"While these constitute classical philosophical questions, they are also of much contemporary appeal. They remain central to some of the most compelling philosophical, theological, and scientific discussions at hand. They have consumed my own mind for some time and are the stimulus for the present work....Asking the questions themselves offers a rare pleasure to creatures who have consciously woken to their wonder. As Homo Quaerens we are wedded to this mystery from the inside."
- Andrew M. Davis
In the spiritual alphabet developed by Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat in Spirituality and Practic, "Q" is for questing.
Questing takes many forms: questing for happiness, for intimacy, for community,
for justice, for peace, for forgiveness, for new life.
Questing can also take the form of intellectual questioning: questing with the mind.
Questioning requires a sense of adventure: what the process philosopher Andrew Davis calls a wandering and wondering mind.
Sometimes questioning takes the form of curiosity about facts in the world. It asks: What's going on? What's really happening? How do things work? This is empirical and historical questioning.
Empirical questioning is one of the joys of life. One aim of education is to foster curiosity. When education stifles curiosity, it is useless and deadening.
Empirical questioning can include despair and hope: calling into question what is and lured toward what can be. Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On."
Sometimes questioning takes the form of trying to understand the roots of things, the underlying reasons for why things are as they are. This is metaphysical questioning. This kind of questioning asks:
What's going on at the deepest level? What has been going on? What will be going on? What is the going in going on? Why is there going at all? Why not rather no-going, stasis, frozenness, or non-existence? Does the going include possibility as well as actuality, value as well as fact? Are these real, too?
These questions are not for scholars alone or for philosophers. They are for everybody. We ask them implicitly if not explicitly throughout the course of our lives, whenever we struggle. Our answers vary:
God? The Universe? Value? Mind? Possibility? Actuality? Relationality?
Or all of the above. This is what Andrew Davis believes, and process philosophers agree with him. All are real and ultimate in different ways.
Whatever our answers, metaphysical questioning is not at all sterile. It, too, is a form of curiosity. It carries with it a certain vitality that is food for the soul.
"O " is for openness, "P" is for playfulness, "A" is for attention, "W" is for wonder, "P" is for passion, "J" is for justice, and "F" is for faith. Metaphysical questioning partakes of them all.
The faith in metaphysical questioning is not hardened belief. It is trust that that there truly is a way things are and that this way can be partially glimpsed in flashes of insight. Davis speaks of these glimpses as"relational intuitions."
Metaphysical questioning is a yearning for answers, but it holds on to its own 'answers' with a relaxed grasp. It knows that truth, what Davis calls the mystery of existence, is always more than our concepts of truth. "H" is for humility.
Metaphysical questioners know that metaphysics can too easily become ideology: a tool for a dominating class.
A mechanistic understanding of the universe, for example, can be a tool of that class, such that people are treated as mere machines in a "system" for those in power. Especially people of color, the marginalized and abused, the forsaken and forgotten.
Built into a healthy metaphysics is a healthy suspicion of metaphysics.
Metaphysical questioning never seeks final answers. Part of its pleasure is in the questing itself. There is a sense of adventure, of openness, of freedom.
In some social settings today, under the burden of authoritarian politics, metaphysical questioning is an act of rebellion and liberation: an act of saying "yes" to the joy of exploration and "no" to those who would otherwise shackle the mind with pre-ordained answers.
God, too, can be an object of metaphysical questioning. We can ask what God is? Who God is? Why God is? Where God is? And whether God exists at all. All are grist for the mill of metaphysical questioning.
The God to whom Davis points loves these questions. For Davis and other process philosophers like him, God is within each of us, among other ways, as a lure to question, without needing final answers.
This is a God whose takes joy in the freedom of human beings to explore, to doubt, to question, and to become fully alive through the questioning., even when the questioning calls God, or at least certain ways of thinking about God, into question.
"Z" is for zest for life.
