QuestionsCan we be certain of anything?Why is there something rather than nothing?
Can we be certain of anything?What escapes words

Why is there something rather than nothing?

Martin Heidegger 1889 · 1976What is Being? We have forgotten the question.
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What it claims

Logic cannot declare empty the question "why is there something rather than nothing?": it arises from an experience of the nothing that logic presupposes.

Why

In anxiety, nothingness shows itself before any negation: the "no" rests on it, not the reverse, so the question keeps its sense.

In short

"Why is there something rather than nothing?" is an argument by Martin Heidegger (What Is Metaphysics?, 1929) on the question "Can we be certain of anything?" (answer: what escapes words). Its claim: Logic cannot declare empty the question "why is there something rather than nothing?": it arises from an experience of the nothing that logic presupposes. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P3, P5). AskPhilosophy presents 3 objections, 2 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

What Is Metaphysics?, 1929
Valid with an implicit premise

In his 1929 lecture Heidegger starts from science: it studies beings (what exists) "and nothing else". Yet, he says, in speaking of itself it calls on the nothing. He asks what this "nothing" is. He holds that it cannot be grasped by a judgement, since it is not a thing, but that it is revealed in a mood: anxiety (not to be confused with fear of a particular danger). That is why we file the argument under "what escapes words": for him the nothing is not proved by logic, it is revealed in an experience. This placement is approximate: Heidegger is not answering the question of certainty here. Its conclusion is the question that ends the lecture: "Why is there something rather than nothing?"

P1The nothing is not a being and is not grasped as an object. It is revealed in anxiety, where beings as a whole slip away from us.
P2This experience ("nihilation") is neither the destruction of beings nor the result of a negation, a "not" said or thought.
P3 · implicit premiseWhat shows itself before any negation and does not come from it is more original than negation: the "not" rests on the nothing, and not the other way round.
P4If negation (an act of the intellect, logic) rests on the nothing, then the intellect cannot decide what the nothing is.
P5 · implicit premiseA question is empty from the standpoint of logic only if logic has the right to judge that question.
Therefore logic cannot declare empty the question "why is there something rather than nothing?": it arises from an experience of the nothing that logic presupposes.

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 P3, the computer finds a case where the nothing shows itself in anxiety without coming from negation, yet negation stays first (the "not" might come from elsewhere, e.g. from language). Without P5, it finds a case where logic is not the judge, but the question is empty all the same, for another reason (for example because the words have no meaning).
Valid with P3 and P5, two premises added out of charity. From P1 and P2: the nothing is revealed, and it does not come from negation. With P3, negation rests on the nothing. With P4, logic cannot decide about the nothing. With P5, it therefore cannot declare the question empty. The weak point is P3: that the nothing shows itself before negation does not prove that anything true can be said about it, and that is where Carnap attacks. Note: the argument does not prove that the nothing "exists"; it only says logic cannot forbid the question.
Analogy. A man blind from birth asks whether colours exist. The mathematician tells him "colour" is an empty word, because he cannot define it with his tools. Heidegger would say: the mathematician's tool cannot judge what shows itself to another sense. But the mathematician would answer that this sense must be sayable to others, or it does not count as knowledge.

Objections

3

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

Objection Heidegger states himself (1929) attacks premise 1

The question "what is the nothing?" destroys its own object: asking what the nothing "is" treats it as a being. And the rule of non-contradiction, the basis of all logic, forbids thinking the nothing, since thinking is always thinking of something.

Heidegger replies
Heidegger Heidegger's answer (same lecture)
He asserts that the nothing is more original than the "not" and than negation.
The debate goes on (our summary) The passage asserts the thesis (P3) but does not establish it alone: Heidegger then relies on anxiety (P1, P2) to support it. A critic will say that the experience of a mood proves one can feel something, not that one can say something true about "the nothing".
Rudolf Carnap, "The Elimination of Metaphysics through Logical Analysis of Language" 1932 · attacks premise 3

For Carnap, "the nothing nothings" is neither true nor false: it is a pseudo-statement. It makes two mistakes. First, it treats "nothing" as the name of an object, whereas "there is nothing outside" simply means there is no thing outside. Second, it invents a verb, "to nothing", without saying under what conditions one could check that a sentence using it is true. The statement has the form of a sentence while saying nothing. At best it expresses a feeling of life, like a poem or music, yet it claims to be knowledge. (Journal Erkenntnis, vol. 2, 1932; paraphrased: the extract is not in our corpus.)

no reply
summary: their text is not yet in our corpus
We have not yet found a direct reply by Heidegger in the texts.
The debate goes on (our summary) We found no direct answer from Heidegger to Carnap in our corpus. The 1943 postscript to the lecture (not in our corpus) answers the charge of abandoning rigorous thought for feeling, without naming Carnap. In the Letter on Humanism (1946, § 84) he writes that thinking against "logic" does not mean defending the illogical, but tracing the essence of logos; this sentence answers the general charge of irrationalism, not Carnap's analysis of the meaning of words. His defenders say the objection presupposes the authority of logic, which the lecture precisely questions. His critics say that to question that authority one needs criteria of meaning that Heidegger does not give. The disagreement is about what counts as "having a meaning".
N
Nishitani Keiji, Religion and Nothingness (Kyoto School) 1961 · attacks premise 1

Nishitani, who attended Heidegger's lectures, keeps from him that the nothing is revealed to the human being, but judges that this nothing still keeps a trace of representation, as if it were some "thing" called nothingness. For him this nothing remains relative, still opposed to being; one must go further, to the emptiness (śūnyatā) of Buddhism, which no longer stands opposed to being. (Paraphrased: the extract is not in our corpus; specialists debate whether this reproach is fair.)

Heidegger replies
summary: their text is not yet in our corpus
Heidegger Answer anticipated by Heidegger (same lecture, 1929, before Nishitani)
The nothing is neither an object nor a being at all.
The debate goes on (our summary) Heidegger thus denies in so many words what Nishitani reproaches him with, and a defender will say Nishitani criticises him for what he says he avoids. Nishitani, who knew this text, judges it is not enough: as long as the nothing remains what stands opposed to beings, it is not yet emptiness. We found no answer from Heidegger to this reproach, made after his lecture.