The Ultimate Why Question: Why Is There Nothing at All Rather than Nothing Whatsoever? ultimate why question: why is there anything at all rather than nothing whatsoever?

Introduction

1 John F. Wippel Introduction The title of this book is in itself controversial and so, too, is the book’s theme: “The ultimate why question: why is there anything at all rather than nothing whatsoever?”1 For some philosophers, that something now exists and therefore that something has always existed is simply a brute fact and needs no explanation. Hence this question should not even be raised. For many other philosophers, however, the question is legitimate, interesting, and worth pursuing. As will be evident from the chapters that follow, even among these philosophers the question is understood in different ways. According to some, it should be limited to an effort to account philosophically insofar as one can for how things are now, how they have come to reach their present status and, if possible, how they may have originated. For others, while this effort is legitimate and praiseworthy, it is not quite enough. Philosophers should also try to explain why it is that anything actually exists rather than nothing whatsoever if they are really addressing the ultimate why question. Chapters 1–8 of this volume present a number of different responses to this question developed by major thinkers in the history of philosophy, beginning with representatives of ancient philosophy, both Greek and Chinese, followed by Avicenna from the medieval Arabic philosophical period, Thomas Aquinas from the medieval Christian West, Descartes at the beginnings of modern philosophy, Leibniz especially as interpreted by Heidegger, followed by Schelling and Hegel. Three individual contem1 . Most of the chapters in this book originated from papers presented at the annual meeting of the Metaphysical Society of America, held in March 2006 on the campus of the Catholic University of America. 2  John F. Wippel porary philosophical approaches to this issue are presented in Chapters 9 (Robert Neville), 10 (Brian Martine), and 11 (Nicholas Rescher). In Chapter 1, Lloyd Gerson turns to Platonism considered broadly enough to include Plato himself, what is commonly known as Neoplatonism (especially Plotinus), and when helpful, Aristotle viewed as a dissident Platonist. Indeed Gerson suggests that the Platonic tradition can “fairly claim to be the fons et origo” of philosophical reflection on our question. He begins with Parmenides’ well-known rejection of becoming based upon his rejection of the existence and the intelligibility of nothingness (nonbeing). He notes that one might understand the question “why is there something rather than nothing?” in a more restricted sense as asking “why did this property appear here and now?” Then one might with Aristotle propose an answer based on an appeal to relative nonbeing (which is “something” rather than absolute nothingness) in order to account for the reality of change or becoming. Nonetheless, as Gerson explains, Plato himself had not been satisfied with such an explanation, since he had realized that an explanation of change would not of itself account for the being of anything that possesses being, especially of changeless things. By drawing upon texts from Plato’s Parmenides and Republic, Gerson concludes that for him whatever has being must partake of ousia and to that extent must differ in some way from ousia. But the Idea of the Good, which provides being (einai) and ousia to that which is intelligible, is itself beyond ousia. Gerson points out the difference between Plato’s First Principle, which is said to be beyond ousia, and Aristotle’s First Principle, the Primary Ousia of Metaphysics XII. Gerson shows how these different conceptions of a First Principle gave rise within the Platonic tradition to the issue often referred to as the Problem of the One and the Many: How can the many arise from the One or the composite from that which is not composite? He traces the origins of a fuller answer within the later Platonic tradition to Plato’s Symposium, where he presents Socrates’ report of Diotima’s definition of love as desire for the possession of the good forever, and its work as “birth in [the presence of] beauty in the body and the soul.” Plotinus applies Plato’s conception of love (erōs) in describing his own First Principle —the One or the Good—as a “lover of itself.” And, Gerson maintains, Plotinus applies Plato’s concept of erōs to the One “as an abductive infer- Introduction  3 ence or quia proof from the claim that goodness is essentially self-diffusive .” This claim in turn follows from the “self-evident...