For additiional reflection on Davis and his work, see also
"It has, nevertheless, been my conviction that the unique dimensions of Homo Quaerens—our wandering, wondering mental life, and the deep fathoms of our axiological experience—do shed light upon a means of approaching the nature of ultimacy and explanation. ^ As Homo sapiens we are also Homo Quaerens; we are questioning beings in a questionable cosmos (AX, 1–2). Consider this for a moment. What does it mean that such a universe houses our very possibility? What does it suggest about the nature and character of things that the universe comes to question itself through us? Is it plausible that human mentality is purely accidental in such a universe? Or is it perhaps a finite reflection of a kind of infinite and necessary Mentality underlying and giving rise to the cosmos itself? And what of value—that concern for the worth of knowing and being, which undergirds all meaningful questions? Is human experience and concern with value fortuitous, or is it an intimation of a kind of axiological ultimacy in the universe? Could Value be the reason for the universe itself, the reason for any kind of mentality at all—be it human or divine? While these constitute classical philosophical questions, they are also of much contemporary appeal. They remain central to some of the most compelling philosophical, theological, and scientific discussions at hand. They have consumed my own mind for some time and are the stimulus for the present work....Asking the questions themselves offers a rare pleasure to creatures who have consciously woken to their wonder. As Homo Quaerens we are wedded to this mystery from the inside."
Anticipating the Future: Andrew M. Davis
“Indeed, the axianoetic nature of Homo Quaerens suggests the deeply axianoetic nature of the universe itself. We not only reach back in quest for origins, understanding, and meaning, however; we also reach forward amid a myriad of possibility, of which we, and the universe we inhabit, are particularly acute and layered actualizations. We are forged from the sedimentations of the past, but we have emerged from, and are oriented toward, a fundamental futurity in the nature of things. We are creatures of the possible in a universe of anticipation.3 We largely take it for granted that the universe in every moment riddles with what seems to be necessary and transcendent possibility. We recognize in bewilderment that we are contingent actualizations of a kind of possibility in the universe that we did not envision. The possibility of our existence transcends the actuality of our existence; our conceptual entertainment of the potentiality of our lives is dependent upon the more fundamental possibility of our existence as such.”
Andrew Davis in Mind, Value, and Cosmos: On the Relational Nature of Ultimacy (Lexington Press, 2020)
Seeking Truth: Andrew M. Davis
Certainly, existence affords far more questions than answers—and there is something deeply comforting in this. “Philosophy begins in wonder,” Whitehead assures us; “And, at the end, when philosophical thought has done its best, the wonder remains” (MT, 168).But we still want to know the truth of things to the extent that it can be known. We want to know whether or not there might be an ultimate perspective on things; we want to know what the reason for things might plausibly be, and how it is they fit together. Truth is of utmost value in this regard. We recognize that it is inherently worthwhile to know the truth of things precisely because it is true. That something truly is the case is a presupposition of our existence and experience, but what manner of “Truth” might one possibly come to when met with the mystery of everything, and how might it relate to what we have considered thus far?
Andrew Davis in Mind, Value, and Cosmos: On the Relational Nature of Ultimacy (Lexington Press, 2020)
Personal Questing: Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat
“Questers venture into the unknown, confront difficulties and dangers, and return home with new understandings of themselves and of the world. A pilgrimage, part trip and part ritual, is prescribed in all the religious traditions for those seeking healing and renewal. The impetus for the journey could be an urge to explore one's spiritual roots, a desire for absolution, a wish to pay homage, or a question that needs answering.
To practice questing, you have to leave home, both literally and figuratively. Travel to a sacred place where something has happened before and see what happens to you now. Don't stop, even if you stumble, until you have found a gift or an insight to bring back with you. If you can't go far, make an inner journey. Ask questions. Look for replies in areas where you have never thought to go before. Questing is a companion of adventure. We thrill to the quest! This kind of travel broadens your horizons and gives you practice dealing with new situations. It increases your capacity to take risks. It helps you overcome any timidity or fear of the unknown that may be holding you back. Questing also serves as an antidote to the rigidity of certitude, thinking that you already know it all. It encourages you to be a seeker, to keep searching for different strategies to meet the challenges of our times."
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat in Spirituality and Practice