Contains essays from the philospher's most creative period, 1945-1949 including his immediate post-war reflections on collaboration, resistance and liberation, reflections on his trip to the United States January-May 1945, a philosophical exposition on the failings pf philosophical materialism, a focus on the new revolutionary poetry of'Negritude' in the famous long essay 'Black Orpheus' and meditations on the visual artswith illuminationg essays on the work of Alberto Giacometti and Alexander Calder.