§1. Introduction

1<2> Misunderstandings that arise between reader and author may have a twofold reason: (1) the reader is incapable of following the author’s train of thought; (2) he is unable to do so because (which may be connected with the first) the author does not convey clearly and unambiguously the content [Inhalt]1 of the issues that comprise the origin and theme of his work.2

2Meanwhile, a clear and unambiguous formulation of the questions to which answers are sought is much more important for the very conduct of the inquiry than for understanding the already completed work. Questions, too, like judgments, can be appropriate or inappropriate, ambiguous or unambiguous, clear or unclear. As the question, however – so the answers. Moreover, questions, though merely “questions”, frequently presuppose a great deal by means of their content about the objects to which they pertain. Every question originates not only on the basis of some familiarity – be it ever so rudimentary – with the pertinent object, and from an awareness of being ignorant about some of its other aspects, but it contains in its very content (implicite or explicite) a body of knowledge about the objects against the background of which the problem that comprises the object of the question is occurs. Accordingly, the question itself may contain a faulty conception of the relevant object, and lead to entirely false conclusions as a result; it may give rise to a variety of fictitious difficulties that can only be eliminated by revising the question; it may guide an entire investigation onto wholly errant paths, and in this manner stifle the evolution of the respective science for a long time to come.

3We would like to develop this claim in somewhat greater detail. To that end, however, we need some information concerning the basic properties of the question as such.

§2. The Question and Its Object

4The word ‘question’ can signify two different things: 1) Questioning in the sense of a particular species of conscious acts; 2) the interrogative sentence [Fragesatz],3 in which the questioning finds its expression and its culmination. At the same time, the interrogative expresses both the intentional content of the <3> act of questioning (i.e. what we are asking about), and the fact of questioning itself. (Cf. E. Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen [henceforth LU], v. II, Invest. VI, §§ 68–70.) In the following investigation we limit ourselves exclusively to the analysis of the interrogative and its intentional object.

5Interrogatives are distinguished from judgment-sentences [Urteils|sätzen]4 owing first and foremost to the occurrence in them of various words associated with questions – ‘whether’, ‘when’, ‘what’, ‘how’, etc. – words which play a special role that brands the sentence as interrogative. There is no denying that such words also occur in some judgments; but then they have a wholly different meaning, or are at any rate stripped of their interrogative function. The assertoric form of the judgment excludes the form of the question. It may well happen, on the other hand, that in posing the question we omit the corresponding interrogative words. It is clear, however, that in such instances the question is just distorted and imperfect in terms of its verbal formulation. The missing words are replaced there by a suitable intonation of the utterance.

6Yet the differences between question and judgment lie in a stratum much deeper than that of words. Question and judgment differ above all in terms of the object to which they refer. In order to make this clear we must first sort out the various meanings of the expression ‘object of a judgment’.

1. We must name in the first place that “object of a judgment” which every judgment, true or false, possesses – namely, the merely intentional state of affairs intended by the judgment’s content5.6 Its distinctive feature is that, insofar as its matter [Materie] is concerned, it possesses those and only those moments or elements that the content of the judgment assigns to it. As to its form, however, it engenders the character of precisely that mode of existence which is intended in the act of judging – or in the corresponding moments of the content and form of the judgment; at the same time, however, this “state of affairs” exists if and only if the corresponding judgment exists. It is the merely intentional correlate of the content and form of the judgment, and as such can lay no claim to existential autonomy. At the same time, it can contain moments that are mutually exclusive, insofar as the corresponding judgment contains contradictory meaning-elements in its content.7 <4> We make use of the old Scholastic expression: objectum formale to designate this merely intentional object of the judgment.
2. From this merely intentional state of affairs we must distinguish the objective [objective] state of affairs, which exists independently of the cognizing subject and of the judgment. The objective state of affairs becomes the object of a judgment if the remarkable relation of identification obtains between it and the objectum formale of that judgment. This relation must obtain with respect to all the moments of the judgment’s intentional object – apart from its character of being merely intentional, and apart from any moments that depend on this intentionality – but need not necessarily obtain with respect to all moments of the objective8 state of affairs. The latter may in principle possess a moment, or a whole multitude of them, to which no moment of the judgment’s formal object corresponds. But these moments of the objective state of affairs cannot contradict those that can be identified with the moments of the judgment’s formal object. We name “objectum materiale” this selfsufficiently existing state of affairs that has become the object of a judgment. Every judgment makes a claim9 to having its objectum materiale (therein lies what Alexander Pfänder in his Logik calls the “claim to truth”);10 but by determining the formal object of the judgment, its content presumes to select the objectum materiale from the totality of states of affairs belonging to a particular region of being. Yet not every judgment possesses an objectum materiale; no judgment whose content is ambiguous or self-contradictory has one. We call a judgment “true” if all moments of its formal object (aside from its character of merely intentional being and the properties that follow from it) can be identified with at least some moments of an objective state of affairs; in contrast, we call a judgment “false” if this identification does not obtain. Had we wished to consider only the objectum materiale as the object of a judgment, then all false judgments would be without an object.
   (We are not deluded about the fact that a host of problems still need to be addressed, and considerable difficulties eliminated, relative to the distinction we have just introduced between the formal and material objects of a judgment, <5> and with reference to our characterization of the truth of a judgment. To the latter [difficulties] belongs, for example, the problem of whether negative states of affairs exist – as A. Reinach maintains.11 Should this problem be resolved in the negative, our characterization of the truth of a judgment would be valid only for positive judgments. We would then have to seek a different characterization for the truth of a judgment in general. But along with the other related problems, this one can only be resolved in a general theory of judgments. At any rate, these quite specific problems are not germane to our subsequent deliberations.)
   
