The Fundamental Question of Philosophy

“Why is there something rather than nothing?” With this question, Heidegger declares the fundamental question of metaphysics, or philosophy in general. For Heidegger, it is “the first of all questions”. But not one that is asked often. In his lectures on metaphysics, Heidegger starts with this question because he sees it as the prime, original question that encompasses the most. But what does it mean to ask this question? And is there an answer that can be given? Let us take a deeper look at this fundamental question according to Heidegger.

The question might be fundamental, yet it is not a question that many seem to ask themselves often. The question almost always arises when we are bored. However, what does it mean to be bored? Being bored is the state where we do not want anything. We are bored when nothing seems to make any difference whether we do it or not. We do not know what to do because we have no goal we want to achieve at that moment. During that moment, we ask ourselves: what does it mean? Or why am I here? Or why is there something rather than nothing?

We ask ourselves in our boredom for the ground of the things. What is the foundation of the things we believe and act upon? When bored, we do not see the ground for pursuing and doing anything. It is then that we ask the question. It is through asking the question that we search for the ground of the things. Heidegger’s language is obscure and vague, but what this means is that we need a reason for things to be. It is a part of the human condition that we need a reason for something to be or to do something. Having no reason is not enough for us, we do not even deem it rational. For example, if I eat 10 bananas in one sitting and someone asks me why I do this, and I reply: “no reason”, then that person will feel confused. But this example is out of the ordinary. Yet, if I only eat one banana, there is also a reason, namely that I was hungry and therefore ate the banana. Every action has an implied reason to do it because it justifies the action. Having no reason for doing things is nonsensical.

The question is fundamental because it asks a justification of the whole of being. The answer to this question grounds everything in our lives. I would explain why things are as they are. It would explain why we need to act so and so. It would explain what is true and what is false. Throughout history, the answer to this question has been most of the time God. It was God who created reality and it is for God that we act in the world so we can join God in heaven. Nowadays, this is no longer an adequate answer. God is dead, Nietzsche proclaimed, and it is on humans themselves to formulate an answer to the question. To answer the question is the fundamental task of metaphysics.

In our daily lives, this question is rarely on our minds. When the question arises, however, it comes to us as a “shock”. The ambiguousness of our situation becomes clear to us. Camus claims in the Myth of Sisyphus, that that is the moment we are confronted with the absurd. The absurd is the situation where we question ourselves. That shock confronts us with the question: “What is the point exactly”. The question of what the point is of a certain action can be broadened until we come to the question Heidegger posits: Why is there something rather than nothing? The question demands an answer for our being to make sense. Most of the time we claim that a higher purpose is the ground for our being. People still claim that God is the ground, others claim it is their ideology (communism, fascism, liberalism, etc.) that grounds their being. The problem is that these are not authentic answers from ourselves. They are someone else’s answers that we adopt so we do not have to formulate our own.

When we try to answer the question for ourselves, however, it doesn’t seem enough. We human beings feel as if we are not enough to formulate an objective answer, an answer that is valid for eternity. Yet, we still act in the world and thus we are answering the question. We can never do this explicitly in language, but only by acting in the world. There seems to be a contradiction. We are not able to answer the question, yet we answer the question by acting in the world. How to solve this?

The solution to this contradiction is not necessarily to construe an objective answer valid for everyone in eternity. The solution is to continue to ask the question and to act in the world. Acting in the world construes an answer to the question of why there is something rather than nothing. Here there exists a “leap”, which means that this answer can never be proven in the scientific sense but is only shown in action as an example to others. Others can see how you are living your life and think that that is the way life should be lived. There is no clear rational ground for this, which is why there is a certain leap of faith. The importance here is to continue asking the question which gives an openness for making a leap. If you are too hung up on an answer given by an ideology or religion without continuing to question the validity of this answer, you fall into dogmatism. Here we can no longer be authentic to ourselves. This we should avoid and try to be authentic beings.

Philosophy tries to answer the question of the ground of being, without giving an eternal answer. The question needs to be asked again and again and again. Asking this question is to justify being, but this justification is never complete. It must be done again and again and again. It comes to us to answer this question. This can never be fully done in speech but by acting in the world we present it with an answer. To act is to formulate an answer.