The question runs: “What is a thing?” A doubt surfaces immediately. One is tempted to say: it makes sense to use and to enjoy available things, to remove things that stand in the way, to provide [things that are] demanded, but with the question “What is a thing?” one can truly initiate [anfangen] nothing at all. And this is true. One cannot initiate anything with this question. It would be a serious misunderstanding of the question if we tried to prove that one could initiate something with it. No, one can initiate nothing with it. This assertion about our question is so true that we must understand it as a determination of its essence. “What is a thing?” That is a question with which one can initiate nothing; nothing more about the question really needs to be said.
Since the question is already rather old, as old as the inception [Anfang] of Western philosophy in Greece in the seventh century BC, it would be good to provide an outline of the question from a historical point of view. A short story has been handed down that pertains to our question. Plato has preserved it in his dialogue Theaetetus (174af.):
Ὥσπερ καὶ Θαλῆν ἀστρονομοῦντα . . . καὶ ἄνω βλέποντα, πεσόντα εἰς φρέαρ, Θρᾷττά τις ἐμμελὴς καὶ χαρίεσσα θεραπαινὶς ἀποσκῶψαι λέγεται ὡς τὰ μὲν ἐν οὐρανῷ προθυμοῖτο εἰδέναι, τὰ δ’ ἔμπροσθεν αὐτοῦ καὶ παρὰ πόδας λανθάνοι αὐτόν.
The story is that Thales, while occupied with studies of the heavens and gazing upward, fell into a well. A witty and attractive Thracian maid laughed at him and said that while he wished passionately to know something of heavenly things, that which stood before his very nose and beneath his feet remained concealed.
Plato added the following remark to this report of the story [3]:
ταὐτὸν δὲ ἀρκεῖ σκῶμμα ἐπὶ πάντας ὅσοι ἐν φιλοσοφίᾳ διάγουσι.
This jest applies to all those who engage in philosophy.
The question “What is a thing?” must consequently be the sort of question that makes housemaids laugh. And proper housemaids must have something to laugh about.
Through the characterization of the question concerning the thing, we have suddenly acquired a hint about the distinctiveness of the philosophy that poses this question. Philosophy is that thinking with which one can essentially initiate nothing and about which housemaids necessarily laugh.
This definition of the concept of philosophy is no mere joke but something to consider carefully. We would do well to remind ourselves occasionally that by strolling we might sometimes fall into a well, and for a long while fail to hit bottom.