Nothingness and Nihilism

Encountering Philosophy, Chapter 14

Travis Joseph Rodgers

I want to treat two topics in this chapter that seem quite distinct, but they are tied together by the importance of “nothingness” in them. The first asks why there is something rather than nothing. The second is what nihilism is, insofar as it is a philosophical position.

The Riddle of Existence

It’s difficult to imagine or even think of nothing. An ancient discussion of the concept relied on linguistic innovation to make this point. Democritus was an Atomist philosopher, who believed that there were substances. He called a substance “den” in Greek. But den doesn’t mean anything on its own. It’s part of the larger Greek word “ouden.” Ouden means nothing. So, Richard D. McKirahan suggests calling existing things “hing” and anything else, if there is such a thing, “not-hing” or “nothing.”

Why is there something rather than nothing? Leibniz offers one of the first systematic investigations into this so-called “riddle of existence.” Too main sorts of responses suggest themselves, though they come in many flavors. A positive answer attempts to posit or put down an answer. One flavor of this response, call it possibilism, is that there are many possibilities, and one of the possibilities had to be actual, so, here we are. Things exist. Another flavor is necessitarian. For some reason or another, there had to be existing things.

Possibilism

Possibilism may be understood by analogy. Suppose there’s a rock/paper/scissors tournament. However many competitors begin, only one wins. So, we might say that the possibility that became actual “won out” by chance. That answer may be unsatisfying, but that doesn’t mean it’s true. Richard Swinburne suggests that this sort of answer is a faulty explanation.

Suppose you were bound to a machine that would draw a card at random from a deck of cards. If that card shows the Ace of Spades, the machine releases you. If it draws any other card, the machine detonates a bomb, killing you. By chance, the machine draws an Ace of Spades, so you survive. Some philosopher asks you why you’re seeing something (The Ace of Spaces) rather than nothing. If you reply, “That was just one of the possibilities,” it doesn’t answer why that one occurred and not another.

Necessitarianism

A version of the necessitarian argument is found in some theistic pictures. Suppose instead of having the opponents play one another in a rock/paper/scissors competition, we looked at the attributes of the different players. Some are tall, some are left-handed, etc. But what if we found that all of them – every single possible one – included some specific attribute. If this attribute was indeed one every possible player had, then it would be a necessary attribute of a player (at least on a modal logic picture). Likewise, suppose every possible outcome –a world with attributes XYZ, a world with attributes ABC, etc. If there were some attributes that they all shared, those would be necessary attributes.

This is essentially how God is, according to Alvin Plantinga. He is present in all possible worlds. As a necessary being, God could not not-exist. This is essentially the point St. Anselm is making in his ontological argument. It’s worth noting that a necessitarian need not be a theist. That is, even if one accepts that existence is somehow necessary, that doesn’t mean that God must exist. There must be something rather than nothing, but what that something is remains open.

The Framing Problem

The second sort of answer to our first question calls attention to the frame of the question. Questions need a frame of reference. We cannot answer, “What’s the answer?” We don’t know what the question is asking, even though it’s formed as a linguistically legitimate question. Similarly, perhaps we cannot answer from within the frame (reality) about why there is something (reality) rather than nothing (whatever that would be). The explanatory forces, if there were such things, would be exterior to the system; we’re, however, stuck within the frame of existence.

Nihilism

A key part of thinking about nihilism requires a clear sense of what’s at stake. James Tartaglia, a professed nihilist, suggests, “‘There is no overall point [or meaning] to human life.” Why are so many who encounter nihilism unimpressed? I think the answer is that nihilism involves nothingness as in the above discussion. “What is the meaning of life?” is not really a question philosophers concern themselves with any longer (if they ever did), in part because it’s ill-formed.

If the question is, “What does life mean?” that’s a great question. Philosophers of biology have tried to answer this question at least since Aristotle. But it seems that Tartaglia’s question calls out for the purpose of life. We can apply the lessons from above to offer some possible answers.

Positive and Negative Answers

If we’re looking for life’s purpose, we can either find something in life itself, or we can turn to something beyond life. Answers in life probably become questions about the good or come up empty-handed. Answers beyond life either become religious matters or appeal to some other potentially transcendent force. But it’s hard to see how something beyond life itself can be what gives purpose. Consider Aristotle’s criticism of Platonism: knowing the transcendent attributes of shoes doesn’t make a better shoemaker or shoe. They must be “in” the shoe.

And so it may be that life lacks purpose. Not that life has no meaning, just that there’s no sort of place that one must arrive at through living. Life may be, despite ending, an infinite game we play.