ABSTRACT
Coercion is an experience that is primarily associated with the human condition of being-in-space. As such, the discussion of coercion as it appears in political and social affairs may be conducted best in the context of the polarity between restraint and release that forms the background of human activities in their spatial aspect. At any moment of human existence neither restraint nor release is absent, though attention may be fixed more on one of the conditions than on the other. It is perhaps impossible even to conceive of a situation in which restraint played no part. A situation of complete release might be described fancifully as the condition of having all of one’s plans fulfilled in action immediately as they appeared. No conflicts between plans, precipitating the pain of deliberation, would be possible in this case; and there would certainly be no tragedies in which one had to sacrifice a cherished value so that 64he could attain another. The situation of complete release would nullify the problematic character of human existence, of which the polarity between release and restraint is merely an expression.
