Nandita asked:

Why do we exist?

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I want to concentrate on one aspect of your question which seems to me the most important. There
may or may not be some ultimate reason why human beings are here on this Earth. If there if there is
no such reason, if human beings are merely the result of the mechanics of Darwinian evolution, there
may yet be an answer to the moral question what the goal of human life ought to be.

But there is another, metaphysical question, which we can ask: Why am I here? Why do I exist?

Each of us, at some time in our lives, is brought face to face with the contingency of our own unique
existence. If your parents had not met, you would not have existed. Neither of them would have
existed if their parents had not met, and so on. You are a fluke, and so am I. Your existence is a
gigantic improbability and so is mine.

Of course, if neither of us existed, neither of us would be asking the question. But that is not an
adequate answer.

If you believe in God, then here's a way to make sense of the fact that Nandita exists. God is
all-powerful, all-knowing and all-good. In creating the universe, God knew the precise date that
Nandita would be born, and, being all-good, his decision to create a universe in which Nandita would
exist was motivated by the thought that, taking everything into account, a universe containing Nandita
was better than a universe without Nandita.

The trouble is, that doesn't answer the question. The question that still grips me, and the question that
ought to grip you is, Why did Ihave to be in the universe? One can say the same thing about
Geoffrey as I have said about Nandita. God saw the possibilities that each of these two individuals
represented and approved. Yet still I am gripped by the question, Why did Ihave to be Geoffrey? And
similarly, you ought to be gripped by the question, Why did Ihave to be Nandita? I cannot ask your
question and you cannot ask mine. It is a question that each human being can only ask about
themself and no-one else.

It is not as if it would make any sense to imagine that Imight have been someone else other than
Geoffrey. As the eighteenth century philosopher Leibniz commented, 'To imagine myself being
Napoleon is to imagine myself not existing and Napoleon being in my place.' If all your thoughts,
feelings and experiences are replaced by Napoleon's thoughts, feelings and experiences then there is
nothing left of 'you' to think the thought, 'Now I know what it is like to be Napoleon!'

So what we are left with is a mystery, the mystery of I.There is no answer from science. There is no
answer from theology. The only contribution that philosophy has to make is to point out that the real
problem is prior to the question 'Why...?'. For no philosophical theory has yet succeeded in explaining
how there can be such a thing as the sheer fact that I exist.

[From MAYNA Staff Users, 10 Feb 2001: “I know that philosophers' arguments aren't always
concerned by purely pedantic points of factual accuracy, and I'm probably not the first reader to have
noticed this, but in your reply to Nandita's question, Why do we exist? (Feb-Mar 2000) you make
Leibniz ask why he wasn't born as Napoleon. Er, shome mishtake, shurely? Leibniz (whom you oddly
call an 'eighteenth century philosopher') lived from 1646-1716. Napoleon was born in 1769 and died
in 1821. Either Leibniz was gifted with prophetic vision, or you're referring to some later Leibniz
(which is quite possible). I'm not trying to score points here. I'm genuinely puzzled!” — Oops! Of
course I 'knew' that Napoleon came after Leibniz. Sorry about that! G.K.]

Geoffrey Klempner