Joel Hubick

I argue that Jan Patočka’s phenomenology can be understood as a kind of questioning philosophy that preserves the work and thought of Edmund Husserl by holding it in hindsight. Following Martin Heidegger’s lead to take up Husserl’s phenomenological questions more than Husserl’s answers, Patočka further develops Heidegger’s strategy with the addition of heresy: the philosophical process of distinguishing traditional questions from their answers in such a way as to preserve both, the original wonder sourced in questioning as well as the specific answers that compose tradition. As excellent answers can tend to eclipse the powerful dynamism of original questions, heretical philosophy is revealed to be Patočka’s way to take up, modify, and enact Husserl’s motto “to the [questions] themselves!” In this way, Patočka’s further develops phenomenology while at the same time throwing a thinker back onto phenomenology’s central questions.

I analyze the potential a link between the problem of plagiarism and academic responsibility. I consider whether or not the way teachers and students view each other, education, and the writing process is irresponsible wherein producing papers becomes more valuable than the genuine learning that paper writing is originally intended to indicate and facilitate. This irresponsibility applies to both students and teachers who allow writing papers to be industrialized into meaningless tasks done in order to obtain a grade / pass a course. In this irresponsible situation, plagiarism can appear an efficient, albeit dishonest, gamble to succeed. Using the thought of Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, and Jan Patoèka to philosophically assess and respond to this academic situation, I argue for a way to restore the teacher-student relationship to a proper state of care and responsibility.

I analyze the potential a link between the problem of plagiarism and academic responsibility. I consider whether or not the way teachers and students view each other, education, and the writing process is irresponsible wherein producing papers becomes more valuable than the genuine learning that paper writing is originally intended to indicate and facilitate. This irresponsibility applies to both students and teachers who allow writing papers to be industrialized into meaningless tasks done in order to obtain a grade / pass a course. In this irresponsible situation, plagiarism can appear an efficient, albeit dishonest, gamble to succeed. Using the thought of Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, and Jan Patoèka to philosophically assess and respond to this academic situation, I argue for a way to restore the teacher-student relationship to a proper state of care and responsibility.

Bringing together Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger and Jan Patocka, this book provides a comprehensive examination of the central role that questioning plays in phenomenology. Joel Hubick not only offers a phenomenological analysis of the activity of asking questions, but further traces the development of this form of questioning in the early stages of the phenomenology movement. Starting with Husserl's motto 'to the matters themselves', Hubick examines how the phenomenological method utilizes questioning as a means to both return to and to preserve the phenomena in order to re-experience them anew. He then demonstrates how Heidegger takes up Husserl's phenomenology as presented in the Logical Investigations and, in doing so, develops phenomenology into a philosophy of possibility, one that seeks in equal measure to preserve questions while also answering them. Continuing this questioning philosophy, this volume showcases how Patocka explicitly advances what had remained implicit in both Husserl and Heidegger's works; namely, phenomenology understood as a set of questions - from 'what is history?' to 'who am I?' - all of which elicit original experiences for future generations of thinkers. With a close focus on the primary material of these three fundamental figures, The Phenomenology of Questioning affords a crucial insight into the history of phenomenological reasoning, as well as a reminder to today's phenomenologists to continue asking questions.