On what there is
By Willard van Orman Quine
[Published in Review of Metaphysics (1948). Reprinted in From a Logical Point of View (1953).]
A curious thing about the ontological problem is its simplicity. It can be put in three Anglo-Saxon monosyllables: ‘What is there?’ It can be answered, moreover, in a word—‘Everything’—and everyone will accept this answer as true. However, this is merely to say that there is what there is. There remains room for disagreement over cases; and so the issue has stayed alive down the centuries.