3. Finally, the expression ‘object of a judgment’ may also be employed to designate the “correlate of the subject-term [of the judgment]” [Subjektsgegenstand]12 (to speak with Pfänder).13 In this case too, we would have to distinguish between the formal and the material object – the object about which the judgment is made [worüber geurteilt wird].

7Like every judgment, so too every question has its formal object – a merely intentional “state of affairs” (to use for the time being this not entirely suitable expression) that is determined through the content of the question. In order to characterize this object more precisely, let us contrast it to the formal object of the judgment. The following two fundamental differences obtain between them:

1. The objectum formale of every unambiguously formulated judgment (and every judgment can in principle be revised to have this form) is determined through the content of the judgment in such a way that each moment of its matter is a “known”. Even in instances where the predicate-term is negative (e.g. “The blackboard is not white” or “The magnitude of the earth’s coal deposits is unknown”), the moments corresponding to the formal object are precisely determined – as negative, indeed, or as those about which it is known that they are unknown. We could also say that the formal object of the judgment is determined with respect to all its material moments – that this determination is settled, decided. This need not at all be the case with regard to the formal object of the question; to the contrary, for most questions the situation is quite different. We say “for most”, and not for all questions, because there are questions whose formal objects are just as fully determined with respect to their matter as the formal object <6> of a judgment. If we ask, for example, (A) “Is sulfur liquid at a temperature of 1000° C?”, we obviously do not know whether or not such is the case (compare point 2. below). Yet, the object of the question (sulfur’s being-liquid at a temperature of 1000°C) is just as fully determinate with respect to its matter as it is in the judgment “Sulfur is liquid at a temperature of 1000°C”. If, on the other hand, we ask (B) “What is the state of sulfur at a temperature of 1000°C?”, the formal object of this question is indeterminate precisely with respect to that moment of it designated by the word ‘state’; indeed, the “unknown” is situated in that very word. This last case of a formal object is therefore different from that belonging to those judgments in which the object is determined by something negative or unknown. It is precisely for this reason that question (A) can be fully and adequately answered with a brief “yes” or “no”, whereas such an answer would be quite senseless in response to question (B). Here, in question (B), it is first of all necessary to supply what is missing, to remedy a deficiency, to complete the determination of the “state of affairs” that shapes the object of the question into a full state of affairs – determined in all respects – which could serve as the material object of a judgment. Determination of the formal object of a judgment by negative or unknown moments represents a certain flaw or imper|fection in the given judgment; a judgment of this has less epistemic value than the correlative judgment in which a negative meaning-element is replaced by a corresponding positive one. On the other hand, it is no defect, no imperfection of a question, for its object to contain an “unknown”. On the contrary! A question whose object would be completely determined by positive moments in every respect (hence, not only with respect to its matter) is altogether impossible. It would then no longer be a question. We encounter here an essential feature of the question in general that distinguishes it from a judgment. To give a preliminary indication, a question is defective or flawed only if the unknown in the object of the question is not unambiguously localized, that is, if it is not clear what is determined and what is not. At the other extreme, a question whose object were to consist only of “unknowns” is likewise impossible.
   The “unknown” contained in the object of a question plays in that object a special role that is characteristic of the question as such. <7> The emphasis, the weight of the question rests precisely on this “unknown”. Its unveiling, disclosure, and by this means its elimination, is what is at issue in the question. What is to replace it as [an] already known, determinate feature is what is being sought. The easiest way to grasp the role played by the unknown in the object of the question is to contrast the question to a judgment that pertains to a similar object: for example, the judgment “The state of sulfur at a temperature of 1000° C is unknown” in contrast to the question “What is the state of sulfur at a temperature of 1000° C?”. In both cases the state of sulfur at a given temperature constitutes something unknown. In the first case, however, its being unknown is simply asserted, whereas in the second this assertion is precisely what is missing; that very assertion is circumvented, as it were, so that we at once proceed to “ask” about the unknown. The unknown in the question is pointed out precisely in order to have it removed, in order to discover what should replace it. It is this peculiar role of the unknown in the object of the question – a role that can only be intuitively grasped in its purity – that sharply distinguishes this object from those of other types of sentences.
   
