I do not begin at the beginning when I ask questions such as “What is being?” or “Why is anything at all? Why not nothing?” or “Who am I?” or “What do I really want?” These questions arise from a situation in which, coming from a past, I find myself.
When I become aware of myself I see that I am in a world in which I take my bearings. Previously I had taken things up and dropped them again; everything had been a matter of course, unquestioned, and purely present; but now I wonder and ask myself what really is. For all things pass away, and I was not at the beginning, nor am I at the end. Even between beginning and end I ask about the beginning and the end.
[Karl Jaspers, Philosophy 1, p. 43, translated by E. B. Ashton, The University of Chicago Press, 1969, from Philosophie, Springer-Verlag, 1932, 1948, 1956.]
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