Existential experience infers human awareness of the self and of
otherness. It calls for a recognition of each man as existing singularly
in-his-situation and struggling and striving with his fellows for
survival and becoming, for confirmation of his existence and
understanding of its meaning.
Martin Buber, philosophical anthropologist and rabbi, expressed artfully
this uniqueness, struggle, and potential of each man. He said:
"Sent forth from the natural domain of species into the hazard
of the solitary category, [man] surrounded by the air of a
chaos which came into being with him, secretly and bashfully he
watches for a Yes which allows him to be and which can come to
him only from one human person to another."[1]
With such uniqueness of each human being as a given, an assumed fact,
only each person can describe or choose the evolvement of the project
which is himself-in-his situation. This awesome and lonely human
capacity for choice and novel evolvement presents both hope and fear as
regards the unfolding of human "moreness." Uniqueness is a universal
capacity of the human species. So, "all-at-once," while each man is
unique; paradoxically, he is also like his fellows. His very uniqueness
is a characteristic of his commonality with all other men.