Abstract

Philosophers committed to the task of coming to grips with reality must face the fact that there are no final solutions and the need to question is fundamental to their project. Taking this as his point of departure Clark proposes that questioning is not confined to the philosopher; it marks every self that is confronted with a given empirical order. Before rendering an analysis of the experience of questioning which is the main thrust of this work, Clark outlines the situation of knowledge in which we find two prevailing viewpoints, the spectator approach, and the performative approach. In the former a subjectivism ensues when the knower passively receives the objects creating a solipsistic prison where the objects take residence precluding any response to the world. In this sense there is no appropriation of meanings as "mine." Clark maintains that this is not what occurs. The self does not merely stand against a world of objects, rather through his intentions he modifies the data conferring meaning on it and in doing so validates his own self. The performative account acknowledges the knower as an active constituting agent who not only intends the facts but uses them in his effort to become a self. A series of historical studies is presented examining these two viewpoints in such philosophers as Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Descartes, the empiricists, and finally ending with Kant who represents the synthesis of both perspectives. Using the Critiques as his source, Clark suggests that while the theoretical reason of Kant is a spectator approach, practical reason incorporates the performative account where the "I can" verifies the active self who is responsible for its realization. Kant’s endeavor to construct a transcendental analysis is seen by Clark as primarily an enterprise to set up the necessary conditions for knowledge which can be applied in the practical order. The self only questions for a reason, so that it "can" do something. The "I can" presupposes the "I know," but the "I know" presupposes the "I ask." Clark proposes his own transcendental analysis of questioning and asks what structures are necessary for the experience of questioning in general with total disregard for the content of that question. He attempts to show that the experience involves self discovery, for what is revealed will only be revealed through further self questioning which is always subject to modification. Questioning is a unique and personal response to a world in which I find myself and yet I intend the world, bestowing on it the meaning that is necessary for my fulfillment. There is an analogy between this transcendental analysis and Kant’s, although Clark is quick to point out that he has hesitations about Kant’s treatment of time and space which he has somewhat modified to serve as the necessary structures of the experience of questioning. Philosophy has been pregnant with analyses of the self primarily as a knowing agent and perhaps it is now time for a movement towards the direction that Clark is suggesting. This book may provide the stimulus for more thought on the self as a questioner.—K. R. M.