“The notion that we live in a broken world is used—along with the person who is characteristic of the broken world, the functionalized person—to segue into one of Marcel’s central thematic distinctions: the distinction between problem and mystery. He states that the broken world is one that is “on the one hand, riddled with problems and, on the other, determined to allow no room for mystery” (Marcel 1995, p. 12). The denial of the mysterious is symptomatic of the modern broken world and is tied to its technical character, which only acknowledges that which technique can address: the problematic. The distinction between problem and mystery is one that hinges, like much of Marcel’s thought, on the notion of participation.
A problem is something which I meet, which I find completely before me, but which I can therefore lay siege to and reduce. But a mystery is something in which I am myself involved, and it can therefore only be thought of as a sphere where the distinction between what is in me and what is before me loses its meaning and initial validity. (Marcel 1949, p. 117)«”
—SEP, Brian Treanor