  Indeed, such is the metaphysical reach of human freedom that every attempt to disclose a portion of the world tends to aim for the disclosure of the “totality” of beings. This is because (as Husserl already insisted) the most partial or minute act of perception entails a reference to a broader horizon of future potential perceptions. Many existentialist writers have stressed this primordial, metaphysical function of the work of art as a partial revealing that aims to uncover the totality of Being. This idea is found, most notably, in Simone de Beauvoir’s defence of the metaphysical novel (de Beauvoir 1946, 1965, 73; see also, Merleau-Ponty’s reflections in his review of de Beauvoir’s first novel, 1945c).