2. The formal object of every judgment is unambiguously determined with respect to the existential character of the constituents of its matter. This existential character is of multiple origin. It stems from the judgment-form, first and foremost – precisely as form of a judgment, of an assertion – and has its ultimate source in the act of judging. It is the intentional correlate of the “assertoric function” of the copula.14 But this existential character is also essentially codetermined by the modality of the predicative function of the copula (be it categorical, problematic or apodictic) and is ultimately essentially dependent on the matter of both terms of the judgment, primarily on the object-correlate of the subject-term [S-G]. The matter of the formal object of a question does not have such a firmly determined character of mode of existence.15 When questioning we are not carrying out any act of judging. Our position regarding what we are asking about is “undecided”. It is the questioning moment of the interrogative that expresses, among other things, this undecidedness. The latter does not yet exhaust the essence of questioning, of course, nor does it constitute the moment that specifically characterizes questioning as questioning. The “undecidedness”, “vacillation”, and the like, is a mental [psychischer] state which, taken on its own, is not only no questioning, but may just as well culminate in the judgment “A is b” as <8> in the judgment “I do not know whether A is b” or, finally, in the question “Is A b?”. The state of being undecided does however make up one of the preconditions for questioning to arise. Questioning itself, on the other hand, is not a state. Rather, it is a distinctive act of consciousness; it is an attempt to extricate oneself from the state of being undecided. In questioning, we attempt to transcend the sphere of our subjectivity. Questioning knocks on the door of reality [pocht an die Wirklichkeit]; it seeks to achieve a knowledge [Wissen] of reality with the aid of means that are currently at our disposal, i.e. by means of our acquaintance with the given situation and by becoming aware of the gaps in this acquaintance. But these means are insufficient to get us to the knowledge we are seeking. Questioning is precisely an attempt to transcend these insufficient means, to supplement them through something which we ourselves cannot attain – namely, the answer. This answer would eliminate not only a gap in our knowledge, but also the state of being undecided that serves as the backdrop for the questioning to arise. Questioning is an act that is essentially directed at another cognizing subject, an act that knocks on the door of reality by going beyond this subject and taking advantage of knowledge possessed by that other.16 But it is precisely because the act of questioning merely “knocks” on the door of reality, because it does not insert or attempt to insert anything into it, because it is itself encumbered with a moment of reserve and is essentially involved with an at least momentary refraining from judgment, because it originates against the background of undecidedness and ignorance – it is for all these reasons that what we ask about, i.e. the formal object of the question, bears the character of undecidedness with respect to being, or to put it better, of indeterminacy in this respect.17

8Yet, in order to forestall misunderstandings, we must note at once: the formal object of the question exists as a <9> merely intentional correlate of the question if and only if the question exists. However, when we do ask a question, we are not at all concerned with this existence of the formal object as an intentional correlate. Nor is it this existence which is endowed with the character of indeterminacy. But just as every judgment makes a claim to having a material object, so every question aims at some definite segment of reality; unable to reach it, however, it equips the state of affairs that is partially determined by the matter of the formal object with the character of indeterminacy as regards being. This character of indeterminacy is of course a formal moment in contrast to what is endowed with it, i.e. what will be established as existing or not existing once the question is resolved. Yet this character belongs not to the form but to the matter of the formal object of the question. Hence, we must amend our earlier assertion that there are questions whose formal object is just as fully determined with respect to its “matter” as the formal object of a judgment. The phrase ‘matter of the formal object of the question’ (in the proposition just repeated) has a narrower meaning than in our present considerations and does not embrace the character of indeterminacy with respect to being that we have just discussed.

9The character of indeterminacy with respect to being is a moment of the essence of every question, although interesting modifications show up for the different kinds of question.18

10For instance, we have to distinguish between existential and material [sachhaltige] questions. We call a question existential when its formal object contains no unknowns in its matter [Materie] – matter in the narrower sense, taken as without the character of indeterminacy with respect to being. For us, therefore, “Is sulfur liquid at a temperature of 1000°C?”, “Is God omniscient?”, and “Does God exist?” are all existential questions. In contrast, we call a question substantive when its formal object contains an unknown in its matter (taken in the narrower sense). For example: “What is the state of sulfur at a temperature of 1000°C?”

11In existential questions the character of indeterminacy adheres to the existential moment [Seinsmoment] of the entire state of affairs about which we ask. The question addresses precisely the being or non-being of this state of affairs. <10> But there is also an existential character for the relation that obtains between the correlate of the subject-concept and that of the predicate-concept. In the object of the judgment this relation is the correlate of what Pfänder calls the “copula’s function of drawing [something] into relation [Hinbeziehungsfunktion]”, which consists in bringing the predicate-determination into relation with the object-correlate of the subject-term [S-G]. This bringing into relation is consummated [vollzogen] in the judgment; the relation is intended as subsisting, as accomplished [vollzogene]. There is a copula’s function of drawing [something] into relation in the question as well, but one that differs in principle from the one we encounter in the judgment. In the question, it consists only of an intimation [Ansatz] toward a relating, or better still, in an intimation of either affirming or denying the attribution of the predicate-determination to the object-correlate of the subject-term [S-G], an intimation that can never be transformed into a fait accompli since it is from the outset constrained from doing so by the interrogative function of the question. To put it better, part of the interrogative function consists precisely in there being in the interrogative merely the suggestion of the predicate-determination being brought into relation with the object-correlate of the subject-term [S-G]. This suggestion is like a proposal whose acceptance can be effected only in the judgment that constitutes the reply. It is for this reason that the moment of consummation of the relation between the object-correlate of the subject-term [S-G] and the predicate-determination – the moment that characterizes the formal (or material) object of a categorical judgment – is missing in the formal object of the question. A new moment of indeterminacy shows up in its place in the formal object of the question, one that is most intimately connected to the moment of existential indeterminacy discussed above – the moment, merely tried out and left in suspension, that relates the predicate-determination to the object-correlate of the subject-term [S-G]. Both moments of indeterminacy – the one that pertains to the existence of the whole formal object and the one that concerns the relation between the object-correlate of the subject-term [S-G] and the predicate-determination – occur in the formal object of every question. In existential questions, however, the moment of indeterminacy with respect to the being of the whole formal object moves into the foreground, whereas in substantive questions the moment of the suspended relating of the predicate-determination [to the object-correlate of the subject-term] comes to the fore. Both moments taken together comprise the second essential point in the distinction between the formal object of the question and that of a judgment, and thus between question and judgment themselves.

