Reflections on Job’s and Hopkins’ Question

Abstract

A question is revealing: it not only asks for information, but often also discloses what is going on in the mind of the questioner. From the questions that are being posed we are given some insight into the questioner’s thoughts. This is even more true if we pay attention to the very way the questions are phrased.¹ A question, furthermore, sometimes shows up the questioner’s prior knowledge of what he or she is asking about. Hence, there can really be no ‘stupid’ question, only perhaps an idle one, for a question bears within it an implicit answer, no matter how vague it may be when the question is asked. For if the questioner had no knowledge at all of the answer, he or she would not have been able to raise the question in the first place. To ask ‘Why?’ for instance, presupposes a knowledge of an observed fact, that something is, so that the question ‘why?’ is really a progression, an explicitation.²