WHY IS THERE SOMETHING RATHER THAN NOTHING?
by Anna-Theresa Tymieniecka

     The history of philosophy shows that philosophical questions are tied together; that singling out one while disregarding the others will lead to disastrous consequences. They are linked not only by the particular articulations of a given system, but also — and in a more essential and esoteric way — in relation to their transcendent object. One might venture to say that the development of philosophy does not consist in inventing "new" questions or abandoning certain questions to be replaced by others, but in rearranging their relations through more sagacious formulations and stressing one question now and another question later. Yet the intrinsic order of these questions seems to resist all the treatments they undergo.
     There is one question which appears to have a specific position in relation to that order. As every philosophical inquiry when pursued far enough opens on avenues of metaphysics, so every thorough metaphysical endeavor ultimately deals explicitly or implicite with the question: "Why is there something rather than nothing?" Leibniz, who first formulated the question in this sharp manner, was acutely aware of its final status and privileged position in the outlining and articulating of the totality of metaphysical inquiry. He has shown, in fact, that his entire metaphysics aims at answering this question.
     In our times such disparate thinkers as Wittgenstein and Heidegger have been struck by its poignancy. As Wittgenstein puts it: "Not how the world is, is the mystical, but that it is." He is believed to have experienced at times "a certain feeling of amazement that anything should exist at all," and Heidegger has developed his metaphysics as the "exfoliation" of the question, "Why is there something rather than nothing?"
     Yet let us abandon Heidegger's presumption that merely to posit this question explicitly at the outset of inquiry indicates an appropriate treatment or a possible answer. On the contrary, the question is so all-embracing that it needs the complete course of concrete inquiry to unfold its meaning. The particular starting point and the method adopted predetermine both the form of the question and its answer. Indeed, the explication of its meaning constitutes the answer.
     There is, however, what might be called a constant in this initial formulation. The subject of the question, conceived in two terms (namely something and nothing) conjoined in an alternative, embraces the whole of being. This whole of being is conceived as an extent between the two extremes, something and nothing, or as Pascal would say, "two infinities," comprising all. Pascal thought the key to the question lay in regarding man as the middle term between the two extremes, nothingness and the totality of being. Man is singled out by Pascal as being in the particularly privileged position of attempting to grasp the infinity of being through cognition.
     Is this interpretation of our question sound? Are the two extremes anything else than mental constructs meant to lead us toward the middle term, the concrete reality which alone exists?
     Yet if one deliberately assumes that it is the human being that has superiority over other beings in the universe, one is either like Leibniz (who admired this text of Pascal's greatly, considering it a prefiguration of the Monadology) led to blur the focus of differentiations, or like Heidegger (who has brought this issue into focus in our time) to put the emphasis exclusively on the interior subjective aspect of man, thus shifting the scale off balance by attempting to account for the ultimate reasons of being by a mere dialectic of consciousness, and so dissolving the distinctive rights of the "objective" universe.
     On the other hand, if one adopts the attitude of Husserl's early period — like Ingarden, who in his attempt to find the basis for a philosophical reconstruction of the universe transposes the central point to the realm of ideas as laws of objectivity but separated from the contingent world — the very existence of the contingent world becomes an unaccountable puzzle, and the universe is reduced to abstract and separated structures.
     In our new pursuit of the question: "Why is there something rather than nothing?" it seems necessary at the outset of our query to place ourselves upon the firm ground of reality, so as to avoid the traps which the mind with its speculative constructs and philosophical verbalisms sets for us. This means that in a challenge to contemporary philosophy it seems imperative to revive concern for the transubjective universe. In the "middle term" chosen as the starting point of our quest, we have to establish the balance between the rights of nature and those of consciousness, as well as the balance between ideal laws and concrete existence.
     Our subsequent cosmological analysis will pursue the intrinsic constant functional system of beings partly through the ontological investigation of ideal structures, but these will be seen as integral elements of the framework of actual existence. In this analysis we will discover that amongst all the types of beings to be distinguished in the world there is one which has a central position: the real individual and autonomous being. It represents the central organizing factor in the universe of beings, and is also capable of specifically differentiating man from other beings. If we take the analysis of the real individual as the starting point of our inquiry we may avoid the two pitfalls mentioned above by giving due rights to the transubjective aspect of nature and the universe before introducing the transcendental point of view. The transcendental approach to the problems of the universe is then by way of expressing the contribution of human being to the universal constitution.
     In what follows we propose:

     (A) Through the consmological analysis of the individual being, autonomous and real, to pursue the unfolding of the question: "Why is there something rather than nothing?" The analysis of the intrinsic foundation of the contingency of the real individual will impose questions about its origin, final aim, and sufficient reason. This will bring us to the notion of world order.

