In a paper entitled "Modes of Givenness"¹, written in 1958 in honor of Professor Josef König of the University of Göttingen, J.N. Mohanty speaks of a "higher positivism", which he has upheld, in contrast to a "lower positivism", which he has criticized. Throughout his career, he has been primarily concerned with modes of givenness as well as with the given. So in this paper I shall be concerned with explicating critically Mohanty's standpoint in propounding a "higher positivism".