Is it possible to be a significant philosopher without emphasizing the importance of the question? ;-)

Socrates is one. His philosophy was that the best teachers don't actually need to tell their students anything; if students are asked the right question they will come to the conclusion themselves. These are also called Socratic Dialogues.

(What follows is a hurriedly written first draft, barely edited. However, some points in are well worth the effort to rewrite it into better form when my time permits. Meanwhile, let the points speak for themselves, however randomly presented...) Let us examine what we would mean by "the" question. Is "the" question intended to mean the overall asking of any and all Of questions on philosophical issues? If so, then allow me to submit that neither questions nor answers are, to themselves alone, meaningful. Let's take a look at why this is the case. Even among the foremost among respected scientists and philosophers of our time, there is healthy disagreement as to how questions should be caged, and how scientifically sound data (both empirical and philosophical) should be interpreted. And various interpretations lead to differences in what questions should be posed concerning them. The resultant disagreement is the very essence of good science. It grows out of different ways of looking at the same issues and the same evidence. And it leads to... still MORE questions... than have been posed up to any given date upon which the 'great debate' encompassing empirical science and metaphysical things (such as ethics) are responsibly contemplated. One brilliant scientist remarked (not having the exact words, I must paraphrase) that in science we can find simple answers to complex questions, but remain dumbfounded by the complexity of answers to the simplest questions... such as, "What is gravity, actually? What is the weak force? What was in place before the big bang, that made it bangable?" One thing, let us hope to agree, lies at the root of all scientific and philosophical inquiry, and that is this: To stop examining life, and the universe, and our place in them, by becoming entrenched in a dead-end eclectic of premises (assuming we are rational) or opinions (assuming we are not rational) is to die intellectually. Many seek from philosophy naught but final answers. Yet for each and every dead-end school of philosophy, and each dead-end eclectic that may be one's own, there are at least two schools of thought, equally valid, running contrary to it. It is easier to characterize all questions under the heading of "the" question. It is harder, however, to characterize all answers as "the" answer, for the simple reason that beyond some very complex specificities of variables assumed but unstated, such as "Am I alive?" lie no final answers as to what life means, how and where and when it originated, and such. And, the history of the search for answers is one marked by tentative models imagined-up -- often only by geniuses among us -- which models sooner or later run into new data revealing each model needs either tweaking or complete revamping. And, too, the answers eventually encounter paradoxes, such as that of the quantum view of change and motion in physics, versus the continuous one suggested by Newton. But only if philosophy were confined to Monday morning arm chair musings would questions, alone, be the stuff of philosophy. The questions merely lead us to seek on in search not of final answers but answers fitting ever more sophisticated examination both empirical and metaphysical. Only to the extent that we would describe that open-ended, open-minded search as deriving understanding from entertaining questions, could we say that the questions are "more important" than "the" answers. Questions do not answer themselves. And neither do we answer them. When we come right down to it, as we gather up empirical data and valid metaphysical abstractifications, we NOT ONLY must refine our models -- which are naught but BEST GUESSES as to how questions might be answered; we must ALSO refine our questions, which are naught but our best articulations of what we flatter ourselves to be our progressively better informed curiosity. To understand this, I submit, is to see that neither the articulations of our questions nor the articulations of our best-guesses, is based upon more than an underpinning of what data we may have access to on any given day. Neither deals with final wisdom, nor final data. We tend to view our theories, hypotheses, laws as progressing toward certainty. Yet each tentative answer in science and philosophy -- rather than narrowing down toward certainty -- instead EXPANDS our confrontation of the boundary of uncertainty that lies beyond. (Even as a balloon, in being blown up, has a larger and larger interior interface with what lies outside that balloon's surface.) If students all would come up with the SAME answers to a single set of questions which is the "right" set, we would need only to make a single reference book with all the "right" questions in it and present that to them, and send them home. But some of the brightest shining stars among the world's great minds have been those who have come up with new and different answers which vary from one to another. And if THEY disagree, then what chance do the rest of us have to come up with only one "right" answer. And even if there were only one set of "right" questions, to which there is only one set of singular "right" answers, whom would be pick to decide which questions are the "right" ones. (Keep in mind that even the world's foremost geniuses cannot even frame a question without first assuming a stance with regard to what to ask -- since questions are based upon interpretations and choices as to which were the preceding "right" questions and answers. A simple truth table demonstrates to us that an "answer" is true, provided all premises leading up to it are true. There are many premises (themselves merely proposed answers to prior questions) which we cannot prove to be "right" nor "wrong." We live in a world in which we can only choose eclectically what premises we shall CHOOSE to think by and live by (provided we have the personal integrity to be consistent in so living). And there is no way around that. But, at the same time, we do not all choose the same alternative premises, and therefore do not all arrive at the same stances, nor questions based upon them. Even teachers and textbook writers can be blind to the circumstance that they believe so strongly in some premises they have adopted -- that no other stances than their own are reasonable nor valid nor (shudder) "true." And to teach one's own personal pedagogical set of I-believes, and allow only such questions as would lead to those, and those alone, is not to educate, but to indoctrinate. In summary, no question is necessarily the "right" question, nor, even if it were... would all the "right" questions be answerable only by singular "right" answers. And even if both the "right" questions do exist, and only singular "right" answers do exist to each... then who in blazes, among us, is the one who can be certain what, among all other logically sound questions and answers (based upon humankinds varying interpretations of the "right" alternatives among unprovable premises) knows what the rest of us do not know. Finally, in full appreciation for a great laugh with the answerer above, who answered with a question, let me attempt an answer possibly not nearly as clever or entertaining, may nonetheless be provocative of some poignant constructive thought. That question is: In our evaluation of what would be the most important thing about philosophy, might we really be justified in saying that: THE QUESTION... IS THE ANSWER? (:>)

Voltaire is the first one that comes to mind. But musn't one put more emphasis on questions than answers to be a true philosopher?

Socrates was the first, but the entire history is based on asking questions about human existence and conditions