PHILOSOPHERS in this country have, on the whole, been reluctant to take very seriously the so-called "Existentialist" writers in France at the present time. No doubt the fact that these writers and particularly the leader of the school, Jean-Paul Sartre, have been identified in the popular mind with a rather bizarre literary movement has been responsible for the general feeling that professional philosophers are under no obligation to acquaint themselves with the views held by these philosopher de cafe. It is not surprising, therefore, that in the midst of this general neglect little, if any, attention has been paid to the fact that Existentialism, or at least the variant of that doctrine represented by Sartre and his colleague, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, has developed into a social and political philosophy of considerable interest. In the form in which it first became generally known, Existentialism seemed mainly concerned to depict, by means of a highly technical analysis of consciousness and conscious existence, the absurdity of man's situation as an active being confronting a world in which no over-all rational pattern could be found and nevertheless obliged by his ontological structure to choose and to act in the absence of any general principle to guide his choice other than just this fact itself of being free. This emphasis on absurdity and on the nausea that the experience of existence is said to inspire caused Existentialism to be denounced as a philosophy of despair that cut off all possibility of meaningful human action. During the war, however, both Sartre and Merleau-Ponty were apparently rather closely associated with the Resistance movement, and in the course of this experience their general philosophical views acquired distinct political implications. The situation of the French under the German occupation was simply the general human predicament, delineated in the starkest and most extreme terms; and the choice many of them made to face death and torture was a dramatic illustration of the freedom that Sartre regarded as central to human nature. Nevertheless, the ability to say No is not a sufficient foundation for a social philosophy, and the political extremes, right and left, were vociferous in their denunciation of a freedom that proved so utterly sterile and meaningless. Apparently these criticisms struck a sensitive spot, particularly when they were made by the Communists, whom MerleauPonty and Sartre had come to regard as comrades-in-arms during the war. Their standard charge was that Existentialism was a kind of philosophical last gasp of a class, the bourgeoisie, that stood condemned by history. The Existentialist view of consciousness simply reflected the isolation and hopelessness of an exploitative class that had reached the end of its rope. Sartre, in particular, has been anxious to show that these charges are unfounded and that Existentialism is also a "humanism." And, to develop the positive and activistic implications of his original position, he has attempted something very remarkable and on the face of it impossible, that is, the incorporation into his system of large chunks of the Marxist philosophy from which his critics on the left had drawn their arguments. The thing appears impossible because Existentialism, if it is anything, is a philosophy which holds that the individual is defined or defines himself solely through the free choices he makes. It follows that any attempt to assimilate man