History entered into the domain of philosophical inquiry once philosophers had exhausted other responses to a question they cannot fail to pose: under what conditions does philosophical inquiry begin? Because one cannot know these conditions unless one is a philosopher and one cannot become a philosopher unless one is aware of these conditions, the question issues into an aporia. The aporia may be called “metaphilosophical,” since it is less concerned with specific philosophical questions than with the moments at which questions first become philosophical. If the conditions under which philosophical inquiry takes place are not supposed to remain a mysterious gift, and if philosophers are not supposed to reconcile themselves to the mystery at the inception of their questioning but are, instead, under an obligation to inquire into its enabling conditions, then these conditions must themselves be available for inquiry (in Greek, historein). The term history thus opens a way out of an otherwise intractable aporia: it allows philosophers to speak of the conditions that give rise to the questions they pose without having to invoke categories such as the ineffable or indescribable. As long as philosophers can appeal to history in response to the question “how does philosophical inquiry begin?” they need not repeat the traditional Platonic-Aristotelian answer: under the miraculous, mysterious, or in any case indescribable condition of “wonder” (thauma).