QuestionsWhy is there something rather than nothing?The world overflows from the One, because the One is too perfect to stay alone
Why is there something rather than nothing?There is a reason

The world overflows from the One, because the One is too perfect to stay alone

Emanation, the overflowing of the One

Plotin c. 205 · c. 270For him, beauty is the presence of form and of the intelligible in matter, and the soul recognises it because it is kin to it.
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What it claims

The many (Intellect, Soul, the world) come from the One by overflow, without the One changing: there is something rather than nothing because the source of all is too perfect to produce nothing.

Why

The One is perfect and lacks nothing: so it overflows and produces all the rest, as the sun shines without losing anything.

The same idea through history
Plotin260Enneads V, 1; V, 2; V, 4: the thesis presented here. From the first principle, perfect and simple, come first Intellect, then Soul, then the sensible world, without the One changing.
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz1714Leibniz takes up the image: created monads are born "through continual fulgurations of the Divinity". But he refuses to make it a necessary production (see Leibniz's objection below).
In short

"The world overflows from the One, because the One is too perfect to stay alone" is an argument by Plotin (Enneads V, 1, 6; V, 2, 1; V, 4, 1 (c. 253-270), 260) on the question "Why is there something rather than nothing?" (answer: there is a reason). Its claim: The many (Intellect, Soul, the world) come from the One by overflow, without the One changing: there is something rather than nothing because the source of all is too perfect to produce nothing. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P5). AskPhilosophy presents 4 objections, 3 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

Enneads V, 1, 6; V, 2, 1; V, 4, 1 (c. 253-270)
Valid with an implicit premise

Why is there something rather than nothing? Plotinus answers without speaking of creation or choice. At the top of everything there is the One: a perfect principle that seeks nothing and lacks nothing. Yet what is perfect does not stay closed on itself: fire warms, snow chills, a perfume spreads. So the One overflows, as light comes from the sun without the sun changing. From this overflow come Intellect, then Soul, then everything else. For Plotinus, "nothing" was therefore never a real possibility: the existence of the world follows from the perfection of its source.

P1Everything that exists after the first principle comes from it, nearby or at a distance. That principle must be simple and unique: what is composite needs the simple elements it is made of, and what is not first needs what comes before it.
P2This principle, the One, is perfect: it seeks nothing, needs nothing, lacks nothing.
P3Every being that reaches perfection generates: it does not stay closed on itself, it produces something else (fire warms, snow chills). So the most perfect cannot stay alone, unless it is grudging or powerless, which is impossible for the power of all things.
P4This production happens without the One moving, deciding or losing anything: it is a radiation, like the light around the sun.
P5 · implicit premiseSuch an overflow is enough to explain the existence of the many: there is no reason to look for beyond the perfection of the One.
Therefore the many (Intellect, Soul, the world) come from the One by overflow, without the One changing: there is something rather than nothing because the source of all is too perfect to produce nothing.

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, the computer finds a case where the perfect One "generates" without this explaining the many of the world: the generation exists, but the many owes itself to something else (matter, chance).
The argument is valid with the hidden premise P5. If the first principle is perfect (P1, P2), if what is perfect generates (P3) and without changing (P4), we still need to pass from "it generates" to "the many proceed from it": that is P5, which Plotinus asserts when he says that it is because there is nothing in the One that everything can come from it. The objections aim mostly at this step, and at the idea of a production without choice.
Analogy. A spring from which water overflows without end: it does not decide to flow and it is not used up, because its fullness is enough to make it flow. Plotinus prefers the light of the sun, the heat of fire, a perfume, which spread around their source without impoverishing it.

Objections

4

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

P
Plotinus himself (the old wise men's question) 260 · attacks premise 2

If the One is what we say, perfect and without any multiplicity, how can there be anything after it, a multitude, a number? Why did it not stay in itself, instead of letting flow from it the multiplicity we see in beings? Plotinus recognises that the problem is old and hard.

Plotin replies
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Plotinus (answer) 260
It is precisely because there is nothing in the One that everything can come from it. For Being to exist, the source must not be Being: it must be what generates it. And because the One is perfect, it overflows, and this overflow produces something else.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Our summary: Plotinus raises the difficulty himself and answers with an image (the overflow). His critics think the image hides the problem: a perfect being that overflows seems to "lack" something. A point discussed since antiquity.
Leibniz (Theodicy, on necessary emanation) 1710 · attacks premise 4

Leibniz is not aiming at Plotinus here, but his reasoning reaches him: if creation were a necessary emanation, like the properties of a circle flowing from its essence, one would have to say that God produced the creature by necessity. For him God's action is free; producing without deciding, as Plotinus wants, takes away the source's freedom.

Plotin replies
No reply possible: objection raised in 1710, after the author's death (270).
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Plotinus 260 · Plotinus (earlier text)
How could the most perfect, the First Good, the power of all things, stay shut up in itself, as if out of grudge or powerlessness?
The debate goes on (our summary) Our summary (a reconstructed reply): this passage does not speak of freedom. A Plotinian would say that this necessity is not a constraint from outside but the One's own goodness; elsewhere Plotinus devotes a treatise to the freedom and will of the One (Enneads VI, 8), which is not in our corpus. For Leibniz this is not enough: without a choice among possibles there is no freedom in the proper sense.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Our summary: the disagreement is about the meaning of "free". For Leibniz, being free means choosing among possibilities. For Plotinus' tradition, the highest freedom is to act from one's own fullness, without hesitation. An open point.
Hume (Cleanthes, in the Dialogues) 1779 · attacks premise 1

Why may the material world itself not be the necessarily existing Being? We do not know all the qualities of matter: nothing proves that its non-existence would not be as contradictory as saying that twice two is five. The first principle could therefore be the world rather than the One.

Plotin replies
see the argument
No reply possible: objection raised in 1779, after the author's death (270).
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Plotinus 260 · Plotinus (earlier text)
What is not simple needs the simple elements it is made of, and what is not first needs what comes before it: before everything there must be something truly one.
The debate goes on (our summary) Our summary: it is we who apply this principle to Hume's material world; Plotinus does not discuss that hypothesis. Hume would answer that we do not know whether matter needs a principle simpler than itself.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Our summary: Hume is not aiming at Plotinus, and Plotinus could not answer Hume. The disagreement is about the premise "the composite presupposes the simple": Hume rejects it, since a chain of causes or a whole needs no simple starting point. An open point.
Bertrand Russell 1948 · attacks the conclusion

Russell refuses to admit that the universe as a whole must have a reason. For him, the universe is just there, and that is all: the demand for an explanation of the whole need not be met.

no reply
see the argument
No reply possible: objection raised in 1948, after the author's death (270).
The debate goes on (our summary) Our summary: Plotinus had been dead nearly sixteen centuries when Russell spoke. A defender of the overflow would reply that a brute fact is possible, but that the One offers a more economical explanation: everything derives from a single principle, instead of a multitude of unconnected facts.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Our summary: a core disagreement on the principle of reason: must every fact have an explanation? Neither side has convinced the other.