The heart of philosophy is metaphysics, and at the heart of the heart
lie two questions about existence. What is it for any contingent thing
to exist? Why does any contingent thing exist? Call these the nature
question and the ground question, respectively. The first concerns the
nature of the existence of the contingent existent; the second concerns
the ground of the contingent existent. Both questions are ancient, and
yet perennial in their appeal; both have presided over the burial of so
many of their would-be undertakers that it is a good induction that they
will continue to do so. For some time now, the preferred style in
addressing such questions has been deflationary when it has not been
eliminativist. Ask Willard Quine what existence is, and you will hear
that "Existence is what existential quantification expresses. "! Ask
Bertrand Russell what it is for an individual to exist, and he will tell
you that an individual can no more exist than it can be numerous: there
2 just is no such thing as the existence of individuals. And of course
Russell's eliminativist answer implies that one cannot even ask, on pain
of succumbing to the fallacy of complex question, why any contingent
individual exists: if no individual exists, there can be no question why
any individual exists. Not to mention Russell's modal corollary:
'contingent' and 'necessary' can only be said de dicto (of propositions)
and not de re (of things).