Acknowledgements Abbreviations 1. Existentialism and its heritage 2. Heidegger and the existential analytic 3. Condemned to freedom: Sartre's phenomenological ontology 4. Sartre: hell is other people 5. Merleau-Ponty and the body 6. De Beauvoir: feminism and existential ethics 7. The legacy of existentialism: deconstruction, responsibility and the time of the decision Questions for discussion and revision Further reading and references Chronology Index

Understanding Existentialism provides an accessible introduction to existentialism by examining the major themes in the work of Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty and de Beauvoir