ABSTRACT
Many significant philosophers have been concerned with variations on what we can think of as cosmological questions. Why is there something rather than nothing? Why are there any contingent things? Why does anything have Being? To cite but a few examples. Many significant philosophers have also responded to these cosmological concerns by pointing out that there is no need to ask such questions, or that we need not invoke something as exotic as God to answer them, or that the best answer comes in the form of silence, among still other possible responses. Recently, much has been made in the literature of notions such as ground and fundamentality. What they have brought with them is a revival of (and interest in) a certain kind of cosmological project. In this chapter, we explore the thought that the sorts of questions driving such projects are either ill formed or, if well formed, then able to be answered without appeal to anything as exotic as that which is fundamental; a position that, if correct, will have considerable consequences for the works of figures as wide-ranging as Aquinas, Heidegger, and Nishida (among still others).
