In our data-driven age, everything seems designed to hand us solutions. Every day, Google processes a staggering 13.7 billion searches — nearly 5 trillion a year. Amid the growing sea of AI chatbots, ChatGPT alone handles more than a billion inquiries daily. Surrounded by this avalanche of answers, we charge forward toward certainties, rarely pausing to notice the quiet but powerful moment before — the moment we pose a question. Though we ask questions all day long, they have become little more than automatic triggers for retrieving information, their real potential flattened by our fixation on quick answers.
Philosopher Lani Watson, whose lifelong passion is the philosophy of questions, believes that if we want to understand and enhance the role that questions play in our lives, we should start by asking: What is a question? She suggests looking at its function — what does a question do? What do we do with questions? Once we start paying attention, we find them everywhere. Questions thread through our conversations, drive our curiosity, and shape our focus. They help us discover, communicate, show care, express ourselves, challenge others, debate, inspire, and even engage in small talk — sometimes just to be heard. Watson sees them as essential tools for both individuals and society, a way to seek out and access the information we need to make the right decisions. To her, a question is simply “an information-seeking act.”
But are questions nothing more than shovels, digging up the most efficient answers? Even Watson wouldn’t go that far. After all, she notes, not every question comes with a neat, tidy answer. Some are asked with no expectation of a response. Others have no answer at all. In short, questions don’t exist for answers — they stand on their own. This idea isn’t new. In 1929, Felix S. Cohen explored it in his now-classic essay, “What Is a Question?” He argued that questions aren’t just the starting line of thought, useful only for reaching the finish. In philosophy, he pointed out, questions tend to matter more than answers.
“Those who have formulated the world’s problems have more often deserved the name ‘philosopher’ than those who have settled them,” he wrote — a statement that calls to mind giants like Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, and Paul Feyerabend, whose questions still rattle in our minds today.
It’s surprising, then, that philosophers, history’s great questioners, have rarely stopped to ask what questions really are. Philosophy, after all, is built on questions. Watson finds this particularly perplexing in the case of Socrates. If anyone embodied the spirit of inquiry, it was he. Plato’s dialogues paint a portrait of a man so devoted to questioning that his famous declaration — “the unexamined life is not worth living” — still echoes across more than 2,400 years later. He was willing to drink the hemlock rather than abandon the life of philosophical exploration, conducted through what would later be called the Socratic Method. And yet, in all of Plato’s sprawling dialogues, Socrates never once pauses to examine the very thing he built his life around — the nature and power of questions themselves.
Questioning questions
The long silence of philosophers on this ultimate meta-question has been broken here and there. In recent decades, a few have dared to confront questions directly, most notably Jaakko Hintikka with his “interrogative model of inquiry.” Yet even these efforts remain bound to logic and language, treating questions as mere servants of their answers. But is that all they are?
A vast landscape of inquiry stretches before us, brimming with questions that invite us to reconsider the nature of questioning itself. Where do philosophical questions come from? What is the relationship between the questioning mind and the question it poses? How does one approach questions philosophically? Can a question be right or wrong? Are there questions to which there are no answers that are still worth asking? Do questions exist only to fetch knowledge, or do they shape us in ways beyond their answers? What if their greatest power isn’t in resolution, but in transformation?
Look deeper, and it becomes impossible to ignore: Life itself is an open question, a vast cosmic riddle. This fundamental uncertainty has driven both philosophy and science since the dawn of human thought. Despite libraries filled with brilliant answers, we continue asking life’s deepest questions — some awaiting discovery, others possibly forever unanswerable. Perhaps when we stop demanding answers and let the question mark stand in all its raw mystery, we uncover something profound — an untapped force capable of expanding our minds and reimagining the way we engage with life itself.
Fortunately, we can turn to philosophical and mystical traditions that have thrived on a steady diet of questions. Two stand out for making questioning an active force of transformation. First, in ancient Greece, Socrates mastered the art of relentless inquiry — his probing and often maddening questions captured in Plato’s Socratic Dialogues. Centuries later, across the world in Japan, the Rinzai school of Zen took a very different approach, using kōans — puzzling, riddle-like questions meant to jolt students into sudden insight. Fast forward to the 20th century, and another thinker joins the question club: Jiddu Krishnamurti, whose meditative inquiries revolved around questions that weren’t meant to be answered at all.
Each of these traditions placed questions at the heart of the master-disciple exchange, a process Plato called psychagogy — the guidance of the soul. But what makes them truly fascinating is their refusal to treat questions as mere tools for getting answers. Only Krishnamurti spoke directly about the mystical power of questioning, yet all three traditions saw questions as self-standing forces — sparks capable of setting the mind and heart on fire. Let’s take a closer look at how they did it.
Socrates: Questions that cleanse the soul
Most philosophers agree: Socrates had a method. In fact, it wasn’t his theories that made him legendary — it was the method itself, his greatest and most enduring achievement. His razor-sharp, unsettling conversations were so electrifying that they sparked a movement of imitators after his death, gave birth to a new literary genre, and became the backbone of philosophical training in Plato’s Academy.
