Ian asked:

What is a philosophical question (what would necessarily never be either a philosopheme or a
rogatory thereto?) What theorist first distinguished philosophy and/or its questionable referent from
any other judgment? What school of philosophy holds that proper question (rather than response?) is
the first order apophatic to logic? Within ethnophilosophy or anthropology of thought are there any
studies about the importance of question in the community maieutic (as in Maori?).

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What would be a genuine philosophical question? That is as difficult as asking, What is philosophy? I
don't know of a satisfactory general answer. I would simply give examples: 'This and this is a
philosophical question, but not that.' Socrates, who was always demanding general definitions of
concepts, would not have approved. But Socrates didn't know everything.

The Presocratic philosopher Thales is said to be the first 'philosopher', but from the evidence, he and
his immediate successors did not distinguish between physics and philosophy. Aristotle, however, in
his 'Metaphysics' defines 'first philosophy' as the study of being qua being. In doing so, however,
Aristotle was following the example of the Presocratic philosopher Parmenides, who called the
theories of the Greek 'physikoi' - including his own physical theory - the 'Way of Opinion', by contrast
with the 'Way of Truth' which consists of the logical consequences of the proposition, 'It is'. - But
metaphysics is only part of philosophy, not the whole of it.

The British philosopher R.G. Collingwood, in his 'Essay on Metaphysics' and 'Autobiography'
describes a fascinating theory which defines truth as an answer to a question. A question always has
presuppositions, some of which can vary with historical circumstances. Although condemned by other
philosophers as excessively historicist, I think that Collingwood's theory of questions and
presuppositions has a lot going for it.

I am unable to answer your fourth question. It is news to me that 'the question' has special
importance in Maori society.

Geoffrey Klempner