QuestionsWhy is there something rather than nothing?Absolute nothing is a pseudo-idea
Why is there something rather than nothing?Nothingness does not exist

Absolute nothing is a pseudo-idea

The idea of nothing; "there is more, and not less, in the idea of an object that does not exist"

Henri Bergson 1859 · 1941The free act springs from our whole personality: lived duration cannot be cut up like space.
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What it claims

Absolute nothing is a pseudo-idea, and the question "why is there something rather than nothing?" is a pseudo-problem born of an illusion.

Why

Absolute nothing can be neither imagined nor conceived without contradiction: to think an absence is to think something else present.

The same idea through history
Parménide480 BCParmenides already: what is not can be neither thought nor said. Bergson reaches a close conclusion through psychology (what do we do when we try to imagine nothing?) and not through the logic of being.
Henri Bergson1907In Creative Evolution Bergson takes the idea of nothing to examine it, because it is the starting point of the great systems (Spinoza, Leibniz): if it is an illusion, the problems built upon it fall with it.
In short

"Absolute nothing is a pseudo-idea" is an argument by Henri Bergson (Creative Evolution, 1907, chapter IV, 1907) on the question "Why is there something rather than nothing?" (answer: nothingness does not exist). Its claim: Absolute nothing is a pseudo-idea, and the question "why is there something rather than nothing?" is a pseudo-problem born of an illusion. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P5, P6). AskPhilosophy presents 2 objections, 1 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

Creative Evolution, 1907, chapter IV
Valid with an implicit premise

Close your eyes and block your ears. Make the world disappear, then your body, then your memories. What is left? You, doing the exercise. Bergson starts from this simple experience to claim that nobody has ever thought absolute nothing: we only have the impression of doing so. And if absolute nothing is not a real idea, the question "why is there something rather than nothing?" loses its starting point: it opposes being to a "nothing" that exists only as a word.

P1To represent nothing is either to imagine it or to conceive it.
P2It cannot be imagined. If I remove everything, someone is left to witness the disappearance: "I see myself annihilated only if I have already resuscitated myself by an act which is positive". The image of "nothing" is always full of something.
P3Nor can it be conceived. To think the absence of one thing is to think the presence of another that replaces it; to suppress is to replace. An "annihilation of everything" would therefore be as absurd as a square circle.
P4The idea of an object "that does not exist" contains more, not less, than that of the same object existing: it is the idea of the object, plus that of its exclusion by reality.
P5 · implicit premiseAn idea that can be neither imagined nor conceived without contradiction is not a real idea, only a word.
P6 · implicit premiseThe question "why is there something rather than nothing?" assumes that absolute nothing is a real idea, a state that can be set against existence.
Therefore absolute nothing is a pseudo-idea, and the question "why is there something rather than nothing?" is a pseudo-problem born of an illusion.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P5, one can accept P1 to P3 and say the idea of nothing is still legitimate, as a limiting idea reached without being able to picture it (we cannot picture infinity either). Without P6, one can accept that nothing is a pseudo-idea and keep a version of the question: why does this world exist, and not none?
The argument is valid with the hidden premises P5 and P6. P1 to P3 show that nothing can be neither imagined nor conceived; P5 concludes that it is not a real idea; P6 links that idea to the question "why rather than nothing?". Premise P4 explains why the illusion is stubborn, without being needed for validity. The weak point under discussion is P3: is "conceiving an empty world" contradictory, or only contrary to our habits?
Analogy. Try to record silence: you always record a very faint sound, or the noise of your room. "Absolute silence" is a limiting idea you reach by removing more and more noise; but what you listen to is always the last remaining noise. In the same way, we remove things one by one and believe we have thought "nothing", when we have only thought "fewer and fewer things, and ourselves removing them".

Objections

2

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

Leibniz 1714 · attacks the conclusion

For Leibniz, the first question we are entitled to ask is: "Why is there something rather than nothing?", because "nothing is simpler and easier than something". So nothing is a real possibility, simpler than the world, and existence needs a reason.

Bergson replies
see the argument
Henri Bergson
Bergson answers that here the full is set against the full: the "nothing" we talk about is only the image of realities expelling one another. The question "why does something exist?" would therefore be meaningless, a pseudo-problem raised about a pseudo-idea.
T
Thomas Baldwin 1996
Summary: Baldwin replies that we do not need to imagine nothing to find it possible. It is enough to reason by subtraction: each concrete being (a stone, a star) could fail to exist; if we remove all beings this way, nothing shows that a last one must remain that cannot be removed. The empty world would then be a possible world, described from outside, without anyone needing to imagine it.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Core disagreement: is the possibility of absolute nothing a question of representation (Bergson) or of logic, which needs no image (the subtraction argument)? Neither side has won.
Martin Heidegger 1929 · attacks premise 3

Heidegger refuses to reach nothing by removing things. In dread, he says, beings are not annihilated to leave nothing: beings as a whole "slip away", and nothing shows itself together with them, without being an object. This nothing is not thought by adding up suppressions: it is lived as an experience in which everything becomes strange.

no reply
see the argument
We have not yet found a direct reply by Bergson in the texts.
The debate goes on (our summary) Bergson could not reply (he died in 1941, Heidegger's text dates from 1929, and he does not discuss it). A Bergsonian would note that Heidegger confirms part of the thesis: nothing never shows itself "apart", but always together with beings; and that what he describes is a feeling, not an idea of absolute nothing.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Open point: Heidegger speaks of an experience, Bergson of an idea. It is not established that they mean the same "nothing".