But crack open Plato’s dense dialogues, and you’ll notice two distinct kinds of conversations. One, likely truer to the historical Socrates, shows him provoking young men to question their deepest convictions, never handing down moral lessons or pushing his own beliefs. Scholars call these early dialogues, where Plato still honored Socrates’ restless spirit. The key difference? With Socrates, questions led to open-ended inquiry and embraced not-knowing. With Plato, they became rhetorical steps toward absolute conclusions. No wonder Michel Meyer mourned that “questioning died with Socrates.”
Socrates didn’t just use questions — his very method was questioning, an inquiry built entirely on question-answer exchanges in the pursuit of truth. As Plato writes in Crito, Socrates was “accustomed to proceed by question and answer.” With nothing to teach, defend, or preach, he simply asked, never offering answers himself. The aim: Elenkhos — refutation. His questions weren’t stepping stones to knowledge; they were wrecking balls, smashing through false beliefs and exposing illusions of certainty.
Unlike the sophists, who proudly sold their students polished answers, Socrates did the opposite: He unraveled confidence, turning convictions into fragile questions. To him, philosophy wasn’t about settling down with answers but staying alive in the restlessness of inquiry. He’d begin with a simple question— “What is pious?” — and let the discussant’s own words guide the conversation. But soon, his questions would tighten like a noose. By the end, his companion, tangled in contradictions, would stand speechless — humbled, unmoored, and realizing they knew far less than they had ever imagined.
At first glance, Socrates’ ultimate aim seems to be aporia — intellectual bewilderment. The word itself means without passage, a state best captured by Meno’s exasperated confession after Socrates dismantles his definition of virtue: “Both my mind and my tongue are numb, and I have no answer to give you.”
Philosophers remain divided on whether Socrates’ questioning leads to truth or merely traps his interlocutors in open-ended uncertainty. Are his questions meant only to disorient, leaving his discussants stranded in aporia? And if so, how does this serve his greater purpose as a philosopher? Does he believe questioning can lead to knowledge at all? Although Socrates presents himself as an equal participant in the inquiry, he knows exactly where the conversation is headed. Aporia is not an accidental dead end — but is it a genuine step toward wisdom, or just a clever way to humble his opponent?
Here lies a marvelous realization: Socrates wasn’t just a skeptic with no beliefs of his own. He saw his method as a sacred duty to Apollo. And unless we assume Apollo was merely interested in humiliating mortals, we can conclude that Socrates’ goal wasn’t to tear down but to rebuild. His questioning was a kind of intellectual cleansing, shaking people awake from their dogmatic slumbers into genuine curiosity.
This is vividly illustrated in Sophist, where Socrates likens his approach to doctors who clear the body of obstructions before nourishing it. The same applies to the soul — it cannot absorb real learning until false opinions are purged. Aporia isn’t a dead end but a breakthrough, a jolt into self-reflection. Socrates isn’t trying to humiliate; he’s midwifing the mind, helping us rediscover the dormant wisdom within. The numbness of aporia is a sign that real thinking has finally begun.
Zen Kōan: Hanging over a precipice
In the 12th century, a dramatic rift split Chinese Buddhism into two traditions. One embraced silent illumination, advocating seated meditation (now known as Japanese zazen). The other prescribed intense focus on a gōng’àn, later called a kōan, a striking phrase or enigmatic statement believed to trigger a climactic breakthrough.
Kōans, literally “public announcements,” aren’t random brain teasers. They are brief yet powerful exchanges, often drawn from Zen masters’ discourse records. Originally responses to disciples’ questions, they later morphed into riddles meant to bewilder and awaken. A kōan is like a fuse of insight — stare at it long enough, and it just might detonate, shattering the “calculating mind” in an instant.
Trying to decipher a kōan logically is an exercise in frustration. By design, it resists any rational link between its words and meaning. But to assume its purpose is simply to stun the novice is to miss something deeper. The language of the kōan may seem nonsensical, but it earnestly conveys the essence of Zen.
Zen does not answer questions — it demands direct realization. One must speak only what can be spoken and embody what cannot. So when Master Chao-chou is asked whether a dog has Buddha-nature and responds with Wu! (“not” or “none”), he isn’t negating Buddha-nature. He’s cutting through dogma, urging us to find it in the raw immediacy of life itself.
D. T. Suzuki, in The Zen Koan as a Means of Attaining Enlightenment, devotes many pages to the dizzying journey of a Zen student grappling with the riddle assigned by their master. The master remains the relentless questioner, placing the full burden of response on the student’s shoulders. There is no hand-holding — only pressure. The master intensifies the disciple’s psychic tension, demanding they immerse themselves in the kōan day and night, pushing them toward a crisis of transformation.
Initially, the student desperately tries to find rational connections, but the dialogue with the master quickly shatters such efforts. Their mind condenses into a single, all-encompassing ball of doubt, wholly fixated on the kōan. Every thought, whether sitting or standing, walking or lying, must orbit around it. Speculation is useless; the kōan must become tasteless, devoid of any intellectual foothold. Eventually, this mental strain drives the student into profound disorientation, as if hanging over a precipice — a state of erasure, restlessness, and an inexplicable, growing joy.
