Bede Rundle

contemporaryAnalytic Philosophy

1937 – 2018

Bede Rundle (1937–2018) was a British analytic philosopher and fellow of Trinity College, Oxford, who worked primarily in philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and metaphysics. He is best known for his 2004 work 'Why there is Something rather than Nothing,' in which he argues that absolute nothingness is not a coherent possibility, offering a distinctive response to the classical cosmological question that bypasses the ontological argument's modal framework.

Notable Achievements

Argued that absolute nothingness is conceptually incoherent, grounding existence without appeal to a necessary being

Distinguished his cosmological approach from ontological argument strategies, avoiding modal realist commitments

Contributed to Wittgensteinian philosophy of language in 'Wittgenstein and Contemporary Philosophy of Language' (1990)

Developed an action-theoretic account of mind in 'Mind in Action' (1997)

Worked on grammar and logical form in 'Grammar in Philosophy' (1979)

Positions & Arguments(1)

Natural Theology

claim

The cosmological argument does not rely on notions central to the ontological argument and, if sound, gives us reason to think that the necessary being exists rather than not.