Stefan Heßbrüggen-Walter

In his “Principes de la Nature et de la Grace fondés en Raison” (1714), Leibniz asks, “pourquoi il y a plus tôt quelque chose que rien”, why there is something rather than nothing. In the following series of blog posts I want to explore how this question would have been interpreted in early modern philosophy and theology before Leibniz (this is intended to grow into a paper to be published in a collection discussing the question historically and systematically). Since it is hard to find precursors to Leibniz’s question in early modern philosophy and theology (suggestions in the comments would be highly appreciated), I have decided to tackle this task somewhat obliquely: ‘quelque chose’ (latin: aliquid) and ‘rien’ (latin: nihil) are complementary terms. How we should understand Leibniz’s question depends on how we interpret these two concepts. And since I read Leibniz as wondering why something rather than nothing exists, it makes sense to examine the usage of these terms in theories of the creatio ex nihilo.

Vazquez

I start my analysis in this post with what most might take to be the orthodox view on the question, namely the Thomist position, as it is articulated e. g. in Vazquez’s influential commentary on the first part of the Summa theologiae: ¹ For him, the nihil referred to in the phrase ‘creatio ex nihilo’ denotes the ‘starting point’ (terminus a quo) of creation. Its end result is a complete and self-subsistent thing (res secundum se tota), the aliquid of creation, so to speak. The nihil must not be misunderstood as some sort of pre-existent ‘thing’ that has a role to play in the act of creation. The nihil merely signals that no element of the aliquid has existed before creation (nihil praeexistere ante productionem).²

Coming-into-being that is caused by another pre-existent thing is generation rather than creation proper, i. e. the composition of matter and form to bring about a hylemorphic whole:

Nam quando aliquid rei praecessit, et ea productione non fit, non est creatio; quod illa res non ex nihilo, sed ex aliqui fiat, sive illud sit forma, sive materia, res enim dicitur fieri ex omni eo quod constituitur.³

John of St. Thomas

John of St. Thomas agrees with Vazquez and provides additional arguments. The first is based on the premiss that every being is either caused by another, or it has been created from nothing, or it has not been created at all. If it has not been created at all, it is either God or nothing (because everything that is neither God nor nothing has been created) From this it follows that a more substantial notion of nihil risks either an infinite regress of cause and effect or the existence of an entity besides God that has not been created. Both options are unacceptable.⁴ The infinite regress arises, because for every given antecedent it can be asked, whether it originates in some other antecedent or whether it has been created ex nihilo:

[…] si omnis productio, et processio rerum est ex aliquo praesupposito, de quocumque praesupposito inquiram an sit ex alio, an ex nihilo, an a se: nec enim est dare medium. Si a se, non est factum, neque creatura; et sic vel erit Deus, vel nihil, quia omne ens vel est creatum vel increatum. Si ex nihilo, habemus intentum quod datur processio alicuius rei ex nihilo. Si ex alio, de illo alio ex quo est, rursus inquiram an sit factum ex alio, vel ex nihilo, vel habeat esse a se; et sic vel deveniemus ad aliquid, quod ex nihilo fit, vel procedemus in infinitum.⁵

It should be noted that this argument does not take into account that there may be things that are neither per se nor have they been ‘created’ by God. It is at least an open question whether the disjunction forming the premiss of the argument really is complete.

Nevertheless, the second argument is again based on a disjunction: anyone denying creatio ex nihilo must believe that there is a preexisting ‘thing’ that has not been created by God (the subiectum primum), which must be either finite or infinite. If it is infinite, it must be God and has esse a se (it exists without dependence on another thing). But it must be capable of physical change (transmutabilis). This trait is incompatible with infinity: ‘Transmutability’ presupposes a potency in the thing for physical change. Activities based on such dispositional properties are contingent. One example is solubility: A piece of sugar is water-soluble, if it will dissolve in H2O. The realisation of this disposition depends on bringing the piece of sugar into contact with H2O. In a world where there is no liquid solving sugar, solubility of sugar would not exist. In this dispositions differ from categorical properties which are always present in a thing.

God, however, is actus purus - there are no divine dispositions to act, because acts of God cannot depend on contingent circumstances. Hence, a first subject of physical change cannot be infinite, because it must have dispositions to act (or to be acted upon). Everything that is limited in this sense depends on other things for being real: Hence, it is a created thing, its coming-into-being must be based on Divine creation.⁶

So John of St. Thomas concludes that prime matter (for him the only candidate for a ‘something’ that may exist before creation) has its being from God (materiam primam esse a Deo), because it is no ‘pure nothing’ (purum nihil), but a ‘something’ (though a ‘something’ of limited value, because it only has ‘ens potentiale’).⁷

It should have become clear that ‘nothing’ and ‘something’ in the context of the discussion on creation from nothing are complementary concepts: For Thomists, ‘nothing’ is absolute, so everything there is is a ‘something’. ‘Nothing’ only states the fact of non-being. So on Thomist terms, the question why there is something rather than nothing must be translated into the question, why non-being in the most radical sense imaginable has been turned into being in the act of creation. A reconstruction of a Thomist answer to this question might have to elucidate the Thomist notion of God’s counsel (decretum dei) and Divine liberty in creating the world.

Answers to the ‘big question’, however, do not matter in this context. Therefore, the next blog post will address the question what candidates for ‘nothingness’ a Scotist may come up with. After that, we will return to the concept of matter, since some early moderns have discussed its role in in a completely different vein.