This is based on an observation and analysis of Dasein ("being-there"), human being, investigating the fundamental structure of the Lebenswelt (lifeworld, Husserl's term) underlying all so-called regional ontologies of the special sciences.
[citation needed] Most existentialist phenomenologists were concerned with how people are constituted by their experiences and yet how they are also free in some respect to modify both themselves and the greater world in which they live.
[4] In her work The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir explored how greatly norms of gender shape the very sense of self that women have, in distinction from men.
Besides Heidegger, other existential phenomenologists were Max Scheler, Wilhelmus Luijpen, Hannah Arendt, Karl Jaspers, Emmanuel Levinas, Gabriel Marcel, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Edith Stein, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Enzo Paci [it] and Samuel Todes.
The influences of the phenomenological theorist Roman Ingarden, the early-phase (existentialist) Martin Heidegger, and of Mikel Dufrenne receive a treatment over 100 pages long all-told.
of Magliola's book features on its back cover very strong endorsements from Robert Scholes, Eugene Kaelin, Monroe Beardsley and Ralph Freedman.