Being, Nothing & God

Eight steps to the deepest question: why is there anything at all, and is there a being that had to be?

A course on the thought of Metaphysics.

What you will learn

  • Grasp the question 'why is there something rather than nothing?' as distinct from any scientific 'why'.
  • Distinguish beings (what is) from Being (that they are / what it means to be) — the ontological difference.
  • See Heidegger's charge: metaphysics catalogued beings and forgot to ask after Being itself.
  • State Quine's criterion of ontological commitment (to be = to be the value of a bound variable).
  • State Carnap's internal/external distinction and his deflation of metaphysical existence-questions.
  • Weigh whether this dissolves Heidegger's question or merely refuses to engage it.
  • State emptiness: things lack svabhava (intrinsic existence); they exist only dependently.
  • See the tetralemma's refusal of all four positions (is / is-not / both / neither) about ultimate being.

Course outline

  1. Why Is There Anything At All? — The deepest question, posed. Leibniz first asked 'why is there something rather than nothing?'; Heidegger makes it the fundamental question of metaphysics and adds a deeper one — not just why beings…
  2. What Does 'Exists' Mean? — The analytic answer to Heidegger's grandeur: get precise about 'exists.' Quine: a theory is committed to whatever its bound variables must range over — 'to be is to be the value of a variable' — and…
  3. Is Nothing Something? — Emptiness — A third path between 'being' and 'nothing.' Nagarjuna: nothing has svabhava (intrinsic, independent existence); all things arise dependently and are empty (sunyata). This is neither the eternalist's…
  4. That Than Which Nothing Greater — The strangest argument in philosophy: that God's existence follows from the mere concept of God. Anselm: God is that than which nothing greater can be conceived; a God existing only in the…
  5. The Reason for the World — The cosmological road to necessary being. Both Leibniz and Spinoza apply the principle of sufficient reason to the existence of the world — but Leibniz concludes to a necessary being TRANSCENDING the…
  6. God in Modal Dress — The ontological argument reborn in the apparatus of Course 3. Plantinga: define maximal greatness as being maximally excellent in every possible world; IF such greatness is possible (exemplified in…
  7. Being Is Not a Being — Heidegger's closing turn: every God-argument in this course — ontological, cosmological, modal — answers the question 'which being is the highest/ necessary one?' But that was never the question of…

Works read in this course

  • Heidegger, Introduction to Metaphysics / 'What Is Metaphysics?' — the question of Being; the nothing; the ontological difference; onto-theology
  • Quine, 'On What There Is' (1948) — ontological commitment; to be = value of a bound variable
  • Carnap, 'Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology' (1950) — internal/external questions; metaphysics as pseudo-questions
  • Nagarjuna, Mulamadhyamakakarika — emptiness; dependent origination; the tetralemma on being/non-being
  • Anselm, Proslogion ii-iii — that than which nothing greater can be conceived; existence in re vs in intellectu
  • Kant, Critique of Pure Reason — the refutation of the ontological argument; being is not a real predicate
  • Leibniz, Monadology / Principles of Nature and Grace; Spinoza, Ethics I — the cosmological argument from the PSR; God-or-Nature
  • Plantinga, The Nature of Necessity — the modal ontological argument; necessary being in possible worlds

Terms introduced

the question of Being, ontological difference, ontological commitment, internal vs external questions, emptiness (sunyata), ontological argument, existence is not a predicate, cosmological argument, necessary being, contingent being, God-or-Nature (Spinoza), onto-theology

Part of the Simposeum course library.