Questions. Pia LauritzenЧитать онлайн книгу.
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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
Published with the financial support of the
CARLSBERG FOUNDATION
International distributors:
Oxbow Books Ltd.
ISD
CONTENTS
CALLING QUESTIONS INTO QUESTION?
“MAY I ASK YOU SOMETHING?”
AN ANCIENT INVENTION
QUESTIONS PRECIPITATE THE FALL
QUESTIONS MEAN RESPONS(IBILITI)ES
BLIND SPOTS IN WESTERN THINKING
QUESTIONS WITHOUT ANSWERS
THE QUESTION AND HUMAN FREEDOM
A QUESTION OF TIMING
THE ART OF ASKING
THE QUESTIONING MIND
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