Eleanor asked:

I'm a philosophy student in Poland. I just want to know what is the first philosophical question? Who is
that philosopher?

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Let me begin first, since this is a question about beginnings, about how to begin, and about the
possibility of being to late to begin, by pointing out an ambiguity in the question "What is the first
philosophical question?"

We can distinguish at least two readings chronological and logical: "What is the question that first
leads us on the path (way) to our philosophical endeavours?" and "What is the proper starting point
for our philosophical inquires?"

These two questions may give different answers, the first question provides as many varied answers,
as there are philosophers, examples are: "Why am I me and not someone else?" "Do I have a soul?",
"What happens when I die?", "Why is there a world", "Do I see the same red door as everyone else?"
"Does the world really exist or is this all a dream?" My own view is that philosophy begins, we start to
ask philosophical questions, when we witness or become involved in loss of equilibrium between our
own self and the world, between the particular and the universal. That is, when an event occurs that
shows a discrepancy between me and the rest of the universe we ask questions like the ones above.
Philosophy starts in the strange space that is the intersection and gap between me and the world.

These may be the first question we ask, but they are not first in the logical sense, where first is
understood as prior, original, foundational and structuring, in this case the chronologically first
questions we ask would lead us (later) to the 'ultimate questions', the first philosophy, upon which the
rest are built or derived.

Philosophy has always been (at the first) concerned with this discovery of origins, of this original
base: "Philosophy is the courage to get to the final ground, the ultimate reason for all and
everything...Philosophy is first philosophy in the double sense that it seeks the ground, foundation
origin, arch', and then it anchors grounds, founds, everything upon that origin" (Cohen: Elevations
150).

What then is the first philosophy, what is the proper starting point and ultimate ground for philosophy?

You may not be surprised to learn that depending on who we read we find a different answer,
however one common staring point has been the realisation that things exist, not just things as such,
but that there is existence. Being is at the origin of what can be investigated. Ontology (the study of
being) is first philosophy (in both of the sense described above). This preoccupation with being has in
various guises been predominant in the history of philosophy, from Aristotle to Heidegger.
[Importantly, I should point out that Aristotle was not the first philosopher. It may be impossible to ever
uncover the origins of philosophy since many records, and documents have been lost, generally
however, people like Thales, Anaximander and Anaximenes, the pre-Socratics are called the First
Philosophers, There are a number of source books available of there works, there is also a Pathways
programme dealing with these thinkers.] According to Adorno however Aristotle was the first to
investigate the intersection I mentioned earlier between me and the world. See Adorno's
Metaphysics: Concept and Problems.

Not everyone is satisfied with this prior-ity accorded to Being; for some God is the proper starting
point of philosophy for others it is Ethics. Others think that Philosophy begins and ends [its an
interesting question whether and where philosophy should end, can we make a similar distinction
between chronological and logical orders here?] with the study of language.

Recently, post-modernist thinkers have questioned the very idea of a starting point a ground a
foundation, maybe they have realised that one always comes along too late to uncover any origin, we
just start with what we already have.

Brian Tee

The first ever philosophical question comes down to us as a proposition: 'The basic stuff and the
origins of everything are in water'. Behind that proposition we have to guess at the question, which is
not difficult — for instance: 'If we choose not to believe that there are gods who made everything, can
we find an underlying order or substance of which everything in the world is made?' The thinker
responsible for this train of thought was a Greek named Thales, who lived around 600 BC; his
'agenda' was subsequently adopted by many other Greek philosophers and can be said never to
have come to rest. Although much knowledge has been acquired since, and it is now evident that
water is not the basic stuff of the universe, nevertheless it was such a provocative idea that even
today we are still looking for something to fill the bill — in this respect we are still the children of
Thales.

Jürgen Lawrenz

Sydney