On the phenomenon of questioning

pp. 233-242

in: Burt C. Hopkins (ed), Phenomenology, Berlin, Springer, 1999

Abstract

What is a question? This is in itself a curious question. How can we begin to investigate what a question is except through questioning? While I do not want to get entangled in a paradoxical trap, the question of what a question is is important to an understanding of what really occurs in the act of asking a question. Let us modify the question as follows: What does questioning itself reveal, what is actually occurring at the time a question is being asked? This paper aims at phenomenologically and hermeneutically disclosing what questioning is and how it functions.