An actual world

What, if anything, can be built on the bare assumption that in logic properties are considered in logically possible combinations with objects? Properly interpreted, we can, for starters, derive from the assumption an explanation in pure philosophical ontology of why there exists something rather than nothing. To the extent that the explanation is successful it reflects positively on the analysis of being as maximal consistency.

The historical honour of having first raised the question “Why is there something rather than nothing?” is usually attributed to G. W. Leibniz, in his 1697 essay, “On the Ultimate Origination of Things”. Leibniz's theophilosophical solution of the problem, appealing to God's goodness and creative will, does not satisfy everyone, particularly those who would include God, if God exists, in the category of “something rather than nothing” whose existence needs to be explained. Heidegger takes up the question in his 1935 lectures at the University of Freiburg in Breisgau, updated in 1953, and published as An Introduction to Metaphysics, as an instalment in his preoccupation with all aspects of the question of being. Heidegger refers to the question of why there is something rather than nothing as the “Fundamental Question of Metaphysics”, and refines the problem in such a way as to return to his phenomenological existentialist ontology and solution to the question of being in terms of Da-sein.

The questions Heidegger raises considered in themselves are undoubtedly the right questions to ask; it is Heidegger's methodology and answers to the questions that we have disputed.