The art of questioning

Abstract

In this article, I begin by pointing out professor Jón Torfi Jónasson’s criticism that discussions on education in recent times have been focused on the wrong things; on technical matters and not on the essential questions: What is education?, What is school?, What is the relationship between education and school? Instead of taking on Jónasson’s challange directly by pursuing these fundamental question, I approach the issue by indirect means. I focus on an issue that is not often discussed in relation to education and school: What are questions and why do they matter?

In my analysis, I make use of Hans-Georg Gadamer’s discussion on the hermeneutic priority of the question in his major work, Truth and Method. In Gadamer’s estimation, the essence of the question is that it has an epistemic priority, that is, the path of all knowledge leads through the question. When a question arises, it “breaks open the being of the object”; brings into the open that the thing in question is still undetermined. Questions always bring out the undetermined possibilities of a thing. Furthermore, all questioning involves a desire to know, which presupposes a knowledge that one does not already know. Thus, opinions are the enemy of questioning, as they lead to fixity and tend to close the mind off from an open encounter with things in the world. Questions are an orientation toward an area of openness. The art of seeking truth is the art of questioning, and questioning ever further. This is the art of preventing questions from being suppressed by the dominant opinion. It is also at the heart of thought as an activity of the mind. A person who thinks must ask herself questions.

I bring further out the nature of the question by discussing Leon Kass’ comparison between a question and a problem. Kass points out that the etymology og the word problem comes from the Greek word problema which means “something thrown out before” us. A problem is thus a challenging obstacle which we seek to get out of our way or eliminate. It calls for a narrow, focused attention which can lead us to a solution but seldom carries us beyond the original problem as given. The word question, on the other hand, derives from the latin quaeso which means “to hunt out”. To question is thus to quest, to search out and to seek after, to be engaged in passionate pursuit. As Kass points out, this means that an answer to questions does not dissolve the quest, or at least does not abolish the desire. Furthermore, a question often leads beyond the terms in which it was first posed.

After discussing these and other general considerations regarding the nature of the question, I turn to an example to show what asking “Socratic” questions in the above sense can mean in a persons life. The example is from a book by Jonathan Lear, A Case for Irony, and concerns a teacher who is struck by an ironic experience in the guise of questions such as: “What has what I am doing as a teacher to do with teaching?; What is teaching?; What is education?; Of all teachers is there a teacher?” I show how deep questions of this sort illustrate both the nature of genuine questions and what difference it can make in a person’s life to take them seriously and respond well to them.

Finally, I connect my discussion on the meaning and importance of questions with the concept of attention in the thought of the french philosopher Simone Weil. I claim that attention, like a question, calls for virtues like patience and forbearance; the ablility to wait until the right answer shows itself. Ultimately questioning, like attending, has to do with the difficult realization that others exist like I exist.