      (B) From the intrinsic constant pattern of the individual and the world order, we propose to conjecture about the architectonic design and its system of rules and laws constitutive of the universe of beings, or even of "beingness" as such.The specific inquiry into the cognitive "constitution" of the human world by a particular type of the real individual, man, reveals how through the regulatory function of transcendent ideas, cognitive (transcendental or "phenomenological") constitution is related to the great constitutive scheme of creation. It plays its own limited role within the vast scheme of universal constitution.

      Thus the question: "Why is there something rather than nothing?" is to be explicated as the novel formulation of the problem of cosmic creation.

     CHAPTER I. THE COSMOLOGICAL CONCEPTION OF THE REAL INDIVIDUAL

     (a) The "middle term" between the two infinities

     "I have barely started to philosophize," writes Bergson, "and already I ask myself why do I exist. As soon as I realize the ties that bind me to the rest of the universe, I want to know why the universe exists. From there I cannot but move further on. If I find a principle to account for the subsistence or creation of the universe, the search is still not completed. A most urgent question arises: 'How does it come that something exists?' And finally, 'How, why does this principle exist instead of— nothing?'
     As Wittgenstein says: "How extraordinary that anything should exist! "
Thus the question: "Why is there something rather than nothing?" appears as the most fundamental question because the real problem is, how is it that something exists at all? It is also the terminal of the major array of philosophical questions, and thus it synthetizes all philosophical questioning bearing upon the whole of reality and being.
     However, by formulating our query about the reasons for existence in this way, we run the risk of falling — as have others before us - into a trap prepared by reflection itself. We are tempted to attribute a distinctive and positive denotation to the entirely mind-construed concept of nothingness, putting it on the same level with being, as its counterpart or alternative. With the next step, we consider heing as relative to nothingness, and the existence of beings, reality, and being-as-such as a "conquest over nothingness. " Whether we then equate nothingness with the void or, as contemporary thinkers do, endow it with a specific plenitude by positing it as an alternative to the being, we vitiate the question by pinning it down too promptly to the assumed instant of its origin, its emergence from nothingness, which is supposed to have always preexisted.
     In fact, the basic truth that "being is and nonbeing is not" remains valid. "Something" is, whereas "nothing," upon careful scrutiny, is merely (to repeat Bergson) "a word that symbolizes a concept." This concept does not possess a distinctive denotation but draws all its content from the reality which it means to negate.
     Should we attribute a positive value to nothingness and accept it as existentially equivalent to being, we would be drawn into a delusive scheme of the mind moving within the narrow circle of its own artifacts. We would fail to approach being in its own right. That is, since being embraces all there is, it cannot have a counterpart, and must account for its reasons itself.
     This all-inclusive plenitude of being, the acceptance of which separates us radically from the philosophers of existence, does not (as Bergson would have it) dispense with the question: "Why is there something rather than nothing" as no more than a "pseudo-question raised on the basis of a pseudo-idea. "
     Here is the point of our definitive separation from Bergson, as will be seen later in more detail. Being might well be self-sufficient, reposing entirely within itself and leaving no place for a complement. Yet it is not ipso facto chaotic and inarticulate, purposeless and unaccountable. Being, itself a speculative concept, assesses itself through various types of existents, primordially through existing concrete reality. A direct look at reality, naive or scientific, reveals that reality obeys rules and laws which are not self-explanatory. These could not be a mere form of its appearance to the mind without degrading the underlying "true reality" — which Bergson sees in the undissociable continuity of matter evolving in a progress onward that is incessantly creative — to an arbitrary maze. In fact, reality displays a distinctive and well articulated nature, although it cannot explain why it is " the way it is and not otherwise. Nor can it explain: "Why is it that there is anything at all?" We are back again to the initial question.
     By inquiring as to the reason of something, of beings, of the universe, of reality and being itself, we do not anticipate a ' 'ground'' from which something emerges, a primeval substance, stuff, substratum. All would partake of being in the essential sense of existential dependence, and consequently could not be its reason or condition. But if nonbeing is not, and if being embraces all there is, what then can be the reason or condition of being?
     More specifically, there is no distinctiveness in form or substance to be assumed between the nature of existing reality and its reasons or conditions. Following our line of reflection, we cannot seek these reasons otherwise thanby questioning reality itself. Starting by the knowledge of what is, we may progress toward its unknown reasons.
     The first term of our question: "Why is there something rather than nothing?" through which being assesses itself is at the same time universal and singular. First, it does not denote this or that, but anything; second, although in its universality it does not stop at any particular feature, it singles out just one most particular instance of reality. Such an instance of reality, particular in the sense that it represents reality in its most concrete nature, may be seen as what Pascal would call "the middle term between two infinities."
     The "middle term" between the two speculative extremes of being and nothingness is to be seen then in the real individual being. From the central position it occupies, we only need to adopt an appropriate cognitive attitude and an appropriate methodological apparatus in order to make the transition from being to the reasons for being.
     It is our thesis that the real individual being occupies the key position in the universe among other types of beings, such as ideas, ideal beings, intentional beings, processes, events, ideal qualities, that we distinguish by ontological analysis. On the one hand, as we will show, it plays the organizing role within the world order, centralizing and distributing its forces and activities. To accomplish this central role, it postulates the cooperation of other types of being, if not their coexistence. On the other hand, the intrinsic constant pattern of the real individual exhibits a set of specific features — which are shared also by the world and the universe — called "contingency." Through theintrinsic foundation of the modes of contingency within the real individual, as will be seen, we may conjecture concretely as to his constitutive system. The constitutive system presents the reasons and ultimate conditions of reality and being. The analysis of the contingent nature of reality is then the central point of our investigation.
     Yet - and this is our second thesis - the determination of the nature of the real individual implies the necessity of the world, since (a) the differentiation and distinction of the real individual as actually existing can only be obtained from the perspective of his position in relation to other beings of the world and in opposition to them, and (b) the individual is determined (in what we universally assume as his actual existence) by his place within the context of the world. Thus the conception of the individual and of the world are necessarily correlated.

