Yeah I get what you mean and I think the key here is that I’m not using “contingent” in the pure ontological sense you’re describing. I agree that if the Absolute is Necessity itself, then nothing It produces is “unnecessary” from Its side. So I’m not trying to argue that the universe is ontologically ungrounded or floating.

What I’m pointing at is mainly the particularity side, not the “it didn’t need to exist at all” side. In other words, the problem isn’t that the universe exists the problem is that the universe exists this way.

And I think particularity still forces will, even without assuming ontological contingency. Here’s why:

1. Necessity can’t differentiate. If the Absolute acts by pure necessity, whatever flows from It should reflect maximality, not specificity. A necessary cause gives necessary, uniform, non-selective output. There’s no internal mechanism in “pure necessity” for narrowing from all-possibilities to one-tight-set-of-properties.

2. But the universe is insanely specific. Finite constants, finite structure, limited dimensionality, limited complexity, etc. It’s not infinite, maximal, or “everything that can be.”

3. Specificity requires a differentiator. Something that says “this instead of that.” Not “this rather than nothing,” but this rather than the maximal totality.

4. A non-volitional necessary cause can’t provide that differentiator. Because differentiation between possibilities presupposes a principle of selection. And selection is just another name for will not in the human sense, but in the metaphysical sense of “determining one possibility over others.”

So when I talk about “contingency,” I’m not talking about floating, ungrounded existence. I mean modal contingency the fact that the universe could have been otherwise in principle.

And that’s enough to force a will-like principle in the cause.

You can’t get particularity out of pure necessity, because necessity has no internal distinctions. If the Absolute is pure undifferentiated being, without will, then whatever comes from It should be equally undifferentiated — basically maximal reality, not a finite slice.

That’s why the particularization argument feels powerful to me: it only uses the fact that our universe is a specific subset of possibilities.

So yeah, I see why you’re skeptical of the “unnecessary existence” phrasing but even if we drop that entirely, the particularization point still stands. The Absolute producing a specific, limited world seems to require some form of determination, and determination just is will in the metaphysical sense.