Philosophy › Reason, experience & Enlightenment › Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
Why is there something rather than nothing?
1714 (Leibniz)· Big question· Reality, mind & God
Well documentedSolid records, texts or physical evidence.
The question of why any universe exists at all, rather than nothing whatsoever.
See it on the Philosophy map →The idea
Leibniz put it in 1714: 'Why is there something rather than nothing?' His reasoning: every fact needs a sufficient reason; the whole chain of things needs one too, so there must be a necessary being, God. Other answers: the universe is a brute fact with no explanation (Bertrand Russell, 1948); physics shows 'nothing' is unstable (some cosmologists); every possible world exists. Main objection to the physics answer: a quantum vacuum is already something.
Why it matters
Heidegger called it the fundamental question of metaphysics; it underlies the cosmological argument for God and debates about what came before the Big Bang.
Where it comes from
Stated in Leibniz's Principles of Nature and Grace (1714); kept public by the Russell–Copleston BBC radio debate (1948) and Lawrence Krauss's A Universe from Nothing (2012).
Still debated
Whether the question has an answer at all, or is a trick of language, is itself disputed.
Connections (2)
▸Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz asked Why is there something rather than nothing?Well documented
The connection
Leibniz put the question in its modern form. By his principle of sufficient reason, everything needs an explanation, including the existence of the whole world. Since the world might not have existed, its reason must lie outside it, in a necessary being, God.
When and how
Principles of Nature and Grace, Section 7, written in Vienna in 1714 and published after his death, in 1718.
How we know
The sentence is in Section 7; earlier thinkers asked related questions, but Leibniz's wording is the one Heidegger and later philosophers quote.
Debates and open questions
Whether the principle of sufficient reason is true, and so whether the question must have an answer, is debated; Hume and Kant both doubted it.
▸Why is there something rather than nothing? was called the fundamental question by Martin Heidegger, Being and TimeWell documented
The connection
Leibniz asked why there is something rather than nothing, and answered with God as the sufficient reason. Heidegger reopened the question without that answer, calling it the first and deepest question of metaphysics. For him it exposes how we take beings for granted and forget the wonder that anything is at all.
When and how
He closed his Freiburg lecture 'What Is Metaphysics?' (1929) with it, and opened his 1935 lectures, published in 1953 as Introduction to Metaphysics, with it.
How we know
The question is stated word for word in both texts, and Heidegger discusses Leibniz's version in other writings.
Debates and open questions
Critics from Carnap onward say the question is empty or unanswerable; defenders say its point is the wonder it provokes, not an answer.