12In view of the two moments of indeterminacy that appear in the formal object of the question, it would be incorrect <11> to call this object a “state of affairs”, something we have indeed done only provisionally and with reservation. For in a “state of affairs”, taken in that sense in which we employ this expression for categorical judgments, the character of mode of existence must be fully determined, and a determinate mode of relation must also actually obtain among the individual elements of the state of affairs. For this reason, we shall call the formal object of a question a problem; in doing so, we believe we are in accord with the tendency of science and philosophy to employ this expression – a tendency, incidentally, that to our knowledge has nowhere been clearly specified. One must simply be mindful to eliminate from the meaning of the word ‘problem’ the frequently intertwined moment of logical meaning, a moment that leads to identifying the problem in our sense with the interrogative sentence as a logical entity.

§3. Appropriateness19 of the Question and Its Conditions20

13The fact that the question, in contrast to the judgment, can never have a material object is connected with the distinction we have just discussed between the formal object of the judgment and the problem. Indeed, problems do not exist independently of the interrogative; they are nothing but intentional correlates of the content of the question. In a figurative and indirect sense, however, one can also speak of a material object in the case of the question and distinguish by its means “appropriate” questions from “inappropriate”.

14There are questions to which a true “answer” corresponds, as well as others for which that is not the case, i.e. questions that either have no true answer or have several of them. For example, the well-known Scholastic question “How many angels can fit on the head of a pin?” has no true answer, nor does the question “What degree of intensity does a square circle have?”. If, on the other hand, I ask “What angle is formed by the diagonals of a square?”, there exists the judgment “The diagonals of a square form a right angle”, which constitutes the true answer to this question. In that event, there exists an objective state of affairs that comprises the material object of the answer, <12> and a remarkable relation obtains between this object and the problem of said question: namely, [all] the known elements of the problem’s matter (in the narrower of the meanings we have contrasted) can be “identified” with some elements of the matter belonging to the [objective] state of affairs [Sachverhaltsmaterie]; however, the unknown of the problem (designated in the question by the words “what angle’”) finds its known correlate in the object of the judgment. We say: if the just named relation obtains between a problem and the material object of a judgment, then the question has – in a figurative and indirect sense – a material object, whereas the given judgment comprises the “answer” to the question. We call such a question “appropriate”. Where, on the contrary, such a relation between a problem and the material object of any judgment whatever does not obtain, we say that the given question is inappropriate.

15This characterization retains its good sense even in those cases where the question has a negative answer, or where the matter of the problem – in the narrower sense – contains no unknowns.21 Here too (given of course that we concede the existence of negative states of affairs) a perfect identification can be achieved between the matter of the problem and the matter of the objective state of affairs of the given judgment. Insofar as an existential question is concerned, however, the unknown – which in this case is contained in the formal moment of the problem’s matter in the broader sense – finds its correlate in the form of the judgment’s material object.

16The issue arises concerning the criterion of a question’s appropriateness, and in particular the problem of whether this appropriateness cannot be established as obtaining until one knows the true answer, or whether it is also possible to establish this without knowing the answer. It appears at first glance that this [latter] is not the case. Nonetheless, a closer examination shows that it is possible to infer that a question is inappropriate just from some of its very properties; from a different perspective, however, it shows that if the question does fulfill certain conditions, its appropriateness could be surmised as highly probable.

17We have remarked above that it is impossible for the matter of the problem to contain only unknowns. We must now draw important consequences from this observation. To wit, some “knowns” must be contained in the matter of the problem. The following two questions arise in this connection: 1) What role <13> do the knowns play in the question in terms of its appropriateness?; 2) What conditions must they fulfill for the question to be deemed appropriate?

18A question is “appropriate” if one true answer to it exists. Here, as mentioned above, it must be possible to identify the knowns of the problem’s matter with some elements of the answer’s material object. Insofar as we are forming a question, insofar therefore as we are choosing the concepts that determine the knowns of the problem’s matter, we are eo ipso selecting as the answer a specific judgment (or a whole group of them) out of all possible judgments. The judgment selected in this manner can be true or false, the corresponding question, accordingly – appropriate or inappropriate. In other words, the appropriateness of the question depends on the selection of the problem’s knowns – though not on this alone.

19What necessary conditions must be satisfied by the concepts that determine the knowns of the problem for the question to be appropriate? Let us reply as follows:

1. Say I ask, “What angle do the diagonals of a square form?”, then the following concepts specify the knowns of the problem: 1) square, 2) diagonals, 3) angle, 4) form. To the content of each of these concepts corresponds a formal object determined by it. It is apriori possible that, apart from the formal objects of these concepts, their material objects also exist.22 Thus, we can address to each concept the question as to whether its content points to properties and moments that truly inhere [wirklich inhärieren] in the material object, or to something that the material object of the given concept does not at all have – should that material object exist at all. In other words, for every concept that we employ arises the issue of its “objectivity” [Objektivität]. In this connection, we call a concept “objective” [objektiv] if all properties and moments of its formal object – with the sole exception of those that make it precisely into a “formal” (hence, merely intentional) object, or those that follow from the latter – can be identified with respect to the τί εἶναι [being-such] and at least some of the properties or moments of an object existing independently of the cognition. We call a concept <14> “non-objective”, on the other hand, if the relation just stated does not hold – in the limiting case, therefore, if the concept does not possess any material object at all. In the last instance we are speaking of fictitious concepts (concepts of fictions).23
   When we ask some question, for example the one above [pertaining to the angle formed by the diagonals of a square], we tacitly regard as objective those concepts that appear as the meanings of the individual words in the question, and that specify the knowns of the problem – provided, of course, that no special reservation has been registered concerning the objectivity of the concepts employed. If, therefore, the relevant concepts lack objectivity (even if only some of them!), we end up committing an error without realizing it. This error is expressed in the fact that the judgment comprising the answer to a question so constructed – and which [judgment] itself contains the non-objective concepts – is false. Thus, the consequence of the concepts that specify the knowns of the problem in a question being non-objective is that there is no true answer to this question, and that the latter is therefore inappropriate. Or, to express this in a positive fashion: the first condition for the appropriateness of a question is that all the concepts that specify the knowns of its problem must be objective. Hence, to decide if a particular question is appropriate, it is indispensable to investigate the objectivity of all the concepts involved.
   
