"For Merleau-Ponty, human existence is first and foremost embodied existence. To exist is to be one's body; and this is to be a "body-subject," or a "sentient" subject·, and not the rational, autonomous consciousness so central to the Western tradition. But his concept of the body-subject does not presuppose, as some commentators have argued, our mysterious harmony with being. Rather it presupposes a paradoxical and ambiguous relationship, in which consciousness and materiality, subjectivity and the world of "things" are coextensive and co-constitutive. Such a relationship may be experienced as supportive and affirming of the self, but also as threatening and negating."