  The ‘optimistic’ ontologies, like those of Marcel or Merleau-Ponty, see the world as being on the whole a welcoming place for human knowledge and action. Marcel, despite his critical analyses of what he sees as the ills of modern society, is the most optimistic of all, mainly due to the theological grounding of his ontology. Ultimately there is no gap for him between the yearning for full participation in the world (including in God) and the world itself, since we owe our very existence and capacity for participation to the ultimate origin of this world. As he writes in his diary: “Knowledge is within being, enfolded by it” (1935, 115). Although Merleau-Ponty does not share this theological conviction, he agrees with Marcel on a crucial point: our incarnation in the world through our bodies is the fundamental beginning of our learning to inhabit the world meaningfully. As a result of our being both in and of the world through our bodies, Merleau-Ponty believes that on the whole our presentations of the world reveal objective features of it.