Why Do We Exist?

Each of us, at some time in our lives, is brought face to face with the contingency of our own unique existence. If your parents had not met, you would not have existed. Neither of them would have existed if their parents had not met, and so on. You are a fluke, and so am I. Your existence is a gigantic improbability and so is mine.

Of course, if neither of us existed, neither of us would be asking the question. But that is not an adequate answer.

If you believe in God, then here's a way to make sense of the fact that someone named ‘Kim’ exists. God is all-powerful, all-knowing and all-good. In creating the universe, God knew the precise date that Kim would be born, and, being all-good, his decision to create a universe in which Kim would exist was motivated by the thought that, taking everything into account, a universe containing Kim was better than a universe without Kim.

The trouble is, that doesn't answer the question. The question that still grips me, and the question that ought to grip you is, ‘Why did I have to be in the universe?” One can say the same thing about Kevin as I have said about Kim. God saw the possibilities that each of these two individuals represented and approved. Yet still I am gripped by the question, ‘Why did I have to be Kevin?’ And similarly, you ought to be gripped by the question, ‘Why did I have to be [insert your name]?’ I cannot ask your question and you cannot ask mine. It is a question that each human being can only ask about themselves and no-one else.

It is not as if it would make any sense to imagine that I might have been someone else other than Kevin. As the eighteenth century philosopher Leibniz famously commented, “To imagine myself being Descartes is to imagine myself not existing and Descartes being in my place.” If all your thoughts, feelings and experiences are replaced by Descartes’ thoughts, feelings and experiences then there is nothing left of 'you' to think the thought: 'Now I know what it is like to be Descartes!'

So what we are left with is a mystery, the mystery of I. There is no answer from science. There is no answer from theology. The only contribution that philosophy has to make is to point out that the real problem is prior to the question 'Why...?'. For no philosophical theory, that I know of, has succeeded in explaining how there can be such a thing as the sheer fact that I exist.