"Now live the questions." The phrase is from Rainer Maria Rilke, in Letters to a Young Poet, and says more about the philosophical attitude than many treatises.
The passage
Writing to the young Franz Kappus, Rilke advises:
Be patient with everything that is unresolved in your heart and try to love your own questions as if they were closed rooms or books written in a foreign language. Do not look now for the answers, which cannot be given to you, because you would not be able to live them. And that's what it's all about: living it all. Live the questions now.
What does she mean
Loving questions is not the resignation of someone who has given up on finding answers. It is the maturity of someone who knows that certain answers only arrive after dwelling for a long time inside a good question. The rush for premature answers is precisely the enemy of knowledge: it closes the door before thought enters.
It is the same thing that Socrates practiced when asking, and what the philosophical attitude calls cultivating the question. The question opens; the answer closes. Living the questions means keeping the door open for as long as necessary.
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See recommended readingsFrequently asked questions
Who wrote viva questions?
The poet Rainer Maria Rilke, in Letters to a Young Poet, a series of letters written from 1903 onwards to the young Franz Xaver Kappus.
What does it mean to live the questions?
It means being patient with what is not yet resolved and loving your own questions, rather than demanding premature answers. Certain answers only arrive after dwelling for a long time within a good question.
Is this giving up on looking for answers?
No. It's the opposite of resignation. It is the maturity of someone who knows that living the question seriously is part of the path to the answer.
Continue: What is the philosophical attitude · What is Socrates' maieutics?
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