An investigation of two divergent yet related philosophical movements: phenomenology, from the later Husserl through Sartre and Heidegger to Merleau-Ponty; and structuralism, from Saussure through Levi-Strauss and Lacan to Barthes. This reading of the tradition culminates in an assessment of Derrida and Foucault. From this foundation, Silverman develops his own philosophical position in the context of semiotics, hermeneutics, and deconstruction, and establishes the conditions for a theory of textuality.