2. The condition just set forth is necessary but not sufficient. The concepts do not occur in the question as mutually independent entities, but rather as reciprocally interdependent elements of a whole that collectively determine the relations among the individual knowns of the problem. If we ask, “What angle do the diagonals of a square form?”, this question prejudges [präjudiziert] first of all that the diagonals are not diagonals of just any arbitrary polygon, but indeed those of a square; but this presupposes the existence of the constitutive properties of a square, and prejudges that [1] there are only two mutually bisecting diagonals, that [2] they are of equal length, and [3] are identical with the bisectors of the interior angles. But it is a fourth property of the diagonals that constitutes the unknown of the problem. Even the type or range of properties (or relations) that we have to consider in order to choose for the answer the property that satisfies the unknown of the problem is determined within the problem by knowns (for example, that at issue is the measure of the angle formed by the diagonals). <15> At the same time, the question presupposes through its knowns that the diagonals can form any angle at all.
   Of course, what the question presupposes or prejudges is not contained explicite in the question itself; it is precisely a presupposition. As presupposition, however, it must not only be accounted for when constructing the answer to the question, but [must] also – if we may put it this way – specify unambiguously its direction. That is to say, the answer must take over from the question all the knowns contained in its problem, and thus everything that these presuppose.24 It must adopt the standpoint determined by the question; only on this foundation does it offer the new known in place of the problem’s unknown. But since everything the question presupposes is either the possessing of determinate properties by the material objects of the concepts contained in it or the subsisting of relations or connections among these objects, it is in every case a matter of certain states of affairs that exist independently of cognition. (Insofar, of course, as no reservation to the contrary is contained in the question itself, or in the circumstances under which it is asked.) On the other hand, these states of affairs condition the entire structure of the problem and thereby determine the range of objects, properties and relations which in our answer are supposed to satisfy the unknown. For this reason, we call what a question presupposes the problem-conditioning state of affairs.
   From this last we must distinguish the hypothetically assumed states of affairs that go into [composing] the meaning-content [Gehalt]25 itself of certain questions, and that are adduced explicite in their wording. They are then ordinarily the conditions for what the unknown represents [darstellt] in the problem. For example: “What sort of phenomenon will ensue upon passing an electric current of a given intensity through a wire made of a particular metal and having a given cross-section?” The states of affairs hypothetically assumed here we call the conditions of the problem’s unknown.
   <16> Provided it is not preceded by any reservations to the contrary, every question presumes to have objective states of affairs that condition its problem. But not every one of them is formulated in such a way as to actually have the said states of affairs, even though each does presuppose some intentional states of affairs. For example, the question “What degree of intensity does a square circle have?” has none of the objective states of affairs that it presupposes intentionally. Anyone who takes seriously and tries to answer such a question (and, indeed, we need not take such starkly absurd questions as examples) is obviously seeking a state of affairs that exists objectively, one that is conditioned by the ostensibly existing states of affairs presupposed by the question. But there is obviously no such state of affairs; consequently, there is also no true answer to the question posed, and the question is therefore inappropriate. The second necessary but insufficient condition for the appropriateness of a question is that the concepts which specify the knowns of the problem must be so chosen, and so ordered, that the states of affairs which the question presupposes, and which condition the problem, be solely objectively existing ones.
   
3. The appropriateness of every question further depends on the meaning of the word that signals the unknown of the problem. The problem-conditioning states of affairs, or the corresponding terms of the question, specify the range of “values” (if we may be allowed to employ this mathematical way of speaking) that can satisfy the unknown. It is therefore necessary that even the word which designates the unknown (“does”, “how”, “where”, etc.) be so chosen that it have a meaning suited to the relevant “range of values”. This is the third necessary condition for the appropriateness of a question. For example, to ask the question “To where do the diagonals of a square form?” is obviously to ask an overtly inappropriate question. Once again, the inappropriateness discussed here need not be quite so striking in every case. That is why in more complicated cases, prior to answering the question it is necessary to inquire whether also this condition of appropriateness is satisfied.
4. Finally, of course, only a question that is formulated unambiguously can be considered appropriate. For this reason we shall have to deal briefly with the unambiguous and ambiguous character of the question.26

20We shall leave undecided until later whether all four conditions taken in unison are sufficient to ensure the appropriateness of the question.