     (b) The world context of actual existence and cosmological inquiry

    1. The notion of the concrete real being

     Indeed, if we are aiming at the grasp of the individual being, not as a "bloodless monster" of eidetic perception, but as a type of concrete existent, the notion of the world context is fundamental. The real individual realizes his concrete existence within and through the world context.
     In naive as well as scientific experience, the real world appears to us as this complete world system of which we are an integral, inextricable part. The cognizing subject is immersed anonymously within the world (among other beings) in the infinitely complex texture of the world system or world context. We experience this texture as an infinite wave which carries us along with its incessantly changing and advancing course. Setting out on our basic inquiry in.to the nature of beings, we cannot overlook this primitive evidence and the basic, authentic status of experience — its ingrownness in the world texture. If we aim at the differentiation and grasp of individual beings, we have to approach them from their role within this congenital context of the world (congenital for both the cognizing subject and its object), from which we can' extricate them only by mental abstraction.
     If we aim at the discovery of the nature, final aim, and reasons of the individual, we necessarily inquire as to his place within this world context. Only from within this context can we seize not merely his permanent, ideal structure but also — by not identifying the individual with this structure alone and thus not separating him from all \ his primitive ties with the texture in which he has his roots and body — receive some insight into a crucial feature of his essential existential status, namely, his ingrownness into the totality of beings. This ingrownness reveals a microcosm that discloses not only its own system of operations but also points beyond to the system of the whole.
     Only if we approach the being from the point of view of his primordial originary extension into the world context can we deal with the actually existing and not merely ideally possible being.
     There is, indeed, a crucial piece of evidence, so primitive that it has always escaped attention: the actual existence of a being, of the world itself, consists of nothing else but its complete ingrownness in the world texture in which the cognizing subject is equally immersed.
     The problem of actual existence and of its experiential evidence has to be approached from the point of view of the world system, avoiding the distortions of subjectivistic biases. The experiential evidence of actual existence will also appear as evidence of our conception of the world context.

