Metaquestions: The Space of Thought in Philosophy and Beyond

This book-length project is tentatively titled Metaquestions: The Space of Thought in Philosophy and Beyond. The nature and process of questioning has been taken for granted as a core aspect of philosophy, but there are very different discourses and uses of questions within sub-areas of philosophy (not to mention even more variation in related disciplines, and in areas outside of Western philosophy). The goal of this book will be to outline the different ways that philosophy has understood questions and questioning, make clear how they relate to each other or affect each other, and leverage this inquiry to question philosophy’s own methods of knowledge production. The book will consider the diverse uses of questions, their function as disruptive elements in spaces of thought, and the exchanges between philosophy and other disciplines and practices of questioning. Ultimately, we will ask how questioning in philosophy must change if we take seriously our cognitive existence as embodied, embedded, extended, and enactive beings. Philosophical questioning then reorients towards living well together in a complex world where even philosophy must deal with reality’s emergent phenomena. We already see this in African philosophy, pragmatism, and other traditions of thought.