§4. Ambiguous versus Unambiguous Questions

21<17>Problem-conditioning states of affairs never make up a sufficient condition for the existence of the material object of the answer. For if they did comprise such a condition, there would be no problem at all, nor any reason to ask a question. On the other hand, a question must be so formulated that it contains implicite at least a part of the problem-conditioning states of affairs. For that reason, the case may occur where the part of the conditioning states of affairs that is in fact presupposed in a particular question admits or implies the existence not of one but of several unknowns. We then say that the respective problem is not unambiguously determined; but we term the corresponding question ambiguous only if not all of the possible unknowns are adduced in it. On the other hand, the problem is unambiguously determined if it contains one and only one unknown.27 In concert with this, we must distinguish a problem that is not unambiguously specified from one that is complex (or from a complex question).28 If I ask, for example, “When did Frank go into town, and for what purpose?”, then the problem of this question contains two unknowns; the question, however, is not ambiguous, but complex – and so is its problem. To analyze such questions here would take us too far afield. It will suffice to note that the content of a complex, but not ambiguous, question must distinctly point to several unknowns. In the case of a simple, but ambiguous, question that multiplicity of unknowns is in a certain way concealed. The ambiguous problem contains, so to speak, only one spot in which various unknowns can nonetheless occur, while the problem-conditioning states of affairs presupposed by the question allow a number of unknowns simultaneously, of which either the first, or the second, or the third, etc., can be the unknown of an unambiguously determined problem. In order to transition from an ambiguously formulated problem into one that is unambiguously articulated, in each individual case one would have to supplement the attendant conditioning states of affairs by altering the content of the question, and in this way transform the single not unequivocally determined problem into several determinate ones. By this means one will receive a number of new questions, each free of the ambiguity being discussed here. An example of a question that is ambiguous in the sense here indicated is “What phenomenon occurs during rainy weather?” The number of <18> phenomena to be accounted for is obviously very large; hence, as long as the question is not augmented, there is no way of knowing exactly which of the possible unknowns is being sought.

22A question may however be ambiguous for a still different reason. Namely, the words that designate the knowns of the problem may be ambiguous. In such a case, the problem-conditioning states of affairs, or the unknowns, may not be unambiguously specified, and thereby also the problem itself. The corresponding question is then at bottom not amenable to being answered.

23Finally, a question may be ambiguous due to the ambiguity of the word that designates the unknown. For example, in the question “Who is this man?”, the expression “who is” may on one occasion signify “What sort of social status does he have?”, on another – “What is his profession?”, “What is his name?”, “What is his nationality?”, etc.

24In the cases mentioned here the ambiguity of the question follows from the ambiguity of the words used, and not from an incomplete account of the problem-conditioning states of affairs. It is however possible that, in the course of eliminating these ambiguities, some new problem-conditioning states of affairs might eo ipso be adduced, implicite or explicite, that were not co-intended in the original question.

25To summarize: the question is unambiguously formulated if (1) its problem is unambiguously determined, and if (2) all the terms that occur in the meaning-content [Gehalt] of the interrogative are unambiguous.

26An ambiguous question cannot be answered directly; its ambiguity must first be eliminated.

§5. Questions Pertaining to Essence29 as Theme of the Subsequent Investigation: The Path to be Forged

27The preceding considerations, sketchy and in need of supplementation as they are, have nonetheless made us realize how numerous and diverse are the conditions that must be fulfilled to enable a question to be well-formed and unambiguous. Hence, we already have a better feeling than before for how numerous are the questions we routinely ask in everyday life and in science that are defectively constructed, and how easy it is to be diverted onto errant paths by uncritical questioning, to confuse different sorts of problems – and even problem-domains – and to run into non-existent difficulties as a result. It is therefore indispensable for every science – and especially so for <19> philosophy – that it examine most scrupulously its foundational questions in order to eliminate by this means difficulties that rest on misunderstanding or ambiguity, on the one hand, and achieve a demarcation of the foundational regions of problems, on the other.

28To such ambiguous and often improperly formulated or understood questions belong those that we shall call “essence-questions” [essentiale Fragen].30 With this name we embrace provisionally – i.e. without going into the detailed analysis of their meanings – the questions: “What is that?” [was ist das?], “What is x [for]?” [was ist x], and “The X, what is that?” [was ist das, das X?]. In each instance, the letter x is a placeholder for some substantive. (Thus, for example, the second question reads in the concrete: “What is a square?” or “What is a horse?”.) These are questions that we ask at some point with respect to almost every object of investigation, and by answering them we hope to achieve a definitive knowledge of the entities in which we are interested. Do we, however, have a clear awareness of what it is that we are actually asking about when we ask these questions? And do we know how diversely they have commonly been interpreted – depending on our interests, on the views we ordinarily half-consciously foster,31 depending on the goals and ends we pursue at the given moment? We have no more than a vague feeling that something very important is at issue in the case of such questions concerning the objects designated by their subjects, something we would be inclined to call an “essence” and of which we have only a rather vague intuition. Hence, we do not yet know, for example, whether those researchers are right who deny the existence of an “essence” and see in the cited questions merely questions concerning names or the clarification of names – or, at best, attempt to answer them by adducing some assortment of properties that depends on the researcher’s particular point of view and interest at the moment. We cannot give a proper and well-founded response to all of this until we have sorted out the various equivocations contained in the essence-questions and, having discharged this task, follow this up by analyzing in detail the problems of the various resultant sorts of questions, and the states of affairs that condition them. Of course, these questions would not interest us even remotely to the degree they in fact do, were we not aware that it is precisely the obscurities and equivocations <20> that inhere in the essence-questions which bear responsibility for such a divergence of opinions among scientists and philosophers concerning what the essence of an object actually is, and were we not aware that problems pertaining to essence [Wesensprobleme]32 are almost invariably reinterpreted into problems that have nothing in the least to do with the essence of an object, indeed, even more – that problems pertaining to essence are altogether rejected as such. It seems to us that disclosure of all these obscurities and ambiguities in the essence-questions will also eliminate the misunderstandings that phenomenologists run into almost without exception when addressing such a question to a non-phenomenologist (“What is an intentional experience?”, “What is the essence of the object as such?”, “The perception, what is that?”, etc.). These misunderstandings so completely obstruct a non-phenomenologist’s path to grasping the sense of the whole phenomenological enterprise that in most cases the latter imputes to phenomenology goals that are wholly alien to it, and proceeds to carry on polemics against claims that it had never advanced. But it is impossible to carry out a detailed analysis of the essence-questions without undertaking positive investigations into the problem of essence itself. From a different perspective, through our deliberations we also hope to shed some light on the problem relating to essence and on the problem of the idea, and – by contrasting these problems with the entirely different sorts of problems with which they are commonly confused when discussing essence-questions – to effect a segregation of the fundamentally different problem-types, as well as, finally, to demonstrate the legitimacy that each of these problem-types enjoys independently of the others.

