Bede Rundle obituary

Philosopher in the tradition of Aristotle, Kant and Wittgenstein
  • The Guardian,
Bede Rundle
Bede Rundle, left, taught at Trinity College, Oxford, for 40 years.

The New Zealand-born philosopher Bede Rundle, who has died aged 74, taught for 40 years at Trinity College, Oxford, and made substantial contributions to the philosophy of language, mind and action, to metaphysics and to philosophical theology. He defended the currently unpopular but correct view that philosophy is not, like science, a cognitive discipline building theories, but a critical enterprise of human self-reflection. In this he stood in the tradition of Aristotle, Kant and Wittgenstein and gave us a model of how to do philosophy.

Rundle thought in whole books, six of them over 37 years: meticulously crafted, rich in insights and packed with arguments. Grammar in Philosophy (1979), opening with, "Philosophy may begin with wonder, but it soon ends up in confusion", is one of the most ambitious and important books in philosophy of language since Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations. In it, Rundle attacks prevailing conceptions of key semantic concepts, such as meaning, truth, reference and necessity. His early specialisation was mathematical logic, which he taught for 10 years at Oxford. But under the influence of Wittgenstein's writings, he came to think that to understand the nature and role of language in our lives, the abstract logical and linguistic frameworks pioneered by Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell and Noam Chomsky are less relevant than careful and detailed investigation of how language is employed by ordinary language speakers, including scientists.

Mind in Action (1997) sharply rejects the view of the mind as a machine, or as an entity "inside" our brains, contrary to what our neuroscientific and popular culture often makes us believe. He also showed that animals do not reason, that there is a sharp demarcation between humans and animals, and that we have a free will.

In the third of his most notable books, Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing (2004), which received considerable attention, Rundle tackled one of philosophy's most important questions, formulated by Gottfried Leibniz in the 18th century, in a new way. Rundle contended that the question cannot be answered by science, but must receive a genuine philosophical treatment. He did so by addressing a famous argument in favour of the existence of God, presented by Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century.

Since this universe is contingent, that is to say it might not have existed, at some point it did not exist, and at a later point it came into existence. Since something can only begin to exist in relation to something else already existing (for instance, a football match can only start if the players are on the field), a non-contingent, necessary thing, God, must have existed for this universe to begin to exist. Had there been no necessary thing, God, there would be nothing now.

Unlike most recent philosophers, Rundle found some truth in this argument. In his version, we must indeed claim that if nothing had existed, nothing would exist now, in other words that it is impossible that nothing at all should have existed. For to say that there might have been nothing "then" (before the Big Bang) or "now" presupposes a temporal framework of reference, and thus space, motion and objects.

However, this does not fully vindicate Aquinas, for "the only thing which would provide a setting into which our universe might make an entrée would be another universe". There is no necessary entity, God, but some physical thing or other must have always necessarily existed.

If correct, this argument has dramatic consequences for most humans and their religious or scientific beliefs about the origin of the world, for it undermines the idea of an absolutely first event of the world, whether Creation or Big Bang. Rundle also casts doubt on the notion of divine agency and indeed the coherence of the notion of God.

He had a Catholic upbringing, but little sympathy for religion, or for scientists engaging in theological speculation. Earlier this year, he made his exasperation clear to me: "As if we don't have clear answers to the questions 'Where do we come from? Where do we go to?' – from our mothers' wombs and into the grave."

Born in Wellington, he was educated there at St Patrick's college and Victoria University. His interest in philosophy was sparked when, as a boy, he chanced across CEM Joad's introduction to the subject in the local library. After gaining his first degree in 1959, he went to Magdalen College, Oxford. There he played tennis for the college with the lawyer Michael Beloff, and table tennis for the university. On completing his BPhil in 1961, he went to Queen's College as a junior research fellow for two years before being elected to the Trinity fellowship. In 1968 he married his wife Ros, with whom he had a son and a daughter.

He held visiting professorships in the US, but turned down offers for chairs, preferring the tutorial system, whose recent decline he deplored. An unassuming and generous figure, he was very popular with his students. He took his role as a tutor for graduates just as seriously as that of being the senior common room wine steward.

He is survived by his wife and children.

• Bernard Bede Rundle, philosopher, born 21 February 1937; died 24 September 2011

• This article was amended on 1 November 2011. The original referred to Bede Rundle's books as Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing? This has been corrected to Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing.

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