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Why Anything? Why This?
An Essay by Derek Parfit published in the London review of books volume 20 No. 2.
- GenresPhilosophy
4 pages, Unknown Binding
Published January 22, 1998
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About the author
Derek Parfit
21 books306 followersDerek Parfit was a British Professor of Philosophy at Oxford University specializing in personal identity, rationality, ethics, and the relations between them.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
May 11, 2019
If the universe exists in a way extremely special, this very specificity of it - the Selector, may explain its existence.
As clear as words can do. If I may be hypercritical, the latter part of the second essay seemed a little repetitive, which could of course be just of my limited understanding.
The text is very dense and comprehensive. Derek builds his arguments from tiny conceptual particles with absolute rigour. He raises every possible objection to these propositions he brings about and examins them in details. From refusing these objections he then incrementally make progress in his theoretical construction.
The most sublime question - why there is anything rather than nothing at all, itself, however, has its special stance in philosophy for a reason. When we try to get any grasp of it, even the most fundamental axioms of thoughts become rather powerless. Haim Gaifman wrote a comment to the second half of the essay on London Review of Books questioning Derek's notion of the need for explanation and, perhaps, what really does "special" mean?
Came from an interview with Jim Holt about his book "Why does the world exist?", in which he recommended this essay of Derek's with the notion that this will "make you weeping tears of intellectual joys". He did not exaggerate in my opinion. However, even after reading this, my favourite answer to the sublime question by far remains to be the one given by Jim's supervisor Sidney Morgenbesser: "Oh, even if there was nothing, you still wouldn't be satisfied!"
Maybe another way to ask the question is why do we want to know the reason of the universe at all to begin with?
As clear as words can do. If I may be hypercritical, the latter part of the second essay seemed a little repetitive, which could of course be just of my limited understanding.
The text is very dense and comprehensive. Derek builds his arguments from tiny conceptual particles with absolute rigour. He raises every possible objection to these propositions he brings about and examins them in details. From refusing these objections he then incrementally make progress in his theoretical construction.
The most sublime question - why there is anything rather than nothing at all, itself, however, has its special stance in philosophy for a reason. When we try to get any grasp of it, even the most fundamental axioms of thoughts become rather powerless. Haim Gaifman wrote a comment to the second half of the essay on London Review of Books questioning Derek's notion of the need for explanation and, perhaps, what really does "special" mean?
Came from an interview with Jim Holt about his book "Why does the world exist?", in which he recommended this essay of Derek's with the notion that this will "make you weeping tears of intellectual joys". He did not exaggerate in my opinion. However, even after reading this, my favourite answer to the sublime question by far remains to be the one given by Jim's supervisor Sidney Morgenbesser: "Oh, even if there was nothing, you still wouldn't be satisfied!"
Maybe another way to ask the question is why do we want to know the reason of the universe at all to begin with?
January 12, 2022
A carefully reasoned essay on theology/cosmology that unfortunately suffers from tedious repetition.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews