“Every questioning is a seeking. Every seeking takes its direction beforehand from what is sought. Questioning is a knowing search for beings in their thatness and whatness. The knowing search can become an “investigation,” as the revealing determination of what the question aims at. As questioning about … questioning has what it asks about. All asking about … is in some way an inquiring of …. Besides what is asked, what is interrogated also belongs to questioning. What is questioned is to be defined and conceptualized in the investigating, that is, the specifically theoretical, question. As what is really intended, what is to be ascertained lies in what is questioned; here questioning arrives at its goal.”

From Being and time, 2. The Formal Structure of the Question of Being, page 5

Martin Heidegger, 1889-1976.

translated by Joan Stambaugh.