We have seen that our experience of "presence" precludes our being causally connected to our body, world or society; hence we have already undercut determinism and taken our stand on the side of freedom. But how are we to describe this freedom? At first glance it would seem that we have unwittingly committed ourselves to the Sartrian view of freedom articulated in Being and Nothingness. Sartre's account rejects the transcendental ego in favour of a non-coinciding, situated, temporalizing subjectivity which has a body and finds itself engaged with others "in an already meaningful world". This being-in-the-world involves contingency, ambiguity and objective limits.¹ Nevertheless, Sartre's position is fundamentally at odds with that of Merleau-Ponty, since the Sartrian subject is an absolute freedom confronting others in a situation of inevitable and inescapable alienation.² Not surprisingly, therefore, Merleau-Ponty's chapter on freedom comprises an extensive critique of Sartre's position.