Louis Lavelle, the French philosopher, was born in Saint-Martin-de-Villéréal, in southwestern France. He was professor of philosophy at the Sorbonne from 1932 to 1934 and at the Collège de France from 1941 until his death. In a time of reaction against speculative system-building, Lavelle boldly elaborated an extensive system combining elements of the French philosophie de l'esprit and existentialism. Convinced that the modern world needs basic security, Lavelle, like other existentialist thinkers, sought philosophical and moral certitude in the experience of the self, "pure inwardness," and "absolute existence." Unlike such philosophers as Jean-Paul Sartre, who "disintegrated" the human universe inherited from tradition, Lavelle, like Karl Jaspers and Karl Barth, attempted to "reintegrate" the basic experiences of humanity in a novel form. In his spiritualistic interpretation of the self Lavelle continued the French tradition of Nicolas Malebranche, Maine de Biran, Octave Hamelin, Henri Bergson, and...