What is the Question? Toward a Comprehensive Existential Epistemological Theory-ما السؤال؟ تأسيس لنظرية معرفية وجودية شاملة

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Abstract (English)

This book presents a comprehensive philosophical project for founding an existential epistemological theory, starting from a central question: What is the Question? The book is divided into three main parts: a critical reflective reading of the nature of the question, a foundational essay redefining question, knowledge, and consciousness, and an appendix paving the way for the concepts of "Questionhood" and "Context Theory."

The author defines the question as a request for something from A to B, an existential relation that is not limited to humans but extends to inanimate objects, plants, and animals. The thirsty earth asks for rain, the tree asks for water and nourishment, and the stone asks for a place to be. Thus, the question becomes an existential act, the answer a reaction, and the relation between them dynamic.

The book offers a new definition of knowledge as the content of answers to meaningful questions, not monopolized by humans. It distinguishes degrees of knowledge and consciousness: creative knowledge (human), perceptual knowledge (animal), directive knowledge (plant), and submissive knowledge (inanimate). It links this to divine laws, making question and answer a relation between the being and God's laws.

The appendix introduces "Questionhood": studying the question as a proposition that can be correct or incorrect, not merely a tool for reaching an answer. A question is a compound structure of presupposition, target, and answer domain. It provides a criterion for the propositional correctness of questions and classifies types of error. It then links this to "Context Theory," where context is a comprehensive perceptual framework, and the question is a tool for dismantling and examining context.

The book concludes with a call for an existential epistemological theory, derived from the Quran, reason, and existence, opening new horizons in philosophy, logic, education, media, politics, and religion.