"Author's works cited": p. 173-174.

Introduction -- Participation -- Existence -- Fidelity -- The Ontological Mystery -- The Self and Ambiguity -- Human Dignity -- Morality, Hope, and Freedom -- The Threat to Integrity -- Author's Works Cited -- Index

As a philosopher and playwright, Gabriel Marcel has concerned himself with the fundamental problems of man's existence in today's painful world. Writing in an intimate and personal vein, a man who has been called öne of the great minds of the Existentialist movement" here offers a retrospective account of the development of his thought. He describes the stultifying intellectual environment of his youth, effect upon him of his mother's death, the shaping influence of his father and stepmother, his education, his feelings about religion, and the impact of his deep love of music. Stressing his devotion to the drama, he shows that his plays have had crucial role in his growing understanding of man's nature. M. Marcel's "philosophic itinerary"reveals how and why human problems gradually came to replace the purely speculative questions which first preoccupied him. Of special interest to him now is the part which circumstance and personal encounters may play in determining the destiny of an individual. Drawing on his plays to illustrate the meaning of his philosophical themes, he discusses the ambiguity of possession, his early critique of idealism, and his later concepts of participation, intersubjectivity, presence, and creative fidelity. He insists that the true philosopher must never regard his views as final, but must retain the child's ability to wonder and to marvel. This book, presented originally as the William James Lectures at Harvard, embodies M. Marcel's conviction that the philosopher has a special responsibility to restores the image of a man to its true dignity, to revive an appreciation of integrity, fraternity, and freedom, and to save man from contamination by a specious equality.