The Question Itself

Philosophy has long asked questions, but it has failed to ask the question-itself. Across the tradition, one thing becomes clear, the question has been treated as a tool, a method, or a path towards truth or knowledge. In each of these cases, questioning is subordinated into mere answerability. I argue that such treatments of the question overlook a more originary distinction between the question-itself and the answerstructures built in response to it. What must be first in philosophy is not an answer, doctrine or method, but rather the question-itself. If every answer becomes the site of renewed questioning then no answer-structure can satiate the role of first philosophy. The task of first philosophy must therefore be re-examined around the question-itself rather than around the late answers that philosophy has mistaken for first.