Review of 'Theism and Ultimate Explanation: The Necessary Shape of Contingency' by Timothy O'Connor: Blackwell, 2008. XIV + 178 PP. ₤40.00

In this book Timothy O'Connor combines an investigation of modal epistemology with a fresh look at the traditional contingency version of the cosmological argument. The connection between the two parts is that he defends the practice of hypothesizing necessities for explanatory purposes, resisting those accounts that link possibility too closely to conceivability. This provides the context in which he asks the 'existence question', "Why do the particular contingent objects there are exist and undergo the events they do?" (65). Wisely avoiding the Principle of Sufficient Reason he argues that the existence question is answered by, and only by, positing a necessary being that is 'a se' in the sense of not depending on any other being.