 “What defines man,” claims Marcel, “are his exigencies” (Marcel 1973, p. 34). Nevertheless, these exigencies can be smothered, perhaps even silenced, by despair. Such is the case in the example of the “functionalized” person. The broken world can smother transcendent exigencies, leaving only quotidian, functional needs intact. Ontological exigence, the need for transcendence, is linked to a certain dissatisfaction—one that is all the more troubling because one is unable to soothe this dissatisfaction by one’s own powers. However, without a feeling that something is amiss, without the feeling of dissatisfaction, ontological exigence withers. This is why the functional person, the person who no longer even notices that the world is broken, is described as having lost the awareness of the ontological and the need for transcendence. In the face of this potential despair, Marcel claims that: