Can there be grounding without necessitation? Can a fact obtain wholly in virtue of metaphysically more fundamental facts, even though there are possible worlds at which the latter facts obtain but not the former? It is an orthodoxy in recent literature about the nature of grounding, and in first-order philosophical disputes about what grounds what, that the answer is no. I will argue that the correct answer is yes. I present two novel arguments against grounding necessitarianism, and show that grounding contingentism is fully compatible with the various explanatory roles that grounding is widely thought to play.

Recent metaphysics has turned its focus to two notions that are-as well as having a common Aristotelian pedigree-widely thought to be intimately related: grounding and essence. Yet how, exactly, the two are related remains opaque. We develop a unified and uniform account of grounding and essence, one which understands them both in terms of a generalized notion of identity examined in recent work by Fabrice Correia, Cian Dorr, Agustín Rayo, and others. We argue that the account comports with antecedently plausible principles governing grounding, essence, and identity taken individually, and illuminates how the three interact. We also argue that the account compares favorably to an alternative unification of grounding and essence recently proposed by Kit Fine.Recent metaphysics has turned its focus to two notions that are-as well as having a common Aristotelian pedigree-widely thought to be intimately related:grounding (when some phenomenon non-causally 'derives' from another) and essence (when some phenomenon is in the 'nature' of another). However, how they're related remains quite opaque. 1 We aim to clarify their link by proposing a unified and uniform account of both notions that analyzes them in terms of a third: what we call, following Linnebo (2014), generalized identity. Along with the intrinsic desirability of accounting for either notion alone (which has proven elusive), our proposal illuminates how the two interact by means of a single, relatively wellbehaved conceptual tool.What do we mean by "generalized" identity? Objectual identities (e.g. "Hesperus is Phosphorus") are familiar, and display a canonical form: an identity-indicating * This article is the product of full and equal collaboration between its authors; the order of authorship is alphabetical.

Fine (1994 “Essence and Modality”;, Philosophical Perspectives, 8: 1–16) is widely thought to have refuted the simple modal account of essence, which takes the essential properties of a thing to be those it cannot exist without exemplifying. Yet, a number of philosophers have suggested resuscitating the simple modal account by appealing to distinctions akin to the distinction Lewis (1983. “New Work For a Theory of Universals”;, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 61: 343–377; 1986. On the Plurality of Worlds. Oxford: Blackwell) draws between sparse and abundant properties, treating only those in the former class as candidates for essentiality. I argue that ‘sparse modalism’ succumbs to counterexamples similar to those originally posed by Fine, and fails to capture paradigmatic instances of essence involving abundant properties and relations.

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Grounding and explanation are said to be intimately connected. Some even maintain that grounding just is a form of explanation. But grounding and explanation also seem importantly different-on the face of it, the former is 'worldy' or 'objective' while the latter isn't. In this paper, we develop and respond to an argument to the effect that there is no way to fruitfully address this tension that retains orthodox views about grounding and explanation but doesn't undermine a central piece of methodology, namely that explanation is a guide to ground.