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In this volume we find a scholarly synthesis of the phenomenological philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, an important figure in existentialist thinking. The author, who is an associate professor of philosophy at Seton Hall University, has painstakingly reviewed not only those basic nonpolitical contributions of Merleau-Ponty which are now available in English, but also has condensed an impressive amount of other material by Merleau-Ponty and comment on his work, which has been published only in French. Dr. Barral is most considerate of the reader who is not familiar with existentialism, when she includes an historical introductory chapter and two brief appendices, in which she clarifies the terms and the concepts of Merleau-Ponty's existential phenomenology. In addition, she gives a quite full index, bibliography and footnotes, designed for the scholar but useful to the student or the intellectually curious.
The world, in the eyes of existentialists, is a schema of conscious and subjective experiences, or as Merleau-Ponty puts it, “The world may be defined as the intersection of the experiences of man.” (p. 28) Secondly, in existentialism, existence is the condition of man in his facticity. (Facticity—a little used word—means unnaturalness which has been laboriously created.) The existential condition of man is characterized by consciousness of self, and a sense of responsibility which is derived from die realization of human contingency and solidarity with