29What we are here presenting to the reader concerning the essence-questions and the problems bound up with them is of course just a beginning, which in the future will need to be augmented – and probably even corrected – in various directions. We have the impression, however, that even acknowledging the modest results we have managed to achieve must contribute to clarifying the type of problematic involved in the special sciences, as well as in the various philosophical movements, and must thereby be helpful in resolving misunderstandings wherever these movements are in conflict without having gotten clear on the distinctions of the basic questions.

30Before entering into the investigations proper, we should still like to characterize in a few words the path we have chosen toward accomplishing our task.

31<21> If we are dealing with a sentence that we have ourselves crafted, and have in some way guarded against misinterpretations, then the task of conveying its meaning accurately is very simple and easy; it is then reduced to adducing the meanings of its individual elements and to establishing the relations that obtain among these elements owing to their particular ordering in the given sentence. But essence-questions are sentences taken from everyday life, [sentences] in which shimmers a whole gamut of different meanings, out of which this one or that one shines forth, depending on their juxtaposition with other sentences, or on the varied circumstances and goals of daily life in which they arise. In other words, essence-questions are ambiguous, and as such they possess no unambiguously specified problem. That makes it impossible to clarify their meaning through an analysis of their problems. We must reject the path chosen by psychologism because it cannot lead to the goal we have set for ourselves. That is to say, psychologism takes sentences to be something mental [etwas Psychisches], which for us they obviously are not. On this point we are in complete agreement with E. Husserl (cf. LU, v. I) and have no intention to reopen a discussion of it here. A radical advocate of psychologism can calmly set our treatise aside, since it contains nothing of interest to him. But the path forged by moderate psychologism also does not seem traversable to us. By a moderate psychologism we understand that standpoint which does indeed consider sentences to be something different from mental states and experiences, but which at the same time takes them to be primarily expressive phenomena for externalizing the mental contents experienced by a mind-endowed [psychischer] individuum at the instant of uttering the sentence. Under these assumptions, every analysis of the meaning33 of a sentence is reduced to a story about what has played out, or what ordinarily plays out, in the mind of some individual at some particular instant. It is impossible to engage here in a discussion that would show to what extent this view conflicts with the corresponding essence-governed state of affairs [Wesensverhalt], and to what absurd consequences it leads. Here we have to make do with the remark that, if this view were correct, there would not be a single sentence that would have an identical meaning in the psyches of two different subjects (nor even for <22> one and the same subject on two different occasions). One would then have to treat the content of a sentence only as something individual, or would have to understand by it something like a numerical average that is artificially [kunstvoll] calculated from the similar moments of many individual contents belonging to individual sentences. One would then have to study the whole situation in psychological institutes, collect statistical correlations, calculate means, etc., in order to obtain – after concluding this arduous, though somewhat mindless inquiry – a result that would at best be a contribution to the annals of particular words and idioms in certain groups of inhabitants of this or that country in some particular era. We have no wish at all to disturb the work of the enthusiasts of such an investigation, but we shall not engage in it ourselves.

32We do not take sentences to be modes of expression of any concrete mental experiences, nor as an expression of any “thoughts” that a particular subject entertains at the instant of pronouncing the sentence. We take them to be a certain ideal conceptual unity that is correlated to some particular object (to a state of affairs in the case of judgments, to a problem in the case of questions). By analyzing this “object”, we manage on the one hand to eliminate subjective differences and on the other hand to acquire an objective gauge of what meaning a sentence must have if it is to adequately designate the corresponding “object”. As already noted, the questions we are supposed to deal with here are ambiguous; they therefore have no unambiguously specified problem. Consequently, we are acquainted with a host of “answers” to each of these questions. By analyzing the objects of these “answers”, we establish the sense of each of them. This, in turn, enables us to trace back to the questions themselves in order to make precise and juxtapose their various possible interpretations. To put it differently, we wish to clarify and settle certain logical issues regarding essence-questions by clarifying certain ontological situations that make up the objects of the true and known replies to these questions. A more thorough substantiation of why we have chosen precisely this path must remain reserved for a special methodological investigation.34

