Topics Existence

Question Why does anything exist? Wouldn't it be more believable if nothing existed?

Accepted:
October 7, 2005

Comments

This is an interesting question. If you want to explore it through a text, I recommend Schopenhauer's On_The_Fourfold_Root_of-the_Principle_of_Sufficient_Reason or Wittgenstein's "Lecture on Ethics." Note that usually when we ask "Why?," we mean to ask how something is to be explained given some background conditions. But the question, "Why is there something rather than nothing?" precludes the background against which the "Why?" makes sense, and so might really not be a real question at all, so much as an expression of awe, or something.

And if nothing existed, there would be nobody to believe it at all! Your existing is a precondition of being bothered by the question in the first place.

Whenever anyone would raise this question, my much missed teacher, thelate Sidney Morgenbesser, used to say: "And if there were nothing,you're the kind of person who would ask 'Why isn't there something?'!"

You might also consider looking at Robert Nozick's discussion of thisquestion in his book Philosophical Explanations.

Question Why does anything exist? Wouldn't it be more believable if nothing existed? Accepted:October 7, 2005

Question Why does anything exist? Wouldn't it be more believable if nothing existed?

Accepted:
October 7, 2005