment of the opinion due to repetition. Our opinions are often “unshakable” precisely because of the lack of reflection associated with them.
While opinions are unreflective and external, convictions—which are more akin to belief than opinion—are the result of extensive reflection and invariably concern things to which one feels closely tied. Like opinions that have entrenched themselves to the point of becoming actual claims, convictions are felt to be definitive, beyond modification. However, when I claim that nothing can change my conviction, I must either affirm that I have already anticipated all possible future scenarios and no possible event can change my conviction, or affirm that whatever events do occur—anticipated or unanticipated—they will not shake my conviction. The first possibility is impossible. The second possibility is based on a decision, a decision to remain constant whatever may come. However, upon reflection such a decision seems as over-confidant as the claim to have anticipated the future. By what right can I affirm that my inner conviction will not change in any circumstance? To do so is to imply that, in the future, I will cease to reflect on my conviction. It seems that all I am able to say is that my conviction is such that, at the present moment, I cannot imagine an alteration in it.
Belief is akin to conviction; it is, however, distinguished by its object. Marcel insists in many places that proper use of the term “belief” applies not to things “that” we believe, but to things “in which” we believe. Belief is not “belief that…” but is “belief in…” Belief that might be better characterized as a conviction rather than a belief; however, to believe in something is to extend credit to it, to place something at the disposal of that in which we believe. The notion of credit placed at the disposal of the other is another way of speaking about disponibilité. “I am in no way separable from that which I place at the disposal of this X… Actually, the credit I extend is, in a way, myself. I lend myself to X. We should note at once that this is an essentially mysterious act” (Marcel 1951a, p. 134). This is what distinguishes conviction from belief. Conviction refers to the X, takes a position with regard to X, but does not bind itself to X. While I have an opinion, I am a belief—for belief changes the way I am in the world, changes my being. We can now see how belief refers to the other, and how it is connected to disponibilité: belief always applies to “personal or supra-personal reality” (Marcel 1951a, p. 135). It always involves a thou to whom I extend credit—a credit that puts myself at the disposal of the thou—and thus arises the problem of fidelity
reference : plato.stamford.edu
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