Questions. Pia Lauritzen

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      Questions

      PIA LAURITZEN

      RE

      FLEC

      TI

      ON

      S

       QUESTIONS

      © Pia Lauritzen and Aarhus University Press 2018

      Layout and cover: Camilla Jørgensen, Trefold

      Cover photograph: Poul Ib Henriksen

      Publishing editor: Søren Mogensen Larsen

      Translated from the Danish by David Possen

      Language editor: Heidi Flegal

      This book is typeset in Dante and Gotham and printed on Munken Premium Cream

      Ebook production: Narayana Press, Gylling, Denmark

      ISBN 978 87 7184 631 7

      Part of the Reflections series from Aarhus University Press

      

      Aarhus University Press

      Finlandsgade 29

      DK-8200 Aarhus N

      Denmark

       www.unipress.dk

      Published with the financial support of the

      CARLSBERG FOUNDATION

      International distributors:

      Oxbow Books Ltd.

       www.oxbowbooks.com

      ISD

       www.isdistribution.com

      CONTENTS

       Title

       Colophon

       CALLING QUESTIONS INTO QUESTION?

       “MAY I ASK YOU SOMETHING?”

       DOING WHAT COMES NATURALLY

       QUESTION — QUEST — TRUTH

       THE PARADOX OF THE QUESTION

       THE FIRST QUESTION

       AN ANCIENT INVENTION

       WE ARE ALL SINNERS

       QUESTIONS PRECIPITATE THE FALL

       QUESTIONS MEAN RESPONS(IBILITI)ES

       EVERYTHING UNDER THE SUN

       BLIND SPOTS IN WESTERN THINKING

       A QUESTION OF CULTURE

       MAN’S INNATE POTENTIAL

       THE HISTORY OF THE QUESTION

       QUESTIONS WITHOUT ANSWERS

       THE THREE BIG E’S

       THE HISTORY OF THE QUESTION

       NEW QUESTIONS, NEW METHODS

       THE QUESTION AND HUMAN FREEDOM

       QUESTIONS AND BEING HUMAN

       A QUESTION OF TIMING

       WHO — WHAT — WHERE — WHY?

       QUESTIONS, FLESH AND BLOOD

       WHY THIS? WHY THAT? WHY NOT?

       FEAR OF ‘ASKING ANDY’

       THE STRUCTURE OF THE QUESTION

       THE ART OF ASKING

       THE QUESTIONER IS IN CHARGE

       QUESTIONS AND LANGUAGE

       THE QUESTIONING MIND

       A RUSSIAN-MINDED QUESTION?

       BETWEEN NORMS AND CURIOSITY

CALLING QUESTIONS INTO QUESTION?

      “MAY I ASK YOU SOMETHING?”

      This line opens many a short conversation, and it is also a fitting opening for a short book like this. The question “May I ask you something?” seldom prompts more than a one-word response, and there’s a reason for that: It’s a question that forecloses the issue at hand before even managing to raise it.

      The issue at hand is whether or not we may ask a question. But in asking whether we may ask or not, we’ve already embarked on asking. We’ve already presumed that the answer is “Yes.” Which is why we sometimes don’t even wait for our question to be answered before moving on to our next question, our real question: “Which way is Main Street?” or “Do you have this in size 10?”

      Some philosophers hold that the question “May I ask you something?” isn’t really a question at all, since it doesn’t permit multiple answers, but instead presupposes one specific, predefined answer. Some philosophers hold the opposite: that it’s in the nature of questions to foreclose the