 Thus, ontological exigence is a need and a demand for some level of coherence in the cosmos and for some understanding of our place and role within this coherence. It is the combination of wonder and the attendant desire, not to understand the entire cosmos, but to understand something of one’s own place in  it.[4]  Note that, for Marcel, ontological exigence is not merely a “wish” for being or coherence, but is an “interior urge” or “appeal.” “Otherwise stated, the [ontological] exigence is not reducible to some psychological state, mood, or attitude a person has; it is rather a movement of the human spirit that is inseparable from being human” (Keen 1984, p. 105).