     2. Experiential evidence for the actual existence of the real individual

     The existence of the real individual has always been the crux of philosophical controversies, yet its conception remains distorted and confused. Ontology may well analyze its mode within the ideal structure of the individual, but the specific actuality of the existence of the real being remains structurally ungraspable. We may well speculate about possible beings and yet repeat with Wittgenstein, how extraordinary it is that something should actually exist!
     The reason is that in the historical course of philosophical speculation about existence the original experiential evidence of existence has been lost from sight. Philosophers used to seek for an existentially significant contact with reality in some type of man's cognitive function, hoping to find it in "originary experience" (one in which man would, according to phenomenologists, emerge together with the world around him) by probing ever deeper into the genetic course of the constitutive process of consciousness or cognition; and so they continued to move within the transcendental circle out of touch with the real. But prior to the differentiation of his functions into volitive, cognitive and judicative, man enjoys reality, immediately as a living being, involved vitally with the rest of the universe through his original openness to the elemental world process, and his presence in the universal becoming. Only with the ulterior differentiation and specialization of the individual's functions does the universal becoming take on the form of a world of things and beings. Thus presence — as our primeval participation in reality prior to all subsequent operations of mind and giving a specific shape to both — means nothing else but man's rootedness and involvement in the universal scheme of things and of beings. This involvement is neither passive nor statinonary, it is not "being part of", as a particle ."To be involved in the universal scheme of things and of beings means to pulsate with the world's pulsations, to take an active part in its becoming, now challenging and repelling the threatening forces, then using them to one's own advantage to emerge victoriously at every instant from its perils as a self-reliant being.
     What is this primeval "ground", this reality shaping itself into forms which the mind reconstructs as the real world? What evidence of its nature can we obtain from our presence in it, which appears as simple as the very fact of being alive?
     Had presence dissolved itself into the vital functions of the individual, leaving no specific significant as the actus of life does, it could not give us the desired evidence. Yet looking more closely, we discover that presence, although not yet an instance of cognition, is already an instance of experience. It is the type of an undifferentiated, global experience — experience in the sense that, in opposition to simple vital acts, it does not pass away with the change caused in our organic system or its parts, but leaves our whole being with a significant imprint which transforms not just this or that function but our whole being. This imprint is a prototype of cognition.
     Moreover, as experience, presence may most adequately be considered as "originary." Our presence within the universal process, in point of fact, means our origination within the universal scheme of things and beings. Unrestricted to any specific function, presence'mobilizes all our primary functioning into a basic act of our vital active participation in the universal scheme, participation through which we "originate," emerge as a living, acting, experiencing, and thus existing, being.
     Presence here as the originary experience is not to be identified with any instance of our development (e.g., the first instance of awareness which a baby performs with respect to the world around him), nor is it any particular instance of feeling, sensing, etc., singled out from other simultaneous acts and distilled into a specific form. Presence is rather the complete experiential set in germ, the natural condition and vital background of every type of experience. Although its content remains hidden under the sedimentations of conscious structures, it is always there as the plenitude of our being, on the surface of which we exercise the narrow margin of our conscious life.
     What, then, is the specific significant content which will serve as the crucial experiential evidence for the existence of the real individual, as well as for our notion of the world context?
     What can we "know" about reality at this vitally primitive level preceding cognition itself?
     The total differentiation of our system which is specific for the type of existence it accomplishes - the entire course the human individual outlines in his development — is conditioned by the originary imprint of his basic presence within the universe. Yet all we "know" in this complete, unaltered sense is inexorable motion and change.
     Motion and change are the notions we obtain as the significant content of the originary contact with reality is lifted from its vital ties into the distilling prism of mind. Motion and change appear as the elemental ground from which we originate, and our presence — our root within the inexorable mobility - is the challenge pregnant with protest and readiness to self-defense against the invading flux.
     The human being originates, evolves and perdures as an equilibrium between the indomitable universal flux and man's vital urge for stability. Emerging within these antithetical tensions, man is like an acrobat who manipulates his feeble and limited potentialities to reach equipoise, measuring up to the demands of his condition so as to resist the perils that threaten him.
     Our concern with existence arises from our wonder at the relative stability reached by things and beings in their (however limited and narrow) perdurance as opposed to the imperturbable changeability of the whole. The notion of existence has its experiential evidence in this originary antithesis: the relative stability of beings projected against the primeval "ground" of motion and change. Thus its terms are determined: first, the notion of existence deals with the real, actually existing, individual. Second, the conceiving of the real individual in his emergence' and development in opposition to the universal interplay of forces, relates the existence of the real individual to the system of forces that are scheming the universal becoming in which the real individual originates and evolves, together with all other things and beings -that is, together with the world. Thus the world appears as the natural context of actual existence.
     Indeed, the world does not emerge in prereflective experience as a puzzle which we could compose from separated beings (as ontology would have it), neither is it a system of intentional structures. On the contrary, it is an organized totality of beings following its own laws.
     From this provisional description of its subject matter, the scope and method of our inquiry delimits the domain which has traditionally been called "cosmology." This inquiry proposes as its object the universe of beings as actually existing, while seeking to disclose the nature and sufficient reason of that universe. The individual being within the world context will determine the choice of method.
     Our concern with discovering the individual's constant articulations as the basis of his perdurance indicates as the first methodological step the analysis of his intrinsic pattern of organization. This pattern (seen not in abstraction but as involved in all its ties with the world context) will indicate the subsequent methodological procedure.By our approaching the real individual — on the one hand in his constant pattern of intrinsic articulations, on the other hand, as participating within the world context — we hope to account for both dynamics and order.
     This approach will allow for the formulation of problems concerning the nature and ultimate reasons of the world total, not on the basis of an idle dialectic, but in concrete terms strictly determined by the intrinsic rational pattern of beings themselves, thus the approach shares in its certitude.
     Having defined the actual existence of beings in terms oftheir integral place within the world context, and having taken the primitive givenness of the individual being as a starting point of the analysis, we will arrive at a novel form of investigation into the hitherto crucial and mystifying problem of cosmic creation. Indeed, the constitutive system of the totality of being corresponds as a postulational correlate to the conjectural inference which has its foothold in the intrinsic pattern of the individual.