Necessary Existence

Necessary Existence breaks ground on one of the deepest questions anyone ever asks: why is there anything? The classic answer is in terms of a necessary foundation. Yet, why think that is the correct answer? Pruss and Rasmussen present an original defense of the hypothesis that there is a concrete necessary being capable of providing a foundation for the existence of things. They offer six main arguments, divided into six chapters. The first argument is an up-to-date presentation and assessment of a traditional causal-based argument from contingency. The next five arguments are new "possibility-based" arguments that make use of twentieth-century advances in modal logic. The arguments present possible pathways to an intriguing and far-reaching conclusion. The final chapter answers the most challenging objection to the existence of necessary things.

Alexander R. Pruss is Professor of Philosophy at Baylor University, working in metaphysics, philosophy of religion, formal epistemology, philosophy of mathematics, and applied ethics. His previous books include One Body (Notre Dame 2012), Actuality, Possibility and Worlds (Continuum 2011), and The Principle of Sufficient Reason (Cambridge 2006). He holds Ph.D.s in both philosophy and mathematics.


Joshua L. Rasmussen is a research professor of philosophy at Azusa Pacific University. He specializes in analytic metaphysics, with interests in mind and philosophy of religion. He is the author of Defending the Correspondence Theory of Truth (Cambridge 2014) and the founder of Worldview Design, which helps people use reason to address the big question of life.