Stephen asked:

What is your response to the ultimate 'Why?' question?

(I mean the question, Why is there something rather than nothing? the fundamental question of
metaphysics — M. Heidegger.)

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My personal answer is that it is just a brute fact. I don't think there is an answer to that question.
There might just as well be nothing (though in a strange way, there actually being nothing is an idea
which seems impossible to comprehend).

Tim Sprod

The word "something" needs clarification. We ordinarily use "something" to refer to an unidentified
particular in a general way (e.g., "I just heard something; what was that?"). The question, "Why is
there something rather than nothing?," however, seems to ask in a general way about the totality of
things.

The grammatical form of a question can be misleading. "Why is there something rather than
nothing?" is grammatically similar to "Why is there salt in the soup rather than pepper?" or "Why are
there swallows in Capistrano rather than bald eagles?," but they are logically quite different from our
question. The other questions can be answered by investigating other parts of the world (culinary
practice and the nature of certain birds, respectively). The explanation in each case lies outside the
thing to be explained. But the question, "Why is there everything ['something'] rather than nothing at
all?," logically does not permit any such investigation. There is nothing "outside" everything that could
yield an explanation.

In The Mystery of Existence(which I highly recommend) Milton K. Munitz argues that, unlike "Why is
there something rather than nothing?," the question "Why does the observed world exist?" is
well-framed, but unanswerable. (A genuine mystery, according to Munitz, is a question that can be
neither dismissed nor answered.) He rejects the theistic answer, i.e., the observed world exists
because God created it, but that rejection does not affect what we have said above. The mystery of
existence is neutral with respect to theism. Whether or not God exists, there is nothing outside the
totality of existing things (including or excluding a God) and therefore nothing that can yield an
explanation for its existence. That is, whether the totality equals "just the observed world" or "God
plus the observed world," there is — there canbe — nothing outside that totality which explains it.
Even when, according to theism, God was all that existed, there was no explanation for that fact, for
there were no other facts than his existence to which possible explanatory appeal could be made.

As Paul Edwards put it in his (also highly recommended) essay, "Why?," in The Encyclopedia of
Philosophy,". . . the word 'why' loses its meaning when it becomes logically impossible to go beyond
what one is trying to explain. This is a matter on which there need not be any disagreement between
atheists and theists or between rationalists and empiricists."

Tony Flood

Heidegger's particular way (denkweg) of asking becomes hymnal (dankweg) as it returns to the
primal wonder of the beings for whom Being is an issue, to Being itself: that there is. We see in his
later lectures his thinking become thanking or thanksgiving. He has come under the sway of language
itself, he would say, as revealed in acts of language ie. the poems of Holderlin, Trakl and Rilke (we
shouldn't underestimate the influence of the latter because Heidegger is less than complimentary to
him). The 'philosophy' of Rilke is crucial to Heidegger I would argue, his Holderlin is Rilkean. But the
result, in any case, is that Heidegger has become wondrous before Being. Wonderful for him, but
perhaps for us, somewhat Germanly romantic.

As for my response, I must hide it behind the wonder of Levinas — but his response is worth hearing.
He says in his winter 1975 lecture course at the Sorbonne that Heidegger follows the Aristotelian
interpretation of wonder as the recognition of ignorance by itself "thereby making knowledge (savoir)
proceed from the love of knowledge (savoir). In so doing he denies to knowledge any origin in the
practical difficulties of life, in the difficulties of people who do not manage to communicate with one
another. The origin of knowledge is not in need but in knowledge itself." Hence Heidegger's originary
question: why are there things that are rather than nothing? But for Levinas this question is
predetermined by the Aristotelian interpretation of wonder, which Heidegger's originary question
makes unquestionable.

Matthew Del Nevo

http://www.sicetnon.com