Gabriel Marcel on the Relation between Having and Being

According to Gabriel Marcel, humans have two kinds of relationship with the existence: “being” and “having”; that make fundamental differences in understanding the world. “Having” is used for referring to, e.g., “having an idea” and even ones’ own ideas, describing them in a concrete manner. In “having”, we are dealing with “primary thought” and an “I” and a “he” relation, which Marcel puts it against “I” and “thou” relation. In the latter, we are dealing with “being”. Meeting someone who is known as “he” means that we have relationship with him in such a way that he, as an object, is separate from us; the case is different when we meet someone as “thou”. In this relationship, we deal with “secondary thought” and it can be understood through participation and our living experience. Love, hope, fidelity and availability are categorized under “being” which is manifested in the existence of human. At the same time, these two kinds of existence are connected to each other: “being” and “having” are two levels of existence; "being" shows itself in different methods and “having” is the manifestation of “being”. In the modern age, the realm of “having” has been expanded and Marcel proposed two kinds of existence to return the expansion of the realm of “being”, i.e. human authentic experience. In this article the important question is: what is the relation between “having” and “being”? To answer this question, at first we should describe “having” and “being”.