This disorientation signals the final breakthrough. If the student fully experiences the psychological deadlock, the seemingly insurmountable wall shatters, and the kōan dissolves—not by logic, but by awakening. The answer is not learned; it reproduces the master’s state of consciousness within the student’s entire being.
Descriptions of this realization are strikingly poetic: the sudden illumination of the Buddha-mind, a light that reveals the Dharma in every grain of dust; the ecstatic taste of true knowledge, like drinking from an endless spring; or the sensation of one’s brain splintering upon realizing the truth was always there. As Tai-Hui declared, all scriptures are mere commentaries upon that one electrifying cry: “Ah, this!” The answer isn’t spoken—it’s shown. A kōan like “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” isn’t solved by thought, but by hearing the answer beyond words.
Jiddu Krishnamurti: The answer is in the question
If anyone could rival Socrates in turning questioning into an art form, it was Jiddu Krishnamurti. In a randomly selected public dialogue from 1967, I counted — yes, personally! — 192 question marks in Krishnamurti’s words. His discussants, who started as the questioners, barely managed 23 before realizing they had become the ones answering.
In his public lectures, especially during Q&A sessions when audiences expected solid answers, Krishnamurti defied their expectations. In 1982, he opened one such session with a simple yet profound question: “Do questions need answers, or are there only questions?” To him, what mattered wasn’t the answer but how one meets the question. Instead of chasing solutions, he urged people to observe their own reactions — the impulse to escape, to latch onto easy conclusions. A question, fully met, becomes a mirror reflecting the mind itself. Rather than resolving questions, Krishnamurti invited his audience to step inside them, to probe with hesitation and without preconceptions. “The answer is in the question,” he insisted. A year earlier, he had warned against using questions only in times of distress. Instead, he saw a questioning mind as a constant force — one that disrupts the brain’s craving for security and opens the door to deeper insight.
Krishnamurti’s insatiably questioning mind was on full display when a small group gathered to ask the 86-year-old about the nature of God. But instead of playing the role of a traditional guru, he shifted the focus entirely, not to answers, but to how one approaches a question. For Krishnamurti, What is God? was unanswerable — he neither knew nor believed one ever could. So rather than theorizing, he turned the inquiry inward: Can the mind stand completely free of past knowledge, meeting the unknown without seeking refuge in beliefs? He called this a cleansing act.
One participant remarked that questions like Do you believe in God? act like sugar for ants — the mind leaps at them, conditioned to respond. But Krishnamurti resisted this reflex. When a question is held in full awareness, without rushing to conclusions, something remarkable happens — it opens the mind to an untapped wellspring of wisdom, energy, and liberating power.
This was the stance Krishnamurti sought to instill in anyone engaging with him. Like Socrates, his dialogues followed a rapid cycle of questioning and rejection, with a single question looping back, pressing forward, refusing to dissolve.
Ask him something — say, “What is the nature of fear?” — and he’d immediately hand the question back, not as an inquiry to be solved, but as a mirror reflecting the mind’s scripted reactions. Anyone tempted to offer an answer would quickly realize their mistake. Krishnamurti did two things at once: He insisted on the urgency of the question while simultaneously blocking every attempt at resolution.
He left no escape. Thought itself — the very tool we rely on for inquiry — was exposed as inadequate. The pressure built. The usual reflexes faltered. Held in place without an outlet, the mind’s scattered energy gathered, condensed, and intensified — until, suddenly, a break. The mind, no longer seeking closure, was fully awake, open, and alive in the presence of the question itself.
Living with questions
From Classical Greece to the 20th century, these three approaches chart a radically different path for questions — one that refuses the comfort of answers, theories, or neatly packaged concepts. Instead, they throw us, the seekers, back on ourselves, demanding that we take full responsibility for our own awakening.
Questions, in their hands, become purifiers of mind and soul, stripping away conditioned responses, false knowledge, and ingrained biases. They don’t lead the mind forward; they trap it in a dead-end, shutting off every escape route until the only way out is inward. But they don’t break just to leave one in ruins — they clear the ground for something new to emerge.
Their hope? To snap us out of our philosophical slumber, strip away illusions, and set us on a path of genuine inquiry. Sometimes, in their sheer force, these questions even pull us beyond the limits of thought itself, offering glimpses of a truth that can only be lived.
However, more than anything, these extraordinary paths invite us to fall in love with the very presence of questions. Instead of treating them as unsettling shadows of the unknown, problems to be solved and set aside, we can learn to welcome them—to let them simmer, unfold, and shape us.
It is not just about asking well-crafted questions; it is about holding them in a way that transforms us, making full use of their mind-altering power — not in pursuit of immediate answers, but of deeper, truer insight. A mind that lives with questions is not lost; it is awake, alive, and endlessly expanding. As physicist Richard Feynman put it, “It’s much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers that might be wrong.”
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The post “The hidden power of unanswerable questions” by Shai Tubali was published on 03/25/2025 by bigthink.com