Notes

• 1 [All instances of the word ‘content’ in this chapter are translations of the German Inhalt.]
• 2 [Cont. in P: “Whereas the reader, once erroneously or inaccurately informed about the problem, already reads the entire work from a certain perspective not intended by the author. Hence, in order to avoid misunderstandings, it is imperative that the principal issues of the work be articulated clearly and unambiguously.”]
• 3 [In the sequel Fragesatz will be translated as “interrogative”.]
• 4 [Henceforth: “judgments”. A similar distinction applies to the word ‘judgment’ as Ingarden has made above for the word ‘question’, i.e. judgment in the sense of the act of judging vs. judgment in the sense of a declarative (assertoric) sentence. The context should make clear in which sense it is used.]
• 5 [Cont. in P: “(briefly: the intentional state of affairs). In the judgment ‘This iris is violet’, such a state of affairs is ‘the being violet of the iris’, but taken just as the content of the judgment intends it – and only so.”]
• 6 [Ftn. in P: “Some – Meinong and his students – speak here of an ‘Objective’ {Objektiv}. I make use of the locution ‘state of affairs’ as correlate of Husserl’s Sachverhalt: for one, because Husserl called attention to what the object of a judgment is before Meinong; secondly, because I am not sure whether Meinong’s Objektiv does not perchance refer to the object of a judgment in the second of the meanings [see below] of that term [Sachverhalt] whose meaning I am differentiating.”]
• 7 We shall omit here the problem of whether multiple intentional states of affairs correspond to an ambiguous judgment, or only a single one that is characterized by a remarkable plasticity [Vielfachheit] of some of its elements – those that correspond to the ambiguous terms of the judgment. We are of the opinion, however, that the existence of the object in the sense we have established must necessarily be acknowledged even for this sort of judgment.
• 8 [“objective” replaces “independently existing”]
• 9 [Continues in P: “through its assertoric character”]
• 10 Pfänder 1921.
• 11 Concerning the so-called negative judgment, see A. Reinach, “Zur Theorie des negativen Urteils”, in Reinach 1989, pp. 95-140.
• 12 [In P this term is explicated in this instance by the expression “the object of the concept occupying the position of the subject in the judgment”, and elsewhere by ‘object designated by the subject of the judgement’ <84>. Husserl says in his Logische Untersuchungen (Inv. I, §12) that the Subjektgegenstand is “the object…’of’ which [something] is stated” [ der Gegenstand ... ‘von’ dem ausgesagt wird]. P.A. Gorner, the translator of E. Tugendhat’s Vorlesungen zur Einführung in die sprachanalytische Philosophie, renders this expression as ‘the object of the subject-term’ and ‘the object for which the subject-term stands’ (Traditional and Analytical Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge U. Pr., pp. 113, 114). Our standard way of rendering it will be ‘object-correlate of the subject-term’, and signaled by the symbol [S-G].]
• 13 [Cont. in P: “In this sense, the object of the judgment ‘This iris is violet’ is the object of the concept ‘this iris’.”]
• 14 Cf. Pfänder, ib 182.
• 15 [The preceding two sentences added in G.]
• 16 This does not, of course, exclude the possibility of our questioning ourselves. But it is indeed here that there is a split into the “I” who questions and the one being questioned. We then apprehend ourselves as another, and only question when we expect this “other” to answer. [This ftn. added in G.]
• 17 One might be tempted to speak here of the neutrality-modification of the mode of being; Cf. Husserl, Ideen I, §§ 109–11. Nonetheless, the mode of being does not appear to us to be neutralized here, but rather to remain indeterminate.
• 18 [This sentence replaces: “This character of undecidedness as to the subsistence of the state of affairs is essential for the formal object of every question, hence of those questions whose content does not contain any substantive unknowns as well as of those in which they do occur.”]
• 19 [Richtigkeit: in the sense of being well-suited to discovering what the question is seeking, of its being reasonable (as Ingarden states in the next note) for the expectation of a true answer; numerous other terms could have been adopted instead – among them: rightness or propriety (G. Ryle), soundness, suitability, viability, cogency.]
• 20 E. Husserl occasionally speaks of the appropriateness or reasonableness [Vernünftigkeit] of questions in his LU, but does not deal with it in any detail. [This ftn. added in G.]
• 21 [Cont. in P: “For example, ‘Do the diagonals of a square form an acute angle?’ Answer: ‘The diagonals of a square do not form an acute angle’.”]
• 22 Concerning the distinction between the material and formal objects of a concept, see A. Pfänder, ib 273. This distinction, incidentally, is not new.
• 23 [This sentence added in G.]
• 24 In everyday life we ordinarily employ a much broader concept of answer, so even a sentence that merely corrects the posing of a question counts as an answer. But so broad a concept cannot be normative for us. [This ftn. added in G.]
• 25 [See the Translators’ Note for a brief discussion of the oft neglected, but (certainly for Ingarden) significant, Inhalt/Gehalt distinction.]
• 26 [Condition 4 added in G.]
• 27 [“one and only one unknown” replaces “exactly as many unknowns as follow from the states of affairs conditioning the problem, or from the terms of the question”]
• 28 [Cont. in P: “, though unambiguously determined”]
• 29 [This is a literal translation of Ingarden’s own rendition of the phrase “essentiale Fragen”. See the immediately following ftn.]
• 30 That is, questions “pertaining to the essentia” [“auf die essentia bezügliche” Fragen]. [For brevity, we shall also occasionally abbreviate the expression ‘questions pertaining to essence’ by ‘essence-questions’.]
• 31 [The following text, to the end of the paragraph, replaces: “, etc.? It is for this reason that I set myself the task of analyzing in greater detail and deliberating on the differences among them, as well as on the ambiguities they conceal.”]
• 32 [Also occasionally abbreviated by ‘essence-problems’]
• 33 [“meaning” replaces “content”]
• 34 [Cont. in P: “I adopt this path (not the only possible one, incidentally) because it will also give me occasion to discuss a series of very important issues from the realm of ontology.”]