A comprehensive and scholarly exploration of the personal and philosophical origins of André Gorz''s work, this book includes a unique analysis of his early untranslated texts, as well as critical discussion of his relationship to the work of Husserl, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Marx and Habermas. Reassessing pivotal notions such as the ''lifeworld'' and the ''subject'', it argues that Gorz has pioneered a person-centred social theory in which the motive and meaning of social critique is firmly rooted in people''s lived experience.