We are surrounded by darkness on all sides as we rush through our brief span of life toward inevitable death. The agonized question “Why?” that almost every man feels at some moment or other as he becomes conscious of his condition is quickly stifled by the cliché answers that society has available. Society provides us with religious systems and social rituals, ready-made, that relieve us of such questioning. The “world-taken-for-granted,” the social world that tells us that everything is quite okay, is the location of our inauthenticity.

What others regard as fate, he looks upon as a set of factors to reckon with in his operations. What others assume to be essential identity, he handles as a convenient disguise. In other words, “ecstasy” transforms one’s awareness of society in such a way that givenness becomes possibility.

I don’t feel that it is necessary to know exactly what I am. The main interest in life and work is to become someone else that you were not in the beginning. If you knew when you began a book what you would say at the end, do you think that you would have the courage to write it? What is true for writing and for a love relationship is true also for life. The game is worthwhile insofar as we don’t know what will be the end. My field is the history of thought. Man is a thinking being.

Time and time again reports and surveys indicate that children are under more pressure today than ever before. What these surveys actually mean is that children have become de-educated from being able to deal with difficult circumstances. To a considerable extent, children have been socialized to perceive pressure as a marker for a disease.