Abstract

Some sort of resistant, some kind of "given" with which the "Self" must struggle, is lurking in each of these suggestions. A quick survey of them seems to suggest that at least four categories of "givens" must be taken into account in the struggle of self-realization. 1) There is a primordial level of "givenness," consisting of the fixed structures of our "nature" and of those of our inherited temperament; 2) there is all that is subsequently, historically acquired--cultural habits, dispositions, and conceptions; 3) there is the style, built-up of our whole personal past unified by our fundamental projections; 4) finally, there is a kind of given that is unqualifiedly "other," that is entirely outside of me: the other people, the institutions